The Progress
Published Monthly
Serving the communities of Morrisville, Carpenter
and Preston
March 25 1999
Cary money may speed up NC 55 widening
$50 million
improvement
project could
begin next year
By Mary Beth Phillips
. Staff Writer
A f3'inile stretch of NC 55, start
ing at the US 64 junction and con
tinuing west towards Durham, could
be widened in less than a year if a
way can be found to use money
offered by Cary to speed up the
process.
For most of the nearly 150 people
who attended an information session
held at the Carpenter Fire Station on
Tuesday, March 16, that was good
news. To others, widening the road
simply meant the opportunity for
more growth and the loss of the rural
lifestyle they have enjoyed.
“We’re going to turn into New
Jersey,” warned Wendy Mason, who
lives in the Woods of Chatham, west
of NC 55 near the Carpenter com
munity. Rather than adding more
lanes, she said the road should stay
two lanes. “If we fill it up, then they
can’t build any more.”
DOT Engineers place the road at
level of service “F”, the lowest pos
sible level because traffic is com
pletely stopped many times during
. Oktay Rifki
Carpenter brothers caught in historical trap
By Mary Beth Phillips
Staff Writer
When Dale and Joel Carpenter
agreed that the Carpenter cross*
roads, including the historic feed
store (circa 1870), and the 1910
Ferrell store building should be
designated as a historic area,
they didn’t know that the state
Department of Transportation
would be so anxious to avoid the
historic area that they would put
the alignment for the widening of
N.C, 55 entirely on the west side
and destroy the parking lot of
Carpenter Texaco, which they
also own.
Jay Bissett, P.E., project plan
ning engineer for DOT, called
officials from the State Historic
Preservation Office in to his
office last week to look at aerial
maps to see if the road can be
moved from its preliminary align
ment, which would take most of
Carpenter’s parking lot and
would run over the gas tanks at
neighboring Edwards’ Grocery
and Hardware.
See CARPENTERS, page 2
the course of a day, usually at rush
hour.
Residents who live on the busy
highway objected to the plan
because it would take part of their
yards. The preliminary design that
was presented on March 16 would
not t^e any homes or businesses,
only land. Most residents who
attended were glad to see some
relief, and hoping that construction
really will begin by the beginning of
Rifki
receives
scholarship
to NC State
Oktay Rifki of Morrisville has
been selected to receive the Park
Scholarship at
N.C. State
University, val
ued at more than
$47,000, and
one of
America’s most
prestigious
undergraduate
scholarship pro
grams.
Rifki, the son
of Fatih and
Hatice Rifki,
will graduate
from Enloe High School, where he
is a member of the National Honor
Societi!».Spiril.Club, and Students
Against Drunk Driving. He has
played in the CASE soccer league
since he was five and currently
serves as captain of his team. He is
also active in the American Turkish
Association of North Carolina and
edits the organization’s monthly
newsletter. He hopes to become
active in the Turkish Student
Association at N.C. State.
He has a 5.234 weighted grade
point average. Not only is he smart,
he is a good sport. This year, he
served as the Enloe mascot Eagle in
disguise. “I love clowning around in
front of everybody,” Rifki said,
adding that it was hot inside the cos
tume. “I drank more water than the
football players,” he said.
Rifki is a National Merit
Scholarship semifinalist and a par
ticipant in the N.C. Academy of
Science. He plans to major in chem
ical engineering but will probably
continue his education in medical
school or law school, he said. His
main interest is research, he said,
after an internship last summer at
the Army Research Organization,
where he worked with a statistics
professor and with Nortel doing
quality control analysis using statis
tical methods.
The scholarship includes full
tuition for four years, plus a stipend
for each student to purchase a per
sonal computer and peripherals.
Cinemas
will reopen
for Star Wars
The Park Place movie theater,
which has been closed since Feb. 8
while stadium seating is installed,
should reopen by the middle of May
in time for Memorial Day when the'
summer movies are released, and in
time for the May 19 release of the
prequel to Star Wars.
Phil Smitley, assistant vice presi
dent and controller for CarMike
Cinemas at its headquarters in
Columbus, Ga., said the stadium
seating is needed because of the
good business at the theater.
It costs from $75 to $100,000 per
screen to put in the stadium-style
seating, which features a stair-step-
style floor with a higher elevation
for each row behind the previous
row, Smitley said.
The new seats will provide “a
totally unobstructed view of the
screen no matter where you sit in
the theater,” he said.
Looking for a prince
the year 2000. were putting in money to attract
But in order for that to happen, the DOT money and get their projects
law has to change. moved up on the priority list. In
House Bill 1211 was introduced February, Cary voters passed $62.6
about eight years ago, to protect million in road bonds, (some of
smaller municipalities after cities CARY, page 2
Expanding Pharmaco
joins forces for research
By Mary Beth Phillips
Staff Writer
PPD Pharmaco, which is rapidly
expanding in Perimeter Park, joined
with another company last month to
start a new line of research called
pharmacogenomics, adapting drugs
to individual genetics.
Intek Labs, which PPD bought in
1997 was absorbed into the new
joint venture with Axys
Pharmaceuticals, forming a compa
ny called PPGx, which is now the
largest pharmacogenomics compa
ny in the world.
PPD will provide initial funding
for PPGx, receive exclusive market
ing rights to PPGx pharmacoge
nomics products and services, and
hold a minority ownership position
in the new company with options to
increase its ownership share.
Pharmacogenomics research will
change the way people are diag
nosed and treated for diseases. The
researchers can look at each individ
ual’s DNA to find how he or she
metabolizes certain drugs, and
adjust the dosage accordingly. An
extensive metabolizer will need a
larger dose than a poor metabolizer.
The research helps the poor raetabo-
See EXPANDING, page 3
Town’s new fire station
opens ahead of schedule
Photo by Mary Beth Philups
Rachel Adams (center) and Caitlin Reddin examine a bullfrog during the Science Go Round
held at Morrisville Elementary School recently while Rocki Mayhew (left) looks on. The N.C.
Museum of Natural Science brought live animals to exhibit to students, one of many exhibits
students visited during the day.
From Bosnia to Morrisville
Local man leaves
war-torn country to
start a new life in
North Carolina
By Mary Beth Phillips
Staff Writer
Edin Smajic started learning
English in 1992 any way he could,
mostly by listening to rock ‘n roll
records.
He knew he would need it if he
was allowed to leave Bosnia, and
there was nothing left for him there.
His life had been disrupted and left
in a shambles by the war that lasted
for more than three years during the
early 1990s.
During the war, Smajic was con
fined to a l,000-foot-by-1.000-foot
area near his home in Sarajevo. He
was protecting the front from the
Serbian army, filling, two 24-hour
shifts a week guarding the border,
and hanging out and learning
English for the rest of the time,
because there were no jobs. Though
the stores were all shut down, he had
quite a supply of English books and
recofds-^he played the songs when
the power was working, which was
only a small percentage of the time.
Several times he escaped from the
area via a street where more than
By Mary Beth Phillips
Staff Writer
The 18 new firemen were sup
posed to begin sleeping at the new
fire station Monday night, about a
week earlier than the contractor had
promised to have the station com
pleted.
Patriot Building of Hillsborough
completed the station early and
within budget, said Morrisville Fire
Chief Tony Chiotakis. The 8,715-
square-foot station built on 4.1 acres
at the corner’ of N.C. 54 and
McCrimmon Parkway was budget
ed at $1.02 million.
The new firemen were working
Ganymede top
company, says
From Staff Reports
PC Week named Ganymede
Software, Inc., of 1100 Perimeter
Park Drive in Morrisville, to its list
of the top 15 corppanies to watch in
1999.
Ganymede has become a leader in
end-to-end performance manage
ment. In other words, “We help
companies manage their networks
so users* applications will run bet
ter,” said Katherine Demacopoulos
of Ganymede’s public relations
department.
Other companies named to the list
include Amazon.com, Caldera,
Foundry Networks and Red Hat
Software. Ganymede was also
recently named to digitalsouth’s
annual list of 50 companies to watch
in the coming year.
According to PC Week,
“Ganymede is in the right place at
the right time. Performance man
agement is going to take center
stage for IT over the next 24
Photo by Mary Beth Philups
Edin Smajic pots a plant in the greenhouse at Bloomin’ Orchids. He
is a Bosnian refugee who has been in America about three months.
700 people had been killed trying to
cross. He took food to his 10-year-
old soft, who was with his ex-wife in
another part of the city. Because
Smajic was a non-smoker, he had no
trouble getting food. Soldiers
received a pack of cigarettes a day,
and about 90 percent of them
smoked. The food was tins, rice,
macaroni, or beans, but he never
went hungry. ■
“I didn’t see fruit for two years,”
he added, between 1992 and 1994.
The other part of the time was
spent fighting outside the city. The
U.N. Protective forces held the air
port, and soldiers could get in and
out through a 2,000-foot tunnel
under the airport. He went out and
came back four different times dur
ing the war.
In October, 1995, Smajic began a
four-month stay in the hospital after
he was hit in the right chest by fall
out from a grenade. He was pump-
See BOSNIAN, page 8
LflifS
?i!i®
’•'ssiiBi:
■ -
IllPlIiji
Bulk Rate
Postage Paid
Morrisville, NC
Permit #23
Delivered expressly to the residents
of Morrisville and«^ton .
out of Station No. 1 in central
Morrisville for one week beginning
March fSrbul'Chiotakis said they
were not crowded. The 18 firefight
ers work in three eight-hour shifts,
six at a time.
Engine No. 2 and the new ladder j
truck will be based at the new sta
tion. The ladder truck is expected to
be delivered by the end of April.
The fire station will serve the
northeast part of town and the Wake
County portion of the Research
Triangle Park. The ladder truck will
be needed for multi-story office
buildings there, but also for some
multi-story apartment buildings in
See FIRE, page 2
15 software
PC Week
‘Ganymede is in
the right place at
the right time. ’
months. Ganymede’s tools monitor
end-to-end performance of critical
and distributed applications and will
make the company a leader in that
space.”
Steve Joyce, vice president of mar
keting of Ganymede Software Inc.,
said, “We are pleased to be recog
nized by PC Week as one of the
companies poised to make a great
impact in the coming year. Our
Strategy is to enable Information
Technology departments to deliver
reliable, predictable application per-
See PC WEEK, page 4