Open Source: NC mines stir conspiracy theories | Boom nears a boom | Morrisville tenant wait

I’m Brian Gordon , tech reporter for The News & Observer , and this is Open Source, a weekly newsletter on business, labor and technology in North Carolina.

Next to Asheville, perhaps no place in North Carolina attracted more national attention in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene than Spruce Pine . The mountain town in Mitchell County was hit hard by the storm; its local North Toe River flooded and destroyed the community’s historic brick downtown. Water stains marked 8 feet up walls . Yet sadly, such scenes weren’t unique among ravaged Western North Carolina areas.

What made Spruce Pine unique is what’s underneath it. The town of 2,000 has a deep deposit of the world’s purest quartz. For much of the last century, miners actually threw away the mineral — instead prizing the abundant mica and feldspar — but that shifted with the advent of cell phones, laptops, solar panels and pretty much anything powered by a semiconductor chip, which rely on very, very pure quartz.

Nowhere on the planet has it like Spruce Pine.

The biggest of Spruce Pine’s quartz mines partially reopened this week after then-Tropical Storm Helene swept through. On Thursday, the private Belgian mining operator Sibelco announced “both production and shipments are progressively ramping up to full capacity,” though the company didn’t say (or answer my follow up email) about how long it will take to return to normal operations.

A second mining company in the area, the straightforwardly named The Quartz Corp , has yet to resume operations after also closing on Sept. 26, the day before Helene arrived. In a statement last week, The Quartz Corp did not offer a timetable for doing so.

Any restarts in Western North Carolina right now are a welcome sign. For Mitchell County, the partial opening of its largest employer is especially good news. As for any broader economic consequences the mine disruptions may cause, we should know the extent in time. Spruce Pine quartz is too important to go under the radar.

My article about the Sibelco mine was shared on Facebook yesterday where it received more than a dozen comments about the government using Helene as an opportunity to build a quartz mine in Spruce Pine, as if the mines weren’t already there. Misinformation has been widespread since the storm, and leaders from both major political parties have denounced its hindrance to the region’s recovery effort.

In separate mine news, the government is not seizing private property in Chimney Rock, North Carolina , to build a lithium mine. Several people on social media have tied the ongoing permitting process for lithium mining in Kings Mountain (50 miles away) to a supposed land grab in storm-affected Chimney Rock, which local and state officials assure isn’t happening.

Seeking tenants on both sides of the street

Two of the Triangle’s largest incoming life science hubs are still seeking tenants. Standing across the street from each other in Morrisville, Pathway Triangle and Spark LS are both massive $1-billion-plus complexes nearing completion. They offer discrete manufacturing accommodations and ample R&D space, but as of today, no announced leases.

Funding in the biotech sector had been sluggish since a pandemic-era boom, said Jeff Sheehan, managing partner at Trinity Capital, which is developing Spark LS. He described “a natural recoil” in the industry following the rush of 2020 and 2021. But over the past two months, Sheehan said, there’s been a “strong uptick” in discussions with potential tenants. And lower interest rates, while not a total panacea, should only help.

Over at HUB RTP , Research Triangle Park’s emerging downtown, a projected eight-story tower called Via Labs also lacks tenant commitments. The building is being developed by Long Fellow Real Estate Partners , which this week shared a piece of positive local office space news. Longfellow said “well over 90%” of its 11-building, 806,000-square-foot Triangle LIFE campus is leased following the recent arrival of the tech company SWIR Vision Systems .

Clearing my cache

• Soon comes the boom. Within a few years, the startup Boom Supersonic aims to begin manufacturing supersonic passenger jets at its newly constructed superfactory in Greensboro. But first, it has to build the plane. Boom completed its fifth test flight this week in California’s Mojave Desert, taking its XB-1 aircraft up to 373 mph. The company says it’ll break the sound barrier (starting around 770 mph) by the end of 2024.

• Another week, another development in the antitrust battles between the Cary video game company Epic Games and Apple/Google. The latest turn was good news for Epic, as a federal judge ordered Google to open up its Android app store. Google said it will appeal. Or, as Epic founder Tim Sweeney posted online alongside an image of a popular Fortnite banana character, Google will “a peel.”

• Twice in the past few days, I lacked cellular signal. The first was self-explanatory. I was reporting on Helene damage and recovery in the storm-battered remote mountains of Western North Carolina. The second time was when I went grocery shopping at the Harris Teeter on Durham’s 9th Street . Why this busy Bull City commercial corridor lacks consistent cell service continues to vex.
• Not a long trip. On Tuesday, North Carolina awarded incentives for the physician staffing company Weatherby Locums (and its parent CHG Healthcare ) to add 155 jobs to its Triangle workforce. The company announced it will relocate from its current Durham office to a 45,000-square-foot space in Raleigh.

National Tech Happenings

• Amazon says it will hire 250,000 part-time, full-time, and seasonal workers ahead of the holiday shopping season, including 3,000 employees in Charlotte and 2,000 between Raleigh and Durham.
• OpenAI secured a $4 billion credit line , adding to its financial arsenal after recently raised $6.6 billion in investment.
• The New Yorker called Silicon Valley “the new lobbying monster” this week, writing “from Coinbase to OpenAI, the tech sector is pouring millions into super PACS that intimidate politicians into supporting its agenda.”
• The creator of Bitcoin has successfully concealed their identity — up until now. Potentially. A new HBO documentary claims the cryptocurrency founder, who goes by the alias Satoshi Nakamoto , is in fact an early Bitcoin developer named Peter Todd.

Todd has denied he is Nakamoto.

Thanks for reading!