The governing agency that runs the The University of Texas agreed on a spending measure that would allow the MD Anderson Cancer Center to move forward on a $2.9 billion expansion plan.

The school will bring in university revenue, financing bonds to supplement the hospital revenues that are also funding the project at the Texas Medical Center (photo) in Houston. In total, MD Anderson will commit around $1.6 billion from its hospital revenues for the project, while around $1.2 billion will come from the UT revenue bonds.

The funding will be used to build a new, standalone building to house the Therapeutic Radiation Center and a 25-floor patient care building. The 1.8 million square foot Therapeutic Radiation Center will include services focused on imaging and therapy, including infusion and cell therapies, diagnostic imaging, pathology and laboratory medicine, pharmacy, outpatient surgery, extended-stay beds, endoscopy, outpatient clinics and ancillary services.

The last phase of the project is set for final completion in October 2032.

Metal fabrication and manufacturing company, Unified Legacy, is expanding its existing footprint in Macon. The company will invest $125 million in a new manufacturing facility in Macon, creating 500 new jobs over the next several years in Bibb County. Unified Legacy’s new manufacturing facility will be located at Barnes Ferry Road in Macon, with construction expected to begin in 2026. Parrish Construction is the general contractor.

Unified Legacy manufactures complex products and components for the defense, aerospace, data center, and industrial markets. Through advanced machining, welding, and fabrication capabilities, the company delivers custom solutions including ground support equipment, welded assemblies, generator enclosures, fuel storage tanks, and precision-machined components. Unified Defense, their existing manufacturing facility, has been operating in Byron, Georgia, since 2022.

Gen Z-focused retail brand Princess Polly is deepening its brick-and-mortar push with a slew of new stores planned in the U.S. and abroad.

Eight new U.S. stores are on the way from the midrange fashion company, according to a March 5 earnings report from parent a.k.a. Brands. Half will open this year, and the remaining four will debut the following year. The new openings will bring the brand’s store count to 21.

This year, Princess Polly will enter Minnesota and Texas. Houston and Frisco will each get a location in the Lone Star State. Edina, Minnesota, and Orlando, Florida, are also up for 2026 openings. 

Locations in Jacksonville and Boca Raton, Florida, are planned in 2027, as are stores in Nashville and Charlotte.

The company said it plans to announce even more U.S. openings throughout the year. 

Princess Polly began as an e-commerce brand in 2010 and first opened stores in its home of Australia. The first U.S. store opened in 2023 at Westfield Century City in Los Angeles. Princess Polly co-CEO Eirin Bryett said in a press release that the U.S. reception to its brick-and-mortar expansion has exceeded expectations. 

In the U.S., fourth-quarter sales grew by 7% year-over-year in 2025, a.k.a. Brands CEO Ciaran Long said during a fourth-quarter and full-year earnings call. 

For the full year, sales increased 4.4% to $600M. 

Princess Polly’s physical presence follows its audience to the shopping mall. Gen Z has been a driving force behind the mall’s resurgence in recent years. Foot traffic is trending positive as indoor mall visits grew 4% in January and 5% in February, according to Placer.ai. 

The brand has ample space to choose from as storefronts are being vacated by brands unable to recover from the pandemic. Saks Fifth Avenue, Forever 21 and Francesca’s have all announced Chapter 11 bankruptcy and a major reduction in their footprints in the past year, mostly in malls.

Last year, Princess Polly entered New York City with an 8K SF SoHo location that spans two floors.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation has floated allowing parts of the planned I-77 interstate expansion to be constructed underground, after dismissing the idea as too expensive just a month prior, according to a Charlotte Observer report. 

NCDOT indicated that underground expansion of the highway was back on the table during a city of Charlotte transportation committee meeting Thursday and invited developers to get creative about overall plans for how to make the expansion happen.

The transportation department had initially rejected the idea of underground tunnels in early February, Axios reported. The $3.2B expansion project would add two lanes, both north and south, on a section of I-77 spanning 11 miles. 

NCDOT announced last week it would initiate a three-month delay on its request for proposals for the expansion. 

There has been growing pushback to the project from nearby residents, while Charlotte’s business community has signaled that abandoning the planned infrastructure investment would stifle local development.

The proposed design for the expansion is only 10% to 15% complete. Final design isn’t expected to be completed until the end of 2027, according to an NCDOT press release.

Current plans call for the interstate to be widened through the southern portion of the city and elevated above uptown, then returning downward to connect with existing toll lanes already open from north of uptown to Iredell County. 

The project was first proposed by the Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization in 2014 and placed on a long-range planning document. 

A public-private funding plan was approved in 2024. It includes $600M of state funding, with the remainder to be funded privately and recovered via commuters’ tolls, the CBJ reported.

Last week, the Black Political Caucus of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, a community advocacy organization, announced it was seeking a temporary restraining order to pause the project. 

Opponents of the plan have criticized the above-ground design favored by NCDOT, saying it would bring increased air and noise pollution to primarily minority neighborhoods and displace residents. For some Charlotte residents, the expansion harkens back to earlier injury done to their neighborhoods. 

Robert McCutcheon, president and CEO of the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance, acknowledged that past highway projects have disproportionately impacted Black neighborhoods in Charlotte in a Feb. 24 op-ed in The Charlotte Observer. However, McCutcheon argued that abandoning the project would forfeit state investment in the city’s roads while hurting small businesses, worsening congestion and reducing workforce access. 

“Walking away does not eliminate growth pressures. It risks sending investment elsewhere,” McCutcheon stated in the op-ed.

The Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization, made up of regional governments, ultimately must vote on whatever proposal NCDOT puts forward.

Craig Idlebrook contributed to this story.

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.

CommScope, a North Carolina telecommunications company and one of Catawba County’s largest employers, is halting a long-planned expansion project, according to The Charlotte Observer. 

The fiber-optic manufacturing facility project in the town of Catawba, just north of Charlotte, was projected to cost $60M and bring 250 new jobs to the region, according to a 2023 press release by the North Carolina Department of Commerce.

North Carolina’s Economic Investment Committee also terminated a nearly $2M economic development agreement grant it gave CommScope last summer as an incentive for the project. 

The demise of the expansion, announced Jan. 13, comes about a month after CommScope informed the state it would not reach its local hiring or investment goals.

In a letter, the company placed partial blame on delays in grant funding from the federal Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program, which works to expand high-speed internet access across the country.

The White House updated oversight of the federal grantmaking process in August 2025 through an executive order. Among the changes, the order calls for more oversight by senior government appointees or their designees in awarding grants. The National Association of Development Organizations, a nonprofit supporting regional and local government officials and development organizations, warned that the additional scrutiny may “introduce delays into the grantmaking process.”

CommScope reportedly told the state commerce department that a recent acquisition was another factor for missing hiring and investment goals.

On Jan. 12, the telecommunications company Amphenol Corp. announced the completion of its $10.5B purchase of CommScope’s Connectivity and Cable Solutions business. 

The parts of CommScope’s business that were not folded into the Amphenol merger will be rebranded as Vistance Networks.

Data center REIT Digital Realty is looking to build a pair of large-scale campuses in Charlotte and Atlanta that together could total as much as 600 megawatts of capacity.

A Digital Realty data center in Northern Virginia

In Charlotte, Digital Realty filed plans last week for what would be North Carolina’s largest data center campus, GovTech reports. The 156-acre campus would house more than 3M SF of data center space across two buildings, with the two-phase project ultimately yielding as much as 400 megawatts of capacity. 

The Dallas-based data center giant acquired the site, located 12 miles west of downtown Charlotte at 12899 Moore’s Chapel Road, in November for $160M, according to the Charlotte Business Journal. The parcel is undeveloped but sits next to a major logistics complex used by Amazon. Rezoning approval from the Charlotte City Council will be required for the project to move forward as planned. 

Further expansion in Charlotte is likely to follow for Digital Realty, with the company’s leadership saying on its quarterly earnings call Thursday that the firm has acquired three additional parcels in the Queen City. One of those parcels is adjacent to the Moore’s Chapel Road site — a 48-acre property that the company acquired for $20M. 

The other two properties are adjacent to the company’s existing data center in the city — a 2-megawatt facility that the firm says it will expand to a 12-megawatt campus. The two downtown parcels were acquired for a combined $16M.

 In Georgia, Digital Realty plans to build a 200-megawatt campus on 97 acres in the Atlanta suburb of Forest Park, company leaders said on the earnings call. The vacant property was acquired last quarter from TPA Group for $120M, according to CoStar. Digital Realty already has three data centers in the Atlanta market: two in downtown Atlanta and one in nearby Douglas County.  

In addition to its land acquisitions and development plans, Digital Realty also revealed Thursday that it launched a $10B hyperscale-focused data center fund focused on U.S. markets. The fund, which raised $1.7B in the first closing, includes five operating properties and four development sites, with assets located in Northern Virginia, Dallas, Atlanta, Charlotte, New York and Northern California. 

Digital Realty’s development plans capped a strong first quarter for the REIT, which reported data center revenues up 7% year-over-year and a record leasing backlog of $919M. The firm’s development pipeline grew to 814 megawatts, 63% of which is already preleased. 

The Frisco City Council okayed a 1.4-acre expansion of Kaleidoscope Park, adding a new water feature, an outdoor video screen and a stage.

The new plans also include a 1,100-space parking garage with a 12-story office building. It will rise on a 2.7-acre redevelopment site east at 6635 Warren Pkwy.

The total cost for the Kaleidoscope Park expansion is $14 million, with developer Hall Group Management and the Frisco CDC each contributing $7 million. The Kaleidoscope Park Foundation is responsible for the design and construction of the expansion.

Construction for the park expansion, garage and office tower is expected to begin in early 2026 and finish by June 30, 2028.

Published reports estimate that the total cost of the parking structure and office tower is about $90 million.

Hall Group will receive a $7 million grant from the FEDC for infrastructure improvements. The city will also issue $40 million in tax increment reinvestment zone funding to construct the parking garage.

The Texas Biomedical Research Institute has launched a major expansion of its West San Antonio campus. The $210 million plan calls for expanding the 200-acre campus’ structural footprint and capabilities.

Some of the initial work on the expansion has been completed, including the first phase of a new animal care complex and infrastructure improvements.

The bulk of the expansion is to come and includes approximately $160 million worth of new projects expected to be completed by 2028. Plans call for a 30,000-square-foot high containment structure that will house nearly 4,000 square feet of new biosafety level 4 lab space. The new BSL4 building is projected to cost about $75 million to construct.

Plans also include a new Animal Health Center. The 18,000-square-foot facility, a roughly $20 million investment, is expected to be completed by June 2026.

New shipping, receiving and maintenance facilities are also planned, as well as additional infrastructure improvements. 

Retail cap rates have increased across all sectors, with the dollar store and grocery sectors seeing rises of up to 23 and 19 basis points, respectively, B+E said in its latest net lease cap rate report. However, other sectors have experienced only minimal cap rate adjustments since the third quarter of 2024, with convenience stores remaining unchanged and QSR cap rates rising by just one bp.  

Since the end of August, there has been an increase in supply across all retail asset classes, the report stated. The casual dining, banking and convenience store sectors have experienced the largest supply increases, with rises of 21%, 20%, and 17%, respectively.

In contrast, the auto parts and pharmacy sectors saw the smallest growth in supply, with changes of 6% and 7%, respectively. Newly available listings make up 34% of the properties currently on the market. 

The industrial market has experienced a 28% increase in the number of available properties, with the distribution sector seeing a 27% rise. Major industrial players, such as FedEx, currently have 15 properties on the market, with an average cap rate of 6.55% and an average of 6 years remaining on the lease term. Among industrial property types, manufacturing facilities have seen the largest increase in cap rates, which have gone up 16 bps to 7.51% as of Q4. 

Among specialized property types, such as urgent care center and dialysis facilities, cap rates have compressed slightly since the end of Q3, according to B+E.