What’s next for Centennial Campus? NC State seeks approval for expansion and growth.
N.C. State University wants Centennial Campus to go bigger and taller.
The university is putting together a rezoning request that would increase the potential building space on the campus by two million square feet and allow office towers that would rival ones in downtown Raleigh.
The request would seek changes to nearly 98% of the 1,000-acre campus, asking for permission to build towers of up to 28 stories. It would also increase the potential density of the campus from 11.8 million square feet to 13.8 million square feet.
The Spring Hill district, located between Centennial and Dorothea Dix Park, is not included in the request.
Alicia Knight, N.C. State’s associate vice chancellor for real estate and development, said the goal of the rezoning is to give the university more flexibility for how it builds its future.
Centennial was given to the university in the 1980s as a place to meld research, teaching and economic development, and the university has done that successfully over the past 30 years, Knight noted.
“We see it as an opportunity for continuing to realize that vision,” she said.
N.C. State University’s Centennial Campus has become one of the Triangle’s most important economic engines.
It’s been a launching pad for some of the region’s largest home-grown tech companies, like Red Hat before its explosive growth caused it to need an entire tower in downtown, and Bandwidth, a communications technology company, that is similarly about to build its own headquarters after outgrowing its offices on the campus.
When prospective tech companies and entrepreneurs visit Raleigh, they often tour the campus, where private corporations mix with students and researchers.
Just a few minutes from downtown, you can simultaneously feel like you are in a suburban office park and on a college campus. It’s home to much of the school’s engineering department as well as offices for a diverse array of companies, like Lexis Nexis, ABB and Live Oak Bank.
When Amazon considered Raleigh as a site for its much-hyped HQ2, regional leaders talked up the campus and offered a vision of adding soaring towers to it.
It appears that the university is moving a step closer to allowing that sort of development.
The application does not give specifics for how N.C. State would like to develop the campus. The application breaks down the campus into nine sections, each with varying levels of height allowed, from three stories to 28 stories.
But Knight, who previously worked at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., said the university wants Centennial to feel more urban and have a “live-learn-work-play” environment.
“Could residential be a part of it? sure,” she said. “I expect residential, labs, offices and retail could be part of [it].”
It would also maintain open space for recreation.
“We are talking about 1,000 acres here,” Knight said. “This is a large land area.”
The school had been having conversations about the rezoning well before Knight was hired about six months ago.
She said that there wasn’t an imminent partnership or development that was spurring the request, which the university expects to formally file later this month. It is currently planning the neighborhood meetings that the city of Raleigh requires before it considers rezoning requests.
However, the university is approached about opportunities all the time, and it wants to be prepared to meet them, Knight said.
“There have been opportunities that have presented themselves over the years where NC State was in position to do great things on Centennial,” she said. “We want that to continue.”
This story was produced with financial support from a coalition of partners led by Innovate Raleigh as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. Learn more; go to bit.ly/newsinnovate
This story was originally published November 9, 2020 at 5:36 PM with the headline "What’s next for Centennial Campus? NC State seeks approval for expansion and growth.."
