Special Collections Research Center
Centennial Campus Documentation Project
TRANSCRIPT—Interview with Charles Leffler
(Compiled August 22, 2006 by Chad Morgan)
Interviewee: Charles Leffler
Interviewer: Chad Morgan
Interview Date: August 15, 2006
Location: Raleigh, NC— N.C. State, Holladay Hall
CL=Charles Leffler
CM= Chad Morgan
START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A
CM: Thanks for agreeing to talk with me. I wanted just to begin by asking
a little about your background and how you came to work at State.
CL: Okay. I joined State in 1984, coming here from the University of Cincinnati,
and saw it as a great opportunity.
CM: I wondered if you could talk, too, about some of your responsibilities
as Vice Chancellor for Finance. What does your typical workday look like?
CL: Okay. Currently? My current position?
CM: Yes sir.
CL: The role of Vice Chancellor of Finance and Business at NC State is as
the Chief Financial Officer, responsible for all business operations. And in
that we have not only the traditional financial operations but a number of
physical operations as well, that is, campus operations for transportation
or public safety or facilities and also supporting activities such as purchasing
and the bookstores and other kinds of auxiliary operations. So it’s a
pretty broad band. And in terms of my daily routine, it varies from almost
minute to minute. In this position, there’s no such thing as a routine
day.
CM: And of course, the main thrust of this project is Centennial Campus. Obviously,
that’s seen some pretty significant growth in the last 15 years, and
I wondered what some of your objectives or aims for its future were?
CL: Well, I came to the university at about the time we received the first
transfer of lands or at least the first segment of that transfer of lands from
Governor Hunt. And so I was familiar with it from the very start in that regard,
in my previous roles as being Associate Vice Chancellor for Business Affairs/Business
Services, and those ended up later as the Associate Vice Chancellor of Facilities,
working with the Master Plan and the rezoning of property and to physically
develop the property. So I’ve been involved at various stages along its
maturity.
CM: And what do you see as being distinct about Centennial Campus? What sets
it apart from other university research parks?
CL: Well, when the concept was created, it was quite distinct and different.
There had not been to that time a university-related—and I’ll use
the word “park” here—that was conceived to be a partnership
with the non-university entities that were on the park. What you found at that
time back in the ‘80s were business parks that were close to a campus
generally but were still separate and apart and did not have a mingling of
the university activities and the private-sector activities in the same general
area. So they were more traditional parks in that regard, industry or otherwise.
What we tried to do was really make it different by the intermingling of all
these things, both within the buildings and building to building within the
plant.
CM: You say “I’ll use the word ‘park’ here.” Are
you hesitant to use the word?
CL: We don’t—we’ve never called it a park because we don’t
consider [it] that. We consider it a campus. And “campus” has been
an important part of our vernacular for this. We called it Centennial Campus.
We’ve always referred to it that way, and we take great strides not to
call it a park. Because a park connotates something that is entirely different.
Now, what’s happened over the last 20 years, though, is that as we’ve
developed this and been successful, there’s been a steady stream of universities
in here to see this model. We have others who are trying to do something similar.
So we’re not quite as unique as we were 20 years ago when the idea was
conceived.
CM: You’ve been around this—well, not through the entire process,
but more or less. What were the early days like on Centennial Campus?
CL: Like watching paint dry. Things happened very slowly. The planning process
was a very long, involved process, which we brought in a group called Carley
Capital to help develop a Master Plan. And that was the time that Bruce Poulton
was the Chancellor. One of the things that Chancellor Poulton recognized was
that that campus needed something to jumpstart it. We had at that time, in
the early ‘80s, we had designed an expansion of the College of Textiles
to their former home in Nelson Hall. And we were actually going to build onto
the back of Nelson and make that an expansion of the College of Textiles. And
that building was essentially designed. And Bruce Poulton, because of his desire
to jumpstart the Centennial, said “We’re not going to build that
there. We’re going to go build that new college on Centennial, and we’re
going back to the legislature to ask for more money to build a whole new college
on Centennial Campus.” And that’s what he did. And the faculty
declared they would not move to Centennial Campus if that happened. Well, it
happened. They moved. And in fact they were very happy once they moved, quite
frankly.
CM: And that’s the thing that really jumpstarted—
CL: That really created a presence over there. It wasn’t the first building
we opened, now. We actually opened Research I prior to Textiles opening because
it was a smaller building done in a different way. But it was the first time
that we really placed the university over there in a big way that said we’re
serious about moving, and it sent a strong message about where the campus was
going.
CM: And that made it easier because it was easier to get partnerships over
there?
CL: It’s very hard when you’re establishing a
new development--and this is very true in the private sector—to get that
first anchor tenant. You can get little drips and drabs, and we had our first
partner over there—was
a company called ACSO, and they had two offices on the top floor of the
Research I building. They were our only partner on the campus at the time.
That was the first one. They’re no longer there, but in getting that
anchor tenant who really became ourselves in this case, we established our
own college as the anchor tenant to say “We’re serious about the
investment on Centennial Campus.” It was a very important thing to do
because companies were hesitant to see the vision.
CM: Right, so it signaled you were serious about it.
CL: Yeah.
CM: Are there any projects or initiatives that you’re working on now
that stand out for you?
CL: On the Centennial Campus, there are a variety of things
that are still very high on our list that we’re working on and some we’re
revisiting that the time wasn’t quite right for [before]. For instance,
the golf course as an amenity to the campus and also a laboratory for turf
grass and the professional golf management program. So that’s in the
works, and we’re trying to do that. Of course, we’ve just completed
the second of the Engineering complex buildings, and we’re now designing
a third of those. So we’ll continue to move the College of Engineering
over there; that’s a very big endeavor for us. We have under construction
the Biotechnology Training Center: B-Tech. And that’s an important partnership
not only with the community colleges but with the biotech industry. We are
completing the Alumni center, which again is another amenity kind of facility
on the campus near the lake. We are working with a developer to—in another
private partnership development—what we call the M-4 cluster, which
we’re
now calling it the Alliance Center. Which is very similar to the Venture Center
we completed—a private project, totally built with private money, occupied
largely by non-university tenants but still university tenants, which you approve
the non-university tenants. And now we’re getting ready for our next
phase of that kind of development on campus. We are---there was something else
I wanted to mention there. . .
CM: What are some of the benefits that accrue to Centennial Campus as a result
of things like the golf course or the other amenities?
CL: What accrues to the university?
CM: Yes sir.
CL: In the case of—well, let me start at kind of a high level. Of course
just the simple development of the campus and the space that represented to
the campus is an enormous benefit. And that needed to occur because we were
becoming landlocked on the original campus with minimal spaces to grow. And
that was really a vision to give us a second land grant, so to speak for the
university on its hundredth anniversary. It’s name came from the fact
that it occurred real near our centennial year, and hennc it became the Centennial
Campus. Now, on the campus, in terms of the number of things that we’re
doing over there to set aside the additional space, amenities like the golf
course, which provide a field laboratory for turf-grass management, an operational
laboratory for the professional golf management program out of Natural Resources,
a place for the golf team to play, the same as any other venue we would have
around the campus for our various athletic teams. It’s going to provide
all three of those as well as an additional laboratory that’s related
to turf grass, in terms of erosion control and best practices and those kind
of things. And in terms of the golf course business per se.
CM: Does it also work in terms of developing a convention-center type place?
CL: Certainly the hotel and conference center—which is part of our master
plan and we’ll be reviving that, kind of roll that back out here this
coming year—the golf course is certainly an amenity to that. But the
hotel itself and the meeting space is an amenity to the campus in a way that
the McKimmon Center perhaps isn’t. But it’s a facility that our
business partners want to have to bring in their customers to do things like
training here on site. And that’s very important to them.
CM: And what do you think makes for a successful industrial or governmental
partnership?
CL: That’s defined in a lot of different ways because there are probably
no two partnerships that are exactly alike. We have now probably 61 or 62 partners
on the campus at this time, and every one of those has been different. In some
cases, their partnership is that they use some technology that was developed
here, trying to now move that along to a production status. So profit making
activity; they’d license that. That’s one kind of partnership.
Another is they do simply a kind of work that we have an interest in from a
faculty and research standpoint, and our faculty collaborate with them on that
research. They fund grants in our faculty laboratories. Our faculty may actually
work in their laboratories or their offices there to do the same thing. We
have situations where the partnership is often internships, where they’re
applying a technology we’re teaching here, and our students are able
to work there and learn how that’s done in the private sector, on-the-job
training. There’s really a variety of ways those partnerships are constructed.
CM: In a general way, where do you see Centennial Campus being in its development?
CL: Where is it along in that continuum of development?
CM: Yes sir.
CL: I think it is probably approaching . . . I won’t say it’s
quite at the halfway point because it’s not there yet. It’s getting
near that, you know. It’s at that halfway point or when we break over
the hump. When we have completed the third engineering building, when we have
completed the Hunt Library, which is a project we’re seeking funding
for, and we have completed the Conference Center Hotel and Golf Course, I would
consider that project halfway complete. As a project. As a campus, it will
continue to evolve and that kind of thing. So I think we’re really on
the cusp of another major milestone in its history over the next five to seven
years.
CM: What are some of the major problems or obstacles you’ve confronted
in the past or even continue to confront?
CL: We face all the same things that a developer faces. How do you finance
infrastructure? How do you cashflow a project? While there are some state funds
in certain buildings, the project as a whole has to stand on its own. So managing
the cashflow for the project, being able to pay for the things that need to
come when they need to come has been one of our biggest challenges. We have
faced challenges in dips of occupancy sometimes, which affects your cashflow.
But we have been able to, because of the reputation of the campus, largely
avoid the kinds of same significant dips that the private sector’s seen
off campus. And so we face all those same realities and we have to learn sometimes
because sometimes, in our business, that’s not what we’re used
to doing. So we’ve had to learn how to manage those ebbs and flows of
the business side of it.
CM: Was there anything else you wanted to add?
CL: I think that one of the things that the campus has been for us, besides
this additional land to build on and so forth, it has been one of those ways
that NC State can distinguish itself from other universities. And we really,
I think, have been able to play that to our advantage. It has meant an enormous
amount to recruiting. We have had faculty and administrative positions that
we have recruited for here, and many, many times we have heard after the fact
from the person that’s gotten here was the thing that made the difference
was the uniqueness and the opportunity that they thought the Centennial Campus
presented for NC State to have an edge. That was really important.
CM: You mentioned that a lot of universities were catching onto this trend
[of a campus integrating private companies and governmental agencies]. Is there
something NC State has to do to maintain their edge?
CL: Yeah, do all the things I just mentioned a moment ago. We have got to
stay out there—we’ve got to keep the campus on the front edge of
that. We have to be able to keep the amenities coming. We have to be able to
do the things that make it unique, that is, the Hunt Library and the Emerging
Issues complex that we’re planning. That has a great opportunity to make
a very unique statement on the campus. Make it another magnet for things that
might come there. Things like the Biotechnology Training Center—that’s
a very unique magnet to get things. We’ve got
to look for those things that make that campus unique and attract partners.
Red Hat is a good example. MeadWestvaco and the innovative packaging center
that’s now coming to the campus. Those things that are sort of a magnet
on a magnet. Once you keep clinking them together, your magnetic field keeps
getting stronger. We’re moving back into a place where we’re really
bringing some interesting things and big names to the campus that make a difference.
And that’s what it’s going to take. We cannot rest on our laurels.
We cannot think that because we were good once, we’ll always be good,
we’ll always be unique, or we’ll always be special. We have got
to keep reinventing ourselves to do that. That’s true of the whole university.
CM: Okay, thank you so much for your time, sir.
CL: Okay.
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