Triangle poised to expand in all directions in 2023. Here are 5 places to watch.
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The Triangle is growing up and out
Construction crews should again be busy in 2023, in the heart of RTP and across the mushrooming Triangle region. We’ve identified five spots you’ll want to keep an eye on for the rest of year, places where the region’s continuing growth will be easily visible.
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It was after 4:30 p.m. on a Friday, the tail end of the workweek, and construction was humming along at the center of the North Carolina Research Triangle. The beeping of trucks overlapped with the rumble of I-40 traffic as excavators methodically removed mounds of red dirt from the earth and workers in hard hats stood atop concrete pillars high above.
The site was Hub RTP, a $1.5 billion development that aspires to be the first downtown in the surrounding Research Triangle Park’s 64-year history. Plans include office towers, shopping, dining, a hotel, and apartments — basically forming a new city neighborhood where there are currently mostly empty fields.
Construction crews should again be busy in 2023, here in the heart of RTP and across the mushrooming Triangle region. We’ve identified five places you’ll want to keep an eye on for the rest of 2023, places where the region’s continuing growth will be easily visible.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Raleigh had the second-fastest growing metro area in the country between 2010 and 2019, and since then, Wake, Orange and Durham have only gotten larger. Population forecasts for the region in the coming decades are rosy.
If Hub RTP represents the Triangle looking inwardly, the region is also pushing its boundaries, enveloping new outlying communities into its orbit.
Northern Harnett County, for example, has become a hotspot bedroom community for Raleigh, popular among those who now find Wake County home prices too steep. The county issued 1,084 permits for new single-family homes in the most recent fiscal year, double what it granted two years earlier. The population in the northwest section of Harnett increased 50% between 2000 and 2017, and it’s expected to more than double by 2038.
The population boom in the town of Cary isn’t new, but the community will still be undergoing changes over the next calendar year. After more than two decades of planning, the Downtown Cary Park is expected to open this summer, featuring a large lawn, paved trails, play spaces and a pavilion, and more.
Speaking of long-developing plans, Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina have teamed up to open an innovation district later this year, aiming to lure more businesses and employees to the Triangle’s western point.
Durham, you’ve been warned. Chapel Hill’s director of economic development told The News & Observer this incoming innovation district intends to compete with the Bull City for new startups.
And over in the northern slice of downtown Raleigh, the Seaboard Station development will be opening hundreds of apartment units in 2023, bringing some welcomed housing density to the city center.
The Seaboard expansion is the Triangle expanding up. Harnett County’s housing boom is the Triangle expanding out. In every direction in 2023, the Triangle seems posed to keep growing and changing, bringing a host of opportunities and challenges along with it.
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.
Read next: As homebuyers look south, Harnett County is becoming a Triangle suburb
This story was originally published February 3, 2023 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Triangle poised to expand in all directions in 2023. Here are 5 places to watch.."
