RTP is a few votes from starting 50-year plan to remake the Triangle
I’m Brian Gordon, tech reporter for The News & Observer, and this is Open Source, a weekly newsletter on business, labor and technology in North Carolina.
Forest envelopes Eli Lilly’s new campus, a 58-acre site halfway around a long looped road in Research Triangle Park where the company manufactures popular weight-loss and diabetes medications.
“I think it brings a beautiful aesthetic,” Daniel VonDielingen, an Eli Lilly senior vice president of manufacturing, said in late July during a facility tour.
This aesthetic, seclusion as a selling point, has defined Research Triangle Park since state leaders opened the economic zone in the 1950s. Nearly half the size of Manhattan, RTP was made for employees to commute into and drive out of.
Fidelity Investments today maintains the park’s largest workforce at its office complex in the woods. Cisco, another major RTP employer, has occupied more than 10 buildings around a lake and a pond since the 1990s. And years before Eli Lilly bought its local campus in 2020, the shielded site was owned by GlaxoSmithKline.
These layouts are no accident. RTP straddles Durham and Wake counties, and each local government sets special zoning designations that require park campuses to have large buffers and low density. The maximum building height is 120 feet. Around 20% of RTP, 1,400 acres, is parking lots.
This suited past tenants, but park leaders now have a 50-year plan to evolve alongside the booming region and modern work trends. “The old RTP model of this very suburban, auto-oriented campus really doesn’t align with what we’re seeing in demand for both an office market perspective and a town perspective,” said Travis Crayton, head of planning and public policy at the Research Triangle Foundation, which manages the park.
The first change (called RTP 2.0) opened five years ago, when the Foundation launched Hub RTP, a quasi-downtown area that today offers office, retail, dining and — in a park first — apartments. The next change has a longer timeline. Under “RTP 3.0,” park leaders wish to give developers flexibility to convert low-density, tree-lined campuses into mixed-use areas with shops, restaurants, grocery stores, towers and additional residential neighborhoods.
The Triangle’s population has never been higher, and post-pandemic, many residents maintain hybrid office schedules. “Being able to provide those amenities in close proximity to a workplace, that’s what you’re seeing the most successful office leasing have in this market today,” Crayton said.
In June, Wake County revised its zoning ordinances to fit the RTP 3.0 vision. Durham County is rewriting its entire unified development ordinance, and Crayton has advocated for its leaders to pass park rezoning faster through a standalone action. Nida Allam, chair of the Durham County Board of Commissioners, told me she supports rezoning the park with housing and a transit station to make it more accessible.
“Much of our growth is within city limits,” she said. “But so many of our jobs are within RTP.”
Crayton anticipates Durham will green light the RTP rezoning plan in November. Then, after a few internal votes, the park can get started on its big reinvention.
Coffee man vs. coffee machine at Lenovo
Proximity made the juxtaposition hard to ignore. Standing to the right, behind a mobile coffee cart, human barista Cameron Keith of Raleigh’s Arbour Coffee served drinks for guests touring Lenovo’s upgraded Executive Briefing Center in Research Triangle Park.
And a few yards away was the Coffee Robot, a fully automated system Lenovo displayed Monday alongside its data center liquid cooling apparatuses and a six-legged robotic dog.
Coffee Robot is manufactured by a company called Hestia Robotics USA with Lenovo software and screens. It has milk dispensers, syrup pumps and latte art capabilities. A mechanical arm waves to customers from behind a clear barrier as it delivers one of 200 drink variations. It’s pitched as performing the work of two employees, said Milo Speranzo, Lenovo’s North America chief marketing officer.
Keith and his wife started their coffee catering business last year. Are robots new competition? “I think people want that personal touch,” Keith told me during Monday’s event. “And we’re bringing a happy experience to you. I think that’s a little differentiator there.”
Coffee Robot is in a handful of hospitals and airports, including Austin, Dallas and San Francisco. Speranzo said there’s demand from high-traffic spaces that struggle to find employees, particularly skilled baristas.
And after watching it work all morning, Keith admitted it was a pretty cool concept.
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Duke investigation silence
When does no news become news? In late July, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Education Secretary Linda McMahon threatened to sever all Duke Health federal funding if the Durham medical system did not address allegations of racial discrimination. Their letter didn’t cite examples, but prominent DEI opponents have criticized Duke’s efforts to promote diversity in its residency programs.
Kennedy and McMahon gave Duke 10 business days to decide whether it would form a “Merit and Civil Rights Committee” to review internal practices and 20 business days to respond to the government’s information request under an investigation conducted by the Health Department’s Office for Civil Rights.
With both deadlines past, Duke University continues to not say how it has responded. Nor did the federal health or education departments answer requests for updates this week. In early August, the White House confirmed to The N&O that it had frozen $108 million for Duke. It did not publicly state which specific funds were cut, or give a reason.
Other Trump administration battles with elite universities have reached some resolutions: Columbia settled, a federal judge found the funding freeze at Harvard unconstitutional, and Northwestern’s president recently announced he will resign.
Will the Duke situation quietly fade, or are more headlines coming?
Clearing my cache
- It’s 919 Day in the Triangle, as today’s date matches our main area code. NC State’s Centennial Campus will host a free concert to celebrate.
- Data center update: Statesville City Council unanimously approved a five-building data center campus, despite some local opposition.
- The production company behind YouTuber/candy bar magnate MrBeast’s Amazon game show received a maximum $15 million state incentive to shoot portions of the next season near Wilmington and Greenville. MrBeast grew up in Greenville and maintains a studio in the Eastern North Carolina city.
- Duke Health CEO Dr. Craig Albanese will step down at the end of the month, meaning Duke Health and UNC Health each face top leadership changes amid a turbulent funding landscape.
- Acadia Healthcare is shutting Carolina House, three treatment center facilities near South Durham that address eating disorders and general behavioral health. The closure comes as Acadia faces both federal investigations into its general admissions practices and Medicaid cuts under the One Big Beautiful Bill.
- A new annual report from NCInnovation shows the imperiled statewide economic development organization awarded UNC System researchers $18.8 million between June 2024 and June 2025. Melanoma treatment, lithium purification and power-grid efficiency were among the recipient projects’ aims.
- North Carolina has issued a permit to Duke Energy to install 13 new emergency generators to support Novo Nordisk’s large, expanding pharmaceutical plant in Johnston County.
- RTI International laid off around 120 staff members on Thursday as the Durham-based global research nonprofit continues to readjust to the federal funding climate. “RTI’s next chapter will demand bold thinking and strategic agility,” RTI CEO Tim Gabel said in a statement.
National Tech Happenings
- Trump officials and Chinese leaders have outlined a deal to transfer TikTok to U.S. control. At least one Raleigh grandmother should be thrilled.
- The Federal Reserve cut rates his week in an 11-to-1 vote and suggested two more cuts could come before year’s end.
- Amazon says it will invest $1 billion to raise pay and lower health care costs for its U.S. transportation and fulfillment workers to more than $23 an hour.
- Waymo’s driverless robotaxis are coming to Nashville. How long until Raleigh gets them?
- ABC has pulled Jimmy Kimmel off his night-time talk show following complaints from Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr over Kimmel’s comments regarding the Charlie Kirk shooting suspect.
Thanks for reading!
This story was originally published September 19, 2025 at 9:11 AM.
