Businessman Franklin Wittenberg came to Durham for a weight-loss program. He was attracted enough by the town that he invested in property and development and built a blue-glass office high-rise in the mid-1980s.

Wittenberg called his building "Durham Centre" and envisioned it as one of a pair of complementary towers on the former parking lots along the Downtown Loop between Morris and Foster streets. Subsoil problems, though, left the second building unbuilt. The office building rises from a three-level, city-owned parking garage, the roof of which is a landscaped entrance plaza for the Centre.