In spite of the poor economy, good news continues to emerge from downtown Durham. As a downtown Durham hotel, Duke Tower Hotel both participates in and benefits from this continuing positive cycle of development.

The most recent good news is the Measurement Inc. development going in near Durham Central Park. This development, called Morris Ridge and costing more than $15 million, will house retail suites, offices and residential condos in three adjoining buildings.

Measurement Inc.

Morris Ridge will be quite near Duke Tower Hotel, only about 1/2 mile away. (See the map, here.) Part of the Measurement Inc. complex is next to us.

Another positive development is the renovation of the Durham Athletic Park (DAP), the former home of the Durham Bulls minor league baseball team and the site of the movie, Bull Durham.

Bull Durham was filmed near Duke Tower Hotel

The City of Durham has embarked on a $5 million facelift for the park. Repairs and renovations include the grandstand, new bathrooms and a clubhouse under the grandstand, renovating the concession stands, dugouts and broadcast booth. There will be a new maintenance building, picnic area and sand-based athletic field.

The DAP is a short walk from Duke Tower

The DAP will then become a new training ground for minor league baseball. Umpires, groundskeepers and announcers will come to Durham to learn how to referee, announce, take care of fields and how to “flip” them from festivals to ballgames. The former home of the Durham Bulls is also getting a new state-of-the-art field and will be home to North Carolina Central University’s baseball team in 2009.

In addition to the restoration, a National Minor League Baseball Museum next to the stadium is planned.

With all this renovation activity occurring in our back yard (you can see our historic tower and smokestack from the stands), we are optimistic that some of this activity will have a positive impact on us.

As the hotel closest to the DAP, we can envision the visiting staff staying with us for extended periods of time during their training. Perhaps visiting college teams playing against NCCU will stay with us. And visitors to the Minor League Baseball Museum will find us right around the corner. We want Duke Tower Hotel to be the choice for all minor league baseball fans visiting Durham. We are sure they will all like our collection of “Bull Durham” movie posters and other Bull Durham paraphernalia that we have in our lobby.

Downtown Durham’s revitalization is positive for Durham and for Duke Tower Hotel. There are many other positive developments occuring around us, which we plan to report on in a future posting.