Winston-Salem - Before & After:
Around 2012, developers of tech company office space created a "tech boom" in downtown Winston-Salem. It completely transformed the industrial and once gritty/vacant eastern third of downtown into what the developers call an "Innovation District." Today, those same developers use this project as the best example of their work, when seeking to work on projects in other states. According to Preservation North Carolina, this is the largest historic redevelopment project in North Carolina and one of the largest in the United States. These buildings have made appearances in websites, social media, and documents from Biomed Realty, Wexford Science + Technology, and Ventas, which are companies involved in the project. Several of these buildings/parks have won North Carolina and Maryland AIA awards. Winston-Salem has appeared in the New York Times and Politico as one of the nation's greatest comeback stories, with these buildings shown as a centerpiece of the stories. This project is also called the nation's fastest growing innovation district. I've wanted to post a "Before & After" of this project, showing the transformation of this once gritty industrial district. I thought this was a good thread for it. I did visit a few months ago (I have photographs, but didn't post a thread) and the place was filled with people, beautiful spaces, and construction workers. If you haven't been to Winston-Salem in a few years, you won't recognize it.
Bailey Park was the eastern part of the multi-block Bailey Power Plant coal-fired power plant and steam station complex, before the nearly two-acre site was cleared and renovated. Here we see construction workers building the waterfall / water-wall feature and paths. This work was completed in Summer 2016. In the next phase, they will reuse the old electricity transmission towers, seen in the before photograph, and create a splash pad.
Biotech Place & Bailey Park Biotech Place has a conference center, retail hall, and office & lab space. Notice the food truck courtyard in Bailey Park. The structures won design awards.
Turn-around and look in the other direction:
Bailey Power Plant is a former coal-fired power plant and steam station that once filled blocks of space, with pipes crossing the streets. Last month, workers finished renovating the old power plant into tech company office space, Cambridge Innovation Center / Venture Cafe space, a conference center, retail/restaurant space and a new brewery will open on the ground floor this Summer. Two other buildings will be incorporated into a new tech company and retail building, proposed by Wexford Science + Technology, to be announced soon.
Since the newest Google Streetview photographs are old and still have it under-construction, I have a post showing the completed project:
http://skyscraperpage.com/forum/show...&postcount=428
Former Hanes Factories converted by Maryland and Virginia developers into residential and art gallery space. Sadly, the century-old box factory is being demolished for a new wood-frame apartment building. Yes, Hanes like the T-shirts. Hanes Brands is one of Winston-Salem's Fortune 500 headquarters.
Plant 64 is the work of Philadelphia-based Pennrose. The project includes office and residential space, along with a gym in a former power plant. Many of these buildings are over a century old.
One-storey warehouse transformed into a two-storey office building (right), with pool and grilling space (left):
Winston-Salem's High Line is the transformation of an abandoned and overgrown elevated rail line into a bike and walking path with a future light rail transit line preserved. This project will open for use next month, but people are already using it.
Wake Forest University School of Medicine & Engineering leased this entire building, which was originally planned as a multi-tenant building. The medical school is on the left and the engineering school is on the right. Five colleges/universities from North Carolina and Virginia have classrooms/research space in this downtown innovation district.
525 @ Vine is a multi-tenant tech company office building. This appears to be a national brand from the developer, since the same developer also built an "@" building in St. Louis' Cortex District a few months later, with the same @ logo?
Inmar Headquarters (left) is the conversion of a one-story industrial building into a four-storey corporate headquarters for a large tech company. This building once had one tall & massive machine, filling nearly all of the space, and it had to be taken-apart and removed in pieces before renovation could begin. Preservationists required them to construct this as a building within a building, so it's a new four-storey office building constructed in the middle of this historic structure.
This development, called downtown's IQ District, has around two-million-square-feet of space. Their current construction projects are apartments with retail and the high line project, posted above. They are in talks with two education-tech companies, interested in relocating here, to construct more space in a proposed mixed-use development that could double or triple the square-foot size of the IQ District. They also have the next phase of Bailey Power Plant proposed, which we previously discussed. I do have a thread on this city's construction in City Compilations.