Qualla: Research Triangle Park

Research Triangle Park: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PerryPlanet, CC0. By 1953 a North Carolina contractor named Romeo Guest had an idea. North Carolina's economy was hemorrhaging - agriculture, textiles, furniture all losing market share to other regions and other countries - and the state's three big research universities (Duke in Durham, UNC in Chapel Hill, and NC State in Raleigh) sat roughly at the corners of a triangle. What if you put a research park inside it? What if you used the universities' graduate programs as bait to lure pharmaceutical companies, electronics firms, the kinds of high-wage employers that would replace the dying mills? Guest had already tried, and failed, to bring Merck to Aberdeen in the early 1940s. This time he had a name for the idea. He called it the Research Triangle.

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Image: PerryPlanet | CC0

Research Triangle Park: From Pine Forest to Park

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ildar Sagdejev (Specious), CC BY-SA 4.0. The project officially got its green light from Governor Luther Hodges in 1956. Hodges - a former textile executive who would go on to serve as Secretary of Commerce under Kennedy - is widely credited with leading the transformation of North Carolina from one of the poorest state...

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Image: Ildar Sagdejev (Specious) | CC BY-SA 4.0

Research Triangle Park: IBM Arrives, Then Everyone Else

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RadioFan at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. The early years were slow. The park needed an anchor tenant - someone large enough that other companies would believe RTP was a real place. IBM came in 1965, eventually building out to a four-building complex totaling 774,000 square feet. After that, the floodgates opened. GlaxoS...

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Image: RadioFan at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Research Triangle Park: The Quiet Giant

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Melizabethi123, CC BY-SA 3.0. Today, RTP is the largest research park in the United States by acreage - 7,000 acres, with 22.5 million square feet of built space, more than 300 companies, and roughly 65,000 workers. It is owned and managed by the Research Triangle Foundation, the non-profit Archie Davis set u...

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Image: Melizabethi123 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Research Triangle Park: Hub RTP and Boxyard

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ildar Sagdejev (Specious), CC BY-SA 4.0. That has started to change. In 2019 the Research Triangle Foundation announced Hub RTP - a 100-acre development at the heart of the park that would mix office space, 1,200 residential apartments, retail, 16 acres of green space, at least one hotel, and the first high-rise office ...

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Image: Ildar Sagdejev (Specious) | CC BY-SA 4.0