PEAK EXPERIENCE: Rapid population growth is turbocharging Apex's shift from a tiny hamlet to a bustling suburb.

AuthorMims, Bryan

Wake County's Apex is high on a roster of North Carolina place names with lofty connotations. In recent years, it has certainly earned its motto as "The Peak of Good Living."

In 2007, it popped up on Money magazine's "Best Places to Live" list, working its way from 14th to ninth to the top of the chart in 2015. The swelling suburb southwest of Raleigh was deemed better than 3,625 other towns with populations between 10,000 and 50,000. Naturally, such a superlative is a super selling point worthy of gracing most every roadside welcome sign in Apex.

Other national outlets have also put Apex on a pedestal. In 2009, Forbes named it the third-best place in America to move to. In 2017, Realtor.com ranked it No. 10 on its list of suburban hot spots. Last year, the same group recognized Apex as the fastest-growing suburb in the country with a population soaring from 5,500 in 1990 to 42,000 in 2015 to an estimated 59,827 in 2019.

"The surprising thing to me was how many people moved to Apex without a job, just on trust," says Lance Olive, who's retiring after four years as mayor. Retired Apex police Capt. Jacques Gilbert was elected in November. "They said, 'This is where I want to raise my family, so I'm going to go ahead and move there and then I'll find a job,'" Olive says.

And jobs abound in the Triangle--jobs in high-tech, research and biosciences that demand brainpower and supply handsome paychecks. Research Triangle Park is less than 20 miles away, an easy drive along the tolled Triangle Expressway. RTP has 200-plus companies employing more than 50,000 people. While Durham's slice of RTP has long been the mother ship for the Triangle's tech economy, many tech companies operate outside the park's boundaries. Software firms such as SAS Institute Inc., Red Hat Inc. and "Fortnite" video game creator Epic Games Inc. are all minutes away from Apex. The town's biggest private-sector employers are Apex Tool Group LLC, Dell Inc. and ATI Industrial Automation Inc., according to the local chamber. "This is just a strong employment community," Olive says. "People come here to find work and make work. There's a lot of entrepreneurial support around."

Apex, once known as a shipping point for lumber, tar and turpentine centered around the Chatham Railroad depot, now boasts a booming historic downtown. Boutiques, antiques, pubs, a bakery, a home-video studio, a spa, a beer emporium, a coffee shop, and a handful of gift shops line Salem Street in century-old...

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