Interview: Mary-Ann Baldwin

Driving forward

Diversity and talent are two economic engines pushing Raleigh to new heights

Mary-Ann Baldwin

Mayor – City of Raleigh

What are the city’s key economic drivers? One of the factors that has kept Raleigh moving forward is our diversity of businesses. We have a large tech sector, we have a large creative sector and we have a strong life science sector, especially in the Research Triangle Park. Our diversity of businesses was key in 2008 when the recession hit and is a key now during the pandemic.

The second piece that sets us apart is talent. We have NC State University here and Wake Tech. Wake Tech offers analytics certifications, producing the types of workers that companies are looking for. We have William Peace University and Meredith College, along with two historically Black colleges and universities – Shaw University and St. Augustine’s University. Next door to us in our region is Duke University and UNC at Chapel Hill. All of this together really produces a talent pool like no other. That is a key economic driver for us.

The third element is our quality of life. We are seeing people move here from all over the country right now. They cite the quality of our schools, our great greenway and parks system, our arts and music culture, and our great food scene.

What steps is Raleigh taking to make sure there are affordable housing opportunities? This is my No. 1 initiative. We have a 10-point plan for housing affordability. The City Council’s first vote was to allow accessory dwelling units (or granny flats) to be built by right and we’re looking for ways to incentivize their construction for aging parents or people who want to rent the property and provide housing. We also approved a rezoning text change that would allow more of what’s called “missing middle housing” to be constructed. You can’t build a townhome in 80% of our city and townhomes are usually somebody’s entry into homeownership. We want to make it easier to build townhomes, duplexes, triplexes and quads as well as single-family homes.

What is your outlook for the next two years? There are several things happening. Bandwidth will be hiring about 1,000 employees. They are building a new campus in the western part of our city that will include walking trails and a Montessori school. The Department of Health and Human Services is going to be building its new headquarters here. That’s 4,000 employees who will be moving from Dix Park to a site across from the Museum of Art that is also going to activate that area. We’re seeing tremendous growth in the life sciences and research sector, which continues to fuel our economy. And people are moving here. The Triangle region was just named the No. 2 place to live in the country by U.S. News & World Report.