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Worth mentioning that it’s not just Centennial now. You’ve got the big Red Hat building downtown. Citrix is down there. Cary will have 2 large campuses right off I-40 next to the Raleigh border, in SAS and Epic.
There’s still tons of jobs in RTP and right outside, but the growth is definitely more elsewhere
This is something I don't really understand. Johnston County is pretty far from RTP.... but is there a reason why it is growing so fast compared to other semi-rural counties around the Triangle?
If you are in Western JoCo, getting to downtown Raleigh and RTP will be easy as pie when the 540 loop and 40 expansion projects are done.
And right now real estate is dirt cheap compared to A/C/M.
In the early 1990's I was driving a lot between CH and eastern NC along US 70. No bypass for Clayton or Smithfield back then. I think during that time US-70A (or something with a name like that) opened up and you could bypass all the misspelled 'boiled peanut' signs and not hit a traffic light until Goldsboro after going through Wilsons Mills. And at the time the signs either said Wilsons Mills, Wilson's Mill, or Wilson's Mills (Wilsons' Mills might have been represented).
Sometimes I would take I-40 east to I-95 north to US 70 to avoid Clayton and Smithfield. The first time I was on the Clayton bypass (about 10 years ago) I was amazed by it.
Now when I see the morning traffic report, I'm so happy I don't have to do that drive.
It just seems like that area always has been more developed. And, One can get to a bunch of smaller regional cities from Johnston County in addition to Raleigh (Smithfield, Goldsboro, Wilson.)...Pre-Covid at least I drove all over the Carolinas and Virginia. Driving up to South Boston, as an example, there's Nothin....Driving to Goldsboro, there's a lot more.
I notice the same thing with my hunting leases. I had a lease an hour north of here, and a lease an hour east of here.
The lease an hour east of here is rural.
The lease an hour north of here felt remote.
It just seems like that area always has been more developed. And, One can get to a bunch of smaller regional cities from Johnston County in addition to Raleigh (Smithfield, Goldsboro, Wilson.)...Pre-Covid at least I drove all over the Carolinas and Virginia. Driving up to South Boston, as an example, there's Nothin....Driving to Goldsboro, there's a lot more.
I notice the same thing with my hunting leases. I had a lease an hour north of here, and a lease an hour east of here.
The lease an hour east of here is rural.
The lease an hour north of here felt remote.
Very true. There's virtually no amenities like restaurants, gas stations, hotels--heck, anything that looks like it has human beings working--for the last 20 mies of I-85 until the state line. Vance and Warren counties have been losing population this decade as well, and neither one of them is that crowded in the first place. The biggest municipality there, Henderson, has 5,000 less residents than Carrboro even though it's 1.5 square miles larger. Between that and the sparse exits for 40+ miles between South Hill and Petersburg--only one of which has anything more than a gas station--and the trees in the median, going I-85 northward from Granville until it ends in Petersburg is a slog.
1. I continue to insist that it's mostly about city water & sewer. Raleigh's water system extends down towards Clayton because its sewage plant is on the Neuse, halfway between Knightdale & Clayton. As a result, Clayton has connections to both Raleigh and JoCo's water systems. (Johnston has a water plant on the Neuse, near Wilsons Mills, above Smithfield and Selma.)
Even though Franklin and Granville counties are near Falls Lake, its water supplies are much smaller: Franklinton has two small ponds, and Youngsville has just negotiated an interconnect to Raleigh. Butner has a small reservoir upriver. You have to get all the way to Henderson to find anyone who draws from Kerr Lake.
2. Clayton is quite close to downtown Raleigh, and Raleigh is the heavyweight in the region -- its side of the metro has 140% more jobs. (Just DTR is a job center rivaling RTP, with ~50K jobs.) Butner is kinda close to downtown Durham, but not all that close to RTP until I-885 is finished.
3. Johnston County has I-95, which makes a much stronger draw for logistics/industrial jobs than I-85 or US-1 -- e.g., Amazon's big regional distribution center is in Garner.
4. As others have mentioned, JoCo has more smaller cities beyond it. A dual-income couple can split commutes between Raleigh and Wilson or Fayetteville; someone who grew up in eastern NC and went to NCSU can move "closer to family" without leaving the Triangle job market.
5. Capital Boulevard is not a fast route to Raleigh, and the Falls Lake watershed is a rather big barrier. Similarly, Jordan Lake has been a substantial barrier to eastern Chatham's growth.
6. Reputation: Raleigh favored the northwest, but that growth eventually ran into Falls Lake. It spilled around to the northeast with Wakefield, but that side hasn't grown as fast as the west.
For Granville county, Durham has always favored the southwest. Attempts to pull its growth north, like Treyburn, have fizzled. Butner has always drawn the short end of economic development; yes, it has government jobs... at prisons.
Went ahead and ran an LEHD map for Raleigh (2018, all jobs):
Three more points:
1. Pretty obvious that Johnston has more job density/spillover than Franklin.
2. Even to get to Midtown Raleigh, Clayton is about as far (& on freeways!) as Franklin County. Sure enough, without traffic, North Hills to Clayton is 21 min, to Youngsville it's 28 min.
3. WakeMed is a bigger deal than I thought, and it's really close to Clayton.
Yes, there are some data quirks. It appears that every State of NC job has been mapped onto the State Controller's office behind Highwoods, rather than their actual office address. There are also mysterious big employers mapped onto some woods at Old Stage Road in Garner, and the Raleigh Country Club.
Yes, there are some data quirks. It appears that every State of NC job has been mapped onto the State Controller's office behind Highwoods, rather than their actual office address.
That's probably because the address on our W2s is State Controller's Office Beacon Payroll rather than our individual Departments.State Controller's office is on Rush Street, near Highwoods.
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