For more than a dozen years, the phantom remnants of the once-thriving American Tobacco complex have lingered in downtown Durham, a fenced-off array of aging brick buildings.
But new plans by Durham Bulls owner Jim Goodmon's Capitol Broadcasting Co. promise to transform the 16-acre complex into a center of office buildings, shops and restaurants and breathe new life into downtown.
"It's got tremendous potential," said Mayor Nick Tennyson. "It could shape Durham's downtown for years to come."
If fully realized, the $200 million project will be a mix of retail, residential and office space and could include entertainment options like a movie theater, live performance theater and ice rink in addition to facilities like a health club and day care center, said David Hall, who is handling the project for Goodmon. "We want a vibrant place to work but also a place that remains vibrant outside normal business hours," said Hall, who emphasized that plans were far from finalized. "If it's just an office park, it will be dead at nighttime."
Whether the concept comes to fruition depends on decisions by local leaders to support the project with public funds, specifically for parking to accommodate the complex's patrons and estimated 4,000 workers. Without that money, tenants' revenues cannot support the development. "No matter how sexy our plan may be, it will fail without affordable, adequate, safe parking,"
But financing for that parking has already gained political support from many local leaders. "The redevelopment of the American Tobacco complex is going to be extremely costly and there is a tremendous amount of square footage for redevelopment, but very little parking development," said Ellen Reckhow, vice chair of the Board of County Commissioners. "I think we will need to participate at some level."
City council member Erick Larson said he hoped community support for downtown development would generate support for funding. "Development on a brown field is always more expensive than development on green space," he said. "There needs to be some public investment to offset the cost disadvantage."
The development's appeal lies partly in the long-standing wish for a reinvigorated downtown, where roads are already in place and workers can commute in. "We need to redirect growth to the central core area," Reckhow said. "It's a positive trend and very, very positive for Durham." In contrast to suburban developments that draw consumers and workers to the city's edge and require road improvements, much of the infrastructure for the development already exists, said Reckhow.
Two previous plans to revive the factory grounds have failed, but if this attempt is successful, it will be the second mammoth development in a year to come to Durham. Construction has already begun at the Streets at Southpoint, a mega-mall off Interstate 40 whose offices, apartments and hotels will be designed to mimic downtown.
If city council members and county commissioners do allocate parking funds-a decision that could come within the next two months-Capitol officials will start the process hashing out other details. The project then will stand for a second, final vote of approval by both governing bodies. In addition to funds for parking, Capitol has applied for federal and state tax credits that would finance 40 percent of the renovations.
Portions of the site could be under construction by the end of the summer, with tenants moving in as early as fall. One of those tenants could be the University, which currently leases office space in Goodmon's Diamond View building overlooking the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. Director of Real Estate Administration Jeffrey Potter said he would consider leasing more space in Diamond View II, a twin structure that Capitol has proposed to build behind left field, or within the revamped complex itself.
For the project's proponents, support from Duke and other organizations will help Capitol-and Durham. "People refer to cities based on their downtowns," Tennyson said. "This could literally be the project that moves Durham from being in people's minds analogous to the closed tobacco factory and changes it into being a city with a thriving downtown with an economic heartbeat."
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