Raleigh readies demolition, utilities and funding plan as DHHS prepares to leave Dix Park

Raleigh parks officials and the Dix Park Conservancy told the City Council at a work session that the state Department of Health and Human Services will leave the Dix Park campus in November 2025, leaving the city responsible for roughly 1,000,000 square feet of buildings, about 300 acres of grounds and related infrastructure.

The departure forces the city to accelerate demolition, decommission a centralized boiler-and-chiller plant, plan a new campus utility corridor and identify funding sources for an estimated $90 million to $120 million in capital work and $7 million to $10 million in ongoing operating costs over the next several years.

Why it matters: the state’s exit moves responsibility for a large, mixed set of buildings and systems from one owner to another and creates immediate maintenance, environmental and financial obligations. City staff said the scale of demolition and utility replacement will shape near-term budgets and governance of the park.

Steven Bentley, director of Raleigh Parks, told the council that the city is “in a citywide organizational mode to respond to this.” Bentley said the campus contains about 1,000,000 square feet of buildings (a figure comparable to the city’s entire park system by his count), and that the city and conservancy have renovated about 25,000 square feet across six structures and previously demolished 25 buildings totaling roughly 50,000 square feet. He said staff plan to demolish an additional 500,000 square feet and stabilize another 500,000 square feet of building area as part…