Economic development experts say foresight back in the '90s is helping Raleigh-Durham get through this recession.

"We saw a lot of blood-letting in our economy back in the late 1990s and also in 2001 tech bubble," said Ted Conner, Vice President of Economic Development for the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce. "In that burst, we bled a lot so a lot of those companies that were susceptible to the economy have really downsized and are a lot more stable now."

Conner said the area has gone from a center for tobacco and textiles, to electronics, and now onto a more diversified economy that's helping pump money into Durham and the surrounding metro area.

"Since Wall Street started getting a little crazy, our activity has increased. I wish I could explain it," Conner said. "One of our last economic development community meetings - our presentation started with a slide of the Mona Lisa because she's not smiling nor is she frowning. It's just more a quizzical look. Right now, in economic development, it's more a quizzical time for us."

Traditionally, companies announce about $200 to $250 million in economic development activity each year. This year: it's around $800 million.

"Moving in to next year, we still need to make sure we're focused on the companies that are growing; also supporting the companies that are having tough times," Conner said. "But as long as we make sure that we are continuing to improve our training programs and improve our quality of life - improving our education system - we are going to do well in these times."

The Chamber credits large expansion projects for the influx of the millions into the Research Triangle Park on Durham's southeast side. IBM is building a $362 million data center. Merck is expanding with a $300 million manufacturing center.

"RTP was selected among many other sites across the World for IBM due to its existing infrastructure that we have in place as well as the critical infrastructure that is in place and that we will actually add on to, " said Bruce Sargent, Site General Manger for Internal Business Machines. "We are full-speed ahead. We started construction in October of this year and we are looking to complete construction by this time next year."

The data center will add about 10 jobs to the 10,000-plus who work there.

Merck has about 150 employees at its site at RTP. It hopes to grow to more than 400 by the end of 2011. John Wagner, Plant Manger, said he doesn't think the recession will cause an immediate jolt on the progress here at the Park.

"I don't see an immediate impact ... long-term - if there's a reduction in healthcare spending, it certainly could," he said. "But essentially, we're dependent on new products."

This year, other companies in the park announced hundreds of layoffs: about 450 from Sony Ericsson in September. GlaxoSmithKline also announced in September that it was laying off 425 in the U.S., though it was unclear how it would impact RTP. Lenovo lost 50 RTP employees in October. IBM announced 38 layoffs in November and eliminated 100 contract jobs a month earlier.

"Large corporations - they've, a lot of times, been changing their talent mix so that they may lay off a few folks but hire another number of folks to change their talent pool," Conner said. "As the economy changes, these companies have gotten very adept in making sure that they've got products that are very attune to the market and a lot of times, these market products are going to need a different type of talent pool."

And so, now, developers are trying to gauge what the road ahead will mean: a new year and a new administration in Washington.

"One of our large targets is the environmental remediation industry cluster," Conner said. "We're going to start to see more pressure to improve our air quality, water quality and other environmental factors. So this is going to, in many ways stimulate that industry cluster and we hope to see that grow."