PLATINUM PLAY: A Raleigh family helps create a space expected to draw 1 million annual visitors.

• Author: Gentry, Connie
• Position: NCTREND: Redevelopment

Tom and Pat Gipson are folks you want to sit with and swap stories about why North Carolina is a great place to raise a family and build a business. Soft-spoken and unassuming, the Gipsons recently wrote a $10 million check for a playground.

Not just any playground, however. The Gipson Play Plaza at Raleigh's Dix Park promises to be among the most enchanting public playgrounds in the Southeast, potentially attracting more than 1 million visitors annually after its expected opening in mid-2024. The 18.5 acres is among the first steps in the dramatic reinvention of 308 acres near downtown Raleigh that for more than 150 years was home to Dorothea Dix Hospital, the state's first mental health facility. The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services has its main offices in the historic buildings, but it's expected to move to a new facility on Blue Ridge Road when its lease expires in 2025. Raleigh bought the land from the state for $52 million in 2015.

The play plaza will serve as the gateway into an expansive park to be developed over the next decade. It will feature a waterfall wall, climbing towers, a bevy of swings facing the city skyline, slides and playground accessories. Its signature plaza will host festivals and performances and be set amid lush gardens and green spaces.

And it will be free, thanks to a $67 million public-private investment that entails $20 million from the Dix Park Conservancy, including the Gipsons' donation, and $ 12 million from the city of Raleigh. The remaining $35 million is expected to be funded through the Raleigh parks bond that's on the ballot on Nov. 8. Dix Park is slated to receive 15% of the $275 million bond, which will fund 20 projects in parks across the city.

"What could we possibly do for the city of Raleigh that would be more meaningful than this ? This is the most incredibly designed piece of land in the state and to support it is an incredible opportunity," Tom Gipson says.

The gift: was made possible by a successful homebuilding business founded in 1976. Gipson made his mark by offering an alternative to the traditional two-story Williamsburg-design homes dotting much of Raleigh.

"One of the things I learned at Wharton [he earned an MBA at the University of Pennsylvania's business school] was to bring something unique to market. So I built my business doing homes that were more contemporary and that had basements when nobody else was doing basements," he says. While other builders only wanted...