Epic Games Acquires North Carolina Mall Headquarters In Millions of Square Feet

• Epic Games bought a failed mall on the outskirts of Raleigh, North Carolina for $ 95 million.
• The game giant plans to build a multi-million-square-foot headquarters that could be about 18 times larger than the current base on the outskirts of Raleigh. The site can accommodate up to 4.5 million square feet of new space.
• Epic has been at odds with Apple and Google by installing an in-game payment system on the blockbuster game Fortnite, allowing users to avoid charges charged by high-tech giants.
• The deal is not only Epic’s candid ambitions after the proceedings, but also the creative and profitable diversion of the mall’s assets that developers have collapsed from the pandemic of the past year and the long-standing changes in consumer shopping habits. It also shows that there is.
• For more articles, visit the Business Insider home page.

Video game giant Epic Games plans to buy an old mall on the outskirts of Raleigh, North Carolina for nearly $ 100 million and build a multi-million-square-foot headquarters on the premises.

The company closed the parcel on December 31, according to people who know the deal directly. Epic announced the deal on Sunday night in response to an inquiry from Business Insider.

The acquisition highlights the company’s ambitious growth plans, despite a major rift with Silicon Valley. During the summer, Apple and Google digitally stored the title of Epic’s blockbuster Fortnite when it announced an in-game payment system that Epic could buy directly from Epic and avoid the fees normally charged by tech companies. I pulled it out from.

Shortly thereafter, Epic filed a proceeding against both tech giants and challenged the expulsion from the game store. The proceedings are ongoing and could have a significant impact on Epic’s business as it could separate Epic’s marquee games from billions of devices around the world.

Epic doesn’t seem to give in to standoffs as it announces its new headquarters project, and the company envisions dramatic growth in its business.

read more: The millionaire behind “Fortnite” repeatedly compared his company’s fight with Apple to the struggle for civil rights, saying the fight was a “civil disobedience.”

The company purchased 87 acres of Cary Towne Center. This is a failed mall of about 1 million square feet that developers Turnbridge Equities and Denali Properties acquired from CBL Properties, the landlord of a public mall, two years ago. Filed for bankruptcy in November..

Jason Davis, managing director of Turnbridge, said the company and Denali then steered the property through a month-long local rezoning process to enable multipurpose development of up to 4.5 million square feet on the site. Said.

Epic spokeswoman Elka Looks said the company hasn’t yet made a detailed plan for the project. She reveals whether she hired an architect, how big the development was, and whether Epic would phase out the project to allow the company to grow into additional space over time. I refused. The project could be much larger than Epic’s current headquarters in Cary, North Carolina, for a total of approximately 250,000 square feet.

“We are still in the very early stages of development and have no plans to share it yet,” Looks said in an email. “The facility includes both office buildings and recreational spaces. We are working with the town of Cary to investigate how some of this property will be used by the community. I’m out. “

read more: “Fortnite” maker Epic Games has just set an antitrust trap on Apple, including Tim Cook.

“We are very proud that Epic has chosen to call Cary the home of its new global headquarters,” Mayor Harold Weinbrecht said in a statement.

“We look forward to working closely and collaboratively as the Epic team conceptualizes the new campus,” Weinbrecht said.

Look said Epic is embarking on a project this year and hopes to move its employees to the site by 2024.

The deal is an example of how developers are favorably rethinking a mall property that has been confused by a pandemic and a long-standing shift to e-commerce for consumer spending. Just before Turnbridge and Denali bought the Cary Town Center, one of the anchor tenants, JC Penney, had closed the location, Davis said. Two anchor tenants, Sears and Macy’s, dropped out within a few months of purchasing the property, Davis said. According to Davis, Turnbridge and Denali will then clean up many of the remaining stores in the property and begin demolishing next month, building a combination of office, residential, retail and hotel space on a vast site. It’s a plan.

Instead, Epic urged the group to preemptively buy the site for $ 95 million, Davis said. It’s a high premium of about $ 40 million that developers paid to buy real estate and prepare for development.

“I think Epic liked the site for exactly the same reason that it thought it was the perfect property for development,” Davis said. “A few minutes from downtown Raleigh, close to the airport, it is one of the only important lands ready to be built in one of the country’s fastest growing markets.”