Boxyard RTP bows as a sign of RTP’s upcoming (overdue) boom.
If you build it, they will come… back. Since its inception (nee 1959) as the epicenter of the Triangle’s Tier-1 research universities, Research Triangle Park (RTP) has invested millions of dollars in building a space (to great success) where “people and ideas converge” for the 40,000-plus employees across more than 200 research, technology and ag-bio companies. What’s missing is a place for those knowledge workers to live, play and eat.
Enter the premiere hip entertainment hub that is Boxyard RTP—a first glimpse of what’s coming—giving the bustling epicenter’s brainy talent a place to retreat pre-, during and post-work. Inspired by Boxyard Tulsa, the “industrial meets inventive” cargotecture that is this 15,000 square feet of repurposed shipping containers-turned-playspace has everyone all abuzz—though perhaps leaving some Raleighites to question its location: Why set in the ghost town that is currently Davis Drive? But Boxyard RTP is precisely the kind of vision the Park had missed on manifesting from its original MO. Quality of life is precisely what the massive HQs (think Apple, landing 4 miles down the road) we want to entice to the area to take into account when choosing a destination.
People don’t want to commute. And they need a place to buy groceries, dine and blow off some steam. Enter other new RTP destination for innovation and collaboration: Hub RTP, the $1.5 billion 44-acre project that broke ground last fall, further bringing to fruition this “live, play and shop where you work” vision via 1 million square feet of “all things new, next and groundbreaking.” Think a North-Hills-esque area, if you will, chock-full all of the ideal components of urban life—office space, “funspace” (retail and dining), “sleepspace” (1,200 apartments) and “stayspace” (boutique hotel and full-service hotel on-site), not to mention fitness center, grocery store and more—but merged across acres of greenspace, so you can thrive, and exhale.
“All the feedback [I received] in the community is that the Hub has to happen,” said Scott Levitan, CEO of the RTP Foundation. “In order to attract talent to come work for them, they need a town center so that, at lunchtime or after work, you can get a beer, there’s some entertainment, whatever. That is really the evolution that led us to really have to focus and create the relevant Hub project so that these companies can be successful.”
Blowing us out of the water is Cary native and rising high school senior Claire Curzan. Qualifying in Olympic trials with a beastly 56.43-second 100-meter butterfly time, the 16YO phenom swimmer—who trains and competes locally for year-round club team TAC Titans under coach Bruce Marchionda, in addition to swimming for Cardinal Gibbons High School—is set to spread her wings to Tokyo to go for gold.
Says Cardinal Gibbons head swim coach Jonah Turner, who was in Omaha supporting Curzan at the Olympic Trials, “I have always admired Claire’s maturity and mental toughness. I am still in awe of her performance… to be 16 and be able to walk out to an electrifying crowd for finals on the biggest swimming stage when your name is called and knowing only the top two swimmers will make the Olympic team—all while being able to control your emotions and nerves—speaks volumes about her.”
Also thrilled to speak volumes about her is her bursting-with-pride dad, Mark Curzan—who rightfully gushed in a phone interview with us from Omaha after she punched her ticket to Tokyo. “To witness all the dedication and hard work come to fruition is really cool. What a Father’s Day gift,” he said through joyful tears, before joking that he’d have to phone in to his daughters’ (he has two, and one son) weddings because he won’t be able to handle it.
Meanwhile, Claire, who signed her first autograph in Omaha but is as humble as they come, is taking it all in. “I’ve done that race so many times, it’s ingrained in my body,” she told us. “When I touched the wall, I had no idea if I made it. But when I saw the board, reality hit me that I had achieved my childhood dream.”
Just proves where there’s a will, there’s a wave. Go get that gold, Claire. #Tokyo2021
As Raleigh Police Chief Cassandra Deck-Brown prepares to retire after 33 years of service, we reflect on her lasting legacy.
“And so I think for probably the first couple of months, it’ll be just to take a deep breath.” That’s what legendary outgoing police chief Cassandra Deck-Brown says of her immediate plans for retirement after 33 years shattering glass ceilings and blazing trails in Raleigh and beyond. Her last day is June 30.
The cap city’s first Black female police chief has no shortage of accomplishments—body-worn cameras, mental health first-aid training, Intelligence-Led Policing, the Raleigh Citizen’s Police Academy, and Reality-Based Training for officers with additional curriculum development come directly to mind.
But when I met with her with a host of questions ranging from Raleigh’s growth (the city jumped a spot to become the nation’s 41st largest in 2020) to its woes (think 2020) to its triumphs (“in spite of what 2020 had to offer and the events that happened here in our city, our crime was down at the end of the year,” she says), what struck me most—and undeniably—about Chief Deck-Brown is her humanity.
As we discussed her storied career, for her, the emphasis wasn’t on her achievements, but on the stories. There’s the leadership program she started for young girls over a decade ago, now called Girls Camp, that makes her glow. “Girls Camp has been a huge smile on my face,” she says, literally smiling as she says these words. “At its 10th anniversary, we had a banquet and alumni came back; we had college graduates, entrepreneurs… it was a huge event and just a phenomenal experience.”
There’s the recently launched I-Care team (a team of faith leaders) and Acorns (“the program that will give us an opportunity to better serve our behavioral and mental health community, and our homeless,” she says.).
There’s the Youth Summit of 2019—her brainchild (or what her team calls a true “labor of love”) that saw several hundred young people take over the NC State University McKimmon Center in 2019 for a before-unparalleled day of real-life adulting (think registration, keynotes, breakout sessions, workshops and presentations—even lanyards and swag bags) devised to “give them the experience, to give them a voice,” she says. It was carefully crafted; there was even a preliminary youth advisory board to help field topics. And—because youth—the daylong event included door prizes and a day party so the kids could dance with some of the celebrity guests.
“Hopefully we will do it all again at the end of this year,” she says (virtual or in-person TBD). There will be a new chief in town, but meetings have already begun to carry on the program.
She is joyful and animated when she talks about the brand-new 60,000-square-foot state-of-the-art police training facility slated to open any time now. And while she won’t get to actually teach there after serving her entire career as an instructor, it’s no doubt her lasting legacy. “The new chief gets to take that on,” says Deck-Brown. “The smile is that you know officers are going to have a premier state-of-the-art facility for training. … Stepping foot in that facility, I got a little giddy because it’s going to be such a phenomenal legacy to leave in this department for people to train in.”
She continues: “There’s so many projects afoot and so many initiatives that have been put forward that I believe it’s going to be a great opportunity for the next chief when they get here. The programs that we have in place are going to make this a great location to be a police chief.”
But she’s more than a new facility and laundry list of (remarkable) programs and initiatives. She’s the very message and reminder that we are all more than what we do or what we look like.
Perhaps when you see Chief Deck-Brown, you see the uniform, and your eyes fall to the badge. Perhaps you envision an austere woman hardened by a life of service, or—understandably—by the year that she has just endured at the helm of a capital city. (You couldn’t blame her.) Or perhaps you’re immediately filled with the respect that the badge and decades of service commands.
Either way, you’re lost in a symbol. You don’t get a stereotype. Or just a police chief. Or woman. You get a person who has dedicated herself to a life of service, yes, but who you also quickly realize truly loves her community and her family. Whose compassion for both radiates from within. It’s an immediate reminder that the person behind that badge is human.
“I think so many times we are so focused on the outward appearance of people, and, so, being a police officer, that’s what people see,” she says, “the uniform. … So much gets lost in the narrative. If you get to know those officers, you’d be surprised as to what you have in common. I’m an African American woman who just happens to be a Raleigh police officer, who just happens to be the police chief. Very often, you don’t know the whole story. I think we miss so much on who we are because we’ve made those assumptions based on outward appearance, and I think that’s where, collectively, we fall short as a community. People would be surprised as to what the men and women bring to the table to do this work.”
You probably didn’t know that Chief Deck-Brown has a gift for making custom gift baskets (before rising the ranks, she even had a gift basket business). Or that she likes to sew. Listens to gospel music. That she’s reading A Sin by Any Other Name. Or that she has two degrees from North Carolina universities. Or that she is too kind to name a “favorite” restaurant.
You probably don’t know how warm she is. How candid and thoughtful she is when she listens—and speaks. Or that she’s a loving mother and a grandmother (her grandkids call her “Mama C”—and one will be in driver’s ed before long). Or that her colleagues’ shift in her presence, in respectful admiration, emphasis noticeably on the latter.
And her humanity extends deeply into her passion for the job. “When you talk about homicides and you talk about violence,” she says with pain in her voice, “there’s still a name and a person and a life attached to every single one of those. And every time I get the opportunity to emphasize that and push that out there, I take advantage of that because it’s more than a number at the end of the day. I’ve just really tried to emphasize that in our city to raise the conscience of our greater community, and that’s been part of the intentional effort to shed light on the data.”
Now, at the tail end of a storied career comes what can only be described as one of the most volatile years Raleigh has seen, dealing Chief Deck-Brown utterly impossible challenges to maneuver with simultaneous epic levels of scrutiny. And she doesn’t protest. “You have to make some very conscious leadership-driven decisions that aren’t always the most popular,” she says. “You’ve got to be able to reach into your box of resources and figure out what is needed at that particular point in time. Human behavior sometimes is absolutely predictable, and, other times, it’s not. When it is fueled with emotion and rage and frustration and anger and all of what comes with that, you have to be able to respond in that moment in time and address that issue as best you can with the resources that you have.”
Her regret? “The regret I would say is that it had to happen. Period,” she says, followed by a long reflective pause. “We all lived it, so the greatest regret for me is that it had to happen here in our city and that it happened on my watch. We didn’t do everything perfect in our response to the events that occurred in 2020, but did we learn from them? And how do you grow from them? And out of that came a great deal of new relationships and experiences and realities for us.”
Deck-Brown is undeniably a decorated chief. She is the badge. She is armed and disarming. Sitting with her, listening to her, she is the living, breathing embodiment of unity. And, for her, that has always been the point.
“It is about serving and protecting and wanting to make the difference and allowing people to see what really fuels this calling: It’s about helping people,” she says. Now, as the last woman standing from her academy class being asked to look back on her years of service, she instead gazes ahead and says, “I’ve had the fortunate blessing of having 33 years to know RPD. I just really want to create an opportunity for the next chief to have a really fresh start.”
Beyond that? “I’m looking forward to doing a little bit of traveling and just seeing parts of the world that I haven’t seen but wanted to see, and just enjoying family,” she says. “There’s a lot of commitment and sacrifice that comes with being a police officer. There’s even more when you’re in a role like this. And now I really have a chance to enjoy the missed opportunities.” Send us a selfie from that river cruise, Chief.
Here’s a roundup of local podcasts you should check out to stay plugged in.
Wine for Normal People Why have less scato when you can have mo’scato. Sip on this award-winning podcast by married host duo Elizabeth Schneider and MC Ice that translates the ever-elusive gift of the grape into layman terms. winefornormalpeople.com
Finest Worksongs “Let’s discuss great albums, they said. … Let’s listen, you said.” Y’all. The “Matts” are def worth a listen. Having amassed quite the following—surpassing a benchmark 50th epipod this April—Raleighites Matt Lail and Matt Stevens bring their coming-of-age-in-the-’80s raised-on-MTV vibes to this must-tune-in weekly podcast. finestworksongs.com
Culture State Did ya know rapper Petey Pablo’s from NC? Tap into all things NC pop culture (sports, music and more) in this new podcast hosted by WRAL-TV sports anchor and NC native Chris Lea and 99.9 The Fan producer/host Dennis Cox, who parlayed their shared love of pro wrestling into this celebration of those who put our state on the map. So, essentially, a love letter to NC. Cue the awws. @culturestatepod
North Carolina Food & Beverage Podcast Nosh your way through the latest in NC’s food and bev world via this fan-fave NC F&B Podcast as industry vets Max Trujillo and Matthew Weiss take you behind the scenes of NC’s burgeoning hospitality biz with top chefs, sommeliers, brewers, distillers, farmers and more. ncfbpodcast.com
Under the Dome Domecast fans, listen up. The N&O has overhauled its political podcast of yore with this recent relaunch—think fresh name (Under the Dome, obv) and fresh content—airing out the latest in NC legislation twice weekly so you can stay in the know about what’s going on, well, under the dome. newsobserver.com/dome
First Google. Then Apple. Now an Amazon distribution campus. And next maybe Nike? With already record growth, here’s a look at Raleigh and the Triangle as major brands choose our land as the future.
“Think different.” One of the most recognizable slogans of the 21st century belongs to trailblazing tech icon Apple. And, now, that forward-thinking tech titan—who arguably transformed Silicon Valley into what it is today—has set its sights on Raleigh for its next hub.
Sure, Apple landing in RTP (with its cool $1 billion investment and mammoth 3,000-job campus) is hardly breaking news. Unless you’ve been taking a long summer slumber, you’ve no doubt heard the chatter.
But what you may not know is what that means. For starters, Apple’s local campus will be its largest on the East Coast. Its last landing pad was Austin—a city Raleigh is oft compared to (or said to be “chasing”) in rapid growth. And given that the Apple news comes alongside other goliath Google grabbing Durham as its landing pad, its arguably only when—not if—Raleigh will stop chasing, and finally catch (if not surpass) Austin.
And before Apple has even peeled off the sale sticker, so to speak, Wake County has eclipsed Mecklenburg County as the most populated in the state. Now on the heels of that news comes the May headline announcing Amazon’s selection of adjacent Johnston County for its $100 mill, 620,000-square-foot distribution and fulfillment center in Smithfield. And quick to follow were super-recent rumblings of Nike assuming office space in Chapel Hill.
It’s a lot to process—but despite all the uncanny robust and rapid growth Raleigh and the Triangle have seen, it’s likely safe to say, “We ain’t seen nothing yet.” Here, we break down the latest by the numbers.
