Durham Innovation District

Couldn't find a post specifically for Durham ID, sorry if creating duplicate topics.

Durham ID - BizJournal

Bain Capital

Looks like Longfellow Real Estate bought out Bain Capital's stake in Durham.ID.  Supposedly the largest deal in the Southeast since COVID-19 started.

Per the BizJournal article, it looks like they are focusing on a new 'multistory' laboratory building next. Possible at site C4 (behind the Imperial Building). No plans for timeline are available.  Excited to see if more lab space will go up in Durham.

Found this Q&A with Longfellow which has some additional discussion of Durham.ID. They definitely seem to be betting heavily on Durham and Duke.

https://www.cpexecutive.com/post/life-sciences-shows-pandemic-proof-potential/

Your biggest development underway is Durham.ID, a 1.7 million-square-foot campus focused on science and technology. Tell us more about this project and its impact on the market.

Sichol: Durham.ID is the first life sciences and technology park in downtown Durham, N.C. The genesis of the project is Longfellow’s collaboration with Duke University, which started 12 years ago when we helped Duke create new space for scientific research by transforming old tobacco warehouses in Durham. After two successful projects, we collaborated further to design a master plan for a new innovation district here.

The great opportunity was to create a 24/7 district for science, innovation and technology—a live-work-play campus for an influential, growing sector in the city, anchored by one of the nation’s leading research institutions. The project is a mix of existing product, adaptive reuse and ground-up construction, and includes residential and retail. It’s designed to fit into the fabric of the city—there is no entrance or exit, but rather a seamless flow of space across buildings.

I caught a snippet of an article from TBJ (which, yes, I’m still too cheap to pay for) with the Longfellow exec leading the expansion in the Triangle. She said the next building is 180k square feet and will break ground “next year” which I took to mean 2022 but the timing of the article and ambiguous reference made it a bit unclear. Between that and the new building on Gregson from Wexford that’s another 400k total square feet of downtown life science-specific space in the near term.

Looks like Google Cloud is coming to  Durham ID.  Will be subleasing part of DCRI's space in 200 W. Morris, at least for now.  Will eventually be 1000 new jobs in Downtown.

WRAL Techwire article

Great news, this is huge validation for Durham and the Triangle. We’ve been absolutely on fire in the biotech space so it’s great to see traditional tech joining the list. And a brand name like Google making this kind of investment certainly will raise some eyebrows.

I work in tech as a developer and let me tell you this is absolutely massive news! I hope Durham doesn't have their head up their bumhole now stopping any development. Let the city grow and flourish. Let it become once again a roaring hub.

Bull City proud

Longfellow has a rendering of their next building up and they are moving around a lot of dirt on the other side of Morris St from the first two buildings.

Not sure why it’s sideways — sorry.

Great to see more building up in Durham ID. Especially with all that is going on.  I'm guessing there is enough demand for new lab space with this project and The Gregson.  

Looks like Durham ID is working on a new website. So hopefully we can get some renderings soon.

Top story on TBJ today is about this next phase of Durham ID with a new rendering as the cover photo. At 7 stories this is going to be a really prominent project downtown basically sitting right off the Downtown Loop.

In the Herald Sun this afternoon:

Whoa - sorry for the large size.

Here's the link:
https://www.heraldsun.com/news/business/article254471973.html

Just randomly looked and DurhamID has launched their new website - https://durhamid.com/
Also, site shows what I think are some new pictures of the 518 W morgan building.

The website has advertised the new website coming soon for going on two years. Glad to see it updated.

 I am intrigued by the campus, but the building and parking deck planned for the parking lot above the farmer's market seems poised to cut off that area from the walkway/greenspace that will run up the center of the ID district. That farmer's market greenspace will be surrounded by apartments and parking garages.

Looks like they finally got the development request approved so hopefully we start to see this project moving forward. I was at a life science-oriented event recently and they discussed the critical need for downtown Durham to continue to thrive in tandem with RTP. Lots of companies that are looking at expanding or locating here like the option of downtown and really expect premier Class A office/lab space which we are in short supply of at the moment.

One thing that will be a huge asset to Durham ID is that the belt line/rail trail will run directly next to the new building on Morris St. You can even see it in some of the renderings.

When I drove by last night it looked like they are starting to do preliminary site work for the new Durham ID building. Looking forward to seeing this come together.

Read an article today about the building Longfellow is developing at Hub RTP. The lead for Longfellow stated that they won’t start construction without an anchor tenant. Wouldn’t be surprised if the same story applies to the next Durham ID phase. The market for financing CRE is extremely difficult right now even for a developer with their track record.