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Innovation Quarter updates its plans for Winston-Salem expansion

The proposed layout for the expansion of Innovation Quarter in Winston-Salem
Courtesy Innovation Quarter
The proposed layout for the expansion of Innovation Quarter in Winston-Salem

Innovation Quarter officials have announced changes to its master plan for expansion in downtown Winston-Salem.

The 28-acre expansion is part of a plan to develop the district as a life sciences, regenerative medicine and biomanufacturing hub.

There will also be a park and other spaces for community gatherings.

Lindsey Schwab is the director of community relations for Innovation Quarter. She says recent developments led to the updates.

"We've had $100 million investment in the new Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Eye Institute that will be coming online next year," she says. "We recently completed our acquisition of the former Linden Center, and we've seen a great deal of growth in our startup ecosystem through Sparq co-working space and Sparq Labs.”

The expansion is on a tract running from Third Street south to Salem Parkway. When completed, phase two will comprise an estimated 2.7 million square feet of mixed-use development.

IQ has an annual economic impact of about $2 billion.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.