A recent article projects amazing growth for the Triangle in the coming years...
Joe Lanier is no stranger to the Triangle. He grew up in Sanford and received undergraduate and law degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After law school, Lanier moved to the Washington, D.C., area, where he stayed for the next dozen years – starting both his career and a family. But he never forgot about his roots in the Triangle, which grew bigger and more sophisticated in his absence.
Last year, Lanier and his wife, Amy, decided that Raleigh’s mix of big-city opportunities and small-town Southern living was too good to pass up. They left Alexandria, Va., in December so he could take a job at the local office of the law firm SZD Wicker.
“To us, this is the best of both worlds,” says Lanier, who now lives with his wife and three young children in Raleigh.
Research conducted by Triangle Business Journal’s parent company shows that Lanier and his family will have a lot of new neighbors moving into the area over the next decade and a half. Using federal data, Charlotte-based American City Business Journals projects that the three-county Raleigh-Cary metro area will be the fastest growing metropolitan area in the country in the period that began in 2005 and ends in 2025.
During that period, ACBJ says, the Raleigh-Cary population will explode from 953,093, to almost 1.9 million – nearly a 100 percent increase, or a growth of 3.5 percent per year. Based on the ACBJ projections, Raleigh will rise from being the country’s 51st largest metro area to its 38th largest in 2025.
ACBJ projects that the second-fastest growing metro over that period will be Provo, Utah, followed by Fort Myers, Fla.; Ocala, Fla., and Austin, Texas. Other projected fast-growing North Carolina metros are Charlotte, No. 8 on the growth list with a projected 75 percent increase in its population, and Wilmington, at No. 18.
The four-county Durham metro is projected to increase its population by 32 percent, to 604,663, in 2025. That would make it the 62nd fastest growing area in the country.
All of those potential new residents have local leaders thinking hard about the infrastructure that will need to be added over the next two decades.
“We’re attempting to get ready ... we’re not ready yet,” says Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker. He says the most recent draft of the city’s comprehensive plan, which is updated every 20 years, focuses on encouraging developers and planners to build up – not out.
Meeker thinks that a key to combating sprawl is improving transit, both through additional bus service and the construction of a rail system. He wants to make sure the area can grow without choking on traffic.
That’s a problem that Lanier encountered in Alexandria. He says his eight-mile commute to work in the morning sometimes took as long as an hour. Lanier now can get to work in 15 minutes.
Wake County Commissioner Joe Bryan points to efforts in the works that are designed to improve the area’s transportation infrastructure, such as the Triangle Expressway toll road and a proposal in the General Assembly that would create funding for local transit expansion. And he points out that citizens have stepped up to the infrastructure plate in years past by approving bond issuances related to education, libraries and open space.
Robert Parten moved to the area from West Palm Beach, Fla., in late January. “The quality of life is better here, that’s for sure,” says Parten, who works in IT support at PortBridge Internet in Cary.
Sourced from: Triangle Business Journal June 12, 2009
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