On Feb. 23, 2006, groundbreaking was held for the first building of the North Carolina Research Campus (NCRC), the 311,000-square-foot David H. Murdock Core Laboratory.

A month later, DH Griffin of Greensboro coordinated the first implosion of the former mill buildings. In all, six million square feet of antiquated textile buildings were imploded or demolished to make way for the NCRC.