Women's Clothing Boutique Near Me Morrisville, NC

MORRISVILLE, N.C. (WTVD) -- The Town of Morrisville wants to win big and become the destination for Major League Cricket.

"After coming here, every day we are going to one or the other watching cricket," Virupaxappa Gavaia said. "It's a great pleasure. We are passionate to see sports here."

Morrisville aims to enhance Church Street Park by this summer, featuring expanded capacity of 3,500, additional parking, and new broadcast infrastructure.

"Our residents and business community have rallied around our continued investments in Morrisville's parks," Mayor TJ Cawley said. "We are very excited to be able to provide a world class cricket venue to host both our local league play and some of the best players in the world right here in Morrisville at Church Street Park. "

SEE ALSO | 'Can't wait for the future': Morrisville cricket facility to receive multi-million-dollar upgrade

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A huge upgrade that will create an international-quality cricket venue is coming to the Church Street Park and will soon bring visitors from all over the world.

It's not just the fans getting an upgrade, but there are also plans to enhance seating for the players. Church Street Park was the home field for the Morrisville team and will soon attract Major League Cricket in July.

"There's a passion to play cricket but there weren't any grounds," cricket player Mark Stohlman said. "It would mean everything to Morrisville because we have the fan base. We have the facilities. We have everything that they really need to make cricket successful here in the U.S."

Cricket announcer Aaman Patel said the passion is what sets North Carolina apart.

"There's some of the best players in the world that are coming to play from Australia and the West Indies, so to have those people play it in North Carolina, I think is super huge," Patel said.

"You're talking just a vast amount of people who play cricket, love cricket, and I think we saw that with the minor league finals that happened in 2021 and 2022. Just the sheer number of people that came out to support that. I think if you were to put that on a major league or international level, I think it's just going to be absolutely huge."

An application filed last week in Wake County reveals new details regarding Apple’s future $552 million campus in Research Triangle Park.

On May 30, the county received a commercial use application for the site, located on the Wake County side of RTP near Cary and Morrisville. The land, currently undeveloped, straddles N.C. 540 below Lake Betz.

According to the application, Apple seeks to build a 73-foot-tall building with 324,000 square feet of office space. The company listed office buildings, accessory buildings and a parking deck in its description.

A Wake County spokesperson told The News & Observer that the county is currently reviewing the location’s site plan and storm water documents for permitting. Wake County hasn’t received any specific building plans for review, nor has Apple indicated when it plans to start construction, the spokesperson said.

Within a decade, Apple has pledged to employ at least 2,700 people at the campus, a figure which will eventually rise to 3,000. For now, Apple is leasing space on the MetLife campus in Cary.

The site of Apple’s future campus is owned by a holding company called Acute Investments. Public documents obtained via a records request show Acute has filed for a several environmental permits over the past year.

In August 2022, a lawyer from the law firm Parker Poe, which was representing Acute, requested that some of the applications and supporting documents sent to Wake County regarding the Apple site be kept confidential, citing “trade secrets.”

The county has deemed some of the documentation confidential according to state statute.

Apple did not respond to questions about its construction timeline. It has not shared updates on its RTP campus since the project was first announced in April 2021.

The company has been in contact with the Raleigh Regional Office of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality regarding its campus, NCDEQ spokesperson Josh Kastrinsky said. He added his department “has not received any formal application materials, including any related to construction activities.”

Under Apple’s Job Development Investment Grant agreement with the state, the company can receive more than $845 million in payroll tax relief through the year 2061 if it meets its hiring and investment targets. Those goals start this year with a minimum of 126 employees.

As of Friday morning, Apple had a market capitalization of $2.86 trillion with its share price near an all-time high.

This story was produced with financial support from a coalition of partners led by Innovate Raleigh as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work.

This story was originally published June 9, 2023, 11:43 AM.

From high above, the full scale of the Spark Life Science complex comes into view. The construction site is both massive and incomplete, with sections of red dirt and concrete structures filling the formerly wooded land near the airport and I-40.

Announced in January 2022, Spark Life Science (or Spark LS) promises to deliver 1.5 million square feet of life science lab and biomanufacturing space near the center of the Triangle. The North Carolina developer Trinity Capital and Miami Beach-based Starwood Capital pledged a combined $1 billion for the 109-acre Morrisville site, which will also include restaurants, retail and multifamily residential units.

Construction began in early Fall, and Trinity hopes to have its first phase of buildings ready for tenant uplift — or customization — by the end of the year.

Morrisville leaders say Spark’s size befits their town’s soaring population, which has sprung from 5,200 in 2000 to more than 32,000 today.

“The economic development opportunity Spark offers for Morrisville and the region is amazing,” said Morrisville council member Vicki Scroggins-Johnson. “It offers our community a way of connecting life sciences and RTP and the talent that we have in the region.”

But Spark LS won’t be the only billion-dollar life science hub on its block.

Directly facing the construction on the other side of McCrimmon Parkway is the future site of Pathway Triangle, a one-million-square-foot lab and biomedical facility that broke ground in September. The Massachusetts-based developer King Street Properties says the core and shell of the site’s initial buildings will be complete by the end of the year.

King Street and Trinity Capital are developing their projects without any tenant commitments.

“We and others here in the marketplace have such a strong belief in the marketplace and the future demand that we’re building them in advance of that,” said Tim Skender, a Raleigh-based vice president at King Street Properties.

The greater Triangle area is already home to a flourishing life science sector — with more than 500 industry companies according to the North Carolina Biotechnology Center — and Morrisville, which already has a large Fujifilm facility, aspires to be central to continued life science growth.

In August 2019, the town extended McCrimmon Parkway to give roadway access to the then-undeveloped land. And in July 2021, Morrisville updated its zoning regulations to accommodate the mixed-use projects.

“We pulled the trigger there, and then it just went gangbusters,” said Morrisville Mayor TJ Cawley. “It’s been a struggle for developers to find anything left in Wake County, especially western Wake County, close to the airport.”

Cawley envisions the combined life science hubs will be the Morrisville version of Research Triangle Park’s Boxyard, which provides retail space among a wider office park.

“There will be a lot of mini destinations over there on McCrimmon, on either side of the road,” he said.

Morrisville Mayor Pro Tem Liz Johnson hinted her town’s ambitions in life sciences expand beyond the one street.

“It’s more than just the two (projects) we’re talking about here,” she said. “There is interest by some other large biomanufacturing and life science companies. We are known nationally for that here. Unless you’re following that specific industry, it’s probably something folks are not quite aware of.”

This story was produced with financial support from a coalition of partners led by Innovate Raleigh as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work.

Do you enjoy Triangle tech news? Subscribe to Open Source, The News & Observer's weekly technology newsletter and look for it in your inbox every Friday morning. Sign up here.

This story was originally published April 14, 2023, 6:30 AM.

From starting off as caterers to doing a lot of business through corporations, Aisha White of the Kupkake Fairy finds working in Morrisville is sweet.

"Over time, it just grew," White said. "People started knowing who we were and it's been really great as a minority owned business owner."

The town of more than 31,000 people has not only grown to become one of WalletHub's 2023 top ten small cities to start a business, but a hub for life sciences with two bio manufacturing facilities taking shape on both sides of a portion of McCrimmon Parkway.

"I heard at a conference that the reason we are a good place to do business is because we're great place to live, and that's what we're going for first," Morrisville Mayor TJ Cawley said. "We have Pathways, we have Spark, and another one, Discovery at Watkins Road, and these are life sciences that are coming into the area because we have such a great workforce."

Raleigh-based vice president at King Street Properties Tim Skender said Morrisville is strategically located at the heart of the Research Triangle region, which is why it's the future site of Pathway Triangle, a one-million-square-foot biomanufacturing campus.

"Life science development is in a big growth moment," Skender said. "When you think about it, people (lab technicians, scientists) they want to be in the most convenient location with amenities and Morrisville checks those boxes."

The town also checks the box for talent, according to Skender.

"It's not just the low taxes, the low cost of doing business, the great quality of life that people have," Skender said. "It's that the talent is being produced here at Wake Tech, at Durham Tech, at Alamance Community College. Both the PhDs and the lab technicians, everybody that served that facility is being trained here and wants to live here."

For Mayor Cawley, it's a win-win when it comes to growth and opportunity despite limiting factors, such as land.

"We're surrounded on all sides, so we can't grow outwards," Cawley said. "There's a big push to have more density but there really isn't land to do that even. What's left is mostly in the airport overlay so we can't build single-family housing there anyway. So essentially, we're reaching the top of our residence but we'll keep on growing our businesses."

Cawley said the town is also working on developing a town center, which they're currently discussing with a private developer.

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Between a major highway and a new apartment development, there is a small patch of pine forest left over from a time when it was all farmland. There, between 1930 and 1946, tobacco farmer Fabius Haywood Page laid to rest his beloved horses and mules.

There are 10 graves in all, very difficult to find but well-maintained. They display both practical and heartfelt memories (“Very gentle,” “Very Intelligent,” “3 White Feet”). Mules Maud, Kate, Lulu, and Rose are joined by horses Bessie, Nell, Prince, Starr, Ted, and Dan, named “Best of all” on a gravestone “erected by F.H. Page owner of the animals he loved so well.”

F.H. Page lived on this land from his birth in 1889 to 1978, first with his parents and then with his wife Annie Lee Walton and their five children. He never owned a tractor and loved his animals so much that he swore to never sell a mule. He told a reporter that he stipulated in his will that the small graveyard can never be sold or traded but it’s unclear what the current legal status is of the plot.

In the times before tractors, these draft animals would have been essential to the operation of a farm and the survival of the farmers. Everyone recognizes the importance of horses, but the mule—an infertile hybrid bred from a female horse and a male donkey—has been part of human history since at least 1000 BC. Their hybrid nature made them unable to reproduce, but mules are gentle-natured, hard-working, strong, long-lived, and, while not as bright as horses, they are considered smarter than donkeys. They are mentioned in the writings of Homer, Charles Darwin, and William Faulkner, among many others. George Washington bred them and they became widespread in the U.S. in the 19th century. They are named in the phrase “40 acres and a mule,” an early but unkept promise to compensate formerly enslaved people after the American Civil War, representing land and essential farm equipment to set them up for success.

The mule is part of North Carolina history, especially for their important role in tobacco farming. Nearby Creedmoor, North Carolina, was known as “Mule Town” and was once the largest mule trading center in the world. As demand for mules fell thanks to widespread mechanization on farms, in 1949 Benson, North Carolina launched a Mule Days festival that still takes place each September.

This little graveyard is unique, historic, and a sweet reminder of the love of a human for his animal companions.

Know Before You Go

The address above is approximate, and will lead you towards the end of Landgon Road where there is a circle. You will have to walk into the woods. The approximate GPS coordinates are 35.87961199945577, -78.82659948617747 or 35.87978, -78.82619, but these are not exact—it is difficult to find and takes some hunting.