Research Triangle Park has been a driving force in North Carolina’s growth for decades, but it started with a group of business and political leaders who saw potential to capitalize on the area’s three universities.
About 70 years ago, the region around Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill wasn’t known as the Triangle. And the park filled with major employers between the three communities was just undeveloped woods. The idea of bringing research and industry to this location came to life because state leaders like Gov. Luther Hodges helped push big investments.
Mack Paul, a longtime land-use attorney, joined the WUNC Politics Podcast to discuss the history and future of RTP from his new book, "Miracle Road: The Story of Research Triangle Park." The book, co-authored with his late father Allen Paul, will be released on Oct. 6 with events at Quail Ridge Books, UNC-Chapel Hill’s Wilson Library and the NC Biotech Center.
This conversation has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Let's start the beginning of Research Triangle Park's history. The name and general concept originated with a guy I hadn't heard of named Romeo Guest. Who was he, and how did he come up with this idea?
He was so central to the creation of Research Triangle Park, and not many people know him now. He worked for his family company, Guest and Sons. They did construction, usually for small industrial operations, a lot of textile mills, for example.
He understood this potential opportunity of harnessing the research coming out of universities to attract new industry … as he started looking at North Carolina, we did have this great ecosystem of higher education in North Carolina, and a lot of it centered around the Triangle area with Duke, UNC, and N.C. State. … First he started out with "the Golden Triangle of Research," and then eventually settled on "Research Triangle" in his journal in 1953 … early on it was just an idea.
How did the politics around race and desegregation play a role in making Research Triangle Park an appealing corner of the South for companies to invest in?
Even companies that were based in the South, they were like, "I don't feel like we can really invest right now" in the South (after Brown v. Board of Education). That was a big issue for anyone to look at putting research facilities in North Carolina. The major thing North Carolina had going for it was this reputation for moderation on racial issues. North Carolina was known for investing in its educational infrastructure, public schools — obviously segregated — but also invested in Black schools and teachers and facilities relative to other southern states.
They saw North Carolina was different: their schools were not shutting down, and the leadership was speaking in a different language about it. Then (Gov.) Terry Sanford, gets elected in '60, and he took a very different tone, like in his inauguration speech that everyone in North Carolina needs to have an equal opportunity. He put his kids in Raleigh integrated schools.
You write in the book that the '90s were an initial peak of success for RTP, and it's had some bigger challenges over the past decade or two, as companies have been more attracted to the more urban downtowns of Raleigh and Durham. What have the park’s leaders been doing to address that and try to redesign this area for mixed uses?
The big watershed was this year, it was several years in the making. RTP 3.0 is a wholesale change to its land-use regulations to allow different development typologies, the most urban of which is called an "innovation hub," where they would allow very dense mixed-use development to occur within RTP.
RTP has been very intentional about looking at these types of tech hubs like Kendall Square in Boston, and there's one in Seattle, and crafting these regulations that acknowledge the ability to do that.
Listen to the full conversation on the WUNC Politics Podcast.
Saturday, Oct. 3 · American Tobacco Campus, Durham
Celebrating 50 years of community.
Our 50th Anniversary Celebration kicks off with a 5K run/walk along the American Tobacco Trail and continues throughout the day with free, family-friendly activities and meet-and-greet opportunities with your favorite WUNC reporters, program and podcast hosts.
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