The Blackstone Group's charitable foundation announced this morning that it is committing $3.6 million to create an entrepreneur network in the Triangle.

Stephen A. Schwarzman, CEO and co-founder of private equity firm, formally announce the five-year initiative at an event in Durham's American Tobacco Campus.

The company hopes the network will become a model for other regions.

The money will be used to create an entrepreneurial support network similar to ones that already exist in Silicon Valley and the Boston area.

Partners in the project include Duke University, N.C. Central, N.C. State and UNC Chapel Hill.

Two Triangle shopping centers are changing hands as a result of Blackstone Group's purchase of the U.S. assets of the Australian shopping mall owner Centro.

Devonshire Place in Cary and Wakefield Commons in North Raleigh are both owned by Centro Properties Group. The company owns a total of 24 properties in North Carolina, according to its website.

Blackstone is purchasing all of Centro's U.S. assets for $9.4 billion in a deal that shows how the credit markets are thawing, and how investors believe that commercial real estate property values are poised to rebound.

Blackstone will hold on to the assets and wait for property values to recover, Bloomberg News reported today, quoting a person close to the deal.