Somehow I totally missed the name change from Piedmont Triad Research Park, as it has been known for more than 20 years:
Wake Forest University’s campaign to expand its brand has taken over the name of the downtown Winston-Salem research park it helped found.
…Dr. John McConnell, chief executive of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, said the brand change is an offshoot of the university’s Innovations division that launched in December. The division’s role is enhancing the commercializing of the medical center’s academic and clinical research to bolster revenue streams and establish new ones.
“We were constantly being confused with RTP (Research Triangle Park) outside our market, and many people did not understand that the medical center owns and operates much of the park,” McConnell said.
…Mayor Allen Joines said renaming the park doesn’t take away from the community’s involvement, which has included more than $17.7 million in support from the city and Forsyth County.
The ‘community involvement’ continues, as the City Council voted 5-4 to provide $1.3 million toward ‘easing’ the southern expansion of the research park (emphasis mine):
Overall, the downtown research park projects have increased in cost by $5.6 million in two years, from $15.4 million to $21 million, or 36 percent. The additional cost is primarily due to underground contamination — most likely fly ash from power plants that used to churn downtown, city officials have said.
Some council members have raised questions about whether the city could have better predicted what the projects would cost.
That is the universal question.
