Dorothea Dix Park

Dix Park planners look to Oklahoma for inspiration

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I hope they’re looking at The Gathering Place timeline for inspiration. Total time from assembling properties to opening the park was only 9 years.

TGP is 100 acres, so not as big as Dix, but my sense is that it has a greater built environment density than Dix, which will have more open space in its 300 acres. Like the Dix plan, TGP also includes a land bridge over a major highway. TGP was also designed by MVVA.

Of course private and corporate donors paid for most of TGP, which I’m sure helped speed things along.

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Just think oil/energy money.

“And up through the ground come a bubblin’ crude.”

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Yes, and the principal donor was very passionate about the park as a legacy project. Private funds and the will to make it happen definitely helped things along.

If only SAS was in Raleigh and not Cary…sigh…

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So close, but yet so far, eh?

That’s a great thread in itself: If SAS moved from Cary to DTR.
The new Duke Energy tower in Charlotte will be 40 stories for 4,000 peeps.
With 5,500 employees, SAS need at least a 50 story tower in Raleigh to handle the Cary crew.

But, as if they’d move. Would be interesting tho.

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They will never move because SAS needs a lot of very smart people and they all live in Cary… :wink:

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Never happening. Nor is getting Goodnight to actually try to support the region through supporting a major league sports franchise…

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I would like to know more on your thoughts as I also don’t “think” he willing to get into Raleigh or more specifically DTR and I am just going with his past deeds. And although he/his company obviously give back to the Triangle region, it leaves a sad hole for me with regards to how Raleigh was the starting point in his career. I could imagine him partnering with John Kane :smiley: :exploding_head::heart_eyes:

Main reason will not likely to move is has a Huge investment in current campus. That seems to be a draw to employees as it’s like their own little town and park with all the amenities. Do not think most of them would see any advantage to moving to DTR.

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I spent 12 years @ SAS. Too difficult to attempt to explain in this site.

He can’t see the forest for the trees. Brilliant in many ways…American success story for certain but SAS could have been Microsoft. Unfortunately he’s a guy that couldn’t cede control and he felt his software “just sold itself” and the sales organization was useless…which meant all the good salespeople & businesspeople, in general all left…so you were left with a bunch of “a$$ kissers”…which meant you were left with a bunch of “Caryites” surrounding him.

He kind of runs SAS like local hardware store…is the best way I can describe it. Meaning anything that grows the region like incentives for Red Hat or Apple…just cost him more in salaries because they drive up wages when they come here…supporting sports teams drives the appeal of the region in a similar way.

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I’m not looking to be a smart aleck but it’s his company and his money. He should and can do what he wants with them. I like the fact that he supports the NC Museum of Art and NC State.

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And we also are free to comment on how he uses the gains from the system we support. He seems to hoard more than a number of other people of his wealth so I think it’s fair to scrutinize. He alone didn’t conjure all that wealth out of thin air. It’s good he supports a few things around here but I think it’s fair to say he could do more.

My guess is that a large portion of his net worth is illiquid. He and J. Sall are both in there 70’s. Will be interesting to see what happens with SAS ownership once the two of them are no longer.

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My contacts at SAS (or former SAS) paint a dark picture of the future of the company: Open source competition, missing the boat, should have sold 5-10 years ago, talent jumping ship etc
I am not an IT guy so I am curious how others in this forum see SAS’s outlook

They’ve been predicting the demise SAS for years and decades even.

Yet, they make more money each year than the previous. They’ve done that for over 40 years. Never a negative growth year. And on track for 2019 to beat 2018 (likely a bit over 3.3 billion dollars). (This is all public info).

And the flak that Jim G. doesn’t give back enough to the community is silly; the company has the greatest benefits in the area and they continue to expand in the Triangle without a penny in incentives. They have the largest local solar farm in the Triangle and free electric car chargers in all the lots. They give preferred parking to drivers of eco-friendly cars (hybrid, etc).

The newest tower, Building A, at 10 stories is the tallest in Cary. Directly powered from the solar field next door. Like many buildings on campus, it’s Gold LEED cerfified. The solar farm uses grazing animals to keep the lawn trimmed. SAS uses all local suppliers for their cafeterias. They grow lots of their own greens and herbs on site. They use rain water for the toilet system. They’re a leader in hiring people with physical and mental disabilities. The cleaning people, security, landscaping, etc are hired as employees with full 401Ks and such instead of a lot of places that use contractors for those roles. They literally paid for the Cary fire station down the road and the new Veterans park. On and on.

But as far as moving back to Raleigh in a mega campus in Dix Park or downtown, that’s not in the cards. But certainly an interesting and historical company for the area.

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They barely grow @ 1% per year, assuming you can even believe that because they aren’t publicly traded.

1% “growth” in the software world is a joke…you’d be long gone if SAS wasn’t privately held.

Nobody said that the Goodnights don’t give, however when there is something that helps move the needle for the region, like purchasing the Carolina Hurricanes or an MLS team (or even MLB like some of you are obsessed with)…he nor Sall seem to care of the positive impact it could provide the region as a whole.

If sports teams didn’t provide value…charltote usa would not have coughed up $110million in what appears to be a couple weeks decision time frame (compared to Raleigh’s never ending 'analysis)…Goodnight, Sall, Sweeny, Sloan…could all have purchased teams as a tax writeoff if nothing else. Raleigh has 4X the billionaires as charlotte (which has zero) yet none seem to want to help the region. charlotte was even able to import a billionaire who seems more civic minded that all 4 or our billionaires combined…

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Oh don’t be a party pooper. An old software company like SAS isn’t going to have crazy growth rates. They are similar to IBM and Oracle. Diversifying into Cloud architectures and AI and machine learning and the like. Their employee base is over 13,000 now. The revenue is not fake news. The fact that they are not public has allowed them to take long term investments, which is a good thing for sustainability.

I was responding to @niko who mentioned a dark future for SAS, and to @JetsJessie who says Jim G. isn’t ‘doing enough’. When already - the owners do more than any other company in the area.
The problem for them is their wealth is tied in the company assets. They don’t have a few spare billion in cash to build Raleigh a MLS franchise.
Plus these guys are software nerds. They’re not going to have the same interests like us skyscraper guys.

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Growing up in the 90s, a neighbor down the street suffered a debilitating medical condition. Her husband worked at SAS. The Goodnights installed an elevator into their house so they wouldn’t have to move. They aren’t perfect (as my Chatham family would be quick to point out), but they are good people who have done an extraordinary amount of good for the region.

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