The land is cheaper and emptier, which helps with building the place. Also, a lot of biotech workers don’t get paid that well (you and I should know this!), so doubtful most employees are living in downtown Raleigh or Durham. Honestly, the main thing keeping me in my house in west Raleigh is its proximity to work in RTP and downtown Raleigh/Cary/Durham. Take away the work component, and the idea of getting a bigger house with more land closer to Holly Spring has some appeal. And most people I work with hardly ever go to DTs anyways, so this probably is pretty attractive to a lot of their potential workforce.
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Manufacturing facilities are generally situated outside downtowns/high-density areas due to logistical and infrastructure requirements, as well as potential environmental considerations. The operations will probably need extensive space, major utilities, and efficient access for raw material delivery and finished product distribution, which are more easily accommodated in industrial zones than in densely populated urban settings.
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Interestingly enough, the median Holly Springs household income is over $132K a year. Wake County is over $101K, while Raleigh is over $82K a year.
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The working class usually is found in the outer ring of a primary city. The rich get the downtowns, the middle class get the suburbs.
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but not in Raleigh. The wealth is all over the place sprawled out of course!. There are some nice pockets of wealth ITB but I’d wager most of the money and largest homes of the wealthiest citizens (and Canes players, etc LOL) are Western Wake/Cary/approaching Jordan Lake and North Raleigh, Falls Lake /Wake Forest burbs. They vastly outnumber Raleigh numbers it seems to me.
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I imagine the Five Points area still has the highest average housing price in the county. But rich people like more land as well, so definitely pockets of wealth outside-the-beltline.
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If I was really rich, I’d buy a block of downtown and build a 40 story mansion for myself. Possibly with a moat.
Artist’s rendering:
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Omg that is magical! I’m moving!
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Panonia is considered where in raleigh now?
It was just a matter of time…
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Pharma Voice a trade pub highlights Raleigh specifically as a place that will benefit from onshoring drug and pharma production. Of course just this week we have seen evidence of this in Holly Springs.
https://www.pharmavoice.com/news/onshoring-raleigh-manufacturing-hub-big-pharma/745431/
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This is in Greensboro, but I think it’s a big enough region wide deal that it is worthy of posting here. JetZero selected Piedmont Triad International Airport for a manufacturing site. They claim it could employ 14,564 people by 2036. $1.54b in state incentives and $784m in local incentives. If it comes to fruition I imagine there will be a multiplying impact across the state.
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They claim it could employ 14,564 people by 2036.
Interesting. That must be an extremely rosy upper-bound though. IIRC, Boeing’s commercial plane division employs ~30k people. And JetZero’s first full-scale prototype isn’t projected to be complete until 2027. This sounds to me like a “if there are no delays, and our prototype works perfectly, and Boeing’s current struggles lead them to completely implode” scenario.
All that said, it’s good to see investment in the Triad, and NC in general.
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I saw one article that claimed that JetZero was going to move their headquarters to Greensboro after they build the factory, which would definitely boost the numbers. That claim doesn’t seem to be supported by other sources though.
Boeing commercial has almost 36,000 employees, and last month produced 49 aircraft (FWIW, that’s the most they’ve produced in a long time with all the troubles Boeing has been having). JetZero’s stated target is to produce 20 jets a month, so 14,000 seems a little high if they are only manufacturing related jobs. One thing to consider is that Boeing relies heavily on outside suppliers from everything from small machined parts to entire fuselages. So if JetZero plans to be more vertically integrated, then that number starts to make more sense.
One last thing worth noting, PTI is already the site of Honda’s private jet factory, and Boom Supersonic has already started building a factory there to construct their jets (Boom - Superfactory). These kinds of things build on each-other as the local area establishes a pool of talented workers and suppliers pop-up. The Triad in 15 years could be a huge aerospace hotbed if all of this comes to pass (I’m a little skeptical as both JetZero and Boom have extremely ambitious designs and commercial aerospace is probably the most difficult industry to break into). As a triangle based aerospace engineer, I’m just a little bitter that PTI is getting all the action.
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Headquarters will move so says EDP of NC RDU and CLT are far too busy as passenger airports to have this kind of development by them. Perfect for PTI though.
[https://edpnc.com/news/jetzero/?
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BuildOps selected Raleigh over Austin (and other cities) for a 291-job tech hub. Deciding factors, according to state officials, were talent and affordability, as well as flight availability and office costs. No word in the article where they may locate.
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Lets hope this software company chooses some space in downtown Raleigh instead of North Hills or some other suburban locale. Being based in Santa Monica which is super expensive I would think they would believe downtown Raleigh office space is cheap.
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