Ralph Lauren Corp. is expanding again in High Point, planning to invest $142 million and create 500 jobs.

The Democratic National Convention in Charlotte might not deliver the dollars promised, but publicity will be priceless.

Up Front: After nearly five years writing the Fine Print column, Dan Gearino is departing his side gig to focus on his full-time editing job.

Winston-Salem-based giants Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and Hanesbrands are collaborating to combat illness in a Caribbean country.

Capital Goods: Legislators, whether the old Democratic regime or the new Republican majority, have been swayed by the arguments of corporate taxpayers.

Fine Print: Final words from G.D. Gearino in his last BNC column.

Cover story: Gene Conti tries to get somewhere with moving the politics out of state transportation planning.

Readers write: Letters from Business North Carolina readers.

Harris Teeter, which opened its first store in Charlotte in 1936, has agreed to buy 10 stores in the population-dense Charlotte metropolitan statistical area from Winston-Salem-based Lowe’s Food Stores Inc. for $26.5 million and six Harris Teeter stores.

A software salesman from Mint Hill is converting Frying Pan Shoals Light Tower into a maritime bed-and-breakfast.

The sporting events that Hill Carrow brings to North Carolina may not be as familiar as the Atlantic Coast Conference basketball tournament or U.S. Open golf tournament, but some have been more lucrative and drawn bigger crowds.

Western Carolina University will open its Health and Human Sciences Building this fall, making it the first structure in the school’s Millennial Initiative, which hopes to stimulate a public/private economic development similar to that of N.C. State University’s Centennial Campus.

Minor-league teams pitch new parks as a way for downtown development to hit a home run.

A successful business lawyer teams up with a tattooed dissident to save a video store but finds a happy ending is hard to come by.

Cover story: Solid as a rock. For decades, that described Bank of Granite. Here’s what caused it to crumble.

GlaxoSmithKline PLC is gradually doing away with conventional work- stations at its Research Triangle Park campus, opting for a floating seat plan that saves money and increases productivity.

It’s been trimmed, but Bank of America still towers over the Financial 100, where its sheer size makes it a sequoia surrounded by saplings.

SunEnergy 1 LLC, a Mooresville-based solar-panel installer, has taken advantage of the spike in solar-energy tax breaks, with contracts jumping from about $50 million last year to an estimated $130 million in 2012.

Capital Goods: The fight over who can run the business side of a dental practice could leave both sides in need of some repair work to their pearly whites.

Fine Print: It’s beginning to feel that health care is the American domestic equivalent to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.