Raleigh, North Carolina.  TOLL ROAD BIDS LOWER THAN EXPECTED.  The bids, which totaled $584 million for the 18.8 toll road, were $61 million lower than the turnpike authority expected.  There are two sections involved.  The first is for the 12.6 mile section called the Western Wake Expressway.  The bid for that section came in at $446.4 million.  The second section is the 3.6 mile stretch that goes through Research Triangle Park.  The bid for that section was $137.4 million.  These sections would complete the I-540 outer beltline.  The turnpike authority is scheduled to sell $625 million in revenue bonds in October to cover the construction and operation of the toll road.  Once that is done construction would start in November and be completed (hopefully) by the end of 2010.  Considering the length of time it took to construct other sections that would appear to be wishfull thinking but any way you cut it, it is far less than the 2020 time frame that has been talked about before the toll road approach was decided upon.  The roadway through RTP was reserved for the Parkway 50 years ago when RTP was created.  The Western Wake Expressway will follow a route originally planned.  While a lot of folks aren’t thrilled with more miles of concrete, more traffic and the fact that it will be a toll road, the fact remains that when completed the road will be a considerable boost to the economy of the entire Triangle area.

PULTE HOMES PRESIDENT FAVORS NEW TAX CREDITS.   Richard Dugas, Jr. president of Pulte Homes says the tax credit for first time home buyers is a shot in the arm for the home building and the real estate industry as a whole.  He said Pulte will give buyers an additional incentive to purchase by offering a matching discount.  The tax credit is $7,500 and is equivalent to an interest free loan payable over 15 years.  The Pulte discount will be extended to all buyers of their homes and not just first time buyers.

John Fish (919) 696-3474   Email: Marvmax@mindspring.com   Website: www.JohnFish.com

Research Triangle Park Hooks Another Drug Manufacturer.  Patheon of Toronto will be moving its headquarters to RTP.  That move will create 100 new jobs.  The company manufactures drugs as well as providing services.  Last year it had revenues of more than $650 million.  They have already found a site in RTP for their laboratory and are now searching for a headquarters site.  Their timetable calls for them to move into a lab this summer and into a headquarters facility sometime before the end of the year.  While the company has been losing money they have also been restructuring.  Loses have been cut substantially and revenues have shown a strong increase.

John Fish (919) 696-3474   Email: Marvmax@mindspring.com   Website: www.JohnFish.com

Cisco Growth Continues.  The company is upfitting their last unoccupied building in Research Triangle Park.  The price tag for this expansion is $23 million.  During the last three years the company has added nearly 1,200 employees which brings their total in the Park to to 4,500.  Of these about 80 percent are full-time employees while the other 20 percent are contract workers.

Oppenheimer & Co. says that of all the network equipment makers Cisco is in the best operating position at the present time.  They are realizing growth through increasing sales and acquisitions all around the world.  They are planning a campus in Bangalore, India that will employ 10,000 people and cost a tidy $1.1 billion.

John Fish (919) 696-3474   Email: Marvmax@mindspring.com   Website: www.JohnFish.com

Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.  Network Appliance purchased 72 acres in the Wake County portion of RTP.  The property is at the Southwest Corner of Kit Creek Road and Louis Stephens Drive.  NetApp paid $12.5 million or $172,081 per acre.

John Fish (919) 696-3474   Email: Marvmax@mindspring.com   Webbsite: wwwJohnFish.com

Research Triangle Park - Network Appliance Co. to double RTP work force.  NetApp, a California Company, has 633 employees at its RTP facility and intends to more than double that number over the next four years.  The average annual salary of these jobs is $94,000.  NetApp produces data storage devices that are easy to use and help their clients store inventory records, e-mails, customer information, etc. while reducing their overhead in the process. The demand for their products is such that their sales are increasing by 30%, or more, per year. 

Try and get your mind around this; Research firm IDC says that in 2006 the amount of digital information captured, created and replicated was 3 million TIMES the information in all the books EVER WRITTEN!!

John Fish (919) 696-3474   Email: marvmax@mindspring.com   Website: www.JohnFish.com

RTI International.  RTI International is a think tank known throughout the world.  It has 2,100 employees in the Triangle and another 500 spread throughout 40 other nations of the world.  It is the second largest nonprofit think tank in the U.S. The Largest, Battelle, is based in Columbus, Ohio.  RTI’s rapid expansion comes with a price.  They are about to spend $100 million on their 180 acre campus to add more space, renovate existing space, relocate 600 workers who now work in leased space in buildings outside their campus and accommodate 100 additonal workers per year.  RTI, for the most part, provides services for federal government agencies.  For example, last year they received two contracts totaling $230 million to devise better ways to deal with tropical diseases and to control malaria.

John Fish (919) 696-3474   Email: marvmax@mindspring.com   Website: www.JohnFish.com

A 15 year old Research Triangle Park office building owned by Reichhold was sold to ORIX Real Estate Capital of Chicago.  The 365,000 square foot laboratory and office building brought $34 million or just over $93 per square foot.  This is 6.3% more than DIC paid for the building a year ago.

Research Triangle Park.  Network Appliance a leading data-storage company, now has a local work force of 600.  That’s three times as many as it had just two years ago and well ahead of company projections.  Those projections now call for as many as 2000 workers in coming years.  For those of you who may be looking for technical jobs in this area the company has 60 job openings in RTP on its Web site.

NetApp, unlike IMB and Hewlitt Packard that have data storage as just one facet of what they do, does data storage only and is one of the two major players in that industry.  EMC is the other. 

The company is concentrating in the Triangle because of the areas lower energy  and real estate costs.  Other main factors in the Triangle’s favor, for them, is the areas relatively stable weather and the availability of quality workers willing to work second and third shifts.

John Fish (919) 696-3474   Email: marvmax@mindspring.com   Web Site: www.JohnFish.com

On Tuesday, August 8, Cree opened a new 230,000 square foot semicondutor plant in Research Triangle Park.  Well know for their low-power lighting components, Cree is expanding into other energy-efficient areas as well.  The facility will help them to expand their capabilities in these areas but also allow them to develop their radio-frequency devices for use in broadband wireless Internet networks.  The power chips Cree is working on could eventually help to reduce worldwide electricity costs by more than $35 billion. Cree currently employs just over 1,300 people in Durham and RTP. 

John Fish (919) 696-3474   Email: marvmax@mindspring.com   Web Site:  www.JohnFish.com

Triangle Area.  Fidelity Investments will be leasing nearly 500,000 square feet of temporary office space throughout the Research Triangle, to handle the 2000 employees they will be moving to and hiring in the area, while they wait for their campus in the Wake County part of the Research Triangle Park to be completed.  This will continue to reduce the amount of available office space in the area while adding to the booming demand for single family homes.

John Fish (919) 696-3474   Email: marvmax@mindspring.com    Website:  www.JohnFish.com