Half a dozen Caterpillar earth movers stood at rest Friday morning while inside an adjacent gleaming white tent, Duke University leaders and the governor tried to peer beyond what's now just a construction hole.

"We didn't dig this hole to just have a hole or just have a building in the hole," university President Richard Brodhead told several hundred dignitaries, medical staff, donors and patients gathered inside the tent for the groundbreaking of the planned new Duke Medicine Cancer Center. "We're digging it because we see the future of cancer care and cancer research here."