A REMARKABLE TWO DECADES: VISION, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY--WITH A DASH OF BASEBALL--HAVE TURNED THE TRIANGLE INTO AN ECONOMIC POWERHOUSE.

• Author: Barkin, Dan
• Position: POINT TAKEN

I keep a 19-year-old pack of L&M cigarettes on my desk, one of the last packs manufactured in Durham, a town built by tobacco.

When I came to the Triangle in the mid-1990s, Liggett & Myers was still cranking out smokes in the Chesterfield building in downtown Durham. Today, that factory, closed in 1999, has been transformed into an innovation hub by Wexford Science &. Technology LLC, a Baltimore firm that specializes in research workspaces. A massive atrium dominates the interior, with suites housing technology companies, labs and several floors of Duke faculty and students working on proteomics and metabolomics. Yeah, I don't know what that means, either.

I was business editor of The News & Observer in Raleigh when the factory became the latest empty building in a mostly blue-collar town. A reporter got a pack of L&Ms and tossed it to me back at the office. It now reminds me of how much the Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill region--North Carolina's Research Triangle--has changed over the last two decades.

When I came here, downtown Raleigh and Durham were dead. Today, both urban centers have made startling comebacks, thanks to public and private investment.

Several visionaries were crucial, such as Capitol Broadcasting CEO Jim Goodmon, whose American Tobacco complex and Durham Bulls Athletic Park helped spur Durham's comeback; Charles Meeker, who, as Raleigh mayor, pushed for a new convention center; Greg Hatem, who built a restaurant empire in Raleigh and renovated dozens of buildings; and developer John Kane, whose energy brought life back to the Warehouse District on the west side of Raleigh's downtown and North Hills in midtown.

Meeker's successor, Mayor Nancy McFarlane, clinched the deal aiming to turn the Dorothea Dix Hospital property into a world-class park south of downtown.

Two decades ago, Red Hat Inc. was a startup trying to market a free operating system. Now the company's signature logo sits atop a 19-story tower, and its name is on Raleigh's downtown amphitheater. The venue is next to the convention center and near The Dillon, Kane's 18-story mixed-use office complex in the Warehouse District.

When I arrived, Dillon Supply Co. had departed the warehouses for a new location. There was hope that someone would have a vision for the abandoned space, just as something might be done with empty tobacco factories and warehouses in Durham.

And what do you know? It all happened.

It shouldn't have been surprising. This area was...