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Research Triangle Park

Location:  Research Triangle Park is located in North Carolina and draws it's name from the triangle formed by the large three universities in the area: Duke University at Durham, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University in Raleigh.¹

Maps courtesy of Research Triangle Foundation (Link to http://www.rtp.org). Used with permission.

Year Founded:  Formally established in 1959 as a non-profit organization named the Research Triangle Foundation.²  The foundation owns the land while individual businesses build to suit for their uses.  The Research Triangle Foundation provides services to tenants and other for-profit services such as a hotel.

Focus: Research Triangle Park utilizes the strengths of the three local universities to further research in these fields:³ 

• Biotechnology/Biopharmaceutical
• Computer Hardware and Software
• Chemicals
• Environmental Sciences
• Information Technology
• Instrumentation
• Materials Science
• Microelectronics
• Pharmaceuticals
• Public Health
• Telecommunications
• Statistics

According to the North Carolina Board of Science and Technology, the following high-tech clusters have a significant presence in the Triangle: information technology and instruments, communications services and software, pharmaceuticals and medical technologies, and chemicals.

Size: The park covers an area of 7,000 acres that is 8 miles long and 2 miles wide,⁴ and 1,300 acres are still available for development.⁵  It has approximately 45,000 employees with 99.4% working for research and development related companies and an average salary of $54,145.⁶

Infrastructure: Raleigh-Durham International Airport is five miles east of Research Triangle Park.⁷  Highways include I-95 that links New England to Florida and I-40 that  runs coast-to-coast from North Carolina to California.⁸ North Carolina provides four thousand miles of tracks for freight train services and the park is serviced by CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern Corporation.⁹

Research Triangle Park benefits from the North Carolina Information Highway, a state-wide fiber optic network for high speed transmission of computer data, graphics, images and voice communications.¹⁰

Composition: 136 companies and organizations are in the park and 106 are research and development-related.¹¹  The R&D composition is as follows:¹²

Education: The three main universities are among the best in the U.S.  They are frequently on the "best of" lists for many different fields.  Duke Univeristy, for example, is recognized as #8 on U.S. News and World Report's list of America's Top National Universities.¹² All of the area's colleges had 78,353 students enrolled in 2000.¹³

• Duke University
• North Carolina State University
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Research Funding: The following table details research funds that were available to the schools in fiscal 1999-2000:¹⁴ 

$ In Millions (rounded)

Fiscal Year 1999-2000 Duke NC State UNC-CH Totals Total Dollars Expended $348 $271 $253 $872 Federal Dollars $187 $66 $183 $436 Non-Federal Dollars $161 $205 $70 $436

Fiscal Year 1999-2000 Duke NC State UNC-CH Totals Industry Dollars and as a percentage of Total Dollars $122 35% $31 11% $5 2% $158 18%

Measures of Success: From an investment perspective, the real estate development is more than 17 million square feet with capital investment of $2 billion.¹⁵

Notable tenants: BASF, Ericsson, Inc., GlaxxoSmithKline, IBM (largest employer), Lockheed Martin ¹⁶

History/Description: Started with the idea as a for-profit operation but that strategy was changed.  The Research Triangle Institute was the first tenant, which is now  the fourth-largest non-profit contract research organization in the United States. Its areas of research range from statistics to virtual reality; cochlear implants to advanced pharmaceutical projects.¹⁷

REFERENCES

1. http://www.rtp.org/home.html. Visited on December 12, 2001.

2. http://www.rtp.org/about/history1.html Visited on December 12, 2001.

3. http://www.rtp.org/rtpfacts/factsheet.html. Visited on December 12, 2001.

4. http://www.rtp.org/rtpfacts/factsheet.html. Visited on December 12, 2001

5. http://www.rtp.org/landforsale/home.html. Visited on December 12, 2001.

6. http://www.rtp.org/rtpfacts/factsheet.html. Visited on December 12, 2001

7. http://www.researchtriangle.org/data/airport.html. Visited on December 12, 2001.

8. http://www.researchtriangle.org/data/highways.html. Visited on December 12, 2001.

9. http://www.researchtriangle.org/data/railways.html. Visited on December 12, 2001.

10. http://www.researchtriangle.org/data/telecom.html. Visited on December 12, 2001.

11. Research Triangle Park, "Research Triangle Park Facts", http://www.rtp.org/rtpfacts/factsheet. Visited on December 12, 2001.

12. Research Triangle Park, "R&D Organizations by Specialty", http://www.rtp.org/owners/otindustry.html. Visited on December 12, 2001.

13. http://www.researchtriangle.org/data/quality.html. Visited on December 12, 2001.

14. http://www.rtp.org/rtpfacts/enrollment.html.  Visited on December 12, 2001.

15. Research Triangle Park, "University and Business Partnerships Involving RTP". http://www.rtp.org/rtpfacts/uinvolvement.html. Visited on December 12, 2001.

16. Research Triangle Park, "Research Triangle Park Facts", http://www.rtp.org/rtpfacts/factsheet. Visited on December 12, 2001.

17 Research Triangle Park, "Research Triangle Park History", http://www.rtp.org/about/history1.html. Visited on December 12, 2001.