Two Progress Plaza

Red Hat Tower (formerly known as Two Progress Plaza) is a skyscraper in Raleigh, North Carolina. It was completed in 2004 at a cost of $100 million as a headquarters for Progress Energy Inc and has 19 floors and 366,000 square feet (34,000 m²) of space. It is owned by J.P. Morgan Trust Co.

In 1999, Carolina Power & Light announced plans for a new headquarters tower. The 2000 merger with Florida Progress Corporation which created Progress Energy increased the need for the new building, which at the time had an estimated cost of $60 million. On February 14, 2002, Progress announced that the new project, costing $80 million, would include retail and residential space as well as offices, with a completion date of 2004. The company bought the two-acre site east of the existing headquarters in 2000. In April 2002, Progress selected Carter & Associates of Atlanta to develop the project. The 125,000-square-foot (11,600 m²) first phase would be complete in 2004, with the 300,000-square-foot (28,000 m²) second phase to follow in 2006. Late in 2002, Progress Energy announced its two new office buildings would be built at the same time. Instead, with commercial construction in a slump, Progress planned to speed up the larger project, which would bring together employees from a number of locations, including One Hannover Square, 333 Corporate Plaza and One Exchange Plaza in downtown Raleigh.

On September 2, 2004, the building officially opened with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The January 2011 announcement that Progress will merge with Duke Energy left the status of Two Progress Plaza in question, since completion of the merger would likely mean the company needs less space. However, on August 25, 2011, Red Hat announced plans to move 600 employees from its offices on the N.C. State Centennial Campus. A ribbon cutting ceremony was held June 24, 2013 in the re-branded Red Hat Headquarters.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "Red Hat Tower" and modified on July 23, 2019 according to the CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license.