Duke and Durham: A Downtown Renaissance
Duke has played a critical role in downtown's resurgence; after a lull, Duke officials are hoping the momentum kicks up again
Duke officials hope a developer's recent deal to renovate a former tobacco research laboratory at the intersection of Duke and Main streets will boost downtown renovation and new construction, which has stalled over the past two years amid the economic slowdown.
"I'm being cautious, but it's a good sign," Scott Selig, Duke's associate vice president for capital assets, said about Longfellow Real Estate Partners' purchase and planned overhaul of the 52,000-square-foot property once owned by Liggett & Myers. "This may be the first step in a re-start."
Read MoreSelig and others at Duke are eager for that to happen, seeing redevelopment as vital to the future of both the university and the larger community. Duke has played a key role in Durham's transformation over the past several years, a process that may be unfamiliar to Duke students and newer employees who know the city more for its recent successes in attracting foodies, artists and national buzz.
Not long ago -- only back in the late 1990s -- downtown Durham's best days seemed behind it. Once the center of the world's tobacco industry, its fortunes sagged after the American Tobacco Company stopped making cigarettes there in 1987, and Liggett & Myers in 2000. As huge tobacco warehouses fell into disrepair, so did the downtown area, with boards covering up dozens of shop windows.
Unlike today, when thousands of its employees work downtown, Duke was still firmly rooted in its own campus and medical center then. It viewed the renovation of the downtown area as increasingly urgent but unlikely to occur anytime soon.
"Initially, nobody thought it could be done," recalls Tallman Trask, Duke's executive vice president. "There was a lot of inertia. There were these large structures that had just sat empty."
Knowing a healthier downtown could attract students and faculty, Trask and others at Duke looked for opportunities to support early private development efforts. They leased space in West Village, a residential project championed by former Duke basketball stars Christian Laettner and Brian Davis, and moved some medical school facilities to Diamond View, a new office building overlooking the Durham Bulls ballpark.
Most important, they said yes when local broadcasting magnate Jim Goodmon sought Duke's collaboration in helping him transform American Tobacco, a ragged collection of brick warehouses across from the ballpark.
"We finally realized this was the one good shot to get something going at American Tobacco -- the big, ugly eyesore," said Trask, who liked the idea of Duke leasing building space developed by others rather than buying property itself, which would take property off the tax rolls because of the university's nonprofit status. "We don't want downtown Durham to be downtown Duke," Selig explained. "That wouldn't be interesting. We want an eclectic place with a broad economic base."
Duke officials told Goodmon it would lease 100,000 square feet at American Tobacco if three for-profit companies also agreed to collectively lease at least that much space there. They knew the project needed more than Duke; it needed large, healthy firms with large workforces.
"Duke became that credit-worthy client that let us get so many other projects going," said Bill Kalkhof, president of Downtown Durham, Inc., a non-profit that promotes area revitalization.
Advertising firm McKinney was among the first to follow Duke's lead, moving its Raleigh headquarters to American Tobacco in large part because of Duke's presence. "Duke stood with us to make sure we were happy with our lease before they signed theirs," McKinney CEO Brad Brinegar said. "A lot of what we got wouldn't have happened without Duke standing behind us."
When Brinegar proposed his plan to move to American Tobacco, he was McKinney's sole employee living in Durham. Now, 100 of the company's employees and their families live there, Brinegar said.
Other big companies came as well, including Glaxo, the drug firm, and Compuware, which produces software. Glaxo has since left, but McKinney and Compuware remain along with about 60 other ventures, including nine Duke units.
Kalkhof says the American Tobacco project -- which now bustles with businesses, restaurants and nightlife -- would not have taken off without Duke, which he calls "one of the most influential players downtown, and in terms of leasing office space, the most influential."
Durham's city and county governments also played essential roles in reviving American Tobacco, with each paying for one of two parking decks that have proven essential for both local businesses and patrons visiting the four-year-old Durham Performing Arts Center. Selig also credits Goodmon's vision, the architectural character of the buildings and an economy that had not yet slowed down. Had the project come along today, "it couldn't have happened," he says.
In all, Duke now has at least 1,800 employees from 15 or more campus units occupying more than 500,000 square feet of downtown space. In addition to its facilities at American Tobacco and West Village, Duke leases 50,000 square feet in Brightleaf Square and has 500 employees on six floors of the Durham Centre, where it operates the world's largest academic clinical research organization. It also contracted recently to purchase its first downtown facility, the 114,000 square-foot Carmichael Building.
Selig says Longfellow's decision to rehab the former Liggett & Myers facility at Main and Duke streets will not only jump-start the downtown real estate market but also provide Duke with more options to help revitalize its home town. The university is already considering the possibility of renting high-end research space there.
Thousands of the employees, theater-goers, diners and others who now visit downtown Durham daily may not associate the area's transformation with the university. But those involved in the process know the role Duke has played.
"Duke made a commitment to the area," said Rusty Privett, general manager of Tyler's Taproom, which opened its American Tobacco location in 2005. "With the amount of space it took up, it was a signal to other business that this will be lasting."