News

The job announcements this spring have been amazing, and seemingly incessant.

The April 26th announcement of the Apple campus is obviously an important date, given the sheer size and amount of the investment: 3,000 jobs in RTP, and a $1 billion investment in North Carolina.

March 18, 2021 is also an incredible date to remember for economic development — as this was the date when Google announced a cloud computing center in Durham that will provide 1,000 jobs. 

March 18 was also the date of the largest life sciences capital investment in North Carolina history, with Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies’ announcement of a large-scale cell culture production facility in Holly Springs.

These and other vital milestones didn’t just happen, of course. They are the results of dedicated focus and critical investments of months, years, and decades ago, from leaders in the public, private, and non-profit sectors across this region and state. We should all feel a collective sense of pride at the ongoing transformation of central North Carolina into what is today the envy of the world.

We all know that regional self-congratulation today — even if justified — will not provide the pathway to get us where we want to be in the future.

To be successful going forward, we will need to be absolutely clear what “success” looks like.

I believe our answer can be boiled down to this: “Let’s make sure we all win.”

Of course, our needed and increasing focus on equity will never result in perfect equality — this is earth, not heaven. Still, while perfection is not possible on this planet, our search for excellence should continue, and I am confident that it will bear increasingly prosperous fruit. Our specific objective or target should not just be equity, but “rising equity” — building each other, and our region up.

From an RTA standpoint, equity has been a key part of our focus — “equity, recovery, and opportunity” are our 2021 advocacy themes, and they will continue to guide our efforts on mobility and related infrastructure. The job announcements are only going to continue, and the need for shared prosperity and quality of life is not going away.

Whether it is the development of a metropolitan rapid transit system, the support of sustainable funding for RDU, or the advancement of 540 and other multimodal freeways, the regional business community has a sense of urgency about this.

We will have more to say in the coming weeks, and to put in bluntly, we will continue to need everyone’s help.

Thank you for your membership, let’s get moving, and let’s make sure we all win.