Despite the bursting of the dot.com bubble in 2000 and the Great Recession 10 years later, the Triangle continued to attract tens of thousands of newcomers a year. The area is now home to about 1.6 million people, according to census numbers released Wednesday.
The numbers show that the six-county Triangle region added about 400,000 residents, roughly the equivalent population of Durham and Orange counties.
The growth was led by Raleigh, which added 127,799 residents, and Cary, which grew by 40,698. Wake’s smaller towns also grew at a blistering pace; five of them – Fuquay-Varina, Holly Springs, Morrisville, Rolesville and Wake Forest – have more than doubled in population since 2000.
The numbers also show the growing ethnic and racial diversity of the Triangle and the rest of the state. Non-Hispanic whites still account for the majority of North Carolina residents, but that majority is shrinking, as the influx of Asians and Hispanics far outpaces overall growth.
“We are a destination place for immigrants, and most immigrants are not white,” said James Johnson Jr., a professor at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC-Chapel Hill who studies the state’s demographics.
Hispanics, an ethnic designation in the census that includes both whites and blacks, grew by 111 percent during the decade, to account for 8.4 percent of the state’s population.
The Triangle’s population growth creates a critical mass that brings a host of cultural and economic benefits, from high-end stores and nationally known restaurants to the arts. The concerts and shows at Durham Performing Arts Center made it one of the top 10 theaters for attendance in the nation last year.
Small towns ablaze
Nowhere are those changes brought by growth more acute than in the small towns turned suburbs around the edges of Wake County.
Ten years ago, Holly Springs officials had to persuade Lowes Foods to anchor a shopping center, even though the town had added thousands of residents in the 1990s. Since then, the town’s population has nearly tripled, to 24,661. Now, Holly Springs has three more shopping centers, two new fire stations, five public schools, including a new high school, and a massive vaccine manufacturing plant that opened in 2009.
“We have been discovered,” Mayor Dick Sears said.
‘Rolesville is gone’
But with the growth come wrenching changes and new problems, such as traffic, crowded schools, higher taxes and the loss of the familiar.
Bennie Barham has lived all of his 55 years in Rolesville, where the population more than quadrupled in the past decade, to 3,786.
“My little town of Rolesville is gone,” Barham said.
It’s not that Barham doesn’t welcome growth; it’s just that he thinks Rolesville has suffered from too much too soon. Take, for instance, the morning commute.
“I’m a farmer, and a lot of new people in the community do not show farmers respect on the road,” Barham said. “Between six and eight in the morning, our two lanes can be backed up for miles.”
Restaurants are a plus
Barham was eating at Los Tres Magueyes Mexican restaurant on Rolesville’s Main Street on Tuesday night. The restaurant opened nine years ago, just as Rolesville began to expand from small town to suburb.
“I’ve worked here since this restaurant opened,” said Hector Benegas, the manager. “Each year we get more people here.”
Indeed, many locals describe Los Tres Magueyes as a town hangout, a nice place for a quick weeknight meal with a family or a drink after work. Several patrons Tuesday suggested that the restaurant and a Bojangles’ across the street were the only consolations for the rapid growth.
“I remember when there wasn’t but one stoplight in town,” said Wilson Mitchell, 42, who grew up in Rolesville. “I liked it when it was small, and you knew everyone in town.”
BY RICHARD STRADLING AND STEPHANIE SOUCHERAY – Staff Writers
March 3, 2011
