The Durham City Council voted to annex nearly 160 acres this week for a planned 1.3 million-square-foot industrial park. The project, nicknamed Welcome Venture Park, will be built on vacant land at the corner of Old Oxford and Hamlin roads. It’s in the Braggtown neighborhood, a historically Black and working class community in the northernmost part of the city. The Welcome Group, the Houston-based property owner, was persuaded by neighbors to provide $30,000 in scholarships for Durham Tech students pursuing construction trades, which attorney for the developer Patrick Byker said will benefit 20 students starting in the fall. The Braggtown Community Association had asked for a much larger commitment of $200,000. “We don’t want just a one-time drop in the bucket and they leave,” said Vanessa Mason Evans, the association’s chair. “If we had some type of endowment, that would be so much better.” Council member Leonardo Williams asked why they couldn’t meet the request. “We have to build a segment of the Northern Durham Parkway; we have to build all the water-sewer infrastructure; we have to build the first phase building, which will be approximately 75,000 square feet; we have to build the parking, stormwater infrastructure,” Byker said. “All that has to be done before we even achieve one penny of revenue.” Williams said that was important to explain and highlighted Durham Tech’s other workforce development programs. “Usually folks who are in the development industry, you all as individuals do have a lot of money, but I also tend to feel a little uncomfortable digging into your pocketbook without understanding the full lift,” Williams said. Two unanimous votes The Planning Commission unanimously supported the project in October and the City Council’s vote Monday night also was unanimous. The property was already zoned for light industrial use. After an application from The Welcome Group, the site was designated in 2021 as a brownfield, a property on which development may be complicated by environmental contamination. In exchange for cleanup, the state provides property tax incentives and protections against lawsuits involving designated brownfields so the sites don’t sit empty. Potentially harmful chemicals could be in the soil due to the former neighbors, a Mitsubishi Electric plant and the Beckmann-Durham-Sandefur state hazardous waste site, according to the NC Department of Environmental Quality. The first phase is estimated to total nearly 400,000 square feet, with future phases adding up to 900,000 more. Only the property’s first phase will be on city water and sewer lines, the utility extension agreement shows. Drive-thru restaurants, gas stations, payday lenders, tobacco stores, adult establishments and electronic gaming operations are prohibited. This story was originally published February 22, 2023 at 7:00 AM.

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