Why Hurricanes' redevelopment is the jumpstart west Raleigh has been waiting for

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For nearly a decade, officials have identified west Raleigh as the city’s next “it” district.

Now it appears to actually be happening.

The Carolina Hurricanes’ planned $1-billion redevelopment around Lenovo Center, the club’s home arena on Edwards Mill Road, is the centerpiece of this reimagining. But the NHL franchise is far from alone in making big moves in the area.

“There’s so much potential that can happen out there,” said Philip Isley, a former Raleigh councilman who represented the district in the early 2000s and is now chairman of the Centennial Authority Board, which owns Lenovo Center.

“You see a lot of the big-money players looking at this area. It really is happening now.”

In recent years, the land near the arena has sprouted a smattering of apartments, bars and office buildings. Other attempts have been scuttled. But those projects are only a fraction of what’s envisioned, certainly not the second urban core many have discussed.

After years of fits and starts, plans and promises, this time appears to be different with a mix of public and private moves to build up the area — headlined by what could be a 20-year project around the arena that could end with a new hockey-basketball arena being built.

Lenovo Center, formerly known as PNC Arena and RBC Center before that, is home to the Hurricanes and NC State’s men’s basketball team. The arena also hosts musical concerts, comedy acts and other events, such as monster truck rallies and Disney on Ice. It is adjacent to Carter-Finley Stadium, NC State football’s 57,000-seat home stadium.

Last year’s complex agreement between the Hurricanes, the city of Raleigh, Wake County and the Centennial Authority board resulted in a long-term lease extension to keep the Hurricanes at the venue, $300 million in public money for renovating the arena and lease rights for the Hurricanes to develop 80 acres around the arena.

“The largest economic development project in the history of our city,” Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin called it at the time. “I don’t think you’re going to recognize this area five years from now, 10 years from now. It’s going to come to life.”

“It’s the granddaddy of them all,” said Jeff Murison, executive director of the Blue Ridge Corridor Alliance.

New owner, new plans

When the arena opened in 1999, then called the Entertainment and Sports Arena, the plan was always to develop the land around it. But it’s taken 25 years for that vision to start to become a reality.

Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon is a big part of the reason why. The Texas billionaire bought a controlling interest in the team and operating rights to the arena in 2018 in a deal that put the value of the team at $420 million. In 2021, he bought the rest of the franchise.

The Hurricanes had missed the playoffs for nine straight years before Dundon got involved. They have since reached the playoffs in six consecutive seasons and are now valued at $1.3 billion, according to CNBC.

“Never had anyone like that who’s willing to take the risk, that can take the risk and appreciates the opportunity out there,” Isley said.

It’s helped to see the success of similar projects across the nation, where ballparks, stadiums and arenas have become the centerpiece of mixed-use developments, like the one planned by the Hurricanes.

“Really, I probably should have moved it faster, if anything,” Dundon said in September of the development plans.

The planned first phase of the project includes a new 4,500-seat Live Nation-run music venue, 200 apartments, a 150-room hotel, 150,000 square feet of offices, two parking decks to replace most of the lost surface parking and two additional retail and restaurant buildings.

Construction on the parking decks is set to begin in December 2025 with additional projects beginning after subsequent football seasons, pending rezoning approval from the Raleigh City Council. The Hurricanes would have broken ground on the parking lots this month, if possible.

“Just like anything else you’re excited about, we’re convinced this is the right thing to do,” said Brian Fork, the new chief executive of Hurricanes Holdings who is overseeing the development project. Fork, who is from Raleigh, served as chief of staff for Senate leader Phil Berger previously.

“We want the new features in place as soon as we can get them in place,” Fork said.

Under its district redevelopment agreement with the Centennial Authority, the Hurricanes can develop four separate phases, each up to 20 acres at a time. The development is planned to allow for a new stadium to be constructed at the site farther away from Carter-Finley Stadium and closer to Wade Avenue.

The development is independent of the planned $300 million renovation of Lenovo Center itself. That project is scheduled to begin after the current hockey season ends. The first phase, expected to cost $100 million, includes a new view bar on the upper concourse, new suites and multipurpose areas on the arena level and additional loading and hospitality space for touring acts, a key to landing big-name artists.

The goal is to get more use out of the venue, to “turn this 80 acres into something used by our community on a significant basis 150, 160 times a year to something used everyday of the year,” Fork said.

Dundon’s ambitions don’t stop there. He has been public about his desire to attract a Major League Baseball team to Raleigh, be it an expansion franchise or an existing team.

Like the land where the arena sits and the development is planned, much of the undeveloped land in West Raleigh is likewise state-owned — perhaps part of the reason the area hasn’t developed as quickly as some would have liked. Government entities typically can’t move as quickly as private investors when it comes to real estate deals and developments.

“I’m hearing all of the talk about it and the development around the [Lenovo] Center and those kinds of things,” said Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler, whose department controls some of the undeveloped land. “There’s a finite amount of land and there ain’t much left out there.”

Added Troxler: “It’s really too early yet, but I know pretty much for sure we don’t have any size tract of land that would accommodate a baseball stadium.”

New baseball stadiums, designed to be more intimate, are being built on smaller parcels. The A’s planned ballpark in Las Vegas sits on nine acres on a 35-acre site. The Tampa Bay Rays new planned stadium, which is up in the air, is planned for an 86-acre site. The Texas Rangers stadium, which opened in 2021, sits on 13 acres. The Atlanta Braves stadium takes up 15 acres of their 60-acre site called “The Battery,” which has been an inspiration for mixed-use stadium developments in recent years.

Still Troxler, who was just elected to his sixth term as agriculture commissioner, has been willing to make deals.

“I won’t know until somebody makes an offer,” he said. “… If the land is not something we’re going to us, and I can better utilize money somewhere else, I might look at it.”

An earlier deal has worked out well.

In 2020, Bandwidth purchased 40 acres of land at the southwest corner of Reedy Creek Road and Edwards Mill Road from the state for $30 million. The land, which was managed by the Department of Agriculture, had largely been used for State Fair parking.

Bandwidth opened its $100-million corporate headquarters there in August 2023, while the company provided cash that went toward repairs at the state fairground, a new parking lot and a pedestrian bridge.

“The Bandwidth deal turned out to be a really good thing both ways,” Troxler said.

State government moves

Troxler’s Agriculture Department completed its own $107-million facility on the northwest corner of Edwards Mill and Reedy Creek. The Steve Troxler Agricultural Sciences Center is home to divisions that oversee food and drugs, fuel quality, structural pest control and pesticides and veterinary diagnostics.

The state Department of Environmental Quality is adding a new laboratory building and renovating three others at its Ready Creek campus, a $62-million project on the southeast corner of Reedy Creek Road and Edwards Mill Road. Construction is scheduled to begin next year.

The Department of Health and Human Services, the state’s largest agency, is moving its headquarters and thousands of workers to a new campus on Blue Ridge Road across from the North Carolina Museum of Art, which completed its own renovation in 2021.

To help with escalating costs, DHHS partnered with Raleigh-based office developer Highwoods Properties on the project. The state sold the department’s Dorthea Dix campus to Raleigh in 2015.

“You’re going to have tens of thousands of new workers traversing that area,” said Isley, the Centennial Authority chairman. “They’re going to need places to go to lunch, places to be entertained. There’s a lot of collateral activity in the books right now being built.”

More than $1.5 billion worth of projects have been completed since 2016 in the area, according to a late 2022 report from the Blue Ridge Corridor Alliance. Another $1.1 billion in projects were active but not complete at that time, according to the report. That figures does not include the full cost of the Lenovo Center renovations or the proposed development around the arena.

Nor does it include the $12.5 million included in the 2023 state budget for a refurbished North Carolina National Guard Museum at the Joint Force Headquarters on Blue Ridge Road. The grand opening is scheduled for 2026 and the museum is collecting vehicles and equipment for display.

The Blue Ridge Corridor, as defined by the alliance, is a three-mile area centered around the length of Blue Ridge Road from Western Boulevard to Edwards Mill Road. The alliance envisions four distinct districts: health and wellness, arts and research, entertainment and education and a residential-focused area south of Hillsborough Street.

“It’s definitely been a long process,” said Murison, the alliance’s executive director. “We’re at a tipping point where, for a lot of reasons, it’s finally happening. Investments that have been made and investments that are ongoing are becoming real. You can see and feel the change happening.”The existing road network and its proximity to Interstate 40, U.S. 1, NC State, Raleigh-Durham International Airport and Cary makes it an attractive location, easily accessible to much of the region.

The area has been seen as one of the city’s best growth centers since at least 2009, according to Mitchell Silver, who from 2005 to 2014 served as Raleigh’s planning director and then chief planning and development officer.

“It’s been on the books for well over a decade,” Silver said. “We recognized this is a place that has to evolve for visitors, for patrons, both here in the city and in the region.”

In 2011, the Hurricanes hosted the NHL All-Star Game, an important marker for the franchise and the city as a hockey market. A television promotion for the game showed the arena, then called RBC Center, located in the center of the city.

Many of the game’s surrounding events were held downtown, including fan events at the Raleigh Convention Center. The reaction to the game and the city’s hospitality was overwhelmingly positive. But, Silver said, visitors commented on the distance between the arena and downtown.

“A lot of attendees wished the arena was downtown,” said Silver, who was elected to a seat on the Raleigh City Council this month. “There was nothing to do around the arena. The fans took notice, at least the out-of-town ones.”

Not long after officials adopted the first Blue Ridge corridor plan. West Raleigh was identified as one of the city’s best growth centers.

“If we cannot move the arena downtown, let us move downtown to the arena,” said Silver, who was elected to a seat on the Raleigh City Council this month. “Urbanize it. Build an entertainment center around the arena.”

Fans who attend the Hurricanes next All-Star Game or, likely in a few years, their next Stadium Series game should not have the same complaints.