TBJ just announced!!! Advance Auto Parts announces moving to Raleigh making it official. Fortune 500 HQ in Raleigh some Good news
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Yes. That is good news. How much space do they need?
Update:
Was able to get into the locked story. It says that 4% of its more than 40,000 employee base is corporate. That means about 1600. Wake already has about 1000 employees for AdvanceAutoParts. So, the uplift in numbers isn’t that huge. They are leasing 38,000 in the Duke Energy building on Fayetteville street and also occupy warehouse type office space in north Raleigh to the tune of 146,000 feet. In total, that puts their demand at around 200,000. While not enough to fill a new tower, and if they consolidated into one space downtown, it could be the impetus to breaking ground on previously announced or planned projects like 300H. or the site of the former train station. It could also become a major tenant of 2 Hillsborough. 400H doesn’t appear to have enough commercial space, unless the developer tweaked the distribution of space to add more commercial and less residential.
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Great get for Raleigh! Feels like this has been coming a while. Glad they are making it official.
It also says they lease 328,000 sqft of space in Roanoke right now. The math doesn’t seem to add up when you look at how many corporate employees are already here. I’ll be interested to see how much of that comes to Raleigh. Most of that 328k must be warehouse space.
Fun fact: CarQuest is also headquarted in Raleigh.
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Some of that space in Roanoke might also be excess that they haven’t gotten out of yet.
Advanced Auto bought CarQuest a few years ago.
AAP is not going to wholesale move everyone from Roanoke VA, where the company was founded. I suspect they will keep some sort of ops center there and perhaps over time, they will grow the new HQ with the much larger talent pool in Raleigh compared to Roanoke.
Would be great to see them consolidate downtown however!
FWIW, it’s Advance Auto Parts, not Advanced Auto Parts.
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Looks like 435 more jobs planned. Any rumors going around about them expanding in downtown?
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Last night ABC11 news mentioned Apple and Honeywell as possibly being in discussions of coming to Raleigh. We have all discussed Apple for months, but Honeywell is new to me. Not sure how much faith I put in the 30 second sound byte, but wanted to share here.
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Interesting. Here’s the clip (starts at like 2:00). Honeywell is an interesting one, but the clip says “relocate” which makes it sound like the HQ is moving. I would suspect it’s more likely that Honeywell might be opening a new regional office. We should be clear that nothing about the clip says either company is looking at DTR or Raleigh in particular. https://abc11.com/politics/lame-duck-session-begins-with-voter-id-the-chief-task/4775000/
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Interesting article in WRALTechwire. The estimated impact from Advance Auto Parts is $1B, and while incentives certainly played a role, they specifically mentioned Raleigh’s tech workforce (since most of the 435 jobs will be tech oriented) as a deciding factor. Advance Auto Parts' new Raleigh HQ = more tech jobs and $1 billion impact | WRAL TechWire
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I think that this answers people’s question about “does it matter” if DTR loses Redhat? I think the above articles offers good reasons as to yes it matters…
Now, get ready for RedHats slow move out of there building and Advance Auto Parts to slowly move in…
Apparently DTR only needs one high rise building that all companies do a revolving door dance…I laugh and cry at the same time. 
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I honestly don’t think they will vacate their building. From my understanding, RedHat will continue to be a separate company, and based out of their building.
What is certain is that Advance Auto Parts will need more space than their current North Raleigh location. I wonder how this poses for downtown, and getting some office projects off the ground. Naming rights certainly come a long way, as does some general civic goodwill. I’d think they would at least like to have some key offices downtown.
I would also like to point out that Raleigh is home to a number of F1000 companies, the largest being Martin Marietta. It’s time we start promoting them to show how diverse the business environment is in this city.
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They already use space in the Duke energy progress tower don’t they? I thought I read AAP takes up like 80k sqft. So hopefully they will want to increase their presence downtown. And that will mean getting another tower off the ground since the downtown vacancy is so low.
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Correct…they lease in that building. In fact, that was earlier this year, right? I would say this building or a brand new building will be their new home. Who knows how Duke will affect the building’s capacity now that PE is fully absorbed.
I think they are leaseing in the Duke Energy Building (the white one) not the Red Bat building. I think Red Hat still plans to expand their presence in their building down to some of the first floor retail spots.
I just have a feeling that IBM will move Red Hat to RTP (over the long haul aka years). I believe that IBM owns there land? And if so, it certainly makes sense not to continue the rent in DTR?
Duke is full on every floor excluding the two that AAP occupy. Not much room for expansion.
Do I hear the Edison Office building plans getting dusted off ?? 
#WishfulThinking
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