AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
Starting next month, Research Triangle Park landowners can apply to add more buildings to their corporate campuses. Or to create mixed-use communities. Or to build entire residential neighborhoods in the 7,000 acres between Durham, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh.
Read more Years later, a Raleigh neighborhood remains divided on removing a slave-owner’s name
RTP companies and landowners approved development standards Thursday that accommodate RTP 3.0, a long-term strategy by the Research Triangle Foundation to transform the park into more than a network of sprawling corporate campuses. Last week’s vote was the final hurdle to letting developers apply for mixed-use and residential projects for the first time since the business zone opened in 1959.
It culminates a five-year process that required Wake and Durham counties to revise their respective zoning ordinances.
“It takes what is the most centrally located real estate in our greater Triangle region and allows it to be put to higher and denser and better use,” Travis Crayton, the foundation’s head of planning and public policy, told The News & Observer.
Crayton’s team will begin accepting applications on July 16 for one of three new development options: enhanced corporate campus, residential neighborhood, or mixed-use node. Each development type comes with its own restrictions; for example, residential neighborhoods won’t allow detached single-family houses (townhouses are the lowest density option). And companies can choose to continue operating under the corporate campus model that has defined the park for the past six-plus decades.
RTP historically has been home to spacious office campuses shielded by trees. Most of the land has been limited to 15% building coverage. Seclusion was a selling point, as the park catered to commuting employees and companies that valued privacy over nearby amenities.
The maximum building height in RTP has been 120 feet. And around 20% of RTP, 1,400 acres, is parking lots.
But as work-life expectations have evolved, the park has sought to keep pace. The first change (called RTP 2.0) came earlier this decade when the foundation launched Hub RTP, a quasi-downtown area that now has office, retail and — in a park first — apartments.
Read more If you hear sirens across the Triangle Wednesday, don’t panic. What they’re about.
With RTP 3.0, the foundation is opening up development beyond one location. “It’s not like the park is going to fundamentally look completely different overnight,” Crayton said. “It’s going to take time. But I do think we’ll begin to see some incremental change as our landowners evaluate their options.”
The foundation said its 3.0 plan will include a 10-mile corridor called RTP Greenway to link corporate campuses and mixed-use communities with natural areas.
Research Triangle Park is North America’s largest research park. It spans half the size of Manhattan and straddles both Durham and Wake counties (though it is predominantly in the former.)
Fidelity Investments today has the park’s largest workforce. Other major tenants include Cisco, Lenovo and Eli Lilly. Last year, IBM relocated most of its local workforce out of RTP in a move that was small in distance (IBM moved workers to a nearby Durham site) but emblematic of challenges facing the park.
The park is home to more than 385 companies and 55,000 employees, the foundation reports.
In June 2025, the Wake County Board of Commissioners unanimously amended RTP’s zoning district in its rules to make way for the redevelopment. Durham’s board revised its rules in the fall.
Juan Montes, a Durham planning commissioner, called the zoning district a “great solution to common rezoning issues that limit the ability for innovation, investments and overall economic growth as there are too many restrictions.”
Read more Man had flamethrowers and crossbows as he sat outside church service, NC police say
This story was originally published June 30, 2026 at 5:30 AM.