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CHAPTER 2

The Birth of the Research Triangle

Metropolitan Area

A metropolitan area is defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as “a core area with a large nucleus, together with adjacent communities that have a high degree of economic and social integration with that core.”¹ In 1950, when the first metropolitan areas were designated, Raleigh and surrounding Wake County were included in one area, while Durham and Durham County in another. In 1971 Chapel Hill and Orange County were added to the Durham metro area and in 1981 the two areas were combined into one, until further growth led to their being separated again in 2005. This chapter describes the three major development projects that were critical to the economic and social integration of what has become known as the Research Triangle. The development of the Research Triangle Park, the expansion of the Raleigh-Durham Airport, and the construction of Interstate 40 were all critical to its transition from a collection of separate communities to a metropolitan area.

THE RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK

It is impossible to know exactly how the Research Triangle metropolitan area would have developed without the creation of the Research Triangle Park, but it's safe to say that it would be different in both size and form. RTP filled the hole between the three towns of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. It created a center where none had existed before. The gravitational pull of the RTP has drawn development toward it and distorted what probably would have been a more conventional concentric zone or sector pattern of development around the individual towns.

As a metropolitan center, however, the form of RTP is radically different than those of other urban areas. Rather than a forest of tightly clustered high-rise buildings, the RTP consists of a collection of low-rise buildings cloaked by stands of pine trees. Rather than a mix of office, retail, and residential land uses, RTP is almost exclusively inhabited by research and development operations and some related production facilities. It's the urban equivalent of a monoculture. The RTP has also provided the area an identity, both nationally and internationally, as an area on the forefront of the new knowledge-based economy: an area rich in human capital and containing a critical mass of new economy businesses such as pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and high-technology companies.

The creation of the RTP was critical in knitting together the distinct towns of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill and in creating the social ties that define a metropolitan area. But what lead to the creation of the park? What was the thinking behind the low-density development model? What were the obstacles that had to be overcome? What impact has the park had on the region and what challenges is it facing?

THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CONTEXT

To understand the impetus for the creation of the RTP one needs to appreciate the economic position of the South in general and North Carolina in particular in the early 1950s. Compared to the rest of the country, the South was “relatively disadvantaged and economically depressed.”² In spite of World War II defense spending in southern industries, the South's economy was still heavily based on agricultural production such as cotton, tobacco, and peanuts. Employment in manufacturing lagged other regions. In 1950, for example, the South accounted for only 16 percent of all manufacturing employment in the nation. Moreover, much of this was concentrated in textile and other low-wage manufacturing. Another telling figure is that in the mid-1950s only eighteen of the Fortune 500 companies were headquartered in the South.³

Economic conditions in North Carolina were similar to those in the larger region. A large proportion of the state's jobs were in low-skill, low-pay occupations. In 1952 the state's per capita income was about two-thirds of the national figure, the second lowest in the continental United States.⁴ The lack of well-paying jobs contributed to a “brain drain” as many educated young people left the state to find suitable employment. In a speech delivered at a meeting to announce the Research Triangle Park, Governor Luther Hodges observed that “two thirds of these young people trained in science at these three institutions [Duke, North Carolina State, and the University of North Carolina] are forced to leave North Carolina, and indeed the entire South, to find suitable employment.”⁵ A promotional movie produced by the N.C. Department of Commerce in 1954 showed a set of sad parents seeing their child off at a train station while the announcer says: “Every year many of our best educated young people leave to find a living elsewhere. Of all our state's resources these young people are the most valuable and we're still losing them by the thousands.”⁶

During the early 1950s the Raleigh-Durham area, although better off than many other areas of the state, still lagged the country in high-technology employment.⁷ Moreover, the area's population was small. The total population of the Raleigh and Durham metropolitan areas in 1950 was 238,000. Among the major towns Durham was the largest at 71,000, followed by Raleigh at 66,000, and Chapel Hill at 9,000. This meant that the area had “few of the agglomeration and urbanization economies that characterized larger metropolitan regions.”⁸ Airline connections to major business centers, for example, were limited to several East Coast cities.

What the Raleigh-Durham area did have, however, was three major universities and other smaller colleges, and a highly educated workforce. It was these assets that the founders of the RTP seized upon as the basis for the economic transformation of the metropolitan area and the state. The original goals of the RTP were to: (1) “attract industrial research laboratories and facilities” to North Carolina; (2) “increase opportunities of citizens of North Carolina for employment,” and (3) “increase the per capita income of the citizens of the State.”⁹

By 1954 the idea of capitalizing on the proximity of three major research universities to each other had been discussed but not acted upon.¹⁰ It took a businessman from Greensboro, Romeo Guest, to get the ball rolling. Guest owned a business that catered to the development of new facilities for textile firms moving to the state from New England. As that trend began to wane he sought other development opportunities. He seized on the idea of using the Triangle universities to attract industrial research operations to North Carolina.

Guest began by developing a marketing brochure to lure research facilities to the area and began a series of meetings to promote the idea with representatives of the three universities and state political leaders. Guest is generally credited with coining the phrase “research triangle” to refer to this area. Among the many meetings Guest held were sessions with Malcolm Campbell, dean of the School of Textiles, and William Newell, director of the Textile Research Center, at North Carolina State University, who supported the idea of an industrial park for research and formed a delegation to present the idea to Governor Hodges. The governor requested reports containing an objective assessment of the potential impacts of the idea, which were prepared by Newell and Campbell and provided to the governor in early 1955. After several follow-up meetings, the governor, although not willing to support the idea financially, was willing to use his position to advocate for its creation. He saw the RTP as “the marriage of North Carolina's ideals for higher education and its hopes for material progress.”¹¹ His hope was that if research and development facilities could be attracted to the Raleigh-Durham area, production facilities would locate in other parts of the state. This is indeed what happened.

In May 1955 the governor created the Research Triangle Development Council to take the idea to the next level. Robert Hanes, president of Wachovia Bank, was appointed chairman of that committee, which included other prominent business and government leaders. One of the first tasks of this committee was to convince the universities to cooperate in the development effort since it would be their knowledge and staff resources that would be marketed to potential occupants of the RTP. The universities were seen as “providing a wellspring of knowledge and talents for the stimulation and guidance of research by industrial firms.”¹² Some university officials, however, were uncomfortable with the idea of the universities becoming too closely involved in industrial research: “Guest was explaining the Research Triangle idea and how he would sell to companies the talents of the faculty. William Carmichael of the Consolidated University said, ‘Let me see Romeo, if I really understand what it is we're talking about here, you want the professors here and all of us to be the prostitutes and you're going to be the pimp.’”¹³

One idea to bridge the gap between basic university research and industrial research was suggested by Paul Gross, then vice president of Duke University. Early on he argued that it would be important to have a nonprofit research institute associated with the park. This led to the creation of the Research Triangle Institute, which has played an important role in the park's development.

The Research Triangle Development Council also conducted an inventory of university resources and expertise that would be used to market the area to corporations. It identified approximately nine hundred individuals at the three universities who could potentially contribute to the mission of the RTP.¹⁴ In September 1956, the council was incorporated as the Research Triangle Committee Incorporated, a “non-profit, benevolent, charitable and educational corporation,” with Governor Hodges, Brandon Hodges, the State Treasurer, and Robert Hanes as the directors.¹⁵

One of the first activities of the Research Triangle Committee was to hire an executive director. The committee chose George Simpson, a protégé of the eminent sociologist Howard Odum, and a well-respected UNC-Chapel Hill professor of sociology. The choice of Simpson was a wise one in that it countered the skepticism toward the project held by many university officials. Walter Harper recalled that it “gave assurance to the universities that one of their men was in a position to give guidance to the Philistines.”¹⁶ In January 1957 Simpson presented a plan for moving the RTP project forward. First, he proposed beginning to market the idea to the heads of companies involved in industrial research. Second, he proposed beginning to acquire land and building laboratory buildings for lease. Third, he proposed moving forward on the establishment of a research institute to anchor the park.

The marketing effort began with the development of brochures targeted to several types of industries including pharmaceuticals, chemicals, electronics, ceramics, food, forest products, and textiles.¹⁷ Simpson also put together a team of faculty members from UNC, Duke, and N.C. State to visit chief executive officers and sell them on the RTP idea. “Simpson assembled one of the most unusual teams of traveling salesman ever seen in business offices,” Harper noted.¹⁸ By the end of 1957, this team had visited over two hundred businesses.

One of the difficulties in marketing the RTP idea was that no specific site had been selected. Simpson and others believed that they needed something tangible to sell. Simpson commented: “There is great value in having something concrete, something that can be mapped and walked over…. Something tangible stimulates the imagination.”¹⁹ Upon studying maps of the area, they focused on an area equidistant from Durham and Raleigh with access to the Southern Railway line and to two highways, N.C. 54 and U.S. 70-A. The area was largely composed of worn-out farmland with “nothing but scrub pine and opossums.”²⁰

Simpson also believed that this land purchase would be best handled by a private company: “Someone might care to buy a substantial acreage of land, build a laboratory building or buildings, on the assumption that a profit would be made.”²¹ Thus a search for investors began. On the advice of the director of the N.C. Department of Commerce and Development, Governor Hodges contacted Karl Robbins, a retired North Carolina textile mill owner who had moved to New York. He agreed to invest $1 million in the project and formed Pinelands Incorporated to sell stock. Romeo Guest, who had done business with Robbins in the past, was elected president and treasurer of this new company and Robbins was the chairman of the board and the sole stockholder.

Upon Robbins's commitment, William Maughan, a consulting forester, was hired to quietly begin purchasing options on tracts of land for the park. The goal was a whopping five thousand acres. By the time of the official announcement of the park he had successfully optioned or purchased four thousand acres at an average price of $175 per acre.²²

In what was to be the first of several significant obstacles to development of the RTP, private investors showed very little interest in buying shares of the company and Robbins began to be concerned that his investment was going down the drain. Albert Link notes, “Robbins wanted North Carolinians to own 49 percent of Pinelands, and as of then, there were no investors.”²³ Many of the options on land were coming due and Robbins was not willing to invest additional funds in the company. In addition, “questions of propriety were being raised about the promotion of a privately owned research park by public universities and other state government agencies.”²⁴ The solution to both these problems was to make a fundamental shift in the conception of the park and the approach to fund-raising.

In response to the lack of investors, Governor Hodges and Robert Hanes met with Archie Davis, the new head of Wachovia Bank, to ask him to take a lead role in selling Pinelands stock. In that discussion Davis suggested that the fund-raising concept was flawed: “To me, I just felt without knowing anything about it, it just didn't make sense. If this indeed was designed for public service, then it would be much easier to raise money from corporations and institutions and the like, who were interested in serving the State of North Carolina, by making a contribution.”²⁵ Davis accepted the task of raising funds from private and corporate donations rather than investments. In accordance with this change, the Research Triangle Committee became the Research Triangle Foundation (RTF) and the Pinelands Company would operate as a subsidiary of the foundation. On September 10, 1957, Governor Luther Hodges held a news conference to officially announce the creation of the RTP. Former UNC system president Bill Friday recalled: “The new model worked amazingly well. It changed the whole venue. We were in the public arena from that day on. Nobody was making a personal profit. It was the pivotal day, because everyone was either on the team or you had to explain why you weren't.”²⁶ Davis began fund-raising in September 1958 and by January of the following year he had raised $1.425 million for the project.²⁷ It is interesting to note that many of those donations came from outside the Raleigh-Durham area as the “citizenry of North Carolina came forth to invest in the future of the state.”²⁸ The funds raised were used to buy out Pinelands stock and transfer land to the RTF and to create the Research Triangle Institute, which was to become one of the first anchor tenants of the park.

Figure 14. Picture of Governor Luther Hodges presiding over a ground breaking in the Research Triangle Park circa 1959 (courtesy of the Southern Historical Collection of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries).

THE ORIGINAL ANCHORS: RESEARCH TRIANGLE INSTITUTE AND CHEMSTRAND

As noted earlier, the idea for creating a nonprofit research institute to anchor the park and to provide an intermediary organization between university and corporate researchers is credited to Paul Gross, the Duke vice president. On January 18, 1957, a committee was formed to assess the feasibility of the idea, and how it would fit into the Research Triangle Park. Robert Hanes appointed Brandon Hodges, business executive and former state treasurer, as the chair of this committee.

The committee's report presented that May concluded that a research institute was feasible, that it should engage in both basic and applied research as a way to encourage faculty participation, and that it would not require financial support from the universities. Based on the committee's positive assessment, funding to create an institute was added to the Research Triangle Park's fund-raising goals.

In late 1957, Brandon Hodges died and George Watts Hill, board chairman of a local bank, was appointed as the chairman of the Research Triangle Institute Committee and by the end of that year Archie Davis, as part of his overall fund-raising efforts, had collected $500,000 for the creation of an institute. The Research Triangle Foundation donated land for the creation of RTI and a portion of funds raised was used to construct what was to be named the Robert M. Hanes Memorial Building, after he died in 1959. The Hanes Building was the first of numerous buildings to house RTI's expanding research activities.

With funding in hand, the Research Triangle Committee lost no time in hiring George Herbert, who had served as executive associate director of the Stanford Research Institute, as the first president of RTI, a position he held from December 1957 until he retired in 1989.²⁹ Soon after, Gertrude Cox, a world-renowned statistician, agreed to move her Survey Operations Unit from the University of North Carolina to RTI. Her unit became the first part of “a scientific institution that had no name, no staff, no money, an optimistic but vague mission, and a small, enthusiastic cheering section.”³⁰ Yet Cox's move provided credibility to this fledgling effort. Eighteen of the institute's first twenty projects were in statistics.