The Greens is Centennial Campus is a satellite campus of North Carolina State University, the largest university in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Centennial Campus started with a land grant in 1984 and has blossomed into a center for research and collaboration. The campus is over 1300 acres and has more than 2,700,000 ft2 of developed space for the university and its corporate partners.
Over 70 corporate, governmental, and non-profit organizations are based on Centennial Campus. ABB was the first to move in almost 25 years ago. NC State requires that organizations have some affiliation with the university during their residency. For some businesses this means they work with the NCSU research facilities while others utilize students in work/study programs.
In addition to the businesses that call Centennial home, the university also has several notable buildings on their satellite campus. The Hunt Library is the crown jewel of Centennial Campus. The 221,000 square foot library opened in 2013 and has been featured in more than 330 media articles for various awards. The Hunt Library also houses the bookBot which is a state of the art book retrieval system that allows the library to house 2 million books in a fraction of the space. Visitors can watch the bookBot automatically retrieve books at the click of a mouse from “Robot Alley” on the first floor.
If you are looking for great places to eat on campus, The Oval is a dining facility located within walking distance to The Greens that features several different dining options. You can also find delicious homemade ice cream at the Howling Cow Creamery in the basement of the Hunt Library.
Centennial Campus is a great place to get out and get active as well. It has a 3 mile exercise course with stations that offer a variety of challenges and equipment in addition to the trails that connect to the Triangle Greenway. Nature lovers will also appreciate Lake Raleigh which offers a fishing pier as well as a boat ramp for non-motorized watercraft. For the golf enthusiast, there is Lonnie Poole Golf Course, an Arnold Palmer designed course. From the Lonnie Poole Club house you can enjoy a beautiful view of the Raleigh Skyline after 18 holes. There really is something for everyone!
NC State has recently unveiled “Vision 2034,” which is a plan for the next 20 years of Centennial Campus. One of the ideas presented was for the entire campus to be used as a “proving ground” for all kinds of new technologies. The plan also calls for new collaborative spaces, advanced transportation technologies linking the NC State campuses, and a virtual network that gives research partners remote access to on-campus equipment and labs. Another exciting part of the plan also includes a “town center,” where residents and visitors can enjoy dining, entertainment retail, housing and office space. Campus officials have just begun the developmental work on that property, which will be located adjacent to the Hunt Library.
It is an exciting time for Centennial Campus and The Greens is proud to be a part of it!
(Cover photo credit: Jennifer Dufresne)