Intersect East | Greenville, North Carolina

Story

Greenville, North Carolina was once the epicenter for leaf tobacco farming and auctioning. Then tobacco took a nosedive and the main economic driver for the city with it. In the years that followed the exodus of tobacco, the hospital grew to care for 12 counties in the surrounding area, propelling it to become a preeminent teaching hospital in the region with 9,000 employees. The university, East Carolina University (ECU), also grew tremendously and now boasts 30,000 faculty and staff. Both the hospital and the university are conveniently located in downtown Greenville and it just so happened that sitting between the two were 19 acres of vacant and dilapidated tobacco auction warehouses.

Solution

Develop the vacant historic structures and remaining property. We elevated the entire concept from an innovation hub to a Pacesetter Innovation Hub – an Olympic training center for champion businesses that encourages these industries to relocate R&D to Intersect East. Why? By doing so, they’ll achieve more direct collaboration with the university while utilizing the vast resources already in place: laboratories, professors, grad students, cost-effective land. They’re also training their future workforce with the best and brightest from ECU.

Within this project lies an old-abandoned rail line that once connected Greenville to Richmond, Durham and beyond. Those long-vacant rail lines weave throughout this project serving as a historic ‘tie that binds’ past and present. Our vision was to repurpose the main central line and convert it into a hiking and biking trail with access points throughout this growing cultural district of restaurants and shops. We’re even remodeling an old train car and transforming it into a “food train” – not a food truck – a food train – for a full-service restaurant like no other.

Impact

Injecting $300 million cost in this 10-year project will reverberate to impact the region by a projected $635 million and add over 3,000 jobs.