Only a few years after graduating high school, Armani Evans is working full-time at biotech company Amgen, where she could eventually earn close to $90,000 per year. That’s thanks in part to Wake Technical Community College, which hopes to put thousands more people on the path to high-paying jobs with its new Conlon Western Wake Campus planned for Apex.
The future Wake Tech campus is one of the first major components of Veridea’s master plan for a massive mixed-use development located just inside the outer beltline, near the intersection of US-1 and I-540. In addition to the community college, the $3 billion project is slated to bring new apartments, homes, restaurants, shops, offices, and an industrial park into the area.
Veridea may be best known as the future home to North Carolina’s first freestanding children’s hospital. Officials announced Veridea as the home of NC Children’s Hospital back in July 2025.
The Wake Tech campus, just off NC-55 on the eastern side of Veridea, would be another economic engine of the development, putting students just minutes away from Fujifilm Biotechnologies, Amgen, Genentech, and CSL Seqirus facilities in Holly Springs, as well as Körber Pharma, in Apex.
One of the main goals of the campus is to give community members access to the growing number of biotech, life sciences, and advanced manufacturing jobs in Western Wake. That includes the college’s apprenticeship program, which connects students like Evans to companies like Amgen.
Construction is slated to start in 2027, with Wake Tech leaders aiming to open in fall 2029. But the campus faces a couple of challenges, including a need to secure more funding.
What is Veridea?
Plans to develop Veridea’s 1,100 acres have been underway for years. But it wasn’t until New York real estate firm RXR Capital came in around 2022 that the project really kicked off. Wake Tech leaders, who were already interested in the site, approached the company about a partnership early on.
“It was one of the quickest deals I’ve done in 45 years of doing this,” Joe Graziose Sr., executive vice president of development for RXR, told The Line. “We sat around a table, and he (Wake Tech president Scott Ralls) said, ‘I want to be there,’ and I said, ‘Well, I want you here,’ and we worked it out. And you know, the rest became history.”
Graziose was excited about what a 3,500-student campus would bring to Veridea, he added. The development leans into the popular modern concept of creating one place where people can live, work, and play. But it also goes one step further, he said, looking at what will benefit the community.
As Apex grows, the town needs to invest in commercial development, not just housing, said Apex Mayor Jacques Gilbert. The majority of the town’s tax revenue currently comes from single-family homes. Not only does the town need to shift that ratio, but residents are also looking for opportunities to stay in the community for work, rather than commute to Raleigh or Durham, according to Gilbert.
The NC Children’s Hospital at Veridea is expected to create 8,000 new jobs. That’s in addition to the hundreds of employment opportunities created by the new retail, restaurant, and industrial facilities coming to the development.
“It (Veridea) is really a golden opportunity for our community to thrive,” Gilbert said.
Wake Tech’s campus, in particular, “is really going to set up the region to keep the talent here, and fill some gaps,” he added.
Construction at Veridea will continue through the 2030s, but the first buildings are expected to open in early 2027, according to Graziose. Two industrial facilities will be ready for new companies to move in around that time.
Graziose is already talking to prospective renters, including companies that could support NC Children’s Hospital, he said. Biotech, life sciences, and health sciences companies are certainly a possibility, but “we have a lot of interest from robotic-type manufacturers, at the table at the moment,” Graziose added. “New technology.”
In the eastern portion of Veridea, apartment complex Summit House is expected to open by the end of 2027, and the first retail stores at Veridea Crossing are set to open in 2028.
Wake Tech’s Western Wake Move
Wake Tech’s current Western Wake campus is inside a Cary strip mall, sandwiched between a hair salon and a pilates studio. It includes a library, an auditorium-esque space, and a few offices and classrooms.
Still, it’s much smaller than the community college’s main campuses in North and South Wake County. And students and administrators fight for parking every day against people shopping at the nearby Publix, or visiting Starbucks.
“Around 2019, we realized that this just was not working for us,” said Matt Smith, vice president of Development & Strategic Partnerships for the Wake Tech Foundation.
“The kind of training that we do a lot of now, that really promotes workforce and great-paying jobs, is not the kind of training where you can just roll into a 30-by-30 classroom space, plop down 25 computers, and say, ‘Okay, it’s time for class.’”
The relocation will be near the Dell Technologies facility in southwestern Wake County and is planned to include two new buildings and a parking deck. It’s expected to serve around 3,500 students.
Construction on the first building, Fujifilm Biotechnologies Hall, is set to start next year. About one-third of the space will be dedicated to biotech and life sciences training, Smith said. Another third will be a “flexible training space” for advanced manufacturing.
“We need sophisticated, simulated workforce environments. We’re really big on trying to replicate what people are going to see when they go to industry,” Smith said. “We [also] need to have flexible training space where we can pivot rapidly, depending on what the need is.”
Wake Tech has not yet committed to a plan for what will be inside the second building, but Smith envisions a pediatric nursing training center with ties to the NC Children’s Hospital, similar to Wake Tech’s existing health sciences campus alongside WakeMed.
“There would be great opportunity for collaboration and sharing of space and sharing of resources, potentially,” said Smith.
Wake Tech’s campus in Cary will close after the new campus at Veridea opens. The college’s entrepreneurship and small business programs, currently taught there, are expected to relocate to Veridea.
More tentatively, the new campus could also become home to IT classes currently taught in Cary, as well as science or other classes for Wake Tech’s University Transfer program (which allows students to earn an associate degree with the aim of transferring to a four-year university).
“We’ve got somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 students right now at Wake Tech that have already told us they want to go to a university,” Smith said. “So we need more landing space for them to take their associates classes.”
The Road Ahead for Wake Tech’s Veridea Campus
Currently, Wake Tech only has the funding to finish construction on Fujifilm Biotechnologies Hall, according to Smith. That’s thanks to a roughly $350 million bond Wake County voters approved in 2022, which included money for the new Western Wake campus land purchase at Veridea, master planning, and construction of the first building.
Another, roughly $150 million bond for Wake Tech will be up for a vote this November, after the Wake County Board of Commissioners approved putting it on the ballot earlier this month. Wake Tech plans to use $2 million of that for programming at the new campus—potentially workforce training with a focus on healthcare, according to a presentation from Charles Scott, Wake Tech’s vice president of facilities.
“We anticipate, obviously, the growth of healthcare in our region, particularly with the (NC) Children’s Hospital in southwestern Wake County,” Scott said during his presentation to the commissioners.
As the hospital materializes, “we can begin to see where Wake Tech can step up and meet the needs for growing industry training for healthcare across the region,” he added.
The 2026 bond also proposes money for renovations and infrastructure updates at Wake Tech buildings across the county, but not for construction of the new Western Wake campus. According to Smith, given that the county is already struggling with rising costs, gaps in state funding, and a loss of revenue—all culminating in a need to raise property taxes—Wake Tech leaders hesitated to ask for more money in this bond.
“This bond request is about half of what we did previously in 2022, seeking to really be as efficient as we can with the money that we’re asking for,” Scott said during his presentation. “(We’re) doing a bit more tightening of the belt.”
As it is, the bond would increase the property tax rate by 0.9 cents (for fiscal year 2028-29) if approved. The college plans to seek funding for more construction at the new Western Wake Campus in a future bond, according to Scott.
Smith and other Wake Tech leaders are excited about the potential of the new campus to connect Western Wake residents with the jobs that are coming to the area.
“We are here to make sure that every single person in Wake County has an opportunity to make a better life,” Smith said. “I have seen it happen, where people come to us and they’re working $14 an hour at Chick-fil-A, and they go through one of our apprenticeships, and all of a sudden they’ve got that $75,000 job with benefits and vacation.
“That’s generational change.”
What do you want to know about Veridea and future growth in Western Wake? Send an email with your thoughts to line@theassemblync.com.
