A week after the major Apple announcement, reality is setting in the town likely to feel the biggest impact of the investment and jobs the tech giant will bring to the Triangle: Morrisville.
Mayor TJ Cawley knows that with 3,000 jobs and a 1 million-square-foot facility expected to go up off of Triangle Expressway between Louis Stephens Drive and Davis Drive, local businesses like those in the Park West shopping center will see both good and bad of growth.
The good: “All their employees are going to live in town, drive through town, use our stores, stop at restaurants,” Cawley said.
The bad: While the city has been intentional about building infrastructure, the surge is sure to put a burden on traffic.
“We have a lot of orange cones on the road on Morrisville-Carpenter Road where we are widening that to four lanes to create a nice east-west connector through our town,” he said. “Eventually we will widen Chapel Hill Roard to four lanes. That’s going to parallel I-40.”
Marquise Rogers, manager at Rise in Park West, said 2020 felt like a ghost town. “It was really, really a tough time for us,” he said.
He knows Apple will bring more business.
“Hopefully, by word-of-mouth, that will grow us as a business,” Rogers said. “It’s a big corporation. It’s a chance for us to expand as long as we get our foot traffic and everybody comes in.”
Cawley says that means sales tax revenue across the board will also increase.
“These 3,000 jobs were coming soon, but having it all come in in one company over the next couple of years, that’s really going to be a game changer,” he said.
Cawley says Morrisville is working toward a fall launch of local bus service and is listening closely to discussions about a proposed commuter rail system with stops in Morrisville and Research Triangle Park.
