I know, my wife recently retired from WakeMed. We’re talking 3000 new jobs at the new hospital. A minority of those will be transfers from other UNC or Duke locations, but most will be job growth – either direct, on indirect because of having to backfill people who leave other jobs in the Triangle to work at the new hospital. The median 2025 salary at WakeMed is $73,000 including a lot of top-end people. In short, there are a lot of people taking mid-five-figures jobs who would be looking at an already-tight housing market in Raleigh and Cary. Yeah, they’re way more likely to find housing in Pittsboro, Apex, F-V etc. In terms of challenges to get this hospital in operation, recruiting and staffing aren’t far behind getting the construction money.
I work over at Rex, and the main topic yesterday was whether the new location was more convenient. For most, no. But the Apex/Holly Springs crowd was absolutely there.
Yeah the Apex location is not more convenient than Rex or WakeMed for most in Raleigh. That said, my wife commutes from Raleigh to ECU hospital three days a week as a NICU nurse, so it would be a major commute improvement for her.
For context, she has 15 years of experience (including at some of the nations best children’s hospitals prior to moving here) but WakeMed/Rex only have full time staff openings for night roles and switching to day can take years. That just doesn’t work for our family so for her/us the bigger hospital in Apex with (hopefully) some additional day opportunities will be welcomed over the current 10 hours of commuting each week.
New hospital will be 21 miles from my N Raleigh home. Compare to UNC-CH (27 miles) and Duke (20 miles). Routine problems can be handled much more conveniently at UNC Rex, Duke Raleigh, or WakeMed. But if a problem is serious enough to need treatment at a specialty children’s hospital, I’d be no worse driving my kids (if they were still that age) to Veridea.
The RN who lives on my block works at UNC-CH, so the drive to Veridea wouldn’t bother her. A fair number of healthcare professionals in Raleigh are making the commute to Chapel Hill, Durham, or farther.
This location, and any resulting spurred development, will likely activate the use of the southern loop of NC540. Few from Eastern NC are going to come all the way into Raleigh to take I40>US1 and go south to this new hospital. It’s just too far out of the way, and folks will reluctantly drop the $ for the quicker drive on the toll road.
That’s why they built it. If they come from the west (Durham and beyond) they will probably make the same choice.
I hadn’t seen this mentioned in any of the previous articles, but TBJ has an article today that the North Carolina Retirement Systems is a 99% owner in the partnership that purchased Veridea. NC Children’s is purchasing the land. Seems a tad fishy, like someone is trying to help out the pension system on a piece of land that wasn’t imminently being developed.
Veridea has finally begun construction somewhat recently and you can see work being done as you drive down 55 towards Holly Springs.
Funny, I waa noticed this as well and thought of Alabama, were the state pension fund does similar stuff all the time. They own several buildings in Montgomery that they lease to the state, and are building a new state house for the legislature that the state will lease. Renting yiur capitol, lol. Its knda crazy, but works. This pension is well funded and seemingly sound.
I am surprized the nc state pension isnt long term leasing the property. The sale will certainly help the rest of the pensions property. Remember, the better it does in ivestments, the less payera have to kick in.
Yes RSA Retirement System of Alabama is quite active in real estate. They own the tallest building in the state in Mobile the mixed used tower RSA Battle House which is hotel and office. Here is a photo I took a month ago.
I think what NC is doing here is a wise investment and the value of the remaining land just all went up.
The 1,100-acre master-planned community of Veridea has been a planning project in search of capital for many, many years.
As ambitious as the original concept was by the original assembler of the properties it has only gotten better under the changes of ownership and developers while Apex worked on infrastructure to serve it.
Also will host a Wake Tech campus for the subarea.
RXR is a well capitalized and experienced firm, I just hope economic conditions doesn’t cause even the behemoths to change course.
Phase I includes an ambitious mix of roughly 1,100 single-family homes, 500 apartment units, and 200,000 square feet of retail space. Kicking off the single-family housing should be relatively straightforward, given the flexibility to adjust construction pacing if sales are sluggish. However, several national builders have reported slower sales in nearly all markets and the need for incentives to attract buyers. Although Raleigh continues to demonstrate strong market fundamentals and the proposed hospital adds an encouraging anchor to the area, it’s unclear whether that alone will provide enough momentum to propel Veridea into substantial development. (The River District in Charlotte which doesn’t have a major healthcare facility component serves as a cautionary example, despite being announced over a decade ago, progress there has been minimal).
As I’ve noted before, launching a “new city” is no small feat, even high-profile efforts like Bill Gates’s project in Arizona or Howard Hughes master planned communities have faced significant challenges. When automobiles dominate mobility, land becomes highly fungible, diluting any natural advantage a site might have. And while inexpensive land may seem like a sure bet, the high upfront infrastructure costs often cancel out that benefit. In sprawling areas, abundant supply also tends to keep sale prices and rental rates competitive, making it difficult for developers to achieve favorable economics.
Apex is gonna be bumping.. get these people some transit!!!
It’s more important for jobs to be near transit than for residences to be near transit, per a TRB paper: “Locating jobs nearer to transit may be more effective in promoting more non-car usage”.
I understand why community hospitals have to be scattered throughout the region, but specialty and referral hospitals often cluster together – e.g., University City in Philadelphia, Longwood in Boston, TMC in Houston, WHC in DC. Being able to draw from a larger, more specialized labor pool makes for happier employees, which is better for everyone. It’s the entire reason why we have cities in the first place.
puzzled by the “automatically close in 5 months” death sentence this topic has received. Are we supposed to be upset the hospital wasn’t built in DT Raleigh? That was NEVER in the cards. I think the majority posting here knew it would be in Western Wake County, which is exactly where it’s going.
But seriously, it’s a HUGE employer, thousands of jobs, going into a mixed use development of >1,000 acres (with TONS OF HOUSING desperately needed) right here in metro Raleigh. Why are we no longer interested? The topic seems to get continued new posts. Anyone know why we’re supposed to stop talking about CHONC? Is it sour grapes about the location? Mystified here.
It’s just off topic for this forum now that we know the location. If there’s a desire to follow it and people want to post photos of it under construction, it can go in the topic Show Off Things From Other Cities. It’s just an organizational thing, no need to read into it.
so maybe just relo all comments there? Its weird because it was never gonna be downtown, was always gonna be Cary at closest…so still weird to me that it can’t exist, but hey, your site, rules! 