https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/durham-county/article311494896.html

«Sterling Bay bought Heritage Square at 606 Fayetteville St. for $62 million three years ago and wants to redevelop it into a life sciences campus with a 325-unit, high-rise apartment building. Originally, the proposal featured an underground parking garage, but the discovery of bedrock beneath the property last year prompted Sterling Bay to seek a zoning change.»

How do you “discover” bedrock under a piece of property after you buy it? (I.e., how do you not know what you’re buying?)

(I guess, after that kind of money has changed hands, that property’s getting developed, no matter what.)

«The company also promises that the project will bring 1,500 jobs with average salaries of $80,000, and investment to both the city and the Hayti neighborhood, which was devastated by the construction of the Durham Freeway, or N.C. 147, in the late 1960s.»

History.

«According to researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill, the temperature in Hayti is up to 7 degrees hotter than anywhere else in the city, a result of development and the construction of the Durham Freeway.

…

“One of my friends’ family sold their home for somewhere between $75,000 to $100,000; they thought they were getting a really good deal,” she said. “That same house was torn down and rebuilt and is now worth $600,000.”»

White flight, pave the city, gentrification, is that the right sequence?

«“Nobody is opposed to redevelopment, but on the backs of a community that has already been disinvested in and is vulnerable, it’s just not the right thing to do,” Scott Neville said.»

The aforementioned $62 mil says something’s gonna happen.