The Adaptive Reuse of the old R J Reynolds Tobbaco Plant

This is the promo video for the Wake Forest Biotech Place, in the newly refurbished R.J. Reynolds tobacco plant in downtown Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  This is a great example of putting an abandoned old building to a great, productive new use.

First, let's deal with the irony here.  No, Winston-Salem is not named after two brands of cigarettes, The cities of Salem and Winston grew together, and the cigarette brands were named after the city.  The old nickname Winston is "Camel City," after yet another cig brand.  Now, the factory that once provided coffin nails to millions of people around the world is a biotech research and business incubator.  Yeah, it's funny when you think about it.

For those not from this area, Wake Forest is the upscale university in W-S.  The college tied hospital, Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, does cutting edge research on growing tissue and organs.  They can grow a bladder or veins in a lab.  Some day this technology may grow new organs with your old tissue to replaced diseased ones.  So that's the one area where Winston-Salem leads biotech in the world.  Not bad for a small city hit hard by the loss of factory jobs over the last few decades.

Will this research and business center help rebuild the economy of Winston-Salem?  Time will tell.  This complex, part of Winston's Innovation Quarter, is looking to make the city a worldwide center for biotech.

I spent a lot of time in Winston walking around downtown before this huge renovation happened.  I also spent time driving a taxi there during the construction.   I know the area well, and this project has also helped get several other nearby abandoned factories rebuilt into nice apartments and condos.  This is the thing you want to see happen in a city that struggled with the loss of lots of manufacturing jobs. That's the great part of what you see in this video. 

But I'm going to bust their chops a bit.  First, the Innovation Quarter has put $350 million in funds into this area, from the city, state, and private sources.  Basically, the project above is what happens when the good ol' boy network of this area decided to build an enormous and costly project to help jump start the city's economy.  My thought is, could that amount of money (or much less), be used more efficiently in other ways that would help the city grow?  Yes.  Will this project give good jobs to thousands of former factory workers?  No.  It will definitely lead to many well paid science and tech jobs, no question.  But the large working class population of the city doesn't get a lot out of this particular project.  Even many of the construction workers used in these projects were from out of the area.  I know this because I used to drive some of them in my taxi, and they told me.

Another thing about this project, it took 20 years to happen.  The early stages were done sooner, but this major stage took decades.  When the idea was first thrown around, biotech was pretty new and looking for places to set-up shop.  In the 20 years it took for this facility to get greenlighted and built, other cities surged ahead and landed early biotech companies and scientists.   

On a personal note, the city started this project and quickly outlawed skateboarding in the Innovation Quarter.  Anyone who knows actual, serious skateboarders knows they are some of the most innovative people on the planet.  Pro skateboarder Rodney Mullen has given multiple Ted Talks to high tech people like the ones this facility wants to recruit.  Really. 

So in this Wake Forest Biotech project we see some some of the great things, and the mistakes that can be made on a project of this type.  This huge project has done a great deal to rebuild downtown Winston-Salem, no doubt about it.  But they lost an edge in the long time span it took to make it happen.  It will create good jobs, but not many that will directly employ the city's working class.  And it cost a ginormous sum of money to build.  Some of that money may have done more good on other types of projects.

For those out there looking to do these types of projects, from the local activist to civic leaders to developers, take some time to think about these issues.  With the huge glut of retail space opening up soon, and the industrial/warehouse space that comes with it, cities will need to come up with good ideas and be able to implement them quickly to weather the 2017 retail collapse of many chain stores, shopping centers, malls, and other commercial real estate.