The chairman of Raleigh-based Craig Davis Properties, Davis also is under contract to buy a 21-acre parcel at Meadowmont, a 427-acre, mixed-use development in Chapel Hill. In addition, Davis is teaming up with partners to build industrial parks in Greensb oro and Hampton, Va.

The projects represent further diversification from warehouses, where Davis controls about 13 percent of the Triangle’s more than 11-million-square-foot market. “We are going to diversify some,” Davis said. “But we are going to stick to our knitting of warehouse and distribution. We will ultimately control 50 percent of the market.”

At the Cary property, known as CentreWest, “our thrust is to come out of the ground as soon as possible with 100,000 to 200,000 square feet in office space,” Davis said. The land – which runs south along Evans Road starting just short of the Weston Parkwa y to past Cary Parkway – will be built out in seven years. Davis bought the property from Odell Thompson, a residential developer. In Chapel Hill, Davis is buying an office, retail and residential parcel known as Meadowmont Village from Meadowmont developer Roger Perry. His partners there are G. Smedes York, president of Raleigh-based York Properties, and Roy O. Rodwell, a Durham real estate investor and venture capitalist. The embattled Meadowmont is awaiting the approval of the Chapel Hill Town Council this month. A group of residents who live on nearby Pinehurst Road filed a lawsuit claiming Meadowmont would harm their property values.

The Cary and Chapel Hill developments are not Davis’ first foray outside of warehouses. Beginning in 1992, he developed several office buildings at University Place, an 80-acre development in South Durham with 450,000 square feet of office space and a 8 2,000-square-foot shopping center anchored by Harris Teeter. Davis completed in March a 226,000-square-foot service center for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina.

Tri-Center and University Place cemented Davis’ career as a developer. During that time Davis teamed up with Rodwell, one of his early mentors, who had acquired the land in the early 1980s.

A native of Rockville, Md., Davis came to Raleigh in 1974 to play basketball for N.C.State University, which had just won the national championship. Davis was a small, tough guard who suffered from comparisons by fans and the media to Monte Towe, a scorer and darling of NCSU’s 1974 team. “Every kid that comes to the ACC felt like he was good enough to play,” said, Davis, a bright, mind-over-matter kind of a defensive player. “I wasn’t a great player. I was in at the end of games when we needed a ball handler. I didn’t feel like I had the talent, I know I didn’t have the talent to go to the next level.” After graduating in 1978, Davis tipped off his real estate career, gaining experience at Davidson & Jones and Carolantic Realty.

In 1985, Davis moved to Charlotte to work for Spectrum Properties, returned to Raleigh in 1988 and started developing Tri-Center. At the time, vacancy rates around RTP languished at 30 percent, but Davis figured that companies in the park would increase m anufacturing operations and consolidate other locations across the country to RTP. He would have the warehouses ready. “The glamour stuff was always office and retail …and the roll-your-sleeve-up stuff was always industrial,” said Davis.

By 1992, Davis had erected 1.25 million square feet in distribution and light assembly space for IBM, Nortel, Glaxo Wellcome and Triangle Services Corp., a Raleigh-based logistics provider that Davis had invested in. During that year, a General Electric investment fund – GE Investment Realty Partners II – paid about $60 million for a 75 percent stake in Tri-Center. This February, the GE fund sold its TriCenter stake for $100 million to Steve and Art Sandler, whose parents built Sandler Foods, a major wholesaler in Hampton Roads, Va. That total doesn’t include the annual returns the GE fund generated during the six years.

In 1996, another GE asset – GE Pension Trust – became a 50 percent partner with Davis to buy 65 acres at Globe Road and Interstate 540 for Globe Center, a warehouse park similar to Tri-Center. Davis completed the first building, a 100,000-square-foot fle x unit, last year. The land for the project had been part of the nearly 2,000-acre Airport Assemblage adjacent to Raleigh-Durham International Airport that was owned by the Eastern Airline pension fund. Morgan Stanley, the fund’s adviser, hired Davis to develop a master plan that would enable the land to be sold in pieces for offices, industrial warehouses, houses and a golf course.

GE Investment wanted to aportion the assemblage, but the Eastern fund sold the entire tract, excluding the Globe Center area, to Tri-Land Associates, last year to a company headed by German Count Riprand Arco. “We are very happy with the relationship wit h Craig,” said Robert P. Gigliotti, a vice president at GE Investments in Stamford, Conn. One of many GE subsidiaries, GE Investments manages $80 billion in assets, including the GE real estate fund and pension trust. “We will grow the relationship …we are looking for other deals in the Triangle as well as outside,” Gigliotti said. One such project is a warehouse complex in Greensboro at Interstate 85 and Airport Road. GE owns the land and a master plan is being developed, Davis said.

Today, Davis’ real estate business generates $16 million to $20 million in annual revenues through various partnerships. And Davis said those figures are about to rise with the new projects and some others that he isn’t ready to discuss. In addition to G E, Davis’ partners include the Sandlers, who are working with Davis on an industrial park in Hampton, similar to Tri-Center. The partnership is under contract to buy 80 acres from the city of Hampton with plans to launch the first building this fall.

Back in the Triangle, Davis also teamed up with Sandler on the Venture Center project, a 10.6-acre office development in N.C. State University’s Centennial Campus. The partnership broke ground on the first 110,000-square-foot building this year. Davis is especially proud of winning the bid for the Venture Center. “I’m excited as I can be to do something to give back to the school,” he said.