Corning Inc., a major materials science company, announced last week it is halting its operations at its distribution facility in Edgecombe County, according to the Triangle Business Journal.

Corning is handing off management of the 780K SF site in the Kingsboro Business Park, located off Highway 64 between Rocky Mount and Tarboro, to Florida-based transportation and logistics company Ryder, the company told TBJ.

In a document it filed with the state of North Carolina, Corning cited a strategic shift in business operations as its reason for leaving Edgecombe County.

Ryder will reportedly distribute products for Corning at the center, the company’s North America life sciences hub. The hub was built specifically for Corning’s operations, comprising 750K SF of warehouse space and 30K SF for offices.

With this move, Corning will lay off more than 120 workers, but they will be offered the chance to join Ryder.

Corning will maintain the lease for the facility, a spokesperson for the company said. Ryder will be responsible for all daily operations starting April 19.

In 2017, when Corning selected North Carolina for a two-county manufacturing expansion, the company committed an $86M investment in Edgecombe County. 

Corning will maintain its strong presence in other parts of the state, including a large facility with more than 1M SF of space in Wilmington at 310 N. College Road, as well as plants in Newton, Concord and Winston-Salem

In January, the company announced a $6B supply agreement with Meta to provide fiber-optic cable for data center development, which would require expanding its manufacturing facility in Hickory, north of Charlotte in Catawba County. When this project is complete, Corning will reportedly have the largest fiber-optic cable plant in the world.

Last year, Corning reported net sales of $15.6B, up 19% from the previous year.

Siemens Energy’s manufacturing facility at 101 Siemens Ave. in Charlotte

Siemens Energy has announced $421M expansion plans across its North Carolina operations in both Charlotte and Raleigh, the Charlotte Business Journal reported.

A significant portion of the expansion will be investment at the company’s existing gas turbine manufacturing and service facility in Charlotte, which sits at more than 1M SF at 101 Siemens Ave. off Westinghouse Boulevard. 

In Raleigh, Siemens Energy is also reportedly expanding grid technology project execution.

This move is meant to increase investments at sites that manufacture critical pieces of energy infrastructure equipment, The Charlotte Observer reports.

The investment will create 500 jobs in North Carolina across multiple locations that manufacture energy infrastructure equipment, the company estimates.

Siemens’ expansion in the state is part of a finalized plan to invest $1B in manufacturing in the U.S. The company listed plans for new and expanded manufacturing in Mississippi, Alabama, New York, Texas and Florida. 

The investment was first announced during the company’s Capital Markets Day event in November 2025. During the presentation, company officials highlighted how their backlog for new fossil fuel and power grid energy infrastructure projects had grown since 2022.

Power demand in the U.S. is expected to rise by an average of 1.7% in 2026, and has been rising recently after years of flat demand growth, The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates. This demand has been driven by data center power consumption. 

Gas turbine manufacturing began in Charlotte in 2011, but Siemens halted production in 2018 due to low demand a few years back and altered the space to service gas turbines already installed across the U.S. instead. The Munich-based company will now restart production. 

Siemens reportedly expects its first turbines made in Charlotte to start shipping in the next two to three years. This planned expansion comes two years after the announcement of an earlier additional round of $150M in investment in Charlotte by the company.

North Carolina has become a hub for industrial projects. According to Colliers, Charlotte alone added 5.6M SF of new industrial supply and had more than 6M SF of positive absorption last year. In Q4 2025, the city saw 2.23M SF absorbed and 1.8M SF delivered.

Raleigh-Durham’s industrial market, meanwhile, ended 2025 with steady momentum, with Colliers reporting nearly 777K SF of net absorption in Q4, totaling 2.66M SF of positive absorption for the year.

The market reportedly entered this year with 6.7M SF of industrial and flex product under construction, marking “one of the most active development pipelines of the past decade,” Colliers reported.

An optical cable dealer will benefit from the surge in data center development with a billion-dollar deal that will expand its North Carolina manufacturing. 

Corning Inc. will boost its optical cable manufacturing presence in North Carolina through a $6B data center deal with Meta Platforms Inc., the Charlotte Business Journal reported.

The multiyear deal, which spans through 2030, aims to provide specialized cable to facilitate data center development for Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. 

Corning CEO and Chairman Wendell P. Weeks said in a press release that the investment will significantly expand the company’s footprint across North Carolina and boost its headcount in the state by 15% to 20%.

“Together with Meta, we’re strengthening domestic supply chains and helping ensure that advanced data centers are built using U.S. innovation and advanced manufacturing,” Weeks said.

In October 2025, Corning announced it would expand at its 378-acre cable plant at the Trivium Corporate Center in Hickory, an hour northwest of Charlotte in Catawba County. When Corning announced the Hickory expansion, it stated investment would total between $170M and $268M.

Corning’s plans will reportedly make its Hickory facility the largest fiber-optic plant in the world.

In addition to the Hickory plant, Corning has manufacturing plants in Newton, Concord, Wilmington and Winston-Salem.

Shares of Corning, which have reportedly risen more than 75% in the past year, rose 16% on Jan. 27th with news of the deal to close to reach a new 52-week high of  $110.

Meta announced in November it would commit to spending $600B on data centers and infrastructure in the U.S. by 2028. 

The company’s two largest data center clusters currently under construction are the 1-gigawatt Prometheus site in Ohio and the 5-gigawatt Hyperion site in Louisiana. Both will feature Corning fiber-optic cable, CNBC reported.

Machine Investment Group and Prospect Lane have landed a $53.4 million bridge financing for an 877-unit, seven-property portfolio in two South Carolina counties. A JLL team led by Jamie Leachman secured the three-year, floating-rate loan.

The portfolio comprises five properties in Spartanburg and two in Mauldin. The region has experienced a population growth of over 500,000 in the past decade and a net migration of 94,000+ residents in 2022.

The 70%-occupied, 1971-1986 vintage apartment portfolio has 139 newly renovated units, and the sponsor plans to remodel an additional 300. The restorations will include updates to in-unit features like new cabinet faces, stainless steel appliances, quartz countertops, light fixtures and non-carpet flooring. Additionally, the exterior of the complexes will get updated roofs, parking lots, sidewalks, exterior painting, HVAC systems and security camera installations.

Toyota announced a new investment of nearly $8 billion that will add approximately 3,000 jobs at Toyota Battery Manufacturing North Carolina (TBMNC) in Liberty, NC. This brings total investment to approximately $13.9 billion and job creation to more than 5,000.

This investment adds capacity to support battery electric vehicles (BEV’s) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV’s).

In 2021, Toyota, in partnership with Toyota Tsusho, announced the new Liberty location with an initial investment of $1.29 billion for battery production and the creation of 1,750 new jobs. With today’s announcement, Toyota North Carolina solidifies its position as the company’s epicenter of lithium-ion battery production in North America. Overall, the campus will boast seven million square feet, equating to 121 football fields of battery production.

Courtesy of CBRE

25-01 Queens Plaza North, where Grubb Properties plans to build a 317-unit building.

A new-to-New York developer just dropped $63M on a Long Island City property. 

Charlotte, North Carolina-based Grubb Properties, known for its workforce housing development, picked up its first property in the Big Apple: a 54K SF development site at 25-01 Queens Plaza North, according to CBRE, which brokered the deal. Grubb plans to build housing and take advantage of the opportunity zone program. 

The seller is Estia Realty LLC, an Astoria-based family real estate firm. The family has owned the property — located in an opportunity zone in Long Island City — since 1984, property records show. CBRE’s Dan Kaplan and Elli Klapper brokered the deal for Estia Realty. 

Grubb Properties, helmed by Clay Grubb, filed plans with the city for a 317-unit housing complex at the address last month, The Real Deal reported. In an interview with Multi-Housing News in June, Grubb said the coronavirus pandemic prompted the company to start building in New York. 

“We found that the pandemic opened the drawbridge to certain gateway markets, such as Los Angeles and New York,” he told MHN. “In fact, we recently opened an office in San Jose and continue to build our presence in New York to seize these opportunities.” 

New buyers — particularly ones that would have been priced out in New York before the pandemic — have become increasingly common in New York City’s investment markets as the city reckons with the pandemic fallout.