Oh yeah, that’s CHONCKY alright!
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It might be an even more basic funding problem. After all, this was in the article that @Daniel linked:
In this vein, I guess Veridea makes more sense than SAS - since, unlike the Cary location, residential and mixed land use plans are already in place (so it’s easier to quickly put shovels into the ground).
Edit for additional context: based on our previous posts as well as the News & Observer’s piece about this, the hospital is expected to cost about $3 billion to build and launch. Half of that is expected to be fundraised from private donations, but we still need $1.5B ~ $2B of public funds (unless you want UNC and Duke to cannibalize from their own operations when it’s hard enough to keep things running as-is). The $320M that the state initially allocated, then, is only a fraction of that.
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Art of the deal 
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It’s absolutely necessary for a hospital like this. Hopefully means the staff won’t need to walk a half hour from their parking too like many other facilities in NC.
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Ok so do we close this thread now that it’s freaking Apex? LOL
Apart from obviously supporting children’s hospitals, I couldn’t care less about this project now. I’ll never even see it and will forget it exists.
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I mean, we also have active threads on RTP and other “lifestyle centers”, RDU (which is legally in Morrisville), and business expansions that are often beyond Wake County. I think a lot of people would still care - and it’s still relevant to DTR, too, even if it’s only indirect.
@dtraleigh what do you think?
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I was mostly being facetious. Sorry. I’m not in the business of telling Leo how to run his site. LOL. I can mute it anyways.
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Fair enough. I mean… if we wanna go crazy, we could also just do a hostile takeover of all of Wake County and build up the entire US-1 corridor like Manhattan.
Turns out that the distance from DTR to Veridea is about the same as the length between the north and south tips of Manhattan:
…so if we do that, this would be a non-issue 
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Not gonna try to find a silver lining here. To me, this is an enormous disappointment. While a location at SAS would double down on reinforcing the core of our region, dropping this in Veridea just puts the pedal to the metal for exurban sprawl into Chatham, Lee, and Harnett County.
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Remember this is proposed to be a childrens hospital for the entire state not just the Triangle region. So I guess it accomplishes that (though the Cary site would have too) Hospitals require a lot of parking for not only employees but the thousands that will visit daily. I like the look of the campus from those renderings.
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When I was getting radiation treatment at UNC, a six year-old was getting his at the same time from the machine in the adjacent room. His parents were driving him up from Fayetteville every morning for the six weeks’ duration. The new hospital isn’t just for Triangle residents. The new location will be very accessible to people throughout central NC. As for exurban sprawl, the cow left the barn a long time ago and isn’t going back.
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+1. Putting this along I-40 with a ton of parking (at SAS site) would feel like the same thing as choosing Apex today. Accessible from the interstate and convenient for people traveling all over. However, this would have added to the utilization of the I-40 corridor where someday we hope to have BRT and commuter rail. Placing the hospital there would definitely have helped push the argument for connectivity between Raleigh, Durham, & RTP.
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It’s not as if this was at risk of jumping ship on the Triangle and going to Nashville, Austin, or even Charlotte. This was going to land somewhere in the Triangle, no matter what. They made a big deal about how they wanted it to be in a “central” location. This is only “central” if you consider Sanford to be the third vertex of the Triangle.
I get the symbolism of this hospital being “for the state of NC” - but while moving it to Apex puts it a bit closer to Fayetteville (~50 vs 60 miles), it’s further away from places like Henderson, Wake Forest, Durham, and even Raleigh. The state is so big, that on balance, which side of the Triangle it’s on has a pretty minor net impact on statewide accessibility.
A bigger issue here than patient access, is employee access. For example, the main UNC hospital has over 7000 employees - and they have to commute from somewhere. Putting the hospital at Veridea says “We want our employees to live in Apex, Holly Springs, Sanford, Pittsboro, or Angier - and they’re all going to drive.”
Is this location going to work fine for the hospital? Sure. From the hospital’s perspective, in reality, this is going to work out fine. But as for the future of the Triangle, it’s more decentralization - which IMO is not the direction I want the region to go.
As for the cow/barn analogy: Ok, so a cow left the barn a long time ago. A whole bunch of cows, even. And none of them are coming back! This is all true. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that we should should stop trying to keep the rest of the herd in the barn, let every new cow we get escape before it even ever enters the barn, and actually start celebrating every time another cow gets out.
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Regardless of how its perceived, it’s a win for all the children of the triangle! Personally, I’ve been resisting the temptation to say DTR, DTR, DTR or be disappointed and just be thankful we’ll be aiming high for a best-in-class medical facility.
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This thread will slowly fade I’m sure. Maybe I can auto close it if no one posts after awhile.
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I acknowledge your point, but don’t underestimate the scope of the facility and why it is getting support from the State. The hospital will draw patients from all over, especially now that UNC Health has extended its reach to the mountains. The UNC Health system is gobbling up healthcare operations all over the state, and for the most part it has a green light from the General Assembly to do so.
Sure, the location in Apex will encourage employees to live in the suburbs and exurbs. But honestly, aside from the physicians and upper-level administrators who earn top dollar, how many of those employees could afford to live in Raleigh or Cary anyway?
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The tin foil in me says the state wanted this off a toll road to maximize their investment.
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Tons of them? Is this sarcasm or something thats just gone right over my head? I know a lot of nurses, my wife is one. They all live in Raleigh, Durham, or Cary. You dont have to be a doctor making 500k a year to live here haha. Plenty of well paying jobs in a hospital.
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