RTP is growing. How local leaders are preparing for park’s first ‘sleep-in’ residents
Research Triangle Park is set to welcome its first live-in residents next year, developers say, and with apartments and townhomes already booming nearby, first responders are making plans for the anticipated flood of population growth.
Durham County Sheriff Clarence Birkhead said they’re preparing for the county’s unincorporated population to double in the next few years.
About 40,000 of the county’s estimated 332,680 people live outside the city limits, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The census tracts surrounding RTP are among the fastest growing in the region.
“It is simply amazing to watch,” Birkhead told the Board of County Commissioners recently.
Research Triangle Foundation President and CEO Scott Levitan said deputy response has been slow at times. The Sheriff’s Office has buildings downtown and in north and east Durham, but not south Durham.
“There have been some incidents inside the park where it’s been difficult,” Levitan said at a county commissioners meeting last week. “It’s not anyone’s fault. It’s just ... it happened.”
The Sheriff’s Office asked the county at the meeting for money to build an RTP annex that will help them handle the anticipated population growth.
Building it could cost an estimated $27 million. The 18,000-square-foot building would contain space for patrol and administrative work, a communications center, a records office so people don’t have to travel to the downtown courthouse, showers and a “war room” for coordinating major incidents. County commissioners objected to calling it that.
They propose to build it along Davis Drive, on part of a campus owned by Fidelity Investments, a financial services firm. Levitan said Fidelity is in talks to donate the land.
A new fire-EMS station
Fidelity paid $34 million for its 121-acre campus over a decade ago. The company carved off 3.8 acres in 2021 and donated it to the city for the future Fire Station No. 19.
Deputy Fire Chief Chris Iannuzzi said an EMS station will likely operate out of the same building.
The Durham Fire Department has been run by the city since a 2018 merger, while the county operates EMS. The two newest stations house both fire and EMS personnel.
Station No. 19, which is expected to open in late 2025, has a projected $11 million cost.
The Fire Department has a meeting this week to write a request for proposals from contractors, Iannuzzi said.
The Sheriff’s Office proposal is to position the annex just south of the planned fire station, stretching the tract of Fidelity’s donated land to 7.3 acres.
A diagram proposed by the Sheriff’s Office shows a 120-space parking lot between the fire station and Sheriff’s Office.
The Board of Commissioners will consider the Sheriff’s Office proposal, but no timeline has been proposed.
The first people to live inside the park
Construction is rapidly proceeding less than a quarter-mile away on Horseshoe, a U-shaped set of buildings with restaurants, shops and offices alongside the park’s first 406 apartments.
“We are scheduled to be open this time next year,” said Linda Hall, executive vice president and CFO of the Research Triangle Foundation. “It will be the first time we have residents sleeping in the park in its 64-year history.”
Research Triangle Park was founded in 1959. It sits on 7,000 acres in Durham and Wake counties.
It’s the beginning of a multi-year transformation of Hub RTP. They have $105 million in funding so far from public and private sources, the foundation told the commissioners:
- $20 million: Durham County government
- $10 million: A special tax property district, which landowners pay into
- $75 million: Research Triangle Foundation
Hub RTP will one day include a hotel, two apartment buildings, a large parking deck, an eight-story life science tower and several office buildings with shops and restaurants sprinkled in. The eventual transformation is expected to cost over $1 billion
Horseshoe and the yet-unnamed apartment complex are being built on the northeast corner of Davis Drive and N.C. 54.
The parking garage, which contains about 1,000 spaces, is finished. Hall said about half of the spaces will be free and public, while the rest are for office workers.
This story was originally published August 14, 2023 at 2:49 PM.
