A partnership between UNC Health and Duke Health is finalizing a deal to buy at least 200 acres in Apex — a critical step in its plans to build the state’s first standalone children’s hospital, people familiar with the negotiations told WRAL News.
The deal is expected to transform a wide swath of the growing western Wake County town, paving the way for a multibillion-dollar project that would create thousands of jobs and spur ancillary development of hotels, restaurants, shops and offices at the long-planned Veridea development.
Financial details of the deal weren’t immediately available. A formal announcement is expected as early as Thursday, people familiar with the plans told WRAL. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly discuss the plans.
UNC and Duke announced the scope of the hospital project — called NC Children’s — in January. Executives said at the time that the hospital would be built in the Triangle, but they haven’t disclosed a specific site. The partners have been scouting properties central to the region — targeting sites with easy access to their respective campuses, major road networks and amenities for families who would travel from across the state and beyond to stay for indefinite periods.
The 1,100-acre Veridea project, which was first announced in 2009 but has yet to see vertical construction, is bound by a trio of major roads: N.C. 55 to the east and the intersection of U.S. 1 and N.C. 540 to the west. Being close to roads such as N.C. 540 — which loops around Wake County, connecting to the region’s biggest highways — was a key consideration for the project, people familiar with the site selection said.
A UNC Health spokesperson declined to confirm the location of the project but said the partnership has finished its evaluation of properties that could accommodate a 500-bed hospital, behavioral health center, an ambulatory care center and research facilities.
“We look forward to building North Carolina’s first freestanding children’s hospital, and to the positive impact NC Children’s will have on children’s health in North Carolina and the Southeast,” UNC Health spokesman Alan Wolf said in a statement Wednesday. “... We plan to share our location choice imminently. When we do, we will share it publicly.”
State and local officials have been invited to an economic development announcement at Apex Town Hall on Thursday, people familiar with the plans said. North Carolina Secretary of Commerce Lee Lilley is scheduled to be in Apex on Thursday for an economic development announcement, according to a department spokesman who declined to provide details about the announcement.
“I'm excited tomorrow to share details about a groundbreaking development announcement,” said Apex Mayor Jacques Gilbert, who declined to identify the parties involved in — or the nature of — the announcement.
A representative of RXR, the New York real estate investment firm that owns the Veridea development, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment late Wednesday. The company assembled the land in a series of transactions over the past few years.
Funding questions
The hospital is projected to cost about $3 billion — a figure that could grow the longer it takes to come out of the ground. The university partners aim to break ground on the new campus in 2027. Construction is expected to take about six years.
Critical to the plan is state funding, which remains uncertain. Legislative leaders are at an impasse over the state budget, and the hospital — a pet project of state Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham — has emerged as a sticking point in the negotiations. Lawmakers are sparring in large part over ways to cut government spending to make good on promises to cut tax rates.
State leaders credited Berger with pushing through the initial state pledge of $319.7 million for the hospital, which was approved as part of the 2023 state budget and has helped the partners fund early-stage planning.
The Senate’s proposed 2025 budget calls for investing an additional $535.5 million in the 500-bed pediatric hospital. If the chamber gets its way, the appropriation would bring total state funding to about $855.2 million — nearly 30% the projected cost. It was one of the biggest earmarks in the Senate’s spending plan, which would cover the two years ending June 30, 2027.
The House, however, has proposed to reduce the already-approved funding for the project by more than $100 million. The chambers must agree on a final spending plan for any of the additional spending to flow to the project. To fund the balance of the construction costs, beyond the state funds, it is likely UNC and Duke would have to invest some of their own money while also relying on donations from individuals or philanthropic groups.
Complicating matters further: The main source of state funding for the hospital comes from a nearly $2 billion payment from the federal government — essentially a signing bonus — authorized under former President Joe Biden in exchange for North Carolina approving Medicaid expansion in 2023.
North Carolina's Medicaid expansion program will be eliminated, however, under President Donald Trump’s budget plan — unless state lawmakers change state law and save the program, taking on potentially billions of dollars in Medicaid funding responsibilities.
If Medicaid expansion goes away in North Carolina, or even if it doesn't, it's possible that Trump or a future president might try to force the state to pay back its Biden-era signing bonus. Trump has already moved to claw back some federal funds that were paid out before he took office. Some of his attempts have been blocked in court, but others have worked.
“If that money is compromised somehow, or put into question, then we would need to find an alternative source of funding for the NC Children’s hospital,” Kristin Walker, the state’s budget director, told lawmakers in March.
Securing the land for the hospital in the meantime protects the university partners from surging land costs in a region where large, undeveloped tracts are increasingly scarce and highly coveted by commercial and residential developers.
Veridea rising
The Veridea project has been in the works for more than 15 years. When it was announced in 2009, it was projected to double the town’s tax base at the time — creating up to 30,000 jobs and create $6 billion in tax revenue. But the ambitious project has been slow to materialize.
RXR, the New York investor, acquired the 1,100-acre project through a series of transactions, mostly in 2023. The company began infrastructure work earlier this year. Phase I of the project calls for 1,100 single-family homes and townhomes, up to 1,500 apartments, 200,000 square feet of shops and a student campus built in partnership with Wake Tech Community College, according to the Veridea website. The project also calls for 1.3 million square feet of industrial space for logistics and life sciences. The first apartments are expected to be available in 2027.
When complete, Veridea could feature up to 8,000 single-family homes, townhomes and apartments, as well as 3.5 million square feet of restaurant and retail space and 12 million square feet of commercial space for industrial, warehouse and office uses. The development could take more than a decade to build out.
WRAL State Government Reporter Will Doran contributed to this report.