Fire Safety
When the Palisades and Eaton fires tore through Los Angeles in January 2025, destroying more than 16,000 structures, they exposed a gap that most property owners never anticipated. The toxins released when structures burn settle into surrounding soil in ways that standard government cleanup doesn't fully address, and there was no consistent playbook for what adequate testing and remediation actually required. LightBox CTO Eric Bollens, whose family was personally affected by the Palisades fire, helped fund a Purdue University initiative to create one.
The research, led by Professor Andrew Whelton, addresses a problem that has been filling the recovery vacuum with misinformation. Site-specific sampling, which breaks a property into distinct areas rather than treating it as uniformly contaminated, can significantly reduce remediation costs by focusing resources where they are actually needed.
The longer-term ambition is to use data to build fire impact maps that could help insurers, homeowners, and government agencies understand risk and direct resources more efficiently. As the wildland-urban interface keeps expanding and major fires become more frequent, having better tools before the next disaster is the only way to rebuild faster and more safely after it.
North Carolina is preparing to recommend a new slate of federally designated Opportunity Zones as the 2018 program nears its expiration. Qualified Opportunity Funds held about $3.44 billion worth of property in the state's zones at the end of 2024, ranking North Carolina ninth nationally in investment, according to a June report from the U.S. Treasury Department. About 86% of the state's 252 zones received qualified investment, compared with 77% nationally. The updated program, taking effect January 1, 2027, will reduce North Carolina's total zones from 252 to 202, eliminate contiguous tracts that did not independently qualify as low income, and replace the original capital gains tax deferral with a rolling five-year deferral based on when the investment is made.
State and local officials report difficulty separating projects that used the tax incentive from those that would have proceeded anyway. Nash County's Susan Phelps said most projects in her area's Opportunity Zone started before designation, though the incentive attracted inquiries. Person County Manager Katherine Cathey said the 1,350-acre mega park purchased by Microsoft in 2024 for a data center campus sits within an Opportunity Zone, but the designation did not play a role in attracting the project. Granville County's largest employers, including building materials manufacturer CertainTeed and zipper maker Ideal Fastener, all fall within an existing zone but were located there prior to the program.
Kevin Dougherty, developer of the 3 million-square-foot Eastfield Crossing project in Selma, said the incentive prompted his team to expand from roughly 180 acres to about 435 acres and raise an estimated $14 million to $15 million in Opportunity Zone funds representing roughly 80% of the project's equity. Target opened its first Johnston County store in the development in May. North Carolina does not have access to data that tracks outcomes across Opportunity Zone projects, according to the state Department of Commerce, making it difficult to determine how investments affected jobs, development and local economies.
The state is evaluating nominations using three principles: business development and job creation, strategic local revitalization, and pathways to increasing housing supply in high-need areas. Seven counties do not have any census tracts eligible for designation in the new round. Jill Homan, deputy director of economy and trade at the America First Policy Institute and member of North Carolina Commerce's Economic Investment Committee, said investors in rural Opportunity Zones will receive triple the benefits under the redesigned program. Jimmy Randolph of the Sanford Area Growth Alliance said his organization plans to work with financial advisers and university partners to educate investors and better market qualifying properties if Lee County receives a new designation.
Triangle Business JournalTesla and SpaceX confirmed Thursday they will build Terafab, a semiconductor megafactory in Grimes County, Texas, with a first-phase investment of $16.8 billion. Once complete, the complex is planned to exceed 100 million square feet, more than five times the size of China's New Century Global Center and larger than the Pentagon, Apple Park and Mall of America combined. Elon Musk, who runs both companies, described it as "the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far." Intel confirmed it will contribute to the project, though details of its involvement remain undisclosed.
Tesla said both companies need more chips than current and future global production can supply, with a goal of producing over one terawatt of compute annually. The facility will handle logic chips, memory, packaging and testing in a single structure. Chips manufactured there will power Tesla's Optimus robots and Cybercabs, as well as SpaceX's planned space-based data centers. The project is expected to create at least 3,000 jobs, with 60 to 80 percent of hires expected to come from Grimes and neighboring Brazos County.
The site sits on the Gibbons Creek Reservoir, formerly used to cool a coal-fired power plant that closed in 2018. SpaceX said it will draw water from the reservoir rather than local groundwater, a decision that addresses ongoing concerns about data center water use across Texas. Hundreds of residents packed a county meeting Wednesday to question millions of dollars in tax incentives and what they called a lack of transparency around the deal. Texas Governor Greg Abbott's office extended a $30 million Texas Enterprise Fund grant to SpaceX, and the project qualifies for additional state incentives.
Total investment across all planned phases could eventually reach $119 billion, though that figure has shifted since Musk first floated the project in March with a $25 billion price tag. A 100-million-square-foot facility would represent the largest single industrial footprint ever built, a scale that reflects both the capital intensity of advanced semiconductor manufacturing and the vertical integration ambitions of Musk's companies. The announcement adds to a wave of domestic chip factory construction spurred by federal subsidies and supply chain pressure, though Terafab dwarfs other projects in both size and scope.
New York Post
