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.

Urban Innovations has signed more than 30 new leases, renewals, and expansions within the past six months, totaling more than 100,000 square feet in transactions.

“UI is committed to working with each business to provide flexible lease terms, growth and consolidation planning and fully furnished, desirable office suites where workers and employers alike can take pride in spaces that many consider to be their second home,” said Aaron Zaretsky of Urban Innovations.

Top transactions in the second half of 2024 include:

● A 28,624 square foot lease to SuperFile, a cyber security company. The tenant was represented by Sean Murphy of Office Space Chicago.

● A 2,105-square-foot lease to Digital marketing firm OpenX Technologies. The tenant was represented by Michael Pasquella of CBRE.

● A 4,770-square-foot lease to Array Behavioral Care, a telepsychiatry practice. The tenant was represented by Steve LaKind of Cushman & Wakefield.

● A 2,290-square-foot lease to Trident Experiential, an event planning firm. The tenant was represented by Craig Nadborne of Bradford Allen.

● A 5,427-square-foot lease to V3 Companies, an engineering and consulting firm. Kurt Kittner of JLL represented the tenant.

● A 6,784-square-foot lease to Engtal, an engineering and technology staffing specialist. The tenant was represented by Chris O’Leary & Megan Winter of Avison Young.

Optima, Inc. has received final village board approval for Optima Lumina, a 128-unit luxury residential building in downtown Wilmette on Chicago’s North Shore.

The six-story building features one- to three-bedroom residences of up to nearly 3,000 square feet, almost 5,900 square feet of retail space, a large public plaza, and a robust amenity package. Replacing the long-vacant former Imperial Motors car dealership located at 720-739 Green Bay Road, the transit-oriented development is located directly across from Wilmette’s Metra rail commuter station.

It is also immediately north of Optima’s 100-unit, high-end rental community, Optima Verdana. “The success of Optima Verdana has demonstrated the high demand for luxury new-construction multifamily housing on the North Shore,” said David Hovey, Jr. AIA, president of Optima, Inc. “Optima Lumina builds on that demand by offering the option for current residents looking to downsize from single-family homes as well as would-be North Shore buyers struggling to find a home due to the area’s low inventory of available housing.”

Uprite Construction recently held a ceremonial groundbreaking for the Advantech North American Headquarters in Tustin. The project marks the first development in the South Orange County Community College District (SOCCCD) Technology Park, located on the grounds of the former Marine Corps Air Station Tustin.

This past January, Advantech, a Taiwan-based computer maker, signed a 75-year ground lease for a 9.5-acre site in the SOCCCD Technology Park in a deal arranged by Kidder Mathews’ Eric Tse and Oliver Ternate, SIOR. The site will contain a six-story, 108,942-square-foot build-to-suit office building and a two-story, 78,837-square-foot warehouse facility, which will be used for storage, light manufacturing, repairing, and packaging of non-hazardous industrial computer-related products.

The Uprite Construction Southwest Office attended the groundbreaking, alongside design partners Herdman Architecture + Design, Inc., Zatu Design Build Architects, HSA & Associates, Inc. and Grimm & Chen Structural Engineering, Inc. The project is expected to take 24 months to complete.

Jamestown will acquire the Atlanta subsidiary of Cincinnati-based North American Properties (NAP). The Atlanta subsidiary, which has $2 billion in assets under management as of June 2024, is an owner/operator and real estate services provider of mixed-use properties in suburban, high-growth markets across the Eastern U.S.

As part of the transaction, a Jamestown affiliate will invest in several Atlanta area retail centers. These centers include Colony Square (Atlanta, Georgia), The Forum Peachtree Corners (Peachtree Corners, Georgia) and Avenue East Cobb (Marietta, Georgia). The deal also included a handful of out-of-state lifestyle centers.

Upon closing, the Atlanta-based operating platform and its assets will move forward under the Jamestown name—as will its more than 200 employees.

Established in 1996, the NAP subsidiary positioned itself as a boutique, full-service developer pursuing opportunistic returns. This allowed the subsidiary to assemble a portfolio of underutilized lifestyle destinations and maximize their potential through value-add, experiential redevelopment projects.

The Jelly Belly plant in North Chicago is set to close in October, with the parent company, Ferrara Candy, planning to move production to a different facility.

The closure will impact 66 jobs, and the company aims to move these employees to other facilities in the Chicago area, reported the Chicago Sun-Times. Ferrara Candy acquired the jelly bean maker in 2023.

“Last week, Ferrara announced the difficult decision to end manufacturing operations at our Jelly Belly plant in North Chicago,” the candymaker told the outlet in a statement. “After careful review of the current volumes produced here, we are moving our manufacturing into another facility.” Jelly Belly’s other plant is in Fairfield, California, where the company is based.

Ferrara has 7,500 employees globally, including 2,200 in Illinois. The company recently opened an innovation lab in the former Marshall Field building downtown and has expanded its chocolate production facilities in downstate Bloomington.

Construction crews began tearing down North DeKalb Mall as retail developer Edens prepares to transform the 73-acre property into a walkable, mixed-use district. The mall, shuttered in 2020, will be called Lulah Hills.

The redevelopment will add 1,700 apartments, 100 townhomes, and 320,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space…2.5 million square feet in all. The center will be at the intersection of North Druid Hills Road and Lawrenceville Highway near Decatur. An existing AMC theater will be retained during the build-out.

Edens bought North DeKalb Mall for $43 million in September 2021. In the summer of 2022, the DeKalb County Board of Commissioners rezoned the mall for Edens’ plans. The DeKalb Development Authority granted the project $70 million in tax incentives. 

Biscuit Flats Dev LLC, an affiliate of Mack Real Estate Group (MREG), prevailed at an auction to sell the development rights to over 2,300 acres of fully entitled land immediately adjacent to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation’s (TSMC) semiconductor fabrication campus in Phoenix’s North Valley. TSMC has committed to investing $65 billion in its rapidly growing facilities, with significant further investment anticipated. 

The Arizona State Land Department (ASLD) awarded the project to Biscuit Flats Dev LLC, the winning bidder in an auction for the right to lead what is expected to be a $7+ billion mixed-use development of more than 28 million square feet surrounding one of America’s most potent new employment and innovation drivers, TSMC. McCourt Partners will also invest in the project in partnership with MREG. MREG paid $56.28 million as the winning and only bidder at the auction.

Under an agreement with ASLD, the partnership will control land sales within the site, which are to take place in stages over several years, while also overseeing the necessary infrastructure improvements.  Additionally, the joint venture will have the right to develop approximately 600 acres, across multiple uses.  MREG will decide what the best fit is on 2,300+ acres with over 28 million square feet of development capacity across mixed uses, including up to 8,960 residential units as well as industrial, retail, and office space. Infrastructure work could start in 2025.