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(Introduction: Can’t hear audio). Thank you my friend. Thank you so much.
Well this is terrific. Thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight and to share with you what
I think will be three stories, three stories about how you go about creating places of
innovation. Places where people want to come, share ideas, move ideas forward, create a
better world and a better life for all of us. And I begin my story tonight with a little
walk around that I did here at Centennial Campus.
So, I was a graduate in 1987. That actually was the centennial year of NC State University
and it was the year which Centennial Campus was founded. And so I know this project very
well. In fact I was in the College of Design with the Dean, Claude McKinney. Do any of
you know the name Claude McKinney? Claude McKinney was the visionary behind Centennial
Campus. And I remember as a student, several of us he would invite us into his office to
look at pictures of this project, this vision he had for a place called Centennial Campus.
It was going to be unlike any other research park or campus in the world. It was going
to be a place where industry university and government would come together, sharing common
buildings, plazas, courtyards. It would be a place where we would have a golf course,
a conference center. It would be a place where people would live and work. And everybody
thought Claude was completely nuts. In fact I remember very clearly the number of faculty
at the College of Design who mocked Claude’s vision for Centennial Campus. But there were
plenty of people within the administration including the chancellor at the time Bruce
Poulton who believed Claude had a really innovative idea. And he let Claude take that idea and
run with it. Now I had the privilege of working with Claude
later in my career as I began working in the area of how research campuses come together
and how they’re fashioned. And I remember, I remember Claude going to visit faculty on
the main campus and the faculty would say to him “Claude, we will never drive all
the way over to Centennial Campus to have classes. The students will never go there.”
I remember when they started building buildings over here the faculty said, “But Claude,
why are you building new buildings over at Centennial Campus when we have old buildings
over here that need renovating?” And Claude would say “I tried building old buildings
at Centennial Campus, it just doesn’t work. I can only build new buildings.”
Claude had an amazing amount of courage, tremendous passion and patience. And he stuck with this
idea even after ten years, ten years of development at Centennial. They’d begun to build infrastructure,
put in some of the initial buildings. Claude was out, well before PowerPoints with an old
slide projector and boards under his arm giving pitches all over town. And at one point, ten
years into the development, the News and Observer ran the headline story “The More Abund Centennial
Campus”. It basically said Centennial would never work. It was a failure. They asked Claude
when he was going to give it up. He never did. So, to walk this campus today to see,
to see all of you here on this campus, to see residential going up, to see what was
in Claude’s mind all the way back in 1987 and to see it a reality today is remarkable.
I’ve traveled the world. And when you mention North Carolina people know Research Triangle
Park, but more and more people know of this Centennial Campus. It is a model for the modern
university research park and campus in the world. And it all came about because someone
said what if we could do something really great together. What if we could come up,
what if we could push the boundaries of how we think about working about the way in which
students learn, the way in which industry supports and collaborates with education.
That was Claude McKinney. He asked those questions and he pushed those boundaries. And Centennial
Campus is where it is today. There’s a wonderful plaque here on the campus to commemorate Claude
if you ever get a chance to see it. It’s just outside on the Research I, II, and III
buildings there’s a lovely little courtyard there and there’s a plaque that honors Claude
McKinney. You should check it out sometime. He’s a great guy.
What gave Claude the courage to do a Centennial Campus? It wasn’t just that Claude was who
Claude was, it was where Claude lived. It’s what Claude knew about the history of North
Carolina and about another project that just twenty-five years before had been the big
bet. Research Triangle Park was called North Carolina’s big bet. In 1950’s North Carolina
was 49th out of the 50 states. The motto in North Carolina was Thank God for Mississippi
because they were the only state lower than we were. In almost every measure by the way
we were not poised in any way coming out of the Second World War to take advantage of
any of the new technologies. North Carolina was destined to be an old line agricultural,
manufacturer, southern state, except that some people had a different idea. But the
governor at the time was a governor named Luther Hodges. Luther Hodges had worked with
General Marshall in the rebuilding of Europe. So, he understood the importance of making
big decisions and pushing forward big ideas. And he partnered up with a group of business
leaders to take several thousand acres of scrub pine forests among three good universities.
We weren’t great universities back then like we are today. NC State, Duke, and UNC
were good universities, well respected, and the decision was to carve out this land and
to announce to the world that North Carolina the state near the bottom was going to create
the largest research park in the world. Now at the time there was only one other research
park model anywhere and that was in Stanford University. The other models were growing
up around Boston. So, this was indeed our big bet. The New York Times called it that
and it was very risky. The odds of success were slim. But the leaders who put it together
believed passionately in the people of North Carolina and their promise. And so they launched
this project with great fanfare. And I want to say this to our faculty who might be here
because I always I think this is a wonderful story. Our faculty became our salesmen for
Research Triangle Park. We actually bought them train tickets and on their summer breaks
we sent them out around the country to meet with companies and try to lure them to Research
Triangle Park. Well you know it didn’t, as big as the fanfare
was, it didn’t start off with all that much success. And in fact several years into the
operation the options on the property, they didn’t buy the property outright. They were
so sure that people would come in and buy property. They just took out options. Well,
since no one came in the options were coming due. Luther Hodges was incredibly nervous,
because he had made a deal. The deal was he would fund education and infrastructure, but
the private sector, the private business leaders who had formed the vision for the park; they
were going to have to fund it. So, he got on the phone and he called Robert Hanes. Robert
Hanes was the President of Wachovia Bank. At that time Winston-Salem and Wachovia were
the biggest places in North Carolina. And Governor Hodges called them and he said “Look,
we have a problem. In about thirty days we need to raise the money to pay off these options
or this whole Research Triangle Park idea is going to be a flop. Robert Hanes was dying
of cancer. The amount of money they were talking about was the equivalent of about $15 million
in today. Right. So, they needed the equivalent of $15 million dollars and they needed to
raise it in thirty days. Robert Hanes turned to a young protégé a guy named Archie Davis.
Archie worked there at the bank. He was the son of a prominent family in Winston-Salem.
He would later become the President of Wachovia bank, but at that point he was working for
Robert Hanes and Hanes said “What are we going to do Archie? Are we going to, do we
need to go out and sell stock in this park idea? You know are we going to have to just
float more loans? What are we going to have to do?” And Archie said “No. Here’s
what we’re going to do. We’re going to go out and ask the people of North Carolina
to contribute the money to pay off these options.” So, now imagine this. Archie Davis gets in
his car, and he travels all across North Carolina and he asks private citizens to give money
to this idea that no one in the world had ever tried before. He raised every cent from
private individuals. My favorite story is the farmer that stopped
him at a gas station. He said, “I understand you’re raising money for this project in
Raleigh. Here’s a hundred dollars. I know I’ll never see it, but it’s for my kids
and my grandkids.” They didn’t get anything in return. They bought into a dream, to a
promise, to an idea. Archie Davis said from that point on what would be the mark of Research
Triangle Park would be its generosity of spirit. And they turned Research Triangle Park from
a for profit real estate venture into a not for profit economic development program. And
if you look at our mission statement it doesn’t say a thing about real estate. It says we
have three goals, to support our universities, create jobs, and help lift up all the people
of the state of North Carolina. So, if you drive through Research Triangle
Park, when you think about what it means, know this. It was, it’s your park. The people
of North Carolina believed in it. They invested money in it out of their own pockets. They
took a chance. And even though the park would flounder a few more years, ultimately it all
paid off and in a huge way. Today, as was said, the park is 7,000 acres. We’re half
the size of the island of Manhattan a hundred and seventy companies, forty to fifty thousand
people on any given day show up there for work.
Here’s what’s even more interesting other than all the big names you know out at the
park. More than fifty percent of the companies of the park are twenty employees or less.
Bet you didn’t realize that. It’s a great place for small companies, startup companies,
innovative new companies, to land. And it still ranks among the world’s most innovative
public, private, partnerships. It has a great global plan for North Carolina. It absolutely
changed our state’s destiny. And I can tell you that for a fact because I lived here.
My father was a working class electrician. We lived here in Raleigh. My mom was a stay
at home mom. And I remember distinctly my father putting us, the only thing he had of
value was a 1965 Ford Mustang, black with red interior. It was a sweet little car. Now
that’s the only thing we had of real value. And he’d get us in the car and he would
drive out to this place called Research Triangle Park. I remember that thing because back then
we only had two parks, Pullen Park and Umstead Park. And so we’d go to Pullen, I mean we’d
go to Research Triangle Park. There was nothing to do but look at all these places where big
buildings and red earth was being developed. Here’s what happened. My father believed
that that park would be some, would provide some greater opportunity for him and his kids.
What happened as the years went on is my father went from being a working class electrician
to getting a job at Motorola. Had nothing but a high school degree but the Triangle
was growing. Companies like Motorola were coming in. He could maybe become a salesman,
which is what he did. We went from working class to middle class. We moved into a new
neighborhood along with people who were moving from all kinds of bizarre places like Schenectady,
New York or you know all the places where the IBM employees were coming from and moving
in to Raleigh. And so I saw you know and met kids whose parents had college degrees. I
saw my public education improve when I went to school. And then when I came to NC State,
NC State had gone from a good university to a great university. The faculty, the programs,
the research, everything that was happening here had been influenced by the park. Our
politics in our state had changed. The way we thought about ourselves as North Carolinians
had changed. We believed we were a state with a great destiny. That we were a state that
could do big things. If we at the bottom of the pile, 49th, if we could chose to change
our course then there was nothing we couldn’t do. And I think it was reflected in our modern
history. If you look at North Carolina and where it has grown and how it has prospered,
and as I pointed out it led to the courage of a Claude McKinney and an NC State University
to pursue a bold vision like a Centennial Campus.
So, we’ve been at challenging places before. And we’re at a challenging place again.
We’re seeing enormous global competition. There are research parks all over the world.
I just visited China, was there for two weeks. In China alone the research parks are practically
the size of North Carolina. I mean they’re huge. Tremendous investments going in. Malaysia,
places that are called a biopolis. So, we are seeing tremendous competition in the area
of innovation and technology. Places where people will want to go and create and think
and do amazing things. So, we know that we’re at another challenging place.
So, we have begun an effort at Research Triangle Park that we call redevelop, reconnect, and
reimagine. Let me begin with the redevelopment. Research Triangle Park was designed in the
1960’s and the idea was that dad would live in the suburbs and go to this suburban office
park where their company would provide cafeterias and gyms or whatever. And the park was never
planned with any of the kind of amenities and services we all want today. Imagine this
again. We’re 7,000 acres. Half of the size of the island of Manhattan and you can’t
buy a Starbucks coffee anywhere in Research Triangle Park. We may be the only urban center
in the world that’s 7,000 acres where you can’t buy a Starbucks. So, we are seeing
our existing companies in the park say to us, look we’re investing here. We’re growing
here. We want to stay here, but something has to change. Our employees have to be able
maybe to live closer. We have to have access to food, good coffee. And so, and the newer
companies that are coming in are saying we’re going to have a hard time recruiting people
like you. They’re not going to want to work at mom and dad’s old office park. Something’s
got to change. So, with all those challenges, when we take
on the redevelopment we’re completely re-thinking the way in which the park looks and feels
today. We’ve set out four goals for the re-development. First is that whatever we
create needs to be highly collaborative. You understand a collaborative environment because
Centennial Campus was designed this way. Our design in the field will be different. But
the idea will be the same. How do we create places where people can get together, share
ideas, be comfortable? Right now you can’t do that in the park. Whatever we design in
Research Triangle Park needs to be authentic. It needs to have a great look and feel, but
it doesn’t need to try to look like Centennial, or downtown Durham, or Raleigh, or Austin,
or Boston, or you know Abu Dhabi wherever it might be. We need a look and a feel that
suits us. So, we’ve reached out to some of the world’s best architects, artists,
and planners to create a look and feel for RTP that will be like none other.
This last summer I went to three interesting locations. I began in Boston to look around
the MIT Cambridge Innovation Center. Great place for technology innovation. Then I went
to Silicon Valley, which we all know around Stanford University. And then I visited the
Imagineering Studios for Walt Disney in Glendale, California.
So, I start off in Boston. It has everything that everybody says you all want, right. It’s
very dense, urban, fun, great food, lots of beer, great coffee. Everything’s right there.
You leave Boston going okay well that’s what everybody wants. Then you go out to Stanford
and you see people just like you but in a completely different environment. It’s completely
suburbanned. I mean Stanford Research Park looks just like Research Triangle Park. But
people are there. They’re there in numbers and they’re there because there’s a great
culture of risk taking and there’s a lot of money in venture capital. It’s another
unique place. And then you go to these Imagineering Studios. Okay, I’m a big Walt Disney fan.
I think he’s one of the most inspiring developers, creators, just, I just I think Walt Disney
was, set the standard for modern place making. So, I went to the Imagineering Studios in
Glendale and you pull up and it, and there’s nothing inspiring about it at all. They’re
staying in the same warehouses that Walt Disney picked out himself for them in the 1950’s
around the same time the park was started. Now you go inside. It’s incredible. It’s
like Walt Disney’s attic in there. I mean it’s just like all this amazing stuff. But
you talk to them about collaborations. I sit down with about a dozen imagineers and I said
talk to me about how you collaborate. They said oh we’re terrible at it. They had to
put a Starbucks in here so we’d start meeting together and spending time with each other.
But they wouldn’t work anywhere else. For them the unique environment is all about the
brand. For them they would only want to work with the Walt Disney Corporation.
So, what that tells us is it’s not necessarily about urbanity. It’s about unique and special
places. So, with our redevelopment, what we have to create is something authentic that
is unique and special. It could be all about the park. It could be all about sustainability.
It could all be about all technology showcase, but it needs to be unique and special to drive
people like you to think about wanting to work there.
The third thing it needs to have, is it needs to have and represent something of great inspiration.
It’s not an inspiring place today. Look I work there. I get lost there some days when
I’m there driving around. I mean you arrive at RTP. You don’t know where you were. You
don’t know where you are. You don’t know where you’re going. We need a place in the
park where people can come together and you can get a sense of what the future has to
offer. There was an MPR series this last, MPR radio
series this last summer about the Jetsons Generation. Is that right? That’s people
like me who grew up watching the Jetsons, which you know, you guys have seen the Jetsons
right. You know the Jetsons are the opposite of the Flintstones. They’re all about the
future. And for those of us who grew up watching the Jetsons Generation, we’re excited about
the future. Right? We’re all waiting for our little cars in the sky. I mean we just
love the future. But you know what’s interesting? Those of you who aren’t the Jetsons Generation,
according to all of the professionals, you don’t see the future quite so optimistically.
You see the future as a little darker than folks like me.
One of the things I want to do with RTP is create a place where we can showcase what
the future promises. How exciting it could be. How we can impact it. How we can make
it brighter. So, we believe RTP needs to be inspiring, needs to tell that story. And finally
what we create needs to be as accessible and as affordable as possible. We want to throw
out all the real estate rule books. No long term leases. No big high fit up costs. We
want space where you can get in and move ideas. It all is about idea flow. Right? So, no buildings
with marble ferns and fountains. It’s going to be simple perk space that you can get into
easily. No barriers. That’s what we want to create, a place of no barriers whatsoever
to bring you in. So, that’s our redevelopment. That’s where we’re going. You will see
more about the redevelopment in the coming months because we’re working like crazy
to get something out of the ground. The second part is reconnecting, because RTP
can never just be about the land. It has to be about you, what you want, what you believe
in, what your passions are. So, we traveled all around North Carolina. We got in a bus.
We did a pathways opportunity tour. We traveled all around and we visited over twenty-two
communities in North Carolina, and we asked them the question what great things can we
do together. And they said we want RTP to, they all said to us we want RTP to do something
big. Right? Then North Carolina as I said is a place that likes to do big things. What’s
her next big idea? Who’s going to come up with that?
So, as we reconnect, as we talk to our universities about how we’re going to work more closely,
as we open up to students and say please, give us ideas about the park’s future. Help
us shape it. As we reach out to economic development professionals and as we talk to people around
the world we want to connect with them and open up a conversation so that the park is
never finished. The park is always in a state of becoming, always transforming, always forever
changing. That’s what reconnecting is all about and the big idea it becomes the whole
reimagining phase. And here’s what we did with reimagining.
We turned to our universities. We turned to our friends at NC State and Duke and UNC and
we said if we created something in the park that would be of great value to you, what
would it be? And we began to imagine a place we call Project Archie after Archie Davis.
Right? And this idea is that there would be a place of amazing architecture and in that
place the universities would come together to work on the world’s biggest problems.
So, whether its issues with transformational medicine or big data or water inequality or
food distribution. NC State, UNC, and Duke and by the way we’ve included now the other
public and private universities across North Carolina will send their best thinkers to
come and work on these global problems together. And then they’ll be a part of Archie where
those big ideas and other ideas that we collect will be shared through a network across North
Carolina so that we can reach out to the places in North Carolina that are struggling the
very most. There are communities and families and towns all across our state right now that
don’t have any idea what their future offers them.
We have an obligation, a responsibility. Again, our charter, our mission says to lift up the
people. So, we want to get ideas out to them to connect with them to give them hope, to
open up something we call an Archie’s Fellow Program so the most innovative young person
from every county in North Carolina can come to the Research Triangle Park and develop
mentors and work with companies and get connected with universities. That’s another part of
RTP economic development piece that is like no other in the world that is built around
relationships. The third piece is around a convening space.
We don’t have a space like this in the Triangle. We need a place where we can do Ted X conferencing.
We need a place where we can walk in and get access to a black box studio, where you could
do YouTube Studio events. We need, we need an amazing convening space in the Triangle
where an innovative entrepreneur can launch their product and they don’t have to go
to New York or Boston or San Francisco to do that. You ought to be able to do that right
at Research Triangle Park. And then finally the part about Archie that
I’m most excited about, again I’m a Walt Disney guy right. Walt Disney had a vision
for a place called Epcot later became an amusement park. But the original idea behind Epcot,
I go to YouTube, look up Walt Disney Epcot Presentation, and you’ll see him talk about
a place where science and technology will constantly be on display. Where the best and
brightest of new innovations would be some place where you could go and visit and see
them. Well we want to create that kind of technology showcase. Yeah there would be a
place, a physical place you could walk through, but it would also be connected to the way
the store fronts were. The way the lighting works, the way the sustainability works. It
would be a constant changing and evolving showcase for the best of what our young people
and our great minds around the country can imagine.
So, this is the project we call Archie and I’m very pleased to say that our great chancellor
here at NC State Randy Woodson has fully endorsed it as has Carol Folt at UNC Chapel Hill, as
has *** Brodhead at Duke, as has Tom Ross the President of the UNC Systems. In fact
Tom Ross told me two weeks ago that Project Archie is not just the future of North Carolina,
it’s the future of the UNC System. Because this idea of convergence, of bringing together
science, technology, arts, and humanities is the future. And there is no place with
the history, with the brand, and the reputation of RTP that can make it happen. But we have
to do it with all of you. So, you know what I hope in our conversation
tonight and in the conversation I hope you will have with us in the future whether you
stay here or move a million miles away, Research Triangle Park is your park. It will always
be something we want you to be connected to. And we want you to help us as we think about
that future. It’s our obligation. It’s our responsibility to that kid out there whose
parents aren’t sure what future they have. So, I hope you will join us on that mission,
and as Walt Disney used to say “Let’s keep moving forward.” That’s our plan.
So, I’m glad to share it with you and I’ll be glad to take any questions or comments
that any of you may have. Yes sir?
(Question being asked). Yeah. Right.
(Question continues). It could be, look the idea is completely open.
I mean I think part of what’s exciting is to see that evolution, to see how quickly
ideas are changing before our very eyes and so what it can become, what it will be is
still evolving and changing. It certainly could. We don’t want it to become a static
museum. The idea is not that you would go there and see the same thing over and over
again, but there would be something constantly evolving and it might have elements to it
where there is, places where you could you know there might be places where people can
play and learn and engage. It should be, the goal is that it would be just as interesting
to an advanced Ph.D. as to a mom with two single kids from Bertie, a single mom with
two kids from Bertie County who wants to come and get them excited about their future.
Yes mam? (Question being asked).
You know I don’t believe it ever, I don’t believe that anything ever stops evolving
to changing, you know. I think that as long as our region, and I think this is the key,
and I think that as long as our region and our state continue to invest in education
K-12, community colleges, and higher education, as long as we have talented, smart, people
in this state, we’ll have great ideas. And the park will continue to evolve with change.
It may, at some point the park may be not even viewed as a place within certain boundaries.
It may be constant, it may be something that is just evolved into our cities and it just
may be something that is all part of one large region. But I’m an optimist. I believe that
there’s a, that everything continues to evolve and change for the better.
(Question being asked). Yeah. Sure. Right.
(Question continues). Right.
Yeah, here’s what’s interesting about RTP that most people don’t know. I mean
it has evolved even in the last twenty-five years from the time when RTP was largely viewed
from IT telecommunications and networking. There was one point where Cisco was going
to buy all the rest of the Research Triangle Park property. Right? That didn’t happen.
And that shifted from that industry focus to more of a bio-pharmaceutical focus. Today
it’s really Ag, and life, and bio-sciences. What drives that? Market conditions certainly,
but I’ll tell you what else drives it. What drives it is the particular leadership, skills,
and programs coming out of our universities. So, where those strengths are drives a lot
of what happens in the park. Now what we’re trying to do is create greater diversity in
the park. So, we’re not as reliant only on the big on certain big companies. Right.
So that if IBM changes and evolve, and they will, as Glaxo changes and evolves and it
will, there will be other companies that will grow and change around them. I really suspect
that in the future there will be less about big companies. It’ll just be around, it’ll
be around innovation or thought industries, and it won’t matter whether those are a
dozen people or two hundred and fifty people. Here at Centennial Campus, one of the stories
I tell is that we recruited Lucid Technologies here. Many of you won’t remember Lucid,
but at the time Lucid was one of the country’s great technology and innovation companies.
It came out of Bell Labs. We recruited them to Centennial Campus and within about a year
their stock plummeted and they left their new building, right. But we had a big event
for Lucid when they came here. It was amazing right. The chancellor showed up, the Secretary
of Commerce, the governor came here. But a year and a half, two years later Lucid’s
gone. Another company showed up at the same time that no one went to their opening. The
company was called Red Hat. And Red Hat, Red Hat ended up moving into the Lucid building
right here at Centennial Campus. You just never know. So, you need to make sure you
create great diversity and that’s one of the things we’re focused on at the park.
Yes sir? (Question being asked).
You know this is the question we ask ourselves every day. I think it’s one of the great
challenges we face and I don’t know anybody who knows the answer. We know that part of
the answer is making the Triangle more accessible to the VC community and of course I think
we’ve done a good job by opening up some new flights, direct flights between here and
the west coast. The other thing we here is that it’s all about deal flow. That we’re
going to have to see greater deal flow, greater new surplus of new technology companies in
order for VC’s to find the Triangle more attractive. Now there’s not much I can do
about that other than create the kinds of spaces and places and leverage the part to
get, so that we can see more of those kinds of deals created. The third thing that we
talk about is something that’s game changing, something that will be unlike anything else
in the marketplace. So, if you go to Boston of course VC’s are in Boston anyway, but
they all huddle around this Cambridge Innovation Center, because it was a new model. Now, so
we see in Archie an opportunity to create something where there isn’t, there isn’t
another place in the world. Believe me we’ve looked hard. There isn’t another place in
the world where three great universities work together on global research and where there
in the same space there would be open tables, open labs, no barriers to innovative technology
companies and entrepreneurs. You create that kind of environment. It may not be all that
it takes, but it’s one more element in terms of catching their attention. It's a real challenge
that we’re facing. And I know it’s a political issue for our governor. He’s working very
hard. We’re looking for new ways to find capital to do that.
Questions? Yes sir? (Question being asked).
Right. So, each of those is approaching it differently. But in the case of Glaxo, they
have just spent hundreds of millions of dollars in a new plan that will tie in their development
with our new development and includes all of the things we’re talking about. Their,
so their, what we’re seeing is companies aren’t expanding space, but they’re spending
money in their existing space. They’re taking out all the old cubicles, all the old lighting.
They’re creating a whole new open, flexible environment. Fidelity, which is key to this
conference. Fidelity has just renovated an old building and done a beautiful job of that
creating those kinds of open spaces. We’re actually seeing in the park, we’ve seen
in the last five years, a little over a billion dollars invested in the current facilities
by the current owners. We’re also seeing projects like Syngenta out in the park has
a, if you drive out there at night you can see it. It’s this incredible greenhouse
that can duplicate all of the climates of the world in that one greenhouse. They also
have, we have Bayer out there. It has a wonderful bee facility. We have BASF which has an insect
zoo. So, we have, we have some incredible assets that are going up there. Now we link
those with IBM’s work in smarter planets, smarter cities. We link that with the work
that Cisco is doing in data management. We link all, what we’re doing is trying to
link and converge all those technologies. Yes sir?
(Question being asked). You know, look, I think well we know capital
is part of it. His question. We need more venture capital. So, when you take the risk,
you have an idea. Someone’s going to help you fund it. Right? So, we know we need capital.
The other thing we can do is help reduce your risk. A big risk factor for a lot of companies
is all about space. The reason that Cambridge Innovation Center in Boston has been working
so well is because you could walk in the door. You sign a piece of paper. You’ve not signed
a long term lease. You don’t have to do any fit up. Right. You simply walk in. They
look at what your needs are. You get assigned a space. You pay an amount for that. It’s
not going to go up. You need to cancel you cancel. But in that space they’ve got kitchens,
conference rooms, places where you can engage and meet other people. Right. So, we want
to create a whole, I hate those eco system subservients, but we want to create a whole
eco system that is like that. And we want to create buildings and spaces where it’s
very easy for you to get in. You want to remove those barriers. So, if you have an idea you
get in. That helps keep your costs low and your risk factors low. Now if we could also
bring into that venture capital that’s terrific as well. We also know you’re going to need
to access the talent. And that’s where we continue to talk up the need for continued
investments and higher education in our universities. Right. We’ve got to make sure that the talent
pool coming out of our universities remain strong. Otherwise RTP, or Centennial Campus
or any of these parks, they won’t work ultimately. Because it’s the brain power that drives
them, not the land deals. Yes sir?
(Question being asked). Sure. I mean it’s not so much about worried
about one company and the culture, it’s just a basic portfolio question. And anyone
would tell you that for you know to have long term financial viable strength you want a
more diverse portfolio. I don’t think there’s a risk based on the current way in which we’re
seeing industries invest in RND facilities or in new facilities of somebody coming in
and taking up a third of RTP for instance. What we’re seeing today is most companies
are going away from the big RND Centers. They’re doing what we call pop-up RND. So, if you
have a company today, instead of locating, investing in one big center, instead they
might say well where’s the best place in the world for me to go to work on this drug
development. And they just pop up a lab and go there. So, what we want to create, is we
want to create an environment where it’s easy for them to pop up those labs there with
the belief that once they do that they’re going to want to stay. We won’t get all
of them but we’ll get some of them and they’ll stay here. So, we want to create again a very
flexible environment for that. That will create a great diversity. And I don’t think there
will be a chance of one company or one type of culture ultimately dominating the park.
Yes mam? (Question being asked).
Well, you know you can never quite do that. I’m not in real estate, but I’m in real
estate. You know so part of it is I have to create something that people can see that’s
real. Right. And so I’ve developed with a company called Hines, which is probably
Hines, which is one of the best development companies in the world. And the part of their
deal, I will put the land into the project and they will start building. Alright. So,
in order to make something like what we want to make happen, we need all of it almost coming
out of the ground at one time. So, what we envision in our first phase is about somewhere
around 200-300 thousand square feet of retail. Mostly food and beverage. And we’re very
focused by the way on authentic, local places. We don’t want a lot of change. We want to
be very cool, very funky, very real to where we live. So, about two to three hundred square
feet of retail, about a million square feet of office space, all that’s very flexible
and affordable space. And then we want, we have about a 250 guest room hotel this new
convening center with Archie. And then we want, let’s see what I’m going to say.
I said oh and about 2,000 residential units so that people can live and do all of those
things on this new property. But instead of it looking like a typical sort of new town
center that you’ve overseen, it’ll all be blended in with this park like setting.
So, it’ll be, be like a collaborative park and unlike any in the world.
Other questions? Yes sir? I’m sorry. (Question being asked).
Right. Right. So, we developed, we went out and we traveled around the state. We created
a whole web portal that allows people to come on and participate, one in our virtual communities
so there are ways to connect with us in blogs and Twitters and we do a variety of social
and media events that you can participate online or in person. Tonight as a matter of
fact we have this thing called RTP 180. It sells out every single time tonight. The topic
is food. I’ve heard they’ve got people out the door trying to get in. It’s like
a Ted X event. You can come in. You get like five or ten minutes to sort of do your story
and it’s become wildly popular. And so there’s a lot of people who now connect with us in
that way. You could also go onto the site and be given and get updates on the development
and when there’s activities in the park or where we’re going so that you can come
and give us feedback on our plans. And then we load em up and I do little videos talking
about where certain things are going and how we’re planning it. And then people write
to us or send us video clips back of how they think that looks and how that’s going. So,
we want to create you know both a virtual, a virtual relationship with as many people
as want to participate and then give them enough information of how they can physically
come. And then people can volunteer. And we accept volunteers. And we use em for all kinds
of things. Right. We use em for, we use volunteers for events, for planning, for helping us think
about transit and smart cars and pods. So, we want this to be something that the people
own. (Question being asked).
Well, rtp.org, go to the webpage and then you’ll see a thing called Connect with Us
and there’s pathways to opportunity. You go through that and that’s where you would
connect. I’m sorry. Alright. Any other thoughts, questions, comments, criticisms?
Great. Well thank you all very much. I appreciate it.