FAST FORWARD: THE RESEARCH TRIANGLE AREA: The Raleigh-Durham area has tremendous momentum with a combination of top universities, highly skilled labor and advanced manufacturing.

• Author: Blake, Kathy

For Research Triangle Park's 7,000 acres and surrounding 11-county territory of innovation, manufacturing and technology, new construction and incoming business keep the commerce hub ticking.

About 45 minutes southwest of Raleigh in Sanford, Audentes Therapeutics, a San Francisco-based life-sciences company, is investing $110 million in a gene-therapy manufacturing facility in Lee County, joining New York City-based Pfizer at Central Carolina Enterprise Park.

In Raleigh, N.C. State University's Centennial Campus has plans for a 185,000-square-foot Plant Sciences Building, with construction expected to be complete by fall 2021. The addition will increase the area's dominance in agricultural technology, an industry that touches about 112 area companies.

Coworking spaces, favored by innovators and inventors, are popping up across the Triangle as a new generation of workforce--the disrupters, whose game-changing products redefine their industries--rent space on a fresh blueprint that reworks the concept of office building.

"People all over the world study the model of the Research Triangle Park, "says Ryan Combs, executive director of the Research Triangle Regional Partnership in Raleigh, an economic development connector for businesses and private-sector growth. "They may not know it's in North Carolina, but they know RTP."

Talent and education--the 11 counties are home to 10 colleges and universities and seven community colleges--pair nicely with the area's stellar quality of life. About 76 people move to the area daily, according to a 2019 partnership study. The regional median home value is $175,000, and the median household income is $76,000 with a labor force of 1 million.

"We do a lot of great things here," Combs says. "Look at the health care system, with gene therapy. It's a game changer, because it's going to drive down the cost of health care. Look at the universities and the $3 billion we get a year in research dollars. You take technologies developed at the universities, incubate and have a company in the urban core, and then you expand to the rural counties and manufacture."

BUILDING THE TALENT PIPELINE

Audentes Therapeutics, which develops genetic medicines as part of Tokyo-based Astellas Pharma, says its Lee County facility will create about 200 jobs. CEO Natalie Holies says Sanford's location "will support the next phase of our growth as we establish a robust, global supply chain and expand our therapeutic and geographic...