Business Expansion in the Triangle

Highwoods laughing nervously. ‘Surely, companies will give us money and sign a lease for a building that won’t be completed in 3 years.’

Ha! They’re probably too busy moving their corporate headquarters to notice. :smirk:

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Article in WralTechWire about a South African start-up company. Details their reasons for choosing the Triangle and downtown Raleigh for their new headquarters at 227 Fayetteville St.
“We wanted to keep our downtown headquarters. It’s a very fun place to be, and I think people enjoy being in an urban environment.” Just hope all this attention spurs the beginning of projects in limbo.

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@Drew

Great article, thank you for sharing! :grinning:

DTR could certainly use more of these…(i.e. companies that actually “prefer” downtown) :

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https://www.livetradingnews.com/alphabet-inc-nasdaqgoog-13-billion-investment-reflects-its-ambitions-to-compete-with-amazon-and-microsoft-123759.html#.XGVmw6pKiUk

Also Google bypasses on NC in a big round of expansions. Sure we have already a data center and a tiny office in Chapel Hill but with the motivation to grow Cloud Business one would think they would have considered to open up shop in Raleigh-Durham at least to some degree.

Again we are back at perception of NC (and recent politics) in the eyes of West Coast juggernauts who seem to agree to bypass on NC. In Austin, TX meanwhile Google pre-leased an entire skyscraper

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Actually Google has some Offices in Raleigh and Durham. they are part of their Access group, which works along side their Fiber group.

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Meanwhile…

I don’t think of Texas and liberal tolerance. I also don’t like this perception that the Triangle is no different than the backwoods of NC.

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North Carolina’s ability to nearly immediately spiral downward in the national perception realm is a testament to the special sort of ignorance that has come out of our state government since the Republicans created their super majorities.

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NC has always had a branding issue since the days before Prohabition. Associations with moonshiners, bootleggers and NASCAR still prevail. Beyond the Outer Banks, people still see mainly the historical Appalachian aspects of NC and apply it to the entire state.

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I was hoping that we could close the gap to our “peer” Austin in this business cycle (or at least hold pace) but instead the gap widened. All FAANG basically doubled down on Austin and passed on RDU. Austin has a penthouse on top of the 4 seasons going on the market for $25mil – once unthinkable, that gives an indication on the maturity of a market

I am still very bullish on our area but we should learn a thing or two from conservative Texas for the next business cycle

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Yeah. They got lots and lots of money! Lol :grin:

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Texas actually learned from our government’s mistakes. Our government overstepped an undrawn line to the business community that has wounded us in a very serious way. While this line has been crossed by other states previously, those states aren’t typically part of serious conversations for expansion and relocation of leading, top tier & STEM corporations in the same way that NC typically is. While this is about FAANG, it also includes powerful financial services and phama companies too, and the reality is that NC’s growth has been mostly built on the backs of these specific industries. So, in the end, NC’s Republicans’ targeted legislation has resulted in the killing of the geese that have been laying the golden eggs in the state for decades.
It must be fixed.

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Maybe I’m reading it wrong, but the article seems to indicate that a data center will be added in NC.

For more clarity here is the blog post of Sundar Pichai including a map showing where will be expanded in new locations (NC not included)

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Speaking of Amazon

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You are not reading it wrong. That article did say NC in a list of states but I think it is incorrect as every other source did not include nc and this article specificly says we were skipped

https://www.wraltechwire.com/2019/02/14/googles-13b-expansion-plan-skips-north-carolina/

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Wow! So the most liberal mecca of the continent - crashes and burns in landing a huge leading tech firm. I’d say it’s not liberal politics that was the root cause, but lack of community support and logistical incompatibility and other reasons. It probably was not a great fit and the region was paying a very high price for these jobs (The project may actually go to NJ and receive less incentives).

But will the NC GOP haters on this site scale back their constant blaming of the GOP for any time the Triangle gets ruled out for a tech project? I suspect if you check with Apple, Google, Amazon, etc on why they aren’t here, it’s not because of state politics. Notice that none of Amazon’s criteria focused on politics other than ‘progressive friendly’.

The WaPo says this:

“The question is whether it’s worth it if the politicians in New York don’t want the project, especially with how people in Virginia and Nashville have been so welcoming,” said one person familiar with the company’s plans, according to the Post.

Also: Official statement from Amazon via CNN…will not pursue 2nd location at this time and will focus on “Northern Virginia and Nashville”.

Some of the of the biggest tech prizes continue to go to GOP strongholds, such as Texas and Tennessee; Amazon has started on the first of two 22 story office towers in Nashville for it’s East Hub Ops center.
NashvilleAZN

That area is considerably more conservative than NC or the Triangle. And they may pick up several thousand more jobs on top of the 5,000 committed due to the NYC debacle.

My point… when even NYC fumbles at tech attraction, there’s many more important factors than liberal vs conservative political leadership that determines the selection criteria.

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Highwoods is much too reliant on bank financing and seems like it needs more up front leases to start building. Kane either has his own money, or private partners who kick in quicker so he can build on spec any time he wants to. I imagine he is only minimally leveraged to boot so going to a bank his coverage ratios would be very high.

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@KenAA, The difference between Texas and Tennessee’s GOP and North Carolina’s is they were not stupid enough to draft an idiotic bill called HB2.

Think it doesn’t make a difference because it was ‘repealed’? A) it was ‘sort of’ repealed. No municipality was allowed to implement their own discrimination ordinance until 2020, effectively keeping HB2’s tenet’s alive & well and B) Ask any of NC’s economic recruiters if our legislature’s actions haven’t and still aren’t creating problems for economic recruiting to our state versus say Texas or Tennessee. Never would have thought NC would be viewed as ‘too conservative’ compared to TN or TX…never say never…

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I agree with you 100% and very eloquently stated. Complaining about HB2 and some of the “lost” opportunities to get some companies to come to North Carolina is nonsensical without admitting at the same time that the GOP has made North Carolina more acceptable for companies with the tax cuts and pro business policies. It’s like some people only want to see the negative. There are usually many factors involved.

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