➾ PHOTO COURTESY OF GRUBB PROPERTIES
MORE UPDATES IN THE INNOVATION DISTRICT
downtown
develop me n t What’s up with Chapel Hill’s innovation district
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eveloper Grubb Properties welcomed BioLabs to its 136 E. Rosemary St. and 137 E. Franklin St. buildings in early November, marking important growth for Chapel Hill’s Innovation District – a hub of entrepreneurial activity in the heart of downtown. BioLabs, a network of shared lab and office space, will lease the entire third floor of both buildings, occupying over 21,400 square feet of facilities. Life science startups at the BioLabs location in Durham have created over 500 jobs and raised more than $1 billion in capital since its 2016 opening. The buildings at 136 E. Rosemary St. and 137 E. Franklin St. sit in Chapel Hill’s Opportunity Zone, an area designed to spur economic development by providing tax benefits to investors. Through the opportunity zone’s tax benefits, businesses can have lower cost to access capital, which is particularly helpful to startups. The 137 E. Franklin St. building is more than 90% complete, Grubb Properties said, with capital chapelhillmagazine.com
UNC has also received proposals for a 20,000-square-foot Innovation Hub, which the town is hopeful will locate in the 137 E. Franklin St. property, Bassett said. Launch Chapel Hill, the coworking accelerator space at 306 W. Franklin St., is on its 16th accelerator cohort, still meeting almost entirely virtually. Launch is in talks with town and university staff about the possibility of moving into a new space and further supporting the growing Innovation District in 2022. Grubb Properties is also planning to build Link Apartments Rosemary – a six-story, 140-unit building on the site of the existing PNC Building – beside the town’s new parking deck at the northeastern corner of East Rosemary and North Columbia streets.
By H an n ah M c C l e l lan
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The East Rosemary redevelopment project also includes construction of a new 1,100-space parking deck at 125 E. Rosemary St., the former CVS parking deck, which is underway and expected to be completed by November 2022. The Town of Chapel Hill got the deck and adjacent parking lot in exchange for the current Wallace Parking Deck, which it gave to Grubb in a property swap. The CVS deck was demolished in July to clear the ground for the town’s new $39 million deck, which the town plans to pay for with parking revenues. The lot will include 100 spots for UNC, leased to serve visitors and employees.
December 2021
Though the Town said development applications lagged in 2020 – “business inquiries were almost nonexistent for at least six months beginning March 2020,” Bassett said – applications have since picked up. “Chapel Hill is fortunate to have the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and UNC Health as strong economic engines for our town,” Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger, who was elected to a fourth term in November, said in a Grubb Properties press release announcing BioLabs. “It’s exciting to see that the steps we have taken to reinvigorate commercial office space and infrastructure in our downtown are yielding results.”