Don’t you just love yellow journalism. It not even that it sensationalism Downtown Raleigh isn’t dying it’s reinventing itself. But I’m not gonna lie it’s still very boring that the problem it faces, getting shitfaced on Glenwood South which is fun and something I do almost every weekend now (except for this weekend I’ll be with my parents) but it gets old there needs to be more to do. Someone put a museum of illusions franchise downtown or some tacky attraction.
Glenwood South needs to be reinvented to be more than just an active drinking tour for 4 hours on Friday and Saturday late nights. It needs balance and daytime activation that comes with many more residents, small incubating businesses, services, and retail. Downtown needs to reinvent itself with more balance.
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I wonder about two drivers that could hurt and help the downtown office market.
On one side, security is so big these days. It’s probably better to keep employees away from people outside of their org for fear of losing a laptop at the coffee shop, people glancing at important documents, passwords getting stolen, whatever. It seems like that’s a risk not worth having. Is it enough to entirely upend your business and move it to the suburbs? I’m not sure but think about it in the context of my next point.
Downtown’s are good for collaboration and networking. Meeting people is still a skill worth working on and if you believe that your people, the people you work with, will do better if they mingle professionally with others in the industry then clustering and being downtown is a good thing. At the same time, some people believe if they are anywhere in the Triangle, they are “in the mix”. This might be true but when I see a meetup in Durham on a Thursday, I say “no thanks”.
I think downtown needs to play to it’s strengths and get people that work in the same industries going to some kind of in-person events at local businesses. For me, those that show up and network are the ones you want to hire and be apart of your organization. When I worked in RTP for 10 years, I saw none of that.
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Whether you’re saying this in jest or sincerity; I wholeheartedly agree lmao. One or two tacky tourist attractions could at least move the needle on visitation downtown, which then benefits EVERY business; locally owned, tacky, or otherwise.
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Greg Gala has a skeptical outlook on downtown Raleigh’s long-term prospects because he has multiple land holdings that he wants to develop in the future around RTP and Cary. He believes that suburban and tech-centric hubs are viable than urban cores like downtown Raleigh.
I tend to approach his statements with measured skepticism.
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Ahhhh HA!!!
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I am almost 100% WFH. I had to drop computer equipment off today and then met coworkers downtown for lunch. Love the 2 hour free parking. My office has security and I was pissed they going through my stuff. I won’t go back downtown full time. I will find another consulting job or retire. Parking is 120-160 month plus it’s not safe. Sorry but the truth hurts. I have had coworkers assaulted outside my office. Vic’s was not busy and before 2020 you couldn’t get in the door. We are about 50% of what it use to be downtown. Downtown has not recovered from covid and the riots. Don’t shoot the messenger but I don’t see it recovering from where we are unless new tech company comes downtown and homeless are dealt with. Remember the vibe when Red Hat moved from Centennial Campus to downtown? I do. The potential is there!
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I tend to agree with you. Society has picked up new habits because of the pandemic. These Habits are mostly the antithesis of what a downtown provides. At least that’s how I see it for DTR.
Habits take a long time to shake off so I tend to think we shouldn’t think of it as a “recovery”. Instead, let’s level set and just put things in place for the next big downtown draw.
And yeah, a big office relocation wouldn’t hurt either as well as taking the time to help those in need. 
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Hmmmmmmm… I’d wager anyone saying, in the year 2025, “I’m not going downtown because of the ‘riots’ from half a decade ago” (yes it’s been that long) … probably wasn’t going to be spending much time/money downtown, regardless lmaoooooo
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https://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2025/10/27/grover-gaming-moves-hq-raleigh-greenville.html
Looks like Raleigh just landed a quasi-HQ. ECU pirate alum just got paid it appears.
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““Grover Charitable Gaming, now part of Las Vegas-based video game company Light & Wonder, has opened an office in just under 26,000 square feet of subleased space at One Glenwood (WeWork building) in the Bloc 83 development in Glenwood South.”"
Grover was founded in Greenville. It generated over $135M in revenues last year.
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RapidScale a software firm is leasing another floor downtown at Bloc83 and hiring 100 more people.
Downtown Raleigh needs to actively recruit these tech and software companies to this mixed used district. https://www.axios.com/local/raleigh/2025/10/31/rapidscale-doubles-down-on-downtown-raleigh
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Part of the challenge with RapidScale and others is parking for the employees. They are leasing into Bloc83 due to needing more seats, but also to gain more parking. Not many employees live downtown unfortunately.
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This is why I’m shocked that the old Citrix space is still sitting on the market. They have parking in spades!
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I’m really hoping one of these other tech firms will get big enough to use it. Pendo where ya at
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The state of North Carolina has extended Apple’s deadline for investment and job creation by four years to still be eligible for incentives.
As many of us remember, Apple’s investment was originally announced in 2021 (many of us expected it in 2018). At that time, Apple said in the next decade it would spend a $1 billion in NC on a big data center and the RTP campus. Apple asked for the extension last year, and the state just agreed. So I guess the new deadline is 2035…
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article313037807.html
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That is LOT of Pokemon cards move over Japan we are now going to be printing them in Morrisville in Wake County.
1.27 M square feet lease at the Spark in Morrisville built and targeted for life sciences but this will be printing. Millennium Print Group
https://businessnc.com/morrisville-campus-nabs-nearly-1-3m-square-feet-lease/?
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Paywalled but I love to see another building in the skyline of Raleigh.
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TowneBank is HQ’d in Hampton Roads and has a tower in Norfolk.
“Brian Reid, who oversees TowneBank’s Triangle operations, said the bank will likely outgrow its Glenwood Avenue space. TowneBank, he added, had skyline ambitions even before acquiring Dogwood. Before the pandemic, the bank had looked at a rendering of the 400H tower featuring its logo at the top, Reid said.”
No immediate plans to build anything, but sounds like they’d be interested in anchoring a future office building.
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