Business North Carolina April 2023

4 UP FRONT

6 PILLARS OF N.C.

Walter Davenport overcame racism as a pioneering CPA and a board member at key N.C. institutions.

10 POWER LIST INTERVIEW

Former Truist CEO Kelly King discusses leadership and happiness.

14 NC TREND

Asheville’s baseball save; The case of the missing $25 million in Fayetteville; Can Biomason disrupt the cement business?; Novant Health’s Wilmington leader discusses the hospital sale; Auto companies veer electric; Lawmakers focus on economic development.

96 GREEN SHOOTS

Statesville’s once-sleepy downtown peps up, aided by wider paths, live music and tasty doughnuts.

32 ROUND TABLE: TRANSPORTATION & LOGISTICS

Mobility leaders address the state’s strengths and challenges in keeping commerce and travel robust.

68 REGIONAL SPOTLIGHT: SOUTHEAST N.C.

The area extending from the coast to the Piedmont offers a unique mix of resources and opportunities.

84 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: INDUSTRIAL

PARKS N.C.

Partnerships with counties help create sites that bring jobs and prosperity to rural parts of the state.

NC GOLF

COVER STORY

BEAST MODE

Jimmy Donaldson thrills millions with creative videos and heartwarming charitable projects.

BY NOELLE NORENE HARFF

FAIRWAY FEVER

The North Carolina Golf Panel selects the state’s 100 best courses.

THE IN CROWD

Sorry purists, but the most popular way to play golf is no longer strolling traditional fairways and greens.

BY BRAD KING

RATING GAME

Famed golf designer Tom Doak explains what it takes to make a course better than average.

BY JIM POMERANZ

TEE TOPPERS

Industry experts helped BNC pick 15 leaders who play influential roles in the state’s golf community.

BY BRAD KING

CRAFT RENEWING

A Morganton manufacturer excels with artisans crafting luxury furniture for discerning consumers.

BY KEVIN ELLIS

UP

FRONT David Mildenberg

A

My hunch was that Jimmy Donaldson, who then had more than 1 million YouTube subscribers, would extend his 15 minutes of fame for a bit longer, then move on to more conventional pursuits.

Wrong, like usual.

MrBeast keeps getting more popular, churning out a steady stream of bizarre, entertaining videos of mind-boggling competitions and charitable e orts. For a couple of years, we wanted to produce a strong story on the MrBeast phenomenon, but we struggled to nd a writer enthused enough to take a deeper look at the creative Pitt County resident, knowing that he probably wouldn’t talk with us. Pro les in Rolling Stone and the New York Times in the past two years included some negative comments that evidently made him more distrustful of the media.

Fortunately, our columnist and part-time UNC Chapel Hill journalism instructor Dan Barkin connected us with a talented writer with an unlimited future. Noelle Norene Har is a Colorado native and a sophomore at Chapel Hill with a passion for journalism and nance. As one might expect of a sharp collegian, she has a keen understanding of the internet. Like Taylor, she has a younger brother who grooves on MrBeast, apparently like almost every other teenage boy in the world.

Noelle produced this month’s cover story, which delves into how the graduate of Greenville Christian Academy became a global YouTube celebrity attracting millions of dollars in marketing support. A key reason,

bout ve years ago, our former colleague Taylor Wanbaugh mentioned how much her younger brother enjoyed the zany YouTube videos of a 20-year-old guy from Greenville. We looked and were amazed at the creativity of MrBeast, so Taylor wrote a short story about his popularity.Noelle reports, is that Donaldson, 24, has remained rooted in eastern North Carolina and passionate about helping others.

•••••••••

Two veteran North Carolina journalists have joined our team, bringing loads of experience and wisdom. Kevin Ellis comes aboard a er a lengthy career at e Gaston Gazette, where he had been editor since 2019. Kevin is a UNC Asheville graduate with a passion for sharing news stories, nding new places to walk with his wife, Amy, and his rst grandchild, Ellis, who was born in October.

Ray Gronberg is editor of our North Carolina Tribune newsletter, which provides subscribers with exclusive news on legislative and political a airs. Ray is the former editor of the Henderson Dispatch, which covered Granville, Vance and Warren counties for the past ve years, a er spending most of his career at the News & Observer in Raleigh and Herald-Sun in Durham. He’s a UNC Charlotte graduate who a longtime Raleigh insider describes as “deeply experienced, widely knowledgeable and smart as hell.”

So much journalism is now rooted in partisanship, with organizations having distinct or fairly covert points of view. at’s OK, because journalists at those groups produce some important stories. But Kevin and Ray embody Business North Carolina’s mission to be unbiased, nonpartisan and respectful of a wide variety of viewpoints. ey have quickly picked up on our privilege of writing about MrBeast, furniture makers, golf in uencers, thieves, and many other people and organizations across our amazing state.

PUBLISHER

Ben Kinney bkinney@businessnc.com

EDITOR

David Mildenberg dmildenberg@businessnc.com

MANAGING EDITOR

Kevin Ellis kellis@businessnc.com

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Cathy Martin cmartin@businessnc.com

SENIOR CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Edward Martin emartin@businessnc.com

SPECIAL PROJECTS EDITOR

Katherine Snow Smith

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Dan Barkin, Connie Gentry, Noelle Norene Harff, Vanessa Infanzon, Brad King, Jim Pomeranz

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Peggy Knaack pknaack@businessnc.com

GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Cathy Swaney

CONTRIBUTING GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Emily Harding

MARKETING COORDINATOR

Jennifer Ware jware@businessnc.com

ADVERTISING SALES

ACCOUNT DIRECTOR Melanie Weaver Lynch, eastern N.C. 919-855-9380 mweaver@businessnc.com

ACCOUNT MANAGER AND AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT SPECIALIST Scott Leonard, western N.C. 704-996-6426 sleonard@businessnc.com

CIRCULATION: 818-286-3106

EDITORIAL: 704-523-6987

REPRINTS: circulation@businessnc.com

BUSINESSNC.COM

OWNERS

Jack Andrews, Frank Daniels III, Lee Dirks, David Woronoff, in memoriam Frank Daniels Jr.

PUBLISHED BY Old North State Magazines LLC

WALTER DAVENPORT

By Vanessa Infanzon

Even in high school, Raleigh native Walter Conaway Davenport knew he wanted to be a certi ed public accountant — it says so under his senior photograph in J.W. Ligon High School’s class of 1966 yearbook. At the time he graduated, he’d only heard of one Black accountant, Nathan Garrett, a CPA in Durham.

Davenport attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, graduating in 1970 with a degree in business administration. He then joined Arthur Andersen & Co., one of ve Black sta ers among more than 300 employees in the Atlanta o ce.

In 1974, he was hired by Garrett’s rm as a senior accountant. A er passing the CPA exam a year later, he became a partner. In 1988, the duo formed Garrett & Davenport, the largest minorityowned CPA rm in North Carolina with six CPAs and 20 sta ers in Durham and Raleigh. In 1998, the rm merged with Cherry Bekaert, a large regional rm with roots in North Carolina and Virginia. Davenport led the rm’s nonpro t sector for a decade before retiring in 2008.

Davenport, 74, has been active in many industry, civic and business groups, including serving 10 years on the UNC System Board of Governors. He’s on four boards, including Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina and Wake Tech Community College, while serving as a treasurer for N.C. Sen. Dan Blue’s campaign committee.

Overcoming racism, the Raleigh native and CPA made his way into some of the state’s most powerful boardrooms.

In 2018, he su ered a septic embolism and was put into a medically induced coma. He spent six months at WakeMed, a rehabilitation center and in assisted living before returning to his Raleigh home.

He spends time at his timeshare at Atlantic Beach and with his two sons and two granddaughters.

Comments are edited for length and clarity.

I was part of the honor guard when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. laid in state at the Sisters Chapel on Spelman College’s campus. [Like Davenport], Dr. King was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, so the Alphas stood over his casket for a three- to fourday period while people came in to view him.

Everyone at Arthur Andersen did not accept “us.” ey hadn’t bought into the idea of Black people being in the rm. I had a partner tell me I was o an engagement because the client did not want a Black person. ere are more stories similar to that. In spite of that, I became a CPA a er enduring that kind of treatment.

I met Nathan (Garrett) in 1974 when I was being recruited by a company in the Northeast to be their chief nancial o cer. His rm was the auditor for the company. I didn’t really like my experience in the Northeast and subsequently, I joined Nathan’s rm. Nathan is 18 years older than me. He was a mentor to me. Ultimately, we became gol ng partners, business partners, and good friends. I followed in Nathan’s footsteps. During his career, Nathan was on the North Carolina State Board of Certi ed Public Accountant Examiners and he served as secretary. Almost 20 years later, I was on that board as president, vice president and secretary.

Davenport with his sons, Winston and Walter Jr. Lower right, he represented the UNC Board of Governors at a UNC Greensboro graduation ceremony.

I became involved with nonpro ts on the accounting side when I was with my accounting rm. Nonpro ts were the only ones we could provide services to. e for-pro t industries didn’t want to use a minority CPA rm.

Looking back at it now, you accept what happened. We succeeded in spite of. I don’t know what drove them (boards and management of other companies) to make certain decisions.

We cared about the nonpro ts. We cared about the mission. We were serious about trying to help nonpro t organizations stay on a sure footing. But I always told my sta , “We provide a lot of services to nonpro t organizations, but don’t let a nonpro t organization make us a nonpro t organization.”

When Nathan and I were together, we were an integrated rm. We didn’t care about the color of their skin. We looked at the potential they had or could have, hired them and developed them.

My inauguration speech (in 2014 for the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy) was titled, “Embrace the future,

even when you can’t see it.” We are an aging population and as CPAs retire, young folks have got to come behind us.

NASBA, the accounting profession and the state board needed to be more diverse in their representation. ey needed to start looking like the population.

Dan (Blue) and I are fraternity brothers. I met Dan in 1984, and he became a tax client of mine. He asked me to be his campaign treasurer. I’ve always thought every candidate needs to have a quali ed treasurer — somebody who knows what they’re doing and knows the rules — to keep up with the money.

[When I got sick in 2018] they told my family to make peace with me because I wasn’t going to make it.

When I got out of WakeMed, I went to a rehab center. I had to learn to speak clearly again. I had to learn how to walk. I could not move. One day, I went to therapy and I couldn’t get out of the chair because I had lost all feeling. I remember the rst time I took steps by myself; I cried like a baby. I bounced back. ■

Davenport (left) has served on several powerful boards since retiring in 2008. And he’s enjoyed his two grandchildren.

with Nido Qubein at High Point University

LESSONS IN LEADERSHIP

Retired Truist CEO Kelly King joined High Point University President Nido Qubein in the Power List Interview, a partnership for discussions with some of the state’s most influential leaders. Interview videos are available at www.businessnc.com.

Kelly King, 74, is a legend in North Carolina banking. A Raleigh native who grew up in a family of modest means, he paid his way through East Carolina University and joined Branch Banking and Trust in 1972. King succeeded John Allison as CEO in 2009, then led acquisitions of banks in Kentucky and Pennsylvania and the 2019 merger of equals with Atlanta-based SunTrust. King retired as CEO in September 2021. He works with his son, Ken, at KSK Investors in Charlotte.

This story includes excerpts from King’s interview and was edited for clarity.

Kelly King, your life has been a phenomenal story. You grew up on a tobacco farm in Eastern North Carolina and you traveled a path to become chairman and CEO of the sixth-largest financial institution in America: 55,000 employees and assets of $550 billion. You have been a major architect of the largest bank merger since the Great Recession. Along the way, things like service and leadership filled your heart and nurtured your mind. I want to ask you about the ingredients that make for a good leader?

I’ve tried to learn along and figure out how to take complex subjects and make them simple. So, I sat down one day and asked, “What are the characteristics of an outstanding leader?” And there are three. No. 1, they are honest about the reality they face.

What does that mean?

Leaders will face difficult circumstances, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, it’s not that bad.’ You see company leaders talking to their boards and saying, “Well, we’re having a little tough patch, but it’ll go away,” when it’s really fundamental structural tough issues. They’re not talking about the real, tough reality issues.

How do you define “reality”?

Reality is the circumstances that you are facing that are within and without your control that are going to exist whether you like it or not.

What if you and I

look at the same challenge and define it in two different ways?

In the pursuit of reality, you have to add objectivity. You might think the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. I’d say well, I appreciate your perspective, but you happen to be wrong. As effective leaders, we have to apply objective analysis to perspectives.

How does one learn how to be objective?

Reasoning and reality go hand in hand. You don’t have to be super smart, but you have to know when you are not smart enough to reason through circumstances, then you surround yourself with people you trust who can help you find discernment. A lot of my objectivity and reasoning comes from my faith. Sometimes it’s just too complex, so I go to a higher power and I pray about it. It takes a lot of thought.

What’s the second characteristic?

To be clear about your vision about how to make it better. Not everyone is an outstanding leader. Some people will not be honest about the reality. Some people are honest about reality, they just don’t have a clue about what to do about it. Doesn’t make them a bad human being. They’re just not outstanding leaders. They might be outstanding followers. Each is important.

They’re just not going to be in leadership positions.

We all have different roles in life, in our families and in our business and in our communities. I’m not saying leaders are more important, you just have to have leaders to get from A to B. You have to have effective followers to follow that leader. But the leader has to have clarity about the vision and be able to communicate it.

What’s the third characteristic?

Courage. It’s the commitment to take action in spite of the challenges and circumstances. Even if you get criticized. Even if you don’t know exactly where to go. An example of this was John Kennedy when he said, “We’re going to the moon, and we’re going to do it in 10 years.” Scientists thought we only had 10% of the scientific capacity to do that. He wanted to show our country that we could be bold. It happened because he laid out a clear vision and had the courage to put his cachet on the line. Great leaders are not trying to be popular. They’re trying to change the world.

Was there a time in your life when you executed courageously and got beat up for it?

Early on in the BB&T journey, I wanted to be sure to get everyone’s attention. I put up on a big slide, for our board and for investors, I said, “Disrupt or Die.”

The question is, do we disrupt ourselves or wait for somebody else to do it? If you go back over 25 or 30 years as this paradigm shift occurred where people demanded more ‘right here, right now.’ Some people got it, like Jeff Bezos with Amazon, and the rest is history. Others missed it.

How did you deal with criticism?

I viewed it as an opportunity to educate and to explain. It didn’t make me mad that they didn’t accept my view. I explained and listened. I might be 90% right. One of my pet philosophies on dealing with change is that it’s better to have 100% execution of an 80% idea than a 50% execution of a 100% idea. Start moving down the river and adjust as you go along.

A lot of young people starting in business talk about life-work balance or remote work? What advice would you give them?

People need to decide if they really want to be a high achiever. I believe there are five traits to being an outstanding leader. The first trait is to believe absolutely in what you are trying to accomplish.

Olympians will practice 10 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. They’re not saying, ‘well, maybe I can be No. 13.’ They believe, to their toes, that they can be No. 1.

You have cited three key traits as beliefs, committing the energy and, and skill development. [Another important trait is to] enjoy the journey. It’s deeper than liking. They draw a sense of self-achievement, a sense of self-enrichment. These are the people that’ll work 14-hour days, they’ll go home dead tired, they’ll take a deep breath and they say, ‘I can’t wait to get up in the morning and do it again.” Why? They draw energy from it.

What’s the fifth trait?

The fifth is to have enthusiasm and a positive attitude because obstacles come along.

Does that mean positive thoughts?

It’s not superficial. It’s kin to optimism. A pessimist faces some bad situations and says, “this bad thing happened, it’s going to ruin my whole life, it’s going to last forever, and it’s all my fault.” An optimist facing the same thing says, “this bad thing happened, it’s not going to affect my whole life, it’s probably not going to last all that long. I just have to deal with it.” You have to do some hard work, and then move forward with a positive energy and an optimistic belief.

You also spend time talking about happiness. What’s that about?

I’m deeply concerned about the level of unhappiness in our country today. It is rampant. When you talk to young people, about 60% will say they are very unhappy. Most will say that they have had thoughts of anxiety, depression, even suicide. I saw it exhibited through the pandemic.

That’s not a healthy way to live, and I actually came up with some steps to how to be happy in difficult circumstances. The first step is to choose to be happy. Most people don’t see it as a choice. They think they are victims. Bad things happen, I’ve got to be unhappy. Choose to be happy. Take control of your life.

The second is to be clear about the purpose in your life. And I recommend one of my five great books called “Man’s Search for Meaning” written by Viktor Frankl,. In it, he says, “If you know your ‘why’, you can endure any ‘how.’” Very, very important. Be clear about your purpose in life. Think about it. Pray about it. The third also comes from [author Carol Dweck’s book) “Have a Growth Mindset.”

Versus a fixed mindset?

If you have a growth mindset, that is a mindset that says I can learn, I can grow, I can improve, I can do things. You can move forward. And the fourth is really powerful. It’s to help others. When you help others, two great things happen. You help them, and you help yourself. You’ve heard about the runner’s high? That’s actually true because at a certain point, the brain causes the body to emit a chemical called endorphins and that makes you feel better. The same thing happens when you help other people. The brain says, “release endorphins” and you just feel better.

You picked your lane in life — your personal, spiritual, values, service, leadership lane, and you constantly make sure you’re on track, and you constantly learn. I learn so much from you. Thank you, and best wishes always.

Blessings to you. ■

DRIVING A VITAL INDUSTRY FORWARD

Few industries drive North Carolina’s economy — both literally and figuratively — as profoundly as trucking. According to the North Carolina Trucking Association, the state is home to more than 44,000 trucking companies, with the sector accounting for nearly 240,000 — or 1 in 15 — jobs. And few regions nationwide exemplify the vital infrastructure and nexus of trucking, logistics and manufacturing as deeply as the Triad, with its access to four interstate highways and a rich network of strategically located distribution centers and hub facilities.

Driving the trucking industry forward in the Triad, which boasts one of the largest concentrations of trucking firms on the East Coast, and beyond is an entire fleet of partners, including financial institutions that form part of the axle of this essential sector.

For Donna Perkins, who leads PNC Bank’s Commercial Banking business for the Western Carolinas market and has served as a trusted advisor to several local trucking companies during the course of her nearly 30-year career, being an effective banker in this space is about much more than fulfilling the obvious function of equipment lending. It’s about financing growth opportunities, helping owner-operators plan for the future of their companies, understanding the unique challenges facing the industry and offering solutions to help deliver on these challenges, including employee recruitment and retention – all against the backdrop of accelerated innovation and technology adoption within the industry.

“The trucking industry is evolving right in front of us,” says Perkins, a longtime member of the North Carolina Trucking Association and the Women In Trucking Association. “From advanced technologies that are making trucking more efficient, safe and environmentally sustainable, to the futuristic prospect of driverless vehicles, there’s no question this industry is on a course of significant change.”

The implementation of new and emerging technology and operations capabilities comes at a cost, of course. To that end, Perkins and her team collaborate with PNC Equipment Finance colleagues to structure loans and leases that can help companies stay on the cutting edge of technology while controlling infrastructure costs, leveraging working capital, preserving cash flow and effectively managing equipment obsolescence.

The imperative to invest in business-critical assets and equipment is playing out as the industry confronts the reality of an aging workforce — and the daunting projection that the sector will need to hire nearly 1 million drivers nationwide by 2030 in order to meet the pace of industry growth and replace drivers as they retire or exit the industry, according to data from the American Trucking Associations.

North Carolina’s trucking companies are not insulated from the industry’s worker shortage, a challenge that often dominates discussions between Perkins’ team and their clients. “There’s no doubt that hiring currently is the No. 1 challenge for many owners and operators of trucking companies,” says Chad Weatherford, a Greensborobased Commercial Banking relationship manager on Perkins’ team. It’s a predicament that impacts more than the bottom line. “Paying off the debt on a truck that is sitting idle because there is nobody to drive it is a major source of frustration for these companies,” he says. “As an advisor, we want to understand and help address the workforce challenge, and we work closely with companies to help deliver competitive employee benefits that can ultimately help them recruit and retain workers.”

To empower trucking companies – and employers in a wide range of industries – to deliver these benefits, Weatherford and his colleagues offer the PNC Organizational Financial Wellness program, which allows businesses to provide enhanced employee benefits,

PNC leaders reflect on the trucking industry’s contributions to the N.C. economy and the business opportunities and challenges unique to this regionally significant sector.

This is the twenty-fifth in a series of informative monthly articles for North Carolina businesses from PNC in collaboration with BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA magazine.

a measure that gives credence to a 2022 American Transportation Research Institute survey’s finding that expanded benefits represent the second-most important retention practice among younger drivers — those aged 18-25 — for small fleets.1

To implement this program, PNC Organizational Financial Wellness consultants collaborate closely with companies’ human resources decision-makers and benefits managers to design custom programs that meet employees’ financial wellness needs, such as Health Savings Accounts, online financial education, retirement plan services and personalized banking solutions. Additionally, PNC continues to innovate new payment options that companies can offer workers, including 1099 contractors and employees with the desire to access earned pay prior to payday.

The age dynamics, together with other external factors, also are driving consolidation within the industry — a trend Perkins and Weatherford have observed with increasing frequency following the onset of the pandemic, which amplified the industry’s vital role and value proposition

in commerce and brought along a host of challenges and opportunities.

“When we reflect on the past 20+ years, there have been three major inflection points that have impacted the trucking industry in a significant way: 9/11, the Great Recession and the pandemic,” says Perkins. “That is more than enough for any owner-operator to endure. Add to that the intense competition and business opportunities in this space, and more than a few have made the strategic decision to sell or pass down their business.”

As the trucking industry continues to evolve, Perkins and Weatherford are optimistic about the substantial role it will continue to play in driving the economy in the Carolinas — and in PNC’s ability to meet the wide-ranging needs inherent in this space, from structuring a company’s first loan to engaging in business succession planning discussions. Says Perkins, “Trucking is here to stay, and PNC will continue to support this industry with the consistent counsel that has helped local companies grow and thrive amidst economic environments of all types.”

This article was prepared for general information purposes only and is not intended as legal, tax, accounting or financial advice, or recommendations to buy or sell securities or to engage in any specific transactions, and does not purport to be comprehensive. Under no circumstances should any information contained herein be used or considered as an offer or a solicitation of an offer to participate in any particular transaction or strategy. Any reliance upon this information is solely and exclusively at your own risk. Please consult your own counsel, accountant or other adviser regarding your specific situation. Any views expressed herein are subject to change without notice due to market conditions and other factors.

PNC and PNC Bank are registered marks of The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. (“PNC”).

Bank deposit, treasury management and lending products and services, foreign exchange, and derivative products (including commodity derivatives), bond accounting and safekeeping services, escrow services, and investment and wealth management and fiduciary services, are provided by PNC Bank, National Association (“PNC Bank”), a wholly owned subsidiary of PNC and Member FDIC Lending, leasing and equity products and services, as well as certain other banking products and services, require credit approval.

©2023 The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Alex Leslie and Danielle Crownover, Integrating Younger Adults into Trucking Careers, American Transportation Research Institute (July 2022).

LATE INNING SAVE

Asheville is spending millions to keep Tourists in town.

By Kevin Ellis

Part of the allure of a summer night of baseball watching at Asheville’s McCormick Field comes from the Blue Ridge Mountains enveloping the city.

e city-owned stadium, which opened in 1924 and was last renovated in 1992, lacks modern amenities for Asheville Tourist players and fans, to be sure. But the natural beauty and history make it among the most eclectic in the baseball world.

e Tourists start their season April 6 at home against the Bowling Green (Kentucky) Hot Rods. It could have been the last Opening Day for minor league baseball in Asheville, if not for a late-inning save. Major League Baseball told the Tourists it would lose its minor league license a er this season unless it makes major improvements at the 4,000-seat downtown stadium.

In mid-March, Asheville City Council voted unanimously to spend $875,000 a year for the next 20 years to pay for a $37.5 million upgrade to McCormick Field. Buncombe County and its tourism authority had previously agreed to kick in a combined $1.6 million annually for the project. e team, which had been paying $1 a year, will start making annual lease payments averaging about $470,000 over two decades.

“ is is the city’s largest investment in any one project since the building of the Civic Center in the 1970s,” says Chris Corl, director of the city’s community and regional entertainment facilities, which includes McCormick Field.

E orts to keep the team in Asheville stemmed from sentiment and economic factors. Almost 180,000 fans attended 66 home games at McCormick Field last year for the High-A a liate of the Houston Astros, contributing an impact of nearly $10 million to the county.

AGAINST A DEADLINE

A decision to invest in a stadium project did not sneak up on the Asheville Tourists or the city. In 2020, Major League Baseball issued a facility standards requirement to its minor league a liates, along with a deadline for improvements. Under a scoring system for minimum standards, McCormick Field scored in the bottom 10% of more than 100 stadiums across the nation. Major League Baseball warned that not making improvements would cost teams their licenses.

Asheville nearly lost its minor league a liation in 2020 when Major League Baseball contracted from 160 teams to 120 in an e ciency drive. So the team knew that improvements were required to avoid the team’s departure, says Tourists’ owner Brian DeWine. His family, which includes his father, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, bought the business in 2010 from a company that owned the Detroit Pistons’ NBA team.

e Tourists missed the spring 2023 deadline for completing renovations, but negotiated with Major League Baseball to have nancing in place by April 1, Brian DeWine says. With the agreement in place, McCormick Field should be fully renovated by early 2026. It is expected to have a concourse wrapping around the whole eld, new video board, better locker rooms and improved facilities for female coaches, umpires and sta . e changes will enable the city to use McCormick Field year-round, Corl says, for events including concerts, Christmas light shows and beer festivals.

Nine other North Carolina cities have minor league baseball teams. Stadium issues are a factor in speculation that another team may move within the state. Zebulon’s Five County Stadium, the home of the Single-A Carolina Mudcats, reportedly needs as much as $15 million in repairs to meet Major League Baseball standards.

In February, the Mudcats signed an agreement with Wilson, located about 25 miles east, to explore moving to a potential stadium there. e Mudcats have played in Zebulon since 1991.

Keeping the Tourists in Asheville is important to the city beyond just business, says Corl.

“It’s like that awesome family entertainment that even in 2023 doesn’t gouge you,” he says. “It’s part of the city’s identity. It’s one of those things that’s hard to pinpoint, but it de nitely wouldn’t be the same without them.” ■

MINOR LEAGUE BASEBALL IN NORTH CAROLINA

ASHEVILLE TOURISTS

High-A affiliate of the Houston Astros. More than 30 different beers sold at McCormick Field.

CAROLINA MUDCATS

Single-A affiliate of Milwaukee Brewers. Muddy the Mudcat is one of the most popular mascots and logos in the entire league. Play at Zebulon’s Five County Stadium, 30 miles east of Raleigh. Fried catfish is on the menu.

CHARLOTTE KNIGHTS

Triple-A affiliate of Chicago White Sox. Play at Truist Field, which opened in 2014 and is one of the most visited venues in Minor League Baseball. Friday night fireworks light up the Uptown skyline.

DOWN EAST WOOD DUCKS

Single-A affiliate of Texas Rangers. Inaugural season in 2017 brought baseball back to Kinston. Win and Wine Down Wednesdays offers wine at half price and a ticket provides free admission the following Wednesday if the Wood Ducks win.

DURHAM BULLS

Triple-A affiliate of Tampa Bay Rays. Play at Durham Bulls Athletic Park since 1995. Classic baseball film “Bull Durham” was filmed at the team’s previous ballpark. A giant 20-foot bull invites players to “Hit Bull Win Steak.” Raleigh-based Capitol Broadcasting has owned the team since 1991.

FAYETTEVILLE WOODPECKERS

Single-A affiliate of Houston Astros. Play at Segra Stadium, which opened in 2019. Because of proximity to Fort Bragg military base, the Woodpeckers’ name and colors pay homage to those who serve.

GREENSBORO GRASSHOPPERS

High-A affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Play in downtown Greensboro’s First National Bank Field. Willie Mae Mays, a black lab, retrieves bats and takes balls to the umpire between innings.

HICKORY CRAWDADS

High-A affiliate of Texas Rangers. Mascots Conrad and Candy Crawdad married on the field in 2018. Super Saturdays features postgame concerts and celebrity appearances.

KANNAPOLIS CANNON BALLERS

Single-A affiliate of Chicago White Sox. Play at the $52 million Atrium Health Park, which opened in 2021. Team name pays homage to the town’s textile mill heritage.

WINSTON-SALEM DASH

High-A affiliate of Chicago White Sox. Play at downtown WinstonSalem’s Truist Stadium, which opened in 2010. It replaced Ernie Shore Field, which was built in 1956. Offers all-inclusive tickets that include seat, food, beverages and parking.

OTHER TAR HEEL BASEBALL TEAMS

COLLEGE SUMMER LEAGUE BASEBALL

Asheboro Zookeepers, Boone Bigfoots, Burlington Sock Puppets, Forest City Owls, Holly Springs Salamanders, High PointThomasville HiToms, Morehead City Marlins, Wilmington Sharks, Wilson Tobs

UNAFFILIATED PRO TEAMS

Gastonia Honey Hunters and High Point Rockers

McCormick Field Opening Day, 1924

PRECIOUS JEWELS

By Edward Martin

This was no boardroom. ey were just Muzzy and Chris, shooting the bull, talking business outside the o ce. Square-jawed with thinning hair, Muzzy, a prominent Texas businessman, preferred the nickname rhyming with Buzzy to Mouzon Bass III.

He owned or had stakes in more than a dozen enterprises, including Fayetteville-headquartered EbenConcepts, now known as eBen, which provided employee bene ts and human resource services to companies in North Carolina, Georgia, Texas and Virginia.

Christopher Scott Harrison was CFO with a $300,000 annual salary and a majority stake in EbenConcepts. He had a penchant for ne things, like timepieces. His $1.2-million Fayetteville home on Forest Creek Drive featured two-story, square brick pillars and an ornate grandfather clock in the foyer. Harrison now awaits sentencing this spring in federal court for nancial wrongdoing.

“Muzzy and Chris would sit at Muzzy’s kitchen table and talk about how things were going, the nancials and all that,” says an EbenConcepts executive. “ at’s why Muzzy is so angry. It wasn’t just an employee relationship. He was a friend.”

Between 2012 and 2018, Harrison withdrew $25 million from EbenConcepts in a stunningly simple scheme of purchasing personal items and reporting them as business expenses, which led to him underreporting his income, according to court records. He had help from the company controller, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Now, based on court records, company sources, state and

federal investigators and others, EbenConcepts appears to be a textbook case of fraud, playing out over years and motivated by a time-worn impulse. “Money,” says a Bass acquaintance familiar with the company, “is thicker than friendship sometimes.”

Harrison’s scheme and subsequent prosecution paint a detailed look inside the American justice system. He was targeted by the Internal Revenue Service’s criminal division, rather than the Federal Bureau of Investigation or other agencies more o en associated with crime.

If Harrison goes to prison, it won’t be because he stole $25 million of his company’s money. Rather it’s because he failed to pay $6 million in taxes that U.S. Eastern District Attorney Michael Easley Jr. in Raleigh says he would have owed if he earned and reported it legally.

Such prosecutions have long been a weapon against those who commit nancial crimes. Gangster Al Capone famously escaped punishment for countless murders and mayhem, but he couldn’t escape the IRS. He went to prison in 1931 for tax evasion.

Closer to home, similar tactics were used to nail Tar Heel moonshiners who otherwise laughed o $50 nes and weeklong jail sentences. “One thing I learned when I was in the U.S. Attorney’s O ce was that there were a lot of prosecutions in the 1920s and 1930s, where bootleggers didn’t pay tax on their alcohol,” says Ripley Rand, who later became a Superior Court judge.

at’s how the state came to have three federal court districts. With so many cases coming out of western North Carolina, “the federal government created a third district,” says Rand. “Federal

A Fayetteville benefits consultant mixed personal and business accounts and missed a tax filing, catching authorities’ eyes.

law enforcement follows the money, and that’s why today, a lot of the investigations get started because of some other wrongdoing like embezzlement, but end up with the IRS when it follows the money.”

Rand, a partner in Raleigh’s Womble Bond Dickinson’s law firm, is Harrison’s defense attorney. He says his client admits taking the money, but Rand declines to discuss other details of the case. Harrison, who is in his mid-50s, pleaded guilty in January to willfully filing a false tax return. He faces as much as three years in prison, restitution to the IRS, and a possible fine, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Sabrina Hooten, the former company comptroller, has been accused in civil court documents of taking nearly $2 million from Orchestrate HR, another part of Bass’ holding company. She has not been charged with a crime.

“You don’t brag about the 4-inch-fish,” says an EbenConcepts officer, who adds that an IRS investigator told him the agency didn’t have the resources to pursue smaller cases. The agents also say being too aggressive in cases like Harrison’s might jeopardize bankruptcy settlements.

EbenConcepts remains healthy, says Senior Vice President David Smith, who is based in Raleigh. “No client money was ever taken,” he says. “Last year was one of our best years ever.” The company has about 100 employees and expects revenue of $20 million this year.

EbenConcepts, rebranded as eBen in 2021, dates to 1999. Harrison joined the business in 2002, and worked his way into Bass’ confidence.

From 2012 to 2018, Harrison “began to lavishly spend company funds for his own benefit,” Easley says. Over the years, he traveled to New York to buy a $145,000 Rolex watch, an $85,000 Tiffany bracelet and a $100,000 Cartier necklace of diamonds for his wife.

In the meantime, contractors installed a $300,000 swimming pool in the backyard of his Fayetteville home.

In Dallas, the IRS, by September 2019, was working in conjunction with the Secret Service, piecing together accusations against Hooten, the controller.

Bass, knowing that she and Harrison were privy to the company’s trade secrets, internal data and attorney-client dealings, filed a lawsuit to shut her up. Using information from that lawsuit, the Secret Service moved in, accusing Harrison and Hooten of using company credit cards to buy personal goods, usually coding them as “travel” or “office” expenses. In addition to protecting the president, the Secret Service investigates counterfeiting, credit-card fraud and other crimes.

Harrison was accused of buying $2.2 million in jewelry in four years, secreting it at his Fayetteville home, uninsured to avoid detection. Court documents show his wife, Brandy, has refused to return the bling.

In December 2019, a month after Hooten was hit with Bass’s restraining order, Harrison filed for bankruptcy in North Carolina.

The noose tightened during the federal bankruptcy hearings in Judge Stephani Humrickhouse’s court in the Eastern District of North Carolina. Harrison initially cited memory lapses about details of trips to New York to buy jewelry. Humrickhouse replied that Harrison’s remorse and promises to make amends to creditors and the IRS struck her as hollow, “too little, too late.”

During the month he filed for bankruptcy, he’d converted 3.46 million American Express “Platinum Card” credit-card points to his own use. He’d racked up those points by claiming personal purchases as business expenses, then used them to buy Christmas gifts for friends and family, the judge noted.

If Harrison’s case springs unusual, it might be because much of it stems from his bankruptcy filing, in which he conceded he owed the IRS millions that he couldn’t pay. He said he didn’t realize how much the long history of withdrawals from EbenConcepts totaled.

In Dallas, the Texas businessman who once chatted over coffee with Harrison, is now sole owner of Eben. Muzzy Bass notes that the bankruptcy court awarded him and his companies $30 million in judgments. ■

Mouzon “Muzzy” Bass

Chris Harrison

CONSTRUCTION VEERS GREEN

By Connie Gentry

Whether you’re a science nerd or a nance geek, Biomason is a North Carolina startup worth watching as it uses biology to produce cement.

Biomason predicts its proprietary technology can eliminate 25% of global carbon emissions from the concrete industry by 2030. Investors bought in to the tune of $65 million in venture capital funding in February 2022. It was among the state’s biggest venture capital investments last year, on par with the $70 million raised by Morrisville-based JupiterOne, which creates cybersecurity so ware.

Biomason had previously raised about $10 million since its inception in 2012. Its continued development caught the attention of lead investor 2150, a London-based venture capital company that says on its website that it backs entrepreneurs who “have suspended our disbelief in a sustainable future built on cuttingedge technology innovation that is sometimes hard to imagine.” ree companies tied to North Carolina are also investors: Zebulon-based Noël Ventures owns engineered-foam product maker Nomaco; Raleigh-based Martin Marietta is one of the biggest U.S. aggregates companies with $6.1 billion in revenue last year; and Novo Holdings, the investment arm of Danish biotech giant Novo Nordisk, which has major Triangle plants.

A er water, concrete is the most-consumed material on earth, with roughly 30 billion tons of concrete — requiring roughly 4 billion tons of cement — consumed per year. In terms of environmental impact, 2150 reports the cement industry is responsible for as much as 8% of all global CO2 emissions. at makes Biomason CEO Ginger Krieg Dosier and her biocement, which is grown from microorganisms, a potential game-changer for overcoming climate adversity in the construction sector. e company employs about 100 people and has a production plant in Durham of about 10,000 square feet.

“Given its trillion-dollar scale and continued global use, cement and concrete decarbonization represents both a massive business opportunity as well as possibly one of the most actionable and scalable methods for reducing global CO2 emissions,” 2150 stated in its assessment of the industry.

Dosier’s passion for cement mixes started as a child in Huntsville, Alabama, where her father worked as a NASA scientist. “Growing up we had piles of aggregate, sand, and cement as part of his weekend concrete projects,” she said in an April 2022 interview with San Francisco-based Celesta Capital, another Biomason investor. “He taught me how to make concrete in a Dixie cup when I was 7 and ever since I’ve been fascinated with ‘liquid stone.’”

Dosier, who declined an interview request, has a bachelor’s degree in interior architecture from Auburn University and a master of architecture from Cranbrook Academy of Art near Detroit. She previously taught in the United Arab Emirates and as a visiting assistant professor at N.C. State University.

In June, Biomason announced a partnership with Netherlandsbased StoneCycling to drive sales of Biomason’s precast tile products used for walls and oors in interior and exterior surfaces. StoneCycling creates building materials from waste materials. e company is planning a production plant in Denmark with Danish concrete manufacturer IBF. Plans call for a capacity of 35,000 square meters of product this year.

Globally, the cement market rings in at $300 billion annually and concrete is a $1 trillion enterprise. Biomason’s technology uses bacteria to create calcium carbonate that combines with aggregates or sand at existing temperatures.

Anders Bendsen Spohr, a senior partner at Biomason investor Novo Holdings, says his rm “truly believes that biotechnology has the potential to become a spearhead for the green transition of society.” ■

Smart money is banking on a Triangle firm’s biology-based cement.

COASTAL CATCH

By David Mildenberg

February marked the second anniversary of Novant Health’s $1.5 billion purchase of New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington and a smaller hospital in Brunswick County. e sale occurred in a public, competitive process because the medical center was then county-owned.

e Wilmington hospital recorded about 256,000 patient days in the rst half of 2022, which is more than 40% greater than Novant’s main hospitals in Winston-Salem (177,000) and Charlotte (168,000). Unlike Wilmington, Novant faces hospital rivals in the latter cities.

Former NHRMC CEO John Gizdic is executive vice president and chief business development o cer at Novant Health, which was selected over sale nalists Atrium Health and Duke Health. He oversees New Hanover and has corporate responsibility for human resources, including diversity, inclusion and health equity. is interview with Gizdic was edited for clarity and brevity.

John Gizdic

WHAT IS YOUR IMPRESSION OF THE MERGER, TWO YEARS LATER?

ese are unusually challenging times and the past two years have been some of the toughest nancial years for health care in decades. Our merger was made exponentially harder because of the pandemic. But we really view change as more of an opportunity than a threat.

New Hanover Regional was operating at a position of strength, but no one predicted the big in ation spike that occurred. Fortunately, Novant has enabled New Hanover to do much that we couldn’t have accomplished otherwise.

HOW HAS NOVANT IMPROVED THE WILMINGTON SYSTEM?

We have invested more than $65 million in higher employee compensation. Our minimum wage later this year will be $17 an hour. at compares with $12.50 in 2018.

We’ve more than tripled the number of people who bene ted from nancial assistance by making it eligible for those with income at 300% of the federal poverty rate. e standard had been 200%. More than 26,000 patients bene ted in 2021 and 2022, compared with about 7,000 in the previous two years.

Novant’s top Wilmington executive reflects on the hospital system’s seaside expansion.

We’ve expanded our UNC Health and UNC School of Medicine relationship. Third- and fourth-year residents can now attend in Wilmington. We have boosted the number of students from 16 to 24 and we hope to get to 30 very soon.

Fourth, we’ve continued to invest more than $300 million in capital projects. New Hanover County could not have done this without raising taxes. This includes adding a 108-bed Neuroscience Institute; a 66-bed Scotts Hill Community Hospital; and Michael Jordan Family Clinics.

LIKE MANY PEERS, NOVANT HAS FACED STAFFING SHORTAGES. WHAT IS THE STORY THERE?

We are facing the same problems as others are on a national basis. We had benefited historically from a “come to the beach” approach in recruiting. But we have now had a record number of resignations and retirements by our providers. At the same time, we have had very heavy volume because so many people have put off care during COVID-19.

The situation would have been much worse as a standalone hospital. Having Novant backing us up with its recruitment and retention programs has helped our pipeline of nurses. Staffing problems also can be due to the increased acuity of patients. Wilmington has lots of retirees and, therefore, a heavy reliance on Medicare payments. Those folks can require a lot of care.

Wilmington is also the only major trauma hospital within a couple of hours, so it draws many serious medical-care cases.

It’s a very complicated balance, but Novant is very satisfied now with the quality of care that is being provided.

HOW DID FEDERAL FUNDING RELATED TO THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC AFFECT YOUR SYSTEM?

It helped, but it didn’t cover all of the hospital’s costs, and it was short-lived. The needs have continued, which is a factor in the financial difficulties facing hospitals.

The health care finance model is broken. Hospitals are facing double-digit cost increases, but they can’t raise fees at double-digit rates like a gas station or grocery store. The payment system doesn’t work that way. And health care isn’t connected to the consumer’s premiums in many instances.

HOW IS THE SYSTEM FOCUSED ON MAKING HEALTH CARE MORE AFFORDABLE?

Novant knows that hospital care needs to become more affordable. We know that improving social determinants are key to reducing costs because they affect 80% of a person’s

well-being. Hospitals treat the rest. It’s the reason we believe efforts to improve health equity through diversity, equity and inclusion programs are so important.

WHAT WERE THE KEY REASONS THAT NOVANT WAS PICKED OVER ATRIUM AND DUKE?

A key reason was the view that Novant would be more adept at attacking social determinants. Novant Health is only one of two health systems in the country to receive the National Committee for Quality Assurance’s Health Equity Accreditation Plus status. (Gizdic cited industry recognition for Novant’s efforts at health equity, including programs for mobile health clinics and mammogram screenings.)

We realize change is difficult, but partnering was the right decision. We had three great choices in Novant, Atrium and Duke. North Carolina is very fortunate to have so many great health care systems.

Absolutely, we made the right decision. I’m elated that we made the decision when we did because of what’s happened since then. Scale is very important. I’m not sure of the best size, but the key is whether scale leads to increased access and better affordability. You can’t just grow for the sake of growth.

[A key merger benefit] is that the Wilmington area got a $1.3 billion community endowment, which is unlike anywhere else in the United States. It will make things so much better in southeast North Carolina. ■

New Hanover Regional Medical Center opened in 1967.

SHIFTING GEARS

By Dan Barkin

It has been a year since Wake Technical Community College dedicated the $42 million Hendrick Center for Automotive Excellence in north Wake County. Since then, Wake Tech has tripled the number of students in its automotive systems technology program and added a new degree program in collision repair.

In March, the college received a $939,041 federal grant to help jump start the Hendrick Center’s electric vehicle training program. It was part of the $1.7 trillion spending bill signed by President Joe Biden in December.

e grant comes amid an obvious transformation of the economy from gas-powered cars and trucks to electric vehicles. Electric cars have gone from being something exotic to something that requires trained technicians to service. e electric economy is evolving in places like the northern Wake County campus and throughout North Carolina. If the shi to electrics goes fast, a lot of work needs to be done fast.

e federal government’s target is for half of all vehicles sold in 2030 to be battery electric, plug-in hybrids or fuel-cell electrics. Gov. Roy Cooper’s goal is to have 1.25 million zeroemission vehicles in North Carolina by 2030. At the start of this year, there were about 54,000 zero-emission vehicles, including 38,400 electrics, and 15,600 plug-in hybrids, according to state registration data. Hitting Cooper’s target will require big changes on car lots around the state.

But inventories are increasing as car manufacturers scramble to roll out EVs with more millennials hitting peak earning and family-formation years. Gen Z’s are right behind. Many folks may be driving their last gasoline car right now. at has everyone’s attention in car factories, dealerships, oil-change shops, convenience stores and state highway departments fueled by gas taxes.

North Carolina is emerging as a center of electric-vehicle technology. Toyota is building a $3.8 billion battery plant near Greensboro in a partnership with Panasonic. Siemens is creating charging stations for electric buses and other large vehicles in Wendell, in Eastern Wake County. Kempower, a Finlandbased company, plans a fast-charger manufacturing facility in Durham.

North Carolina is also a key source of lithium, a metal that has been referred to as “the new white gold” because of its use in EV batteries, says Louis Martin-Vega, engineering dean at N.C. State University. “ at’s one of the reasons that Albemarle Corp. is building a research and technology park in Charlotte,” he says.

Albemarle also plans to reopen a Cleveland County mine with lithium deposits that has been closed since 1988. Likewise, Belmont-based Piedmont Lithium is seeking regulatory approval to operate a lithium mine and processing plant in Gaston County, 30 miles west of Charlotte.

“North Carolina’s on the leading edge of this,” MartinVega notes.

e path to a transformed economy is full of potholes, to be sure. In March, Vietnam-based VinFast said it was delaying the start of electric-vehicle production at its proposed plant in Chatham County to 2025, a year later than previously announced. In an email to Chatham County Economic Development, VinFast said “this is the result of administrative delays” and “we remain fully committed to the development of our rst U.S. production facility in North Carolina.”

e six-year-old company has said it expects to produce about 150,000 SUVs a year at the factory for North American customers, eventually employing as many as 7,500 people and entailing an investment of $4 billion.■

North Carolina seeks a front-row slot as the automotive industry electrifies.

TRIBUNE NORTH CAROLINA INDEPENDENT INTELLIGENT INFORMATIVE

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A NEW ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CAUCUS

Thirty-seven House members have banded together to form what they're calling the Economic Development and Foreign Trade Caucus.

House Majority Leader John Bell, R-Wayne, and Minority Leader Robert Reives, D-Chatham, are co-chairing the group, which aims to "establish durable relations with the private sector" and foreign countries.

eir announcement said the group wants to act as "a versatile and responsive mechanism within the General Assembly for engaging with the private sector and foreign dignitaries."

Reives noted that Chatham County has bene ted from "a whirlwind of economic-development deals in the past two years."

e most prominent of them was the 2022 announcement that state and local governments had joined forces on a $1.2 billion incentives package that convinced Vietnamese carmaker VinFast to build EVs in a $4 billion factory near Moncure. O cials expect the VinFast project could create about 7,500 jobs.

e truism that politics stops at the water's edge still holds when it comes to industrial recruiting, which in this state has proceeded on a bipartisan basis.

CHILD CARE PACKAGE

Members of the bipartisan Early Childhood Caucus rolled out ve bills that address child-care issues and between them call for $430.4 million in spending over the next two scal years.

e centerpiece of the package is House Bill 342, which would allot $300 million in federal and state funds to continue the subsidies child care centers started receiving during the COVID pandemic.

All ve bills will have Senate counterparts with sponsors from both parties, and Rep. David Willis, R-Union, said the caucus has "had support from both corner o ces" — meaning House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger — "throughout this process."

Nor is that all.

"Our state's business community is aligned," said Debra Derr, director of government a airs for the N.C. Chamber. "North Carolina's employers have identi ed child care as a crucial factor in our state's workforce challenges."

DERAILMENTS HAVE LAWMAKERS ASKING TRAIN QUESTIONS

February's derailment of a chemical-laden Norfolk Southern freight train in East Palestine, Ohio, has some North Carolina legislators seeking reassurances about the state's relationship with the company.

e company leases the state-owned, 317-mile N.C. Railroad that connects Charlotte and Morehead City. So N.C. Railroad Co. CEO Carl Warren had some questions to answer a er he nished a budget brie ng.

"What's the most important thing we can learn and how can we make sure it doesn't happen in North Carolina?" asked Sen. Michael Lazzara, R-Onslow.

Warren responded that he's "pretty happy" with Norfolk Southern's maintenance of the corridor. He said safety is "part of the reason" his organization is "so careful about managing new

uses" on the corridor, including passenger service and utility encroachments.

While some of the line's older bridges remain "sound and within legal standards," he would like "to see some additional investment."

Rep. Frank Iler, R-Brunswick, asked whether the East Palestine incident could undermine Norfolk Southern's nances. " ey'll have a huge liability up in Ohio," Iler said, alluding to remediation and litigation costs because of the spillage and burn-o of toxics.

e trackage-rights agreement with Norfolk Southern accounts for about 75% of N.C. Railroad's annual revenue, which was $25.1 million in 2022, according to an unaudited report.

"In terms of us getting paid by Norfolk Southern, I don't see any risk in that sense," Warren said. He hopes the incident heightens attention to safety culture throughout the rail industry. ■

Canton’s paper mill, a key part of western North Carolina’s economy for 125 years, is slated to close in June a er New Zealand billionaire Graeme Hart’s Pactiv Evergreen declared the operation as no longer economically viable. e closing, which is expected to a ect about 1,100 workers, surprised state and local o cials, who hope the plant can be sold to a new owner rather than demolished.

e decision came amid labor discord at the mill, where testy relations between the union workforce and ownership has been a common theme for many years. Pactiv Evergreen’s labor agreement with the United Steelworkers’ local union expired last May, and union workers twice rejected company proposals since then.

e plant produces coated paperboard that is used in co ee cups, milk cartons and other products. e company went public in 2020 and reported a 14% increase in revenue

last year to $6.2 billion. It had operating income of $319 million, compared with $33 million a year earlier.

Champion Fibre opened the plant in 1908 to take white pulp from chestnut wood. e rst application involved the leather industry. It has supplied the paper-products business for most of its history.

Gov. Roy Cooper’s budget proposal in mid-March included at least $5 million to support the Canton area following the plant closing.

BELMONT

Belmont Abbey College, a Roman Catholic school in Gaston County, announced a $100 million capital campaign, of which $73 million has already been collected. Plans call for $15 million for a monastery, performing arts center and programs aimed at religious freedom. Another $30 million will fund academic programs, with $55 million going to the endowment and student loans.

Piedmont Lithium says it has secured a $75 million investment from South Koreabased LG Chem. e deal also includes supply agreements for thousands of tons of raw materials. In exchange for the money, LG Chem gains nearly 6% of Piedmont’s stock. e company is based here.

CHARLOTTE

PAPERTOWN BLUES CHARLOTTE

Honeywell International CEO Darius Adamczyk, 57, will retire June 1 and be replaced by COO Vimal Kapur. Adamczyk moved the company’s headquarters to Charlotte from New Jersey in 2019 and quickly established himself as a community leader. He will become executive chairman of the Honeywell board until at least April 2024. He says there’s no major reason for the change except he wants to do something else.

Charlotte Hornets owner Michael Jordan is close to selling his majority stake in the NBA team, according to media reports. Likely buyers are a group including Hornets minority owner Gabe Plotkin and Atlanta Hawks minority owner Rick Schnall. Jordan bought control of the team for $275 million in 2010 from Bob Johnson. In 2020, he sold a stake to Plotkin, who is a New York hedge fund investor. Forbes esimates the Hornets’ value at $1.7 billion. He’s the only Black majority owner of an NBA team.

CONCORD

e city council here approved an incentives grant for a Hendrick Motorsports a liate that is involved in a proposed development of a 269,500-square-foot advanced manufacturing facility. e project, which includes an estimated $23.7 million investment, would be developed speculatively on a 30-acre site adjacent to the Hendrick campus near Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Charlotte-based Krispy Kreme is closing a doughnut factory here, and cutting about 100 jobs. Layo s will take e ect May 11 and will be permanent, the company says.

GASTONIA

e local branch of the North Carolina Association of Educators and two teachers have led a lawsuit against the Gaston County Board of Education over payroll problems that have lasted for more than a year. e lawsuit alleges the school board bought an Oracle payroll system even though it had hundreds of errors in

testing. Teachers and other staff say the system pays them the wrong amounts and fails to put money into their retirement system. The school system employs almost 4,000 people, making it the county’s second-largest employer.

KINGS MOUNTAIN

Hound’s Drive-in Theater closed after seven seasons, leaving only five such establishments in the state, about 300 nationwide. During the pandemic, owners allowed churches and schools to use the property for worship services, concerts, and graduations.

EAST

EDENTON

Timbermill Wind won state environmental approval to build a wind energy generating facility in Chowan County. Developed by Apex Clean Energy, Timbermill Wind is expected to have up to 45 wind turbines, with a capacity of as many as 189 megawatts that can produce enough energy to power up to 47,000 homes every year. The permit is the first for a facility under a state law passed in 2013.

FAYETTEVILLE

Methodist University and Cape Fear Valley Health are partnering to create a four-year medical school at Methodist University, pending approval by accreditation groups. The campus will be

located in a $50 million facility at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center. Classes are set to begin in July 2026 with plans for 80 students.

A Superior Court judge here denied a motion by Dupont and Chemours to dismiss a state lawsuit against the two companies in October 2020. The state alleges in the lawsuit that the companies emitted PFAS into the Cape Fear River, which damaged drinking water and other natural resources. PFAS are associated with cancer, poor child development, liver and kidney problems and are sometimes referred to as “forever chemicals” because they do not break down in the environment.

HOLLY RIDGE

UPS will locate a $12.3 million distribution facility in this Onslow County town and add 98 jobs. It’s the largest economic development project for the county in 40 years. The expected average annual wage is $67,657.

MCADENVILLE

Coats America is laying off 41 workers from its industrial thread plant here effective April 24. London-based Coats bought the plant in 2019 from Pharr HP, which exited the textile business after 80 years. Pharr still sponsors the town’s holiday lights, which transforms the tiny town into Christmas Town U.S.A and attracts hundreds of thousands annually.

MOORESVILLE

Novant Health said it will buy Lake Norman Regional Medical Center here and Davis Regional Medical Center in Statesville from Tennessee-based Community Health Systems. Novant will pay $320 million for the hospitals and affiliated clinical operations, pending regulatory approval.

BALD HEAD ISLAND

A construction company has been ordered to pay a combined $30 million resulting from several judgments related to its allegedly fraudulent activities in obtaining contracts to work on Bald Head Island homes damaged by Hurricane Florence. The cases surround the alleged illegal conduct of Disaster America USA and its subsidiary, Disaster America of North Carolina.

RODANTHE

In the wake of the collapse of several oceanfront homes, Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials warned visitors to use caution when participating in recreational activities on the beach. Dare County and park officials may implement a beach nourishment project there to attempt to try to combat beach erosion.

SNOW HILL

Dexter Duncan pleaded guilty in November to creating fictitious businesses so he could divert $180,988 in federal COVID-19 loans to himself. In March, he was sentenced to 31 months in prison and ordered to pay restitution by a federal judge in New Bern. Duncan was not working, but lived a “lavish lifestyle” with taxpayer money, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

TRIAD

ARCHDALE

Ohio-based packaging manufacturer Axium Packaging will make a $32 million investment and add 118 jobs here in 2024. Axium makes packaging for personal care products, household chemical products, and over-the-counter pharmaceuticals and food products. The company has 3,000 employees and 18 existing sites.

LEXINGTON

A division of German engineering giant Siemens AG will build a passenger rail car manufacturing plant here. Siemens Mobility will make a $220 million investment and add 506 jobs over five years to support an established factory in Sacramento,

California. Siemens plans to start operations next year. The state plans to offer Siemens $5.6 million in incentives over the next 12 years, while Lexington and Davidson County are pledging $8 million and $7 million in incentives, respectively.

Japan-based Daido Steel purchased Elizabeth Carbide Die, a nearly 50-yearold manufacturer here. The forging die manufacturing business with a former headquarters in Pennsylvania will now be called Lexington Technologies. The plant has 24 employees with plans to hire as many as 40 more in the next two years.

MCLEANSVILLE

Burlington-based LabCorp moved out of its leased 176,778-square-foot office building here, off Interstate 40. Raleigh-based APG Capital owns the building. It’s part of about 650,000 square feet vacated by LabCorp, including other office space in Burlington, Durham and Raleigh due to more remote work, APG’s Jim Anthony said.

WHITSETT

Precor Manufacturing said its Peloton unit notified 123 employees at its plant here that it is closing. The layoffs are permanent and expected to be completed by Oct. 31. Peloton said the layoff is due to a business restructuring and that employees don’t have bumping rights to take other jobs in the company.

WINSTON-SALEM

WINSTON-SALEM

Tex-Tech Industries will add 49 new jobs in a $24.8 million manufacturing expansion. The Kernersville-based specialty textiles company will build a 170,000-square-foot building. The company’s fabrics serve the aerospace, automotive, defense, medical and protective apparel industries.

A dairy co-op’s decision to eliminate its ice cream lines led to 78 workers at DFA Dairy Brands Fluid here losing their jobs. The existing fluid milk line is unaffected and some workers may work there. Dairy Farmers of America is a co-operative owned by about 11,000 farmers that markets its products under several regional and national brands.

TRIANGLE

CARY

Real estate services provider Fathom, sharing unaudited results, said revenue was about $412 million in 2022, a 24% increase from last year. The company said its net loss was about $28 million in 2022, versus a loss of $12.5 million in 2021. It completed nearly 45,000 transactions, up 14%.

DURHAM

Duke University intends to challenge whether its graduate students can be considered employees under the National Labor Relations Act, likely delaying students from holding an election and possibly forming a union. The university made a similar — and unsuccessful — attempt in 2017.

MONCURE

VinFast has delayed its plans to start vehicle production here until 2025, a year later than previously disclosed. The Vietnamese carmaker assured local government officials that there are no changes in the scope or vision for the $4.5 billion project — which includes 7,500 jobs. The project could be aided by $1.25 billion in state and local incentives.

WEST

ASHEVILLE

Asheville-based Poppy Handcrafted Popcorn closed its first-ever funding round, securing $3 million from 19 investors, according to a securities filing. CEO Susan Aplin said proceeds from the sale will be used to expand, and includes doubling its manufacturing footprint in Asheville.

BILTMORE FOREST

KNIGHTDALE

State regulators approved WakeMed’s plans to add a 150-bed behavioral health hospital here and a hospital with two operating rooms in Garner. WakeMed already has a free-standing emergency department in Garner. UNC Health and Duke Health had opposed the WakeMed plans.

RALEIGH

The UNC System Board of Governors authorized North Carolina State University to purchase the University Towers property on Friendly Drive in Raleigh for an appraised value of $29.6 million, expanding student housing capacity. The university plans to spend millions on renovations to the building before the fall 2025 academic year.

A Wake County grand jury indicted Raed Abel Amra on 15 charges related to the alleged embezzlement of $1.6 million in sales and use tax from the N.C. Department of Revenue. Amra is president Tobacco Road Sports Cafes in Durham and Raleigh, and was also the president of the now-closed Chapel Hill location. The state alleges the offenses occurred between 2012 and 2019.

An English Tudor-style mansion here sold for $9.6 million, a record for Buncombe County, according to Canopy MLS. The 9,538-squarefeet home with five bedrooms and five-anda-half bathrooms sits on 1.5 acres near the Biltmore Estate near Asheville. Charlotte-based Canopy Realtor Association serves 23 central and western North Carolina counties and three in South Carolina.

FLETCHER

Tageos, a high-tech radio-frequency identification, inlays and tags manufacturer based in Montpellier, France, will open its North American headquarters here. It plans a $19.25 million investment and 64 jobs that pay an annual average salary of $70,203. compared with Henderson County’s average salary of $47,949. ■

READY TO ROLL

Leaders of the state’s transportation network gathered for Business

North Carolina’s roundtable discussion on the same day that Siemens Mobility announced a $220 million light-rail manufacturing plant in Davidson County. About 500 jobs are expected to be created at the Lexington site. The big announcement underlined the critical role that the state’s transportation system plays in luring business of all kinds, as well the impact of mobility-related businesses.

The conversation also covered a possible standard vehicle levy to replace sagging gas taxes; drones delivering artificial organs; driverless shuttles; and a projection that in 10 years, every new vehicle will be at least a hybrid or electric.

Joe Milazzo executive director, Regional Transportation Alliance

Kevin Baker executive director, Piedmont Triad International Airport

Michael Fox chair, the North Carolina Board of Transportation; president, Piedmont Triad Partnership

Martin Marietta, Smith Anderson, North Carolina Railroad Company and Piedmont Triad Airport Authority sponsored the discussion. It was moderated by Business North Carolina editor David Mildenberg and was edited for brevity and clarity.

WHAT IS THE IMPORTANCE OF TRANSPORTATION TO ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT?

FOX: Transportation is one of the key questions that any business leader looks at in deciding where to expand their business or locate a new business, along with the workforce. We’re really fortunate here in North Carolina that we have spent decades improving our transportation infrastructure. I’ve been told personally by the decisionmakers of many of the largest economic development announcements in our state’s history that we’ve had in the last year, that the transportation infrastructure was a critical piece to them making the decision for North Carolina.

WARREN: Transportation is vital. Not only do you need to think about things

like international air service, but rail is also a critical differentiator for winning economic development projects. I’ve observed over the last several years that I’ve been back in North Carolina and the 10 years before that when I was at CSX, when states were going after big manufacturing projects, being able to put together a rail solution that also included the port and also included a good linkage between them in the state’s approach to recruiting economic development deals was a big differentiator for a lot of the manufacturing projects.

KEVIN, YOU’VE LED THE PIEDMONT TRIAD AIRPORT FOR 15 YEARS, AND IT’S ATTRACTING MUCH ATTENTION BECAUSE OF BOOM SUPERSONIC AND OTHERS. TELL US ABOUT THE AVIATION INDUSTRY.

BAKER: North Carolina is a really strong state for this industry. Obviously, you’ve got one of the biggest hubs in the country in Charlotte. And then in Raleigh, you’ve got one of the fastest-

growing cities in the country. And then PTI occupies this niche of employment in the aerospace industry with Honda Aircraft, with HAECO Americas, Boom, Cessna and FedEx. And another 10 companies that are in line right now that we’re chasing. Our best days are way out in front of us right now. It’s going be great.

HOW DO YOU ACCOUNT FOR THE SUCCESSES IN THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS?

BAKER: Last year on this same round table, I think I told the story about how with the Boom project, it was Mike Fox putting me in touch with Brian Clark and Kevin Lacey, who was the state highway engineer, and those guys figured out how we were going to move the railroad. We also were going to figure it moving big pieces of fuselage from the Wilmington port to [the Boom facility in Greensboro], and having the transportation network in place was absolutely crucial. We’ve been working for six years on grading sites, speculatively, basically without any customers to speak of at that time. It was

Peter Marino partner, Smith Anderson law firm; Freeways committee chair, Regional Transportation Alliance

Brian Clark executive director, North Carolina Ports

Carl Warren president and CEO, North Carolina Railroad Co.

about getting all the infrastructure in place so that whenever the opportunity did arise, we were ready to say yes.

FOX: It’s not just the bridges and the highways and the train tracks. It’s the people we have. That’s a key distinguishing factor I think for our state. Our transportation professionals are customer service oriented. I say that because I recently was having a conversation with the folks at Boom, and they specifically said the speed with which North Carolina answered that question that Kevin Baker just posed was stunning. Another state that was a very close competitor to ours basically came back and said, ‘We’re not sure if we even can do that. And we don’t know how long it will take to tell you if we can do that.’ And our folks, as Kevin will tell you, basically said: ‘It can be done, and we’ll figure it out quickly.’

MILAZZO: In North Carolina, doing business is based on really two things, partnership and results. We need both of those things and they relate to each other. And I’ve lived in other states, they’re all great states to be from and go to, but North Carolina is something special with partnerships and results. I can tell you straight up, we have relationships with our NCDOT leadership and our elected officials at the federal, state and local level, all saying, ‘Hey, we’ve gotta get this done.’

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE HAPPEN TO IMPROVE THE TRANSPORTATION REALM IN OUR STATE?

MILAZZO: There’s something already happening with the North Carolina

Department of Transportation. It’s representing the business community on innovation, on new ways of looking at things, new processes, new policies, new procedures. The NCDOT has a pilot in our market right now with an automated (driverless) shuttle. If you’re not looking at automation, you’re looking behind. So they are leading on that, working with a local community in Cary. They’re looking at a variety of new ways of funding transportation, which is important.

At the Regional Transportation Alliance, we have talked about an access fee. We’re going to continue to explore that. We’re finding ways to multipurpose the facilities we do have, whether it’s our rail networks for freight and passengers that makes sense, whether it’s our freeways and putting in Bus Rapid Transit in other networks on or near those, so we can multipurpose those. That’s the way of the future, because money is not infinite, but demands are becoming increasingly so. We’ve got to be able to get more for less.

BAKER: From the aviation perspective, we’re probably in the top three of states in the country in terms of the way that the state legislature and the state DOT are taking care of the airport system. Without what the state legislature’s been doing for the last six or seven years for the commercial service airports, we wouldn’t have the (new large employment) projects that we were talking about.

MARINO: It’s been clear that the legislature recognizes the need for additional transportation revenue to deal with the cost escalations due to material and workforce shortages as well. There’s been a longterm decline over time in gas taxes, as more folks moved to electric

vehicles. And for the first time in this last budget cycle over the legislature, they began devoting a percentage of state sales tax revenue to the highway fund. They’d previously gone to the general fund, and that was a big, big win. That funding is going to continue to increase over the next few years. Funds allocated to help NCDOT really help the contractors complete projects on time and to reduce the delays caused by inflation and budgetary restraints and supply chain issues that contractors on our major highway projects in particular were experiencing.

CLARK: From the ports standpoint, I think some of the most positive changes of the last couple years were the freight rail improvements that have been realized. Whether it’s the Carolina Coastal Railway or some of the improvements on the CSX line out of Wilmington, it’s allowed us to essentially double our intermodal volume. It’s taking trucks off the road, so definitely a positive. We’re out there commercially trying to sell the ports, and we can access some of these markets by rail.

FOX: One of the most exciting things that has happened in the last couple of years has really been the emergence of North Carolina as a center and a leader for transportation technology. It’s not just the announcements that we all know about in terms of Boom Supersonic or Toyota EV batteries or VinFast or even Wolfspeed with the chips. It goes way beyond that.

(Consider the announcement today with Siemens, with their rail cars, which are highly advanced technology. But even before that, we have here in High Point, Thomas Built Buses, one of the

largest manufacturers of school buses. They’ve been developing EV buses for a while. You’ve also got Volvo Trucks (in Greensboro), who have been working on not only EV trucks, but AV (autonomous driverless vehicles) trucks as well. And North Carolina has been a leader in drone technology. We’ve been the recipient of numerous pilot programs from the FAA in the Winston-Salem area. They’re essentially writing the rules of the road, for the air, and working with the FAA to figure out how drones fly and interact and where they can fly safely and where they can’t fly. There are many more advances that could be mentioned, but North Carolina is a forward-looking transportation state, not a backwardlooking one.

WARREN: I had one more item, which is our experience in land assembly. I was encouraged when the legislature decided to start figuring out where the next megasites would be, because we’ve got these tremendous successes we’ve been talking about. But the questions I always ask are, `What about the next wave of possibilities? Are we going to be prepared with land supply?’ The legislature is figuring out new places where the state can invest in the next megasites. That is going to be very valuable because it’s a long-term process between identifying these places, making sure the utility infrastructure is there and making sure the highway and rail connectivity is there.

GAS TAX REVENUES ARE DECLINING BECAUSE MORE PEOPLE ARE MOVING AWAY FROM GAS ENGINES. ARE WE MOVING FAST ENOUGH TO DEAL WITH THAT ISSUE?

FOX: The good news is that this is not a surprise to anybody. It’s been talked about and studied for a while. Key leaders, including the governor and leaders in the Senate and the House, are all very aware of the issue. And our Department of Transportation has been aware of it and working on it for some time. We ask the folks who were part of the North Carolina First Commission to study the different revenue options, knowing that. Not only are the EVs

impacting the gas tax, but even conventional gasoline-powered vehicles are getting much better fuel mileage than they were 20 years ago. The legislature took a great first step last session in terms of dedicating some of the sales tax revenue that is really transportation related to transportation, but there’s more to be done. We’ve got to figure out how we fairly charge people to help pay for the infrastructure that they’re using. That’s going to be one of the more interesting policy discussions that you’re going to see taking place over the next couple of years. What are the next steps?

MILAZZO: The North Carolina Chamber has taken the leadership role

with their Destination 2030 group. One thing that we have elevated is looking at the concept of an access user fee as a potential replacement for the gas tax.

MARINO: An access-user fee is something that needs to be carefully considered. One thing we have talked about is the state has an EV fee of about $140. Can we do something like raise that EV fee to what the average registered vehicle was paying in fuel taxes? This year it’s about $251 per year based on the current state fuel tax rate. Can we have all other vehicles, whether it’s hydrogen power, in the case of something really out there, or just our gas or hybrid power vehicles, electric

vehicles, all the vehicles would pay the same? Then just repeal the gas tax and provide a little more stability.

SPEAKING OF LONG-TERM PROJECTS, WHAT’S THE STATUS OF DREDGING TO SUPPORT WILMINGTON PORT EXPANSION?

CLARK: It’s definitely an opportunity, but also it’s a critical commercial requirement for us to be able to dredge the Cape Fear River to be able to continue to support these larger vessels. The project is moving forward. It’s in the conditional requirements of the authorization and being studied by

the Army Corps of Engineers district in Wilmington. We hope to complete that work over the next several years and move forward to construction. But if you look down the coast, every port has already deepened. Some are moving on to additional deepening projects. So for us to remain competitive, we must move this project forward. It’s a long process. There’s the funding component. The state has fully funded the non-federal share, which is critical and shows the support that the project has to the federal government. But there is that federal share that needs to be funded as well.

THE ELECTRIC VEHICLE EVOLUTION IS AN EXCITING STORY. DO YOU THINK THAT THE CURRENT DEADLINES ARE REALISTIC?

FOX: If you talk to folks in the industry, even they have different opinions. My experience with technology like that is it usually takes a little longer than people predict early on. What I understand is that for widespread consumer acceptance, you need to get to the point where you can go about 500 miles on a charge. I know they’re working on that. I’ve heard prominent folks in the industry say that they believe that hybrids are really sort of a gap filling measure

before you go all EV and that they’re predicting that in 10 years, every new vehicle will at least be a hybrid.

BAKER: We have three EV-related companies that we’re pursuing right now, involving electric, vertical takeoff and landing opportunities. One of them just texted: ‘Can we come in on Monday or Tuesday?’ So, yes, I think it’s accelerating quickly.

MILAZZO: The perspective that Mike offered is straight up. If we’re talking trucks as opposed to buses, as opposed to automobiles, you’re going to get different (timelines and) answers. Then you’re going to get different answers

between each individual company. So in some ways, the specific year isn’t as important as the trajectory. We know the trajectory that’s pretty clear, not just from the investments that are coming in this state, but by the decisions that consumers are making. I appreciate Kevin mentioning the fact that it’s not just on the surface, it’s the air as well. We actually had a breakfast last summer where we brought in a company that was making electric vertical aircraft. They were shipping artificially engineered organs, so to speak, from one hospital to another. So, we’ve only just begun to, to quote a song.

IS THE SUPPLY CHAIN STILL A MAJOR CONCERN IN GETTING THINGS DONE?

CLARK: From the ports’ perspective, it’s been an interesting couple years. Obviously, there was a period of a very quick drop in demand and a very quick rebound. We’re seeing a significant change in carrier behavior in where they’re focusing their capacity, where they’re trying to capture volumes. So from our perspective, it’s getting back to pre-pandemic levels. Locally, volumes are rebounding a little bit at a time. Reliability is returning.

MARINO: I see this in some of my construction industry clients. There are still some supply chain challenges out there. It tends to be more product specific right now and less across all forms of material. There are some specific categories that are still really causing challenges in terms of contractors meeting schedules.

FOX: There are two different problems both being faced by the N.C. Department of Transportation. We certainly have seen our share of supply chain issues in terms of just basic materials, pipes, and materials for overhead signs. Sometimes you’ll see an overhead sign on the road that you think needs to be replaced, and it’s on our list to do, but there was a shortage of that type of material for a while. That’s easing up a bit. I will give a lot of credit to Brian and his team. They did a great job in terms of trying to make sure that our ports were available. As these goods became more available, and they worked hard to get all the ships in and unloaded as quickly as possible. In terms of workforce, we’ve been experiencing significant workforce issues even before COVID. We’ve launched a number of efforts to really engage with the industry and launch campaigns to try to boost the transportation sector workforce, including not only engineers but equipment operators on all levels. We were fortunate a few years ago, the legislature gave us a pilot program in order to try to bring our wages to a market rate. And that helps significantly with us reducing our number of vacancies.

TRANSPORTATION’S ALWAYS BEEN A MAIN COG OF EVERY ECONOMY, BUT IT’S BECOME A STAR IN NORTH CAROLINA. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?

WARREN: Similar companies tend to cluster together. I remember this when I was working on trying to locate auto plants back about 10 years ago in a different role. We’ve really put together

a very compelling universe of related industries, and I think that that can only grow upon itself. I think bringing likeminded similarly configured companies together with strong supply chain solutions and also being extremely customer-centric in the recruitment of those customers is absolutely vital. You help them make it happen because then (companies) know that the state they’re coming to is going to help assure their success.

BAKER: Yes, you’re dead on. Our industry’s a little more esoteric. But I think the companies are going where they know that there’s already a deep bench strength of the skill sets that they’re going to need in that community. It’s a great problem to have that whenever a new company comes in, you’re going to need more employees, and we’re going to figure out how to get it done. I think the companies see the labor supply that we’re able to produce. They trust us to be able to do it as a community and as a state.

MARINO: Maybe one other point that hasn’t been mentioned is the fact that we’ve got so many top-notch universities in this state, as well as the community college system. It’s an almost unmatched community college system. It serves these companies, whether transportation based or others, that we see growing in the Research Triangle Park and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg area. Throughout the state, it really is a driver because it addresses workforce issues in a way that’s very meaningful and a lot of states can’t compete with.

MILAZZO: We’ve talked a long time In economic development about the Piedmont Crescent, or sometimes we call it the Metropolitan Crescent from Charlotte to the Piedmont Triad area, to the RTP area. For all those connections, we have rail in concert with the freeway. And then now you’ve got the Carolina Core. You’ve got Interstate 685 coming down there. Those of us in the Research Triangle are very supportive of that, both because places like Eastern Chatham and Lee County are part of our metro area as well as the Carolina Core, but it also helps build a broader integrated mobility and workforce system that allows economic development to continue to thrive in more and more areas. The motto of this state, in Latin, is ‘Esse quam videri’ which translates as ‘To be rather than to seem.’ That’s actually what we’re doing here. We are a state that is doing, being and living economic development through partnership and really thoughtful investments for bringing urban roles together. ■

FAIRWAY FEVER

Golf keeps drawing a crowd, though the pace slowed as health worries lessened.

After two fast-growth years spurred in a perverse way by the pandemic, interest in golf calmed down a bit last year.

Nationally, the number of rounds played in the United States declined about 3% last year, according to preliminary estimates by the National Golf Foundation.

That follows a 14% spike in 2020 and 5% growth in 2021, when the pandemic encouraged more outdoor activity, industry officials say.

Still, courses remain packed and waiting lists for many clubs continue to lengthen as North Carolina’s population growth ranks among the nation’s leaders. And the North Carolina Golf Panel is pleased to share its 28th annual ranking of the state’s best courses. The panel consists of about 175 business executives, golf industry members and media members who share a love of golf and the promotion of the sport.

Golf touches nearly every county in the state, generating $2.3 billion in direct spending and adding $4.2 billion to the state’s economy, according to state figures. The 520 courses from Murphy to Manteo, along with associated industries, contribute 53,000 jobs and total wages of $1.3 billion.

There were limited changes in this year’s rankings. Notably, WinstonSalem’s Old Town Club moved up four spots, landing in eighth. The Country Club of North Carolina’s Cardinal course (Pinehurst) also gained four notches, ranking 13th. Porters Neck Country Club (Wilmington) ranked 64th, up from 75th. Carolina Country Club (Raleigh), which is new to the list this year, was rated 69th.

Pinehurst Resort made some big news by breaking ground on its 10th course, a Tom Doak-designed layout expected to open in 2024. Doak designed six of the world’s 100 top courses as rated by Golf Magazine in 2021, including Pacific Dunes in Bandon, Oregon.

The new course in Moore County will open in time for the U.S. Open scheduled for Pinehurst No. 2 in June 2024. That course topped the panel’s rankings again, as it has for 28 years.

TOP 100 COURSES FOR 2023

(Second number is previous year’s ranking) 1.

15.

TOP 100 COURSES FOR 2023 NC GOLF

25. 26. Rock Barn Country Club (Jones)

37. 38. Mid South Club

38. 35. Linville Golf Club

26.

27.

31.

32.

TOP 100 Courses for 2023 NC GOLF

89. 86. The Country Club at Wakefield Plantation

ACE ANCHOR

While April focuses golfers’ attention on the Masters, Pinehurst Resort and the USGA are looking ahead to hosting the U.S. Open from June 13-16, 2024.

Golf’s “national championship” will mark Pinehurst’s first as an USGAdesignated “Anchor Site,” with the famed No. 2 course scheduled to also host the tournament in 2029, 2035, 2041 and 2047. Over this 25-year period, the collective events are projected to generate more than $2 billion in economic activity for the Sandhills region and North Carolina.

The 2024 event has experienced record-level hospitality sales, with limited remaining inventory, Pinehurst officials say.

“We can’t wait to welcome and host our corporate partners from throughout the state for what’s sure to be an epic championship week,” Pinehurst Resort President Tom Pashley says.

Lots of change is occurring at Pinehurst, including next spring’s scheduled opening of Pinehurst Resort’s 10th course and the opening of USGA’s second headquarters, called Golf House Pinehurst.

Located four miles south of the main resort clubhouse in Aberdeen, Pinehurst’s new course traverses dunes and natural ridgelines while meandering through longleaf pines, streams and ponds.

“The opening of the 10th course, Golf House Pinehurst and the renovations to the Carolina Hotel will further enhance the overall experience at the 2024 U.S. Open,” says Eric Kuester, the resort’s vice president of sales and marketing. “Never before have we been able to offer our corporate friends the opportunity to enjoy elevated on-course views of championship play on No. 2.”

The 2024 U.S. Open will be Pinehurst Resort’s fourth, and first since 2014, and the 11th USGA championship hosted there. ■

REGIONAL RANKINGS FOR 2023

WESTERN

1. Grandfather Golf and Country Club, Linville

2. Mountaintop Golf and Lake Club, Cashiers

3. Elk River Club, Banner Elk

4. Wade Hampton Country Club, Cashiers

5. Rock Barn Country Club (Jones), Conover

6. Biltmore Forest Country Club, Asheville

7. Champion Hills Club, Hendersonville

9. Balsam Mountain Preserve, Sylva

10. Country Club of Asheville, Asheville

CHARLOTTE

TRIAD

1. Old Town Club, Winston-Salem

2. Sedgefield Country Club, Greensboro

3. Old North State Club, New London

4. Forsyth Country Club, Winston-Salem

5. Starmount Forest Country Club, Greensboro

6. High Point Country Club (Willow Creek), High Point

7. Bryan Park (Champions), Browns Summit

8. Greensboro Country Club (Farm), Greensboro

9. Grandover Resort (East), Greensboro

10. The Cardinal by Pete Dye, Greensboro

TRIANGLE

SANDHILLS

1. Pinehurst No. 2, Pinehurst

2. The Country Club of North Carolina (Dogwood), Pinehurst

3. Pine Needles Lodge and Golf Club, Southern Pines

4. Pinehurst No. 4, Pinehurst

5. Pinehurst No. 8, Pinehurst

6. The Country Club of North Carolina (Cardinal), Pinehurst

7. Mid Pines Inn and Golf Club, Southern Pines

8. Dormie Club, West End

9. Forest Creek Golf Club (South), Pinehurst

10. Pinehurst No. 9, Pinehurst

EASTERN

1. River Landing (River), Wallace

2. River Landing (Landing), Wallace

3. Occano, Merry Hill

4. Benvenue Country Club, Rocky Mount

5. Brook Valley Country Club, Greenville

6. Wilson Country Club, Wilson

7. Cutter Creek Golf Club, Snow Hill

8. Greenville Country Club, Greenville

9. Carolina Colours Golf Club, New Bern

10. Walnut Creek Country Club, Goldsboro

1. Old Chatham Golf Club, Durham

2. Raleigh Country Club, Raleigh

3. MacGregor Downs Country Club, Cary

4. Governors Club, Chapel Hill

5. Prestonwood Country Club (Highlands), Cary

6. Treyburn Country Club, Durham

7. The Hasentree Club, Wake Forest

8. Finley Golf Club, Chapel Hill

9. Lonnie Poole Golf Club, Raleigh

10. Duke University Golf Club, Durham

1. Quail Hollow Club, Charlotte 2. Charlotte Country Club, Charlotte 3. The Club at Longview, Waxhaw 4. Myers Park Country Club, Charlotte 5. Trump National Golf Club, Mooresville 6. Gaston Country Club, Gastonia  7. Ballantyne Country Club, Charlotte 8. Cedarwood Country Club, Charlotte 9. The Club at Irish Creek, Kannapolis 10. River Run Country Club, Davidson

COASTAL

1. Cape Fear Country Club, Wilmington

2. Eagle Point Golf Club, Wilmington

3. Country Club of Landfall (Dye), Wilmington

4. Country Club of Landfall (Nicklaus), Wilmington

5. Bald Head Golf Club, Bald Head Island

6. The Currituck Club, Corolla

7. Porters Neck Country Club, Wilmington

8. Leopard’s Chase, Sunset Beach

9. Crow Creek Golf Club, Calabash

10. Tiger’s Eye, Sunset Beach

Grandfather Golf & Country Club, Linville

THE IN CROWD

Golf goes indoors as duffers practice their craft amid drinks and burgers.

By Brad King

The most popular way to play golf is now indoors.

Of a record 41.1 million golfers who participated in 2022, about 15.5 million played indoors, while 13.2 million played on green grass, says David Lorentz, head of research at the National Golf Foundation. The remaining 12.4 million played in both venues.

It was the first year that more people played golf indoors than outdoors.

Sure, purists will say hitting balls while enjoying a beer at Topgolf isn’t “playing golf.” But with off-the-course golf doubling since 2014, there’s no doubt that the game is forever changed.

“You couldn’t possibly overstate the importance of (off-course golf) in creating demand for golf,” Lorentz said during a speech at the annual PGA Show in Orlando in January. “This is the drug that hooks people to the game. Those in the green grass business should feel very fortunate to have these experiences that are administering the golf drug to now millions more people.”

Demand for nontraditional forms of golf has escalated so rapidly that indoor golf entertainment facilities, not including miniature golf, are now the industry’s fastest-growing sector. Then there’s the simulator and launch monitor market, which is expected to soar to $244 million in 2028, from $178 million in 2021. What began as hitting off a mat into a net in the basement has made its way to more than 50,000 family rooms and living spaces nationally, along with many commercial settings.

Andy Allen, vice president of revenue and partnerships for Winston-Salem-based SkyTrak, has enjoyed an inside-the-ropes view of indoor golf for more than a decade. SkyTrak has sold more than 70,000 units since 2015, making it the leading seller of consumer simulators and launch monitors. The company reached record sales in 2021 as overall simulator sales surged around the world.

“[Simulators] introduce people to the game,” he says. “Not everybody becomes an avid golfer or a single-digit handicap, but nontraditional forms of golf are a fun introduction to the game. Many then aspire to add a glf simulator to their available space and enjoy practicing, improving and playing si mluated courses with friends on their own schedule from the convenience of home.”

Last August, Colorado-based GolfTec bought SkyTrak for undisclosed terms. GolfTec has about 250 locations and 1,000 coaches who provide lessons and services using video analysis and motion measurement sensors. The company provided nearly 2 million lessons last year. Its North Carolina locations include Cary, Greensboro and Raleigh with plans for a Winston-Salem site.

The acquisition paired “two companies that understand how data and personalized coaching can truly accelerate a person’s journey to better golf,” says Joe Assell, GolfTec co-founder and CEO.

The appeal of indoor golf is multifaceted. Simulators allow dedicated golfers to hone their craft 24/7, regardless of the weather. Working professionals enjoy not having to carve out four or five hours to play 18 holes.

Most important, indoor golf carries generational cache. Younger people, who might prefer to stay indoors, can get started in golf by playing games on a simulator. They are attracted to the technology that projects lifelike images of golf courses onto a screen, and also tracks the flight path of the ball, measures spin, and provides accurate distance and shot data.

“I think (young people) are really intrigued with the data,” Allen says. “They want to know, ‘how do I compare it to an LPGA tour player? How do I compare to a PGA Tour player?’ And they easily embrace technology. We’ve seen a large increase in the number of younger golfers, junior golfers that use the system and that are very familiar with the data.”

Research also shows that indoor golf is stimulating interest in traditional play. A survey by the foundation and Topgolf suggests that people who come into golf via indoor play are generally more emotionally prepared and confident for green-grass play.

The most recognizable indoor golf brand is Dallas-based Topgolf, which offers a driving range experience using microchipped golf balls that allow players to track their shots and compete with friends in climate-controlled hitting bays. Food and drink flow freely at the company’s 80-plus locations.

Carlsbad, California-based Callaway Golf bought TopGolf for $2.6 billion in 2021. One of the seller’s major investors was Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon, who is now on Calloway’s board of directors.

Topgolf opened its first North Carolina site in Charlotte in 2017, then added a second location in the region in 2021. Construction is underway on a Topgolf in Durham, while a three-story location is being planned in Greensboro. The city council there approved a resolution to reimburse for sewer improvements for an unnamed attraction that council members confirmed was Topgolf.

Topgolf’s chief competitor, Dallas-based Drive Shack, opened one of its core venues, a three-story, 65,000-square-foot facility, near Raleigh’s PNC Arena in 2019. Drive Shack’s ranges are equipped with radar-based TrackMan Range technology that provides precision ball tracking in real time.

Drive Shack debuted its first Urban Box concept in Charlotte’s South End neighborhood, called “The Puttery.” It features multiple nine-hole miniature golf courses that surround a cocktail bar with food with outdoor patios.

Other venues offer play on simulators. X-Golf America opened its first Charlotte-area site last summer, called X-Golf South Charlotte. In nearby Tega Cay, South Carolina, X-Golf offers virtual golf competitions, leagues and lessons for all skill levels with systems that perform more than 6,000 calculations per second. The simulator replicates golf shots, including short games and putting, through camera systems, infrared lasers, impact sensors and advanced gaming software. Atlanta-based Intown Golf Club has said it plans to open a virtual golf venue with private membership this year in Charlotte’s SouthPark neighborhood.

Two Winston-Salem-area venues have also recently opened with simulators as their centerpiece. Downtown, Roar has a Roaring 20s theme with casual dining, a food hall, and an abundance of games and entertainment on four floors, including four simulators. Just west of Winston-Salem, in Clemmons, The Playground Golf and Sports Bar opened last year and offers three large simulators where patrons tee it up on virtual courses like St. Andrews and Pebble Beach. The simulators, which are booked for $30 to $75 an hour depending on the day and time, can also be used to play soccer, cricket and even Zombie Dodgeball.

Now, indoor golf is going back outdoors. Talamore Golf Resort in Southern Pines recently renovated its driving range and added eight bays of a Toptracer Range, which uses the same high-speed cameras, coupled with sophisticated computer algorithms, to provide instantaneous ball tracking information that is seen on televised PGA Tour coverage.

“The primary goal was to create a fun atmosphere for our guests to gather and continue playing golf utilizing the Toptracer range technology,” says Talamore General Manager Matt Hausser. “They can practice, play other courses, participate in weekly closest to the pin contests or enjoy many of the other games Toptracer has to offer. We added lighting so we could extend the hours into the evening and food and beverage services are being added. We offer an experience that no one else in our area currently offers.” ■

RATING GAME

Pinehurst course designer Tom Doak describes what makes a course great.

When Tom Doak was selected to transform 900 acres in Aberdeen in Moore County into the Pinehurst Resort’s tenth course, I recalled his 2016 LINKS Magazine story titled “How To Rate Your Home Course.”

Ask 10 people to rate the same courses and scores can vary all over the board. e North Carolina Golf Panel uses 10 rating categories to create the North Carolina’s top 100 list: routing, ow, design, strategy, fairness, memorability, condition, variety, aesthetics, and ambiance.

ree courses — Grandfather Golf and Country Club, Elk River Club, the Country Club of North Carolina (Dogwood) — have perfect 100 scores on my ballot. Pinehurst No. 2, is a 99, falling from 10 to 9 in the fairness category. Have you played those greens?

Doak rates a course using nine categories and rates courses from 1 to 10. He starts with a 3 average, not a 5, to avoid the “all above average” approach made famous by Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon children. Doak o ers six factors that might add a point or two to a course’s rating, plus three that can take it down a notch.

SIX WAYS TO ADD POINTS

GREAT LAND: Land for a course is great only if the architect uses it right. Courses near an ocean may make for great viewing, but the layout needs to use the breezes to force golfers to hit a variety of shots. “Great land is actually worth a lot more than one point in the Doak Scale,” Doak wrote in his column, if the designer takes advantage of it.

GREAT HOLES: Champion Hills, a Tom Fazio design in Hendersonville, has great mountain views and interesting holes. A er the 18th hole, a playing partner said, “We just played 18 terri c holes, but all together, they do not make a good golf course.” In his column, Doak wrote, “A great course may be more than the sum of its parts, but usually not much more.” Pine Valley Golf Club in Pine Valley, New Jersey, is long known as the world’s nest course because it has the best set of 18 holes.

GREAT ROUTING: is is the “least understood part” of golf course design. In addition to nding spaces for great holes, “it’s also about exploring the property, making the most of beautiful views, and avoiding back-and-forth monotony.”

GREAT GREENS: Do the greens “create opportunities for interesting recovery play and dictate strategy all the way back to the tee?” Great greens “make every shot count,” Doak wrote.

GREAT HAZARDS: “Golfers dig bunkers and even more so when they have a bit of eye-catching style. Beautiful bunkers are only great bunkers when you put them in compelling spots that force the golfers to deal with them.”

WHAT MAKES A COURSE DIFFERENT: Don’t overlook “creativity in favor of consistency,” Doak noted. Great courses have local characteristics that can’t be replicated anywhere else.

THREE WAYS TO DELETE POINTS

PLAYABILITY: Some courses are designed with low handicap players in mind with little regard for the di culty to the higher handicap players. If customers get beat up on the course, that course may not survive. “You would not enjoy the game if you had to hit multiple wood shots on every hole.”

GOOD PLAYING SURFACES: “It’s hard to enjoy a course if the fairway lies aren’t tight and the greens aren’t true,” Doak wrote. “It can change year to year and day to day,” so he doesn’t give it much weight in rating.

WALKABILITY: Walkers love courses where the next tee is close to the previous green with minimal uphill. “If you’re hiking uphill to every tee, it will spoil the ow of the game.”

Jim Pomeranz

— Jim Pomeranz is a member of the North Carolina Golf Panel. He writes about golf and other sports topics at https://jimpomeranz.substack.com/

TEE TOPPERS

Identifying 15 key people behind golf’s big impact in North Carolina is a question we posed to a dozen veteran golf industry executives and journalists. They came up with this list that includes touring and club professionals, course designers, fashion innovators, event organizers and industry titans. They share a passion for golf and have used their significant expertise to cultivate the game throughout North Carolina and beyond.

By Brad King

MARK BRAZIL CEO Wyndham Championship Greensboro

Brazil has been CEO of the Gate City’s PGA Tour event since September 2021 after serving as tournament director for two decades. The Asheville native previously was executive vice president at the American Junior Golf Association. He is on the PGA Tour’s Tournament Advisory Council. Though not one of the tour’s new elevated events, the Wyndham continues to enjoy an enviable calendar spot as the final tournament before the FedEx Cup playoffs begin.

TOM FAZIO Golf course architect Hendersonville

The acclaimed course designer arrived in Western North Carolina in the mid-1980s to design Wade Hampton Golf Club in Cashiers. That jump started a 20-year run of prolific design that resulted in 17 Fazio designs in the Tar Heel State, ranging from the mountains to the coast and more than 200 layouts around the globe. No living architect has more credits on Golf Digest’s list of America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses and that magazine’s poll for Best Modern Day Golf Course Architect was discontinued after Fazio claimed it three straight times.

Davenport has extended North Carolina’s influence in golf in his role at the exclusive private club that has hosted the Wells Fargo Championship since 2003. Quail Hollow also held the PGA Championship in 2017 and the Presidents Cup competition last year. He has mentored many young golf professionals including Charles Frost at Winston-Salem’s Old Town Club, Eric Williamson at Charlotte Country Club and Kevin Reardon at Providence Country Club in Charlotte.

The Charlotte developer and civic leader is also well-known as the leader of Quail Hollow Club, the elite course built on his family’s land in south Charlotte. He has been president of the PGA Tour’s Wells Fargo Championship since 1988, and is a longtime member of Augusta National Golf Club. The Charlotte club will host the PGA Championship in 2025. Harris’ son, Johno, was general chairman of the 2022 Presidents Cup at Quail Hollow.

SCOTT DAVENPORT PGA Head Professional Quail Hollow Club Charlotte

JOHNNY HARRIS Chairman, CEO Lincoln Harris Charlotte

JIM HYLER JR. Former president U.S. Golf Association

Asheville

The former senior executive of Raleigh-based First Citizens Bank served a 12-year stint on the USGA’s main board, eventually serving as president. He helped found The First Tee chapter in Raleigh and serves on the rules committee at Augusta National Golf Club. The founding board member and club president at Old Chatham Golf Club in Chatham County and former club president at Biltmore Forest Country Club in Asheville was elected to the Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame in 2019.

LONG Chairman Piedmont Triad Charitable Foundation Greensboro

The former owner of a specialty-insurance brokerage, Long revitalized the PGA Tour’s Wyndham Championship (formerly the Greater Greensboro Open) by convincing local leaders of the tournament’s importance in economic development and charitable funding in the Triad. The tournament has helped unite the business communities in WinstonSalem, Greensboro, High Point and Burlington. He’s also a leader at Eagle Point Golf Club in Wilmington.

U.S. Golf Association

Pinehurst

Jones is a veteran of the USGA and Pinehurst Championship Management, having led operations for many U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open events since the 1990s. He was promoted to his current post in 2015 and handled outside-the-ropes strategy and operations for all four USGA Opens – the U.S. Open, the U.S. Women’s Open, the U.S. Senior Open and the newly-created U.S. Senior Women’s Open. When the Henderson native worked for Pinehurst Championship Management, he was a leader in major national tournaments in the 1990s and 2000s.

JOHN MCCONNELL Founder & CEO McConnell Golf Raleigh

The former medical software mogul founded McConnell Golf in 2003 and has built a portfolio of premier private clubs. Including managed and owned properties, the business oversees 13 private golf courses, two semi-private courses and one 27-hole public course in four Southeastern states. The Korn Ferry Tour’s UNC Health Championship presented by Stitch will be played at McConnell’s first course, Raleigh Country Club, after 18 years at another McConnell venue, The Country Club at Wakefield Plantation in North Raleigh.

johnnie-O

Raleigh

A world-wide influencer in golf fashion, Knott founded Peter Millar, based in Raleigh, helping build it into one of golf’s premier sportswear brands. After leaving Peter Millar, which is now owned by Switzerland luxury goods giant Richemont SA, Knott joined Los Angeles-based johnnie-O in 2015 as chief merchandising officer, moving sales, design and marketing offices to Raleigh. The company is now a growing competitor in the golf menswear sector.

Southern Pines

Last year, Miller’s resort hosted its fourth U.S. Women’s Open Championship in the past three decades, while the USGA has hosted three other championships there. Miller’s team recently oversaw the restoration of Southern Pines Golf Club, a Donald Ross design previously owned by the local Elks Club. The former University of Alabama golfer is also a noted golfer, having won many key amateur events in the Carolinas.

Southern Pines

Ledford heads the largest manufacturer of golf grips, operating in six nations. Golf Pride has been transforming from a supplier to club manufacturers into its own brand, and now ranks among the nation’s top 10 golf equipment suppliers at retail. Golf Pride’s 36,000-square-foot innovation center and headquarters debuted in 2019 near the entrance of Pinehurst Resort’s No. 8 course. Previously, Ledford was a vice president at Callaway Golf.

Southern Pines

Morrissett manages the oldest ranking of the “Top 100 Courses in the World” and he also manages GOLF’s “Top 100 Courses in the U.S.” In 1999, Morrissett established Golfclubatlas.com, the game’s epicenter for the study of golf course architecture. The platform has become a virtual Library of Congress, a one-stop-shop highlighting golf course presentation, playability and design.

BOBBY

REG JONES Managing director of Open Championships

KELLY MILLER President & CEO Pine Needles Lodge

CHRIS KNOTT Chief merchandising officer

JAMES LEDFORD President Golf Pride

RAN MORRISSETT Architecture editor GOLF Magazine

Carolinas Golf Association Southern Pines

Nance heads the country’s second-largest allied golf association, spanning North and South Carolina. He arrived at the group in 1984 and was promoted to his current position in 1992. An important a liate is the Carolinas Golf Foundation, which was founded in 1977 to support a variety of golf initiatives. e Clinton native played golf for Wake Forest University, and remained there for two years following graduation as the assistant golf coach.

TOM PASHLEY President Pinehurst Resort

Pinehurst

Pashley has spent nearly three decades at the Dedman family-owned “Home of American Golf,” and was named president in 2014. During his tenure, the resort has embarked on numerous additions to broaden its appeal, such as a redesign of Pinehurst No. 4, the Cradle short course and conversion of a steam plant into a barbecue and cra beer destination. Meanwhile, the USGA is establishing a second headquarters in Pinehurst, with o ces, a new equipment-testing facility, an innovation hub and a museum/visitor center. e Augusta, Georgia native earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Georgia and has a Duke University MBA.

HAROLD VARNER III Professional golfer

LIV Golf Tour

Gastonia

While the fan favorite golf pro caused a stir with his move last year to the controversial LIV Golf tour, Varner is doing many positive things around his home state. e HV3 Foundation is a mentor program that grew to 42 mentors and 60 mentees in its rst year, working with First Tee Greater Charlotte. e foundation partners with the Carolinas Golf Association to conduct the HV3 Invitational, which enables participants to experience a “tour quality” event at an a ordable price. He grew up in Gastonia and played collegiate golf at East Carolina University.

FAN FAVORITES

North Carolina golf fans have opportunities to see terri c players at some key tournaments over the next few months. Here are ve upcoming events that will draw lots of attention.

APRIL 16-18

ACC Women’s Golf Championship at Sedge eld Country Club in Greensboro

APRIL 21-24

ACC Men’s Golf Championship at Country Club of North Carolina in Southern Pines

MAY 4-7

Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte (PGA Tour)

JUNE 1-4

UNC Health Championship at Raleigh Country Club (Korn Ferry Tour)

AUGUST 3-6

Wyndham Championship at Sedge eld Country Club in Greensboro (PGA Tour)

JACK NANCE Executive director

he American dream changes with every generation. One generation found opportunity on transAtlantic ship. Another laid claim to a new land. For those willing to explore, opportunity still exists. It’s not across continents, but it connects them; it’s the internet. Greenville’s 24-year-old Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, has actualized this new American dream.

Tens of millions around the world subscribe to his YouTube channel, leading to $54 million in revenue in 2021, Forbes estimates. He is widely viewed as among the highest-earning individuals on the Google-owned platform.

When asked to imagine a YouTuber, one would picture a boyish dude inhabiting his mom’s basement, sporting pizzastained sweatpants and an immature attitude. Others might envision a bleach-blonde dancing to Billboard’s Top 100, vlogging her Starbucks drink of the week.

Well, that’s kinda wrong.

After hours of interviews and research, I have ascertained only ironies in the world of YouTube. MrBeast is the poster child of this paradox. To be successful in the business, you must be persistent, creative, driven, and smart.

Donaldson started uploading videos under his screen name, MrBeast6000, in 2014. He has a high school diploma from Greenville Christian Academy and relies heavily on four other 20-something guys to film and take part in many of his videos. With his multimillion-dollar income, Donaldson could live anywhere, but chooses to stay in Greenville.

He told podcast interviewer Sam Parr last year that he resides in his Greenville studio. “I like money because I can hire more people and grow a business, but not so I can increase my lifestyle.”

With 128 million subscribers and more than 21 billion page views on his channel, MrBeast is an internet force. His subscribers maintain a loyalty that cable networks

such as CNN and Fox News and streaming services like Hulu and Disney+ would love to match.

Donaldson racks up hundreds of millions of views by creating both crazy challenges and over-the-top philanthropic giveaways to his fans and those in need. Cited as YouTube’s biggest philanthropist, his videos are wholesome, controversyfree, and targeted at a wide range of viewers.

A participant won a $2.5 million Hawker 800 jet in MrBeast’s video, “Last to Take Hand Off Jet, Keeps It.” The 15-minute video, which debuted last November, attracted more than 132 million views as 11 contestants did what the title says. Donaldson began the challenge with only one rule: No pushing.

In his most viral video, “456,000 Squid Games,” Donaldson spent $3.5 million recreating Netflix's hit series about a South Korean survival drama involving post-apocalyptic children’s games. He gave away almost half a million dollars to the winner and $1,000 to each of 456 participants. The video, which didn’t contain the savagery of the Netflix show, launched in November 2021 and garnered more than 380 million views. By comparison, this year’s Super Bowl drew 113 million viewers. MrBeast’s popularity comes from both his creative content, and his extreme altruism. In January, he paid for cataract surgeries that improved the vision for 1,000 people, some of whom had been blind since birth. The emotional video of thankful patients scattered all over the world had more than 120 million views as of mid-March.

MrBeast's `I Survived 50 Hours In Antarctica' on YouTube has received more than 100 million views in two months.

Understanding MrBeast’s business strategy requires an understanding of the intricacies of the internet. “It’s a way for individuals to share their unique experiences with the world.

ere’s nothing like it. It’s the rst of its kind,” says Tate Stephenson, 22, of Winston-Salem.

He’s a prime example of the genre’s creativity as he directs oneor two-hourlong productions for a survivalist video game called “Rust.” Under the screen name Stevie, he uploads gaming and commentary videos that o en o er a touch of comedy. He has 1.1 million subscribers.

ough Stephenson didn’t go to college, he has made a successful career in content creation.

How successful? Enough to have bought a 2022 Stingray Corvette.

What makes the industry special is that most YouTubers don’t start with a monetary motive. “It starts with a passion to share,” Stephenson says. “A passion to create. But actually making money on YouTube takes a lot of hard work.”

He describes two ways of making a career out of YouTube, namely through clicks and sponsorships. YouTube requires creators to have more than 1,000 subscribers and report at least 4,000 hours of channel tra c in one year before becoming eligible for monetizing videos through advertisements. e clicks can pay o , typically using the “cost per 1,000 impressions” metric, or CPM.

“But the rst year, you’re not going to get views,” Stephenson says. “ e road to 1,000 subscribers is grueling,” and is forged by YouTube’s complex algorithm that determines how videos will appear in Google search results.

Considering that 30,000 hours of videos are uploaded every hour, the chance of viewers stumbling along a video is slim to none.

To achieve success that meets the algorithm’s standards, Stephenson says a solid, persistent work ethic is vital. “Video releases need to be consistent — at least one to two videos per week — and every video needs to have something better than the last,” he says. “ at’s the only way to chip your way into the algorithm.”

Donaldson has somehow gured this out for a decade: e dude owns the algorithm. Despite the endless options on the internet, millions ock to MrBeast.

Industry bloggers estimate that MrBeast earns about $20 per 1,000 views. at would suggest potential revenue of $2.6 million for the hand-on-the-jet video that has drawn 132 million clicks. at success has led to sponsorships, which MrBeast has scored mainly from so ware services such as Quid, CSGO Lotto, Honey, and TikTok, the Chinese social media giant. “ e more you grow, the more views you get, the more watch time you have on your videos, the bigger deals you’ll get from brands,” Stephenson says. With an upward of 500 million views per month, MrBeast is attracting considerable corporate interest.

Quid, a San Francisco-based data organization so ware service, sponsored a video in which MrBeast walked around Greenville with $10,000 in cash and handed out increments of $1,000 to homeless people.

Talent agent Reed Duchscher, 33, helps arrange MrBeast’s brand transactions. He’s the founder of Night Media, and considered a pioneer in assisting successful YouTubers in building their businesses. His clients include popular video gamers Preston Arsement, Leah Ashe and Ian Stapleton, who goes by the name of Ssundee.

Given MrBeast’s success, one might think of him as a big, boisterous personality. With that nickname, and someone who handed $500,000 to the winner of a tag game, surely he’s a ashy party animal.

“He’s pretty quiet, actually,” says Andrew Roth, who nished second in MrBeast’s Circle Challenge video. During that event, 100 participants tried to outlast each other by staying inside a circle drawn in a warehouse. A er 12 days, with the circle continually narrowing, 10 contestants remained. ey then played a 48-hour game of extreme tag at Tennessee’s Bristol Motor Speedway.

“Jimmy is a really good businessman. He is strategic and insightful,” Roth says, always thinking about his next move. During the challenge, Donaldson told him, “Don’t do anything you’re not proud of. If you’re doing something, and you’re not 100% in it, drop it.” If MrBeast was unhappy with a video a er spending millions of dollars on production, he would scrap it rather than present a awed product.

Before Donaldson was consulting Night Media, however, he was asking a Greenville business owner for advice.

Bret Oliverio owns Sup Dogs, a downtown pub that has won the Barstool website’s “Best Bar of the Year” three times in the last four years. On a typical Saturday, “people line up to get in at 11 a.m. and we are kicking them out at 3 a.m. We’re always packed,” he says. e bar was so successful, Oliverio expanded to Chapel Hill, claiming a prime location on Franklin Street.

“I remember around 2017 getting a call from Jimmy’s mom,” says Oliverio. “We had a long business conversation when he was just taking o . She was asking me about how we hire in the community and who we use as charity.”

MrBeast has been a big winner for Oliverio’s restaurant and Greenville. “Everyday people come to Sup Dogs because they’ve seen us in one of Jimmy’s pictures,” he says. at includes reporters from Rolling Stone magazine and a YouTuber from Brazil. “ e amount of people who come to Greenville in hopes of stumbling into Jimmy is crazy.”

When Donaldson posted a picture in front of Sup Dogs, the restaurant’s Instagram account gained 6,000 followers.

While becoming an international presence, Donaldson has stayed in his hometown, where he has remained close with his family. His mother, Sue Donaldson, o en appears in his videos, including “Giving My Mom $100,000 (Proudest Day of My Life.).” His stepfather, Tracy, is operations manager, Rolling Stone reported in a story last year.

His brother, CJ, has 4.35 million subscribers to his CJ eseDays channel. His nickname is MrBro.

Greenville Mayor P.J. Connelly calls MrBeast a great partner. He meets periodically with Donaldson to discuss how to make the city more attractive to content creators. Donaldson recently partnered with East Carolina University to develop a credentialing program for students training in video production skills. ey hope to meet growing industry demand.

Donadson bought an old Greenville church for $1.3 million, then spent $10 million on renovations, he told YouTube in uencer Arun Maini in a July 2022 interview. en he added $2.9 million of high-tech equipment, Maini estimates. en there’s the estimated $4 million a month that Donaldson typically spends producing videos, according to published reports.

“He has invested in our community. He is exactly the type of business leader we need,” Connelly says. “His team has ambitious goals to grow.”

Our repeated attempts to seek an interview with MrBeast didn’t pan out. He’s rarely quoted in the press.

PHOTO CREDIT: BRYAN REGAN PHOTOGRAPHY

Apart from YouTube, Donaldson has turned his content creation into a multipronged pursuit.

His rst venture was converting a former Burger Boy location in Wilson into “the world's rst free food restaurant.” He paid people to eat there for a video, ultimately giving away thousands of dollars worth of burgers and fries.

Now, MrBeastBurger sells food in more than 300 cities with burgers and chicken sandwiches made by local “ghost kitchens” and delivered by DoorDash or Uber Eats. Restaurants split the revenue with MrBeast. Fans have ordered more than 1 million burgers, MrBeast o cials have said.

Donaldson isn’t stopping there. He’s selling a collection of chocolate bars called Feastables. e products are sold at Walmart and on Amazon, priced at $29.99 for a 10-pack of “deliciously creamy” bars. More diversi cation is likely for MrBeast, who has said, “I really want to be Elon [Musk] one day.”

What’s most impressive, however, may be his charitable streak.

“ at’s how I know him. He’s more than just a YouTuber, he’s a philanthropist,” says Hunter Burnette, 54, a Greenville native who lives in Raleigh. e construction company executive doesn’t represent Donaldson’s main viewership demographic of males aged 35 and younger, though he is well acquainted with MrBeast.

While Greenville’s economy bene ts from East Carolina University and ECU Health, more than a quarter of the city’s population have incomes lower than the federal poverty level, according to Census Bureau data. “Outside the city, there’s a lot of poverty,” Burnette says.

He and others stress that MrBeast has made Greenville a better place by sponsoring a food bank and donating to the Boys and Girls Club and other nonpro ts. Donaldson launched Beast Philanthropy in 2020 with a anksgiving feast that provided more than 50,000 meals to families in need. “I remember when he rented out the fairgrounds in Pitt County,” Mayor Connelly says. “Vehicles lined up for almost three miles to get turkeys from MrBeast. His outreach is incredible.”

In the past 20 years, the American dream of rags to riches has become harder to come by. According to the World Economic Forum, those born in the 1950s had an 81% chance of earning more than their parents. For the Gen X cohort of the 1980s, the percentage has slid to 45%. is decline is predicted to continue into the new generations.

Fortunately, the internet is presenting unforeseen opportunities for some shrewd operators. e World Wide Web is the wild west. MrBeast is showing the way in how to capitalize o this new sphere. ■

It takes a village to build an internet empire. MrBeast has four friends who are most associated with his work, gaining a touch of stardom in the process.

• Chris Tyson, 26, is a childhood friend of MrBeast who has appeared in many of his videos. He and his wife, Katie, have a son, Tucker. His YouTube account has 2.7 million followers at @chris_Thememegod.

• Chandler Hallow, 24, met MrBeast while working as a janitor before becoming a crew member. He is married to Cara Davis. His Instagram account shows 3.7 million followers.

• Karl Jacobs, 24, has been part of MrBeast’s videos since 2020. His YouTube channel has 3.95 million subscribers. He is a North Carolina native and attended a community college in Oregon before meeting MrBeast.

• Nolan Hansen, 24, is originally from Nebraska. He met MrBeast while dating his sister, Anna. His first video for MrBeast was “I Spent $1,000,000 on Lottery Tickets.”

Another key figure in MrBeast’s universe is Darren Margolias, who has been executive director of the affiliated Beast Philanthropy nonprofit since 2020. The group has participated in many charitable endeavors, but mainly provides food assistance. It has given 4.1 million pounds of food to more than 245,000 people, according to its website.

Margolias is a South African native who sold his real estate business to focus on his passions for rescuing animals and helping charities thrive.

CRAFT RENEWING

A Morganton manufacturer excels by giving luxury furniture buyers what they want.

By Kevin Ellis

Cindy Hood’s le hand holds the base of the un nished dining room chair, while her right hand cradles a small electric sander that glides across its legs. She’s been making furniture for 30 years, so she speaks with authority.

“It’s time-consuming,” says Hood, a cra sperson at Chaddock Furniture Workroom in Morganton, while allowing neither her eyes nor her hands to stray from the smooth maple grain. “So many sides. Everything has to be ush.”

One might envision Hood as a lone artisan, working in a shop behind her home in this Burke County foothills town of 18,000 residents. Instead, Hood performs her job in a 150,000-square-foot building, a former Hanes textile factory where dozens of cra speople are making high-end, made-to-order furniture. Machines aid workers in cutting raw material, while further down the line others apply nish by hand. Elsewhere, workers meticulously hand-tie the springs in a cushioned chair to help guarantee the seat o ers “a good ride” for years to come.

A few steps away, Martin Cazares uses a small metal tool to make scratches and dings to distress a maple console, which will then be sanded and have 20 to 25 coats of nish applied, each coating adding character.

ese tricks of the trade come from years of experience, not mimicked from a YouTube video or mass produced on a factory oor.

“You almost have to have a lesson in antiquing and how things would age,” says Chaddock President Kevin Ward, describing Cazares’ work. “We have artisans and cra smen who work here. It takes a special person to want to do what we do. Someone who will say, ‘It’s my job to create a beautiful piece of furniture that will last for generations.’”

While the average sofa lasts just six years, the 200 or so employees at Chaddock Furniture Workroom take a di erent approach. Sustainability in industry, says Chaddock CEO Andrew Crone, can also be de ned by making something that will last.

“ is is the way it was done 50, 60, 70 years ago, but we still do it that way because we think that’s our customer,” he says. “It’s the nest homes in America that our products are going to live in, and that’s really cool.”

ose homes include the most famous one in the nation’s capital. A er the spring High Point Furniture Market last year, Chaddock Furniture sent a dining room table and a co ee table from its Mark D. Sikes collection to Jill Biden’s o ce in the East Wing of the White House.

AMERICAN COMEBACK

North Carolina’s furniture manufacturing tradition has its roots in the 1800s, when Moravian artisans located in present-day Winston-Salem and Quakers in Randolph and Rowan counties created pieces that remain highly coveted by collectors and museums.

In 1890, six North Carolina businesses produced an estimated $159,000 worth of furniture. Ten years later, 44 furniture factories operated in Hickory, High Point, Marion and other towns, reporting $1.5 million in sales, according to a 2020 report by John Mullin, a researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.

e industry took o a er World War II thanks to a booming U.S. housing market. During the 1960s and 1970s, no signi cant o shore competition existed as North Carolina became the nation’s top producer of upholstered and wooden household furniture. It ranked as the state’s second-largest manufacturing industry, behind textiles and apparel.

By 1990, more than 90,000 people worked in North Carolina furniture manufacturing. But a 1999 trade agreement with China opened the door to imports from Asia. In just 10 years, between 1999 and 2009, North Carolina’s furniture industry lost more than half of its jobs as companies shut down or consolidated. In 1994, China exported $241 million worth of wood furniture to the U.S. Ten years later, that number grew more than 17 times, to $4.2 billion. By 2016, 73.5% of all furniture sold in America was imported, according to the Fed report.

e shi in manufacturing was initiated not by Chinese industrialists, but by North Carolina manufacturers who “sought cost advantages that could put them ahead in what has historically been, and remains to this day, a highly competitive industry,” Mullin wrote.

In recent years, U.S. furniture manufacturers have bene ted from increased tari s on Chinese imports. Companies also have recognized the increased expense of making furniture overseas because of shipping costs and rising labor costs in China. More than 35,000 people work in North Carolina’s furniture industry today, a number that has held steady in recent years.

Some North Carolina manufacturers, such as Chaddock, have responded by targeting the luxury market.

Manuel Diaz upholsters a swivel chair, which will have exposed wood. Chaddock Furniture Workroom employs highly-skilled workers to produce customized products.

Chaddock Furniture Workroom President Kevin Ward explains the multiple finishing processes that are used on furniture such as this $12,000 dining room table.

CHADDOCK'S STORY

Guy Chaddock started his furniture company in his native California, basing its reputation on its high-quality finishes, says Crone, who grew up in Hickory and started his career at Lane Home Furnishings after graduating from UNC Chapel Hill in 2011. He joined Chaddock in sales and marketing in 2016 and was appointed CEO the next year.

In 2004, Guy Chaddock & Co. was about to close in Bakersfield, California, when North Carolina furniture executives Darrell Ferguson and Fred Copeland swooped in and moved operations to Morganton. Their Ferguson Copeland and Chaddock brands operated as separate entities until 2013. Ferguson Copeland, which imported furniture and finished it in North Carolina, was phased out when Chaddock began focusing on the made-in-America model.

That decision appears to have paid off as Chaddock revenue increased nearly 70% over the past five years, Crone says. He declined to provide more details.

Principal owners are brothers Peter and Paul Kennedy, who were also initial owners and investors in Ferguson Copeland. Their late father, Wall Street executive Peter Kennedy, owned furniture company Drexel Heritage in the 1970s and 1980s. Drexel Heritage, which was one of the largest U.S. manufacturers, emerged from Drexel Furniture, which began in 1903 in the Burke County town of that name.

The Unifour counties of Alexander, Burke, Catawba and Caldwell have a long history of furniture manufacturing, boasting companies with global operations including Vanguard Furniture and Century Furniture.

Chaddock’s leaders say the company’s success stems from customizing furniture from heights to widths and finishes to colors, for designers to place in opulent homes, hospitality spots and luxury senior living communities.

“Six years ago, we looked at a path forward and how we wanted to compete,” says Crone. “And we decided to take something people loved about us and just focus on that.”

The company changed its name to Chaddock Furniture Workroom “to celebrate our history of quality, craftsmanship and custom capabilities,” he says. The rebranding is “more representative of our way of working and also to show that we aren't here to just

make furniture but to support and promote the design community.”

“It’s taken us years to get where we are today,” adds Ward, who joined Chaddock as president in 2018 after leadership positions at High Point-based Baker Interiors Group and Hickory Chair.

Like many manufacturers, Chaddock places a major emphasis on the biennial High Point Furniture Market, which is slated for April 22-26. Putting its products before thousands of furniture retailers and designers helps potential customers get a feel for the brand and its quality.

About 60% of Chaddock Furniture Workroom sales go to designers. The balance of sales are at retail stores, where customers can choose between fabrics, finishes and other elements.

Retail prices for chairs range from $2,000 to $6,000, sofas from $4,000 to $9,000, and dining tables, $5,000 to $12,000.

Customization, such as altering the length, width or depth elements, makes up about 20% of the company’s business. That usually adds additional costs that depend on the complexity of the request. Chaddock is able to produce a 17-foot dining room table or a sectional sofa that can seat an entire sorority house, with 95% of the work is done at its Morganton plant.

“You can do what you want in almost every case, and we’ll do it for you,” says Ward.

WORKING WITH DESIGNERS

To score in the luxury market, Chaddock cultivates partnerships with industry trendsetters, such as Sikes, based in Los Angeles, and other famous designers like Mary McDonald, Larry Laslo, and the late David Easton. At last fall’s High Point Furniture Market, Chaddock debuted an exclusive line from Houston-based designer Ben Johnston, whose collection of case goods, tables, chairs and upholstery was cited as one of the event’s best debuts by the Business of Home industry publication.

“There can sometimes be this ‘Amazon’ mindset where people assume products drop off of a magic conveyor belt in the sky,” says Johnston. “However, I’m in the business of selling luxury, and I love telling Chaddock’s story, highlighting the fact that there are real people making these heirloom-quality pieces.

“Yes, clients are seeking furniture, but they also want a story; they want to be sold on the romance of the pieces they are investing in,” says Johnston.

Maria Diaz sews cloth and David Carswell puts the finishing touches on the maple legs of a sofa. About 200 craftspeople make furniture in the Morganton-based business.

CHADDOCK'S GROWTH

About 85% of Chaddock’s roughly 200 employees work in manufacturing, and Crone and Ward say they’d hire another 25 artisans if they could nd skilled workers.

“With us, it’s all about the people,” says Ward. “We could easily increase volume.”

e company added 40 workers last year and introduced a companywide pay increase and tenure program for bonuses to help attract and retain employees. Focusing on the work culture helps employees and the company, o cials say. Simple things like adding umbrellas to outdoor break tables or better food choices in the canteen lead to employee engagement. ey pointed to an example of an employee suggesting the purchase of a di erent grit of sandpaper, which will save the company thousands of dollars in the long run.

PARTY HOST

When 75,000 visitors arrive in High Point this month for the world’s largest home furnishings trade show, a new leader will be in charge of the host organization.

“We are what Detroit is to the automobile industry,” says Tammy Nagem, who succeeded Tom Conley as president and chief executive officer of the High Point Market Authority in January. “The buys that are set here are what we’re all going to have in our homes in six months.”

The Martinsville, Virginia, native joined the authority at its inception in 2001.

While Atlanta, Las Vegas and other cities have significant furniture markets, the market in this city of 115,000 residents remains a powerhouse with 2,000 exhibitors filling 11.5 million square feet of showroom space. There’s also the secret sauce of an unrivaled welcoming attitude.

“The hospitality shown here that keeps this event coming back is something our state can be very proud of,” she says. High Point residents also support the market, now in its 113th year.

“We were doing Airbnb before anyone heard of it,” Nagem says. “People here have been renting their homes to market guests for 50 years.”

“We want everyone to come up with ideas to be more e cient, save the company money or make employee morale better,” Ward says. eir goal is to employ a simple, non-bureaucratic strategy. A single door separates the o ce workers and management from the manufacturing side, or workroom. Because of that close proximity, questions are answered, changes are made and ideas are shared in the moment rather than in days or weeks. eir production is modeled a er Toyota’s “one-piece ow” system, which aims to ensure the right parts are available when they are needed.

Customizing to meet individual demand is also critical. Crone notes a designer may love everything about a particular sofa, except it is intended for the home of a 7-foot NBA player who wants to stretch his long legs. Chaddock can make a sofa that will t. Adaptability sets them apart.

“It’s not easy to compete with us today because we o er so many customizations,” Crone says.

Back in the workroom, David Carswell uses a sprayer to apply nish to the maple legs of a white upholstered sofa. His hands are steady, and he does not use cloth or tape to protect the fabric from stains.

“You better be careful with it,” the artisan says, ashing a smile. ■

The authority has a 13-member staff and $9 million annual budget, about half of that coming from state coffers. A 2018 UNC Chapel Hill and Duke University study reported that the market generates more than $6.7 billion annually to the economy. “For a couple of weeks, we become a really big deal,” says Nagem.

BY THE NUMBERS

#1

North Carolina’s ranking in the U.S. for furniture manufacturing jobs

FURNITURE EMPLOYMENT IN NORTH CAROLINA

34,660 ..... Third quarter 2022

36,601 ..... 2016

32,879 ..... 2011

83,419 ..... 2000

WAGES $902 .....

$856 .....

$877 .....

Average weekly furniture wages (2022 through third quarter)

Average weekly furniture wages 2021

Average weekly furniture wages 2000 (adjusted for inflation)

Source: NC Department of Commerce

Cass Beshears and Darlene Allen assemble an oak side table at Chaddock's Morganton plant.

WORKING REGIONALLY. SUCCEEDING SIGNIFICANTLY.

The public-private economic development organization known as North Carolina’s Southeast is proving collaboration across 20 counties works.

Shaped by vast geography, diverse demography and a vivid patchwork of communities and industries, North Carolina lends itself well to regional collaboration for economic development. Yet, political lines of demarcation among counties and municipalities can challenge such efforts. A strategic consensus must first be built and then sustained tactically by ongoing and careful, even painstaking, give and take.

Few are more aware of what it takes to nurture successful regional economic development than Steve Yost. As president and CEO of North Carolina’s Southeast, he oversees a public-private partnership that markets the state’s southeast region. The organization pulls together 20 counties from the Atlantic Ocean to the

Uwharrie Mountains.

It may be surprising that a region carrying the moniker of “Southeast” includes an ancient mountain range as well as Anson and Montgomery counties of the Piedmont and Moore and Richmond of the Sandhills. Thus are the lines of regional collaboration.

“Our population is now larger than that of 13 U.S. states,” says Yost, a veteran economic developer who has worked at the county, state and regional levels across his 30-year career. “The total GDP of our top five metro areas is greater than either Vermont or Wyoming.”

STRONGER TOGETHER

Yost’s organization succeeds through focus. Instead of chasing after today’s crowded stable of corporate

unicorns, the Southeast targets a small handful of industry clusters for outreach. It includes traditional sectors like metalworks and agribusiness and newer targets like aerospace and advanced textiles.

The region’s vast footprint encompasses the state’s major military installations — Fort Bragg, Camp Lejeune and Seymour Johnson Air Force Base among them. This enhances appeal to defense contractors and military suppliers. Anchored by the Port of Wilmington and supported by recent improvements in railroads and highways, the Southeast has become a choice destination for global logistics and retail distribution operations.

“There may be some economic development programs that still emphasize a ‘shoot anything that

flies and claim everything that falls’ mission,” Yost says. “That’s not us. It never has been. We focus tightly on our competitive strengths as a region and on the activities we excel at as an organization.”

With a staff of just four, Yost and his team generate leads for the region’s counties by reaching out to growing companies whose business strategies could benefit from an expansion or relocation to southeastern North Carolina. Utilizing digital marketing tools, face-to-face outreach, and a network of relationships with allies, corporate real estate brokers and location advisers, the organization funnels qualified opportunities to its local partners.

“We also provide technical support in the form of research and project management to those counties that lack such specialized expertise in-house,”

says Yost, noting that 14 of the Southeast’s 20 counties are classified by the N.C. Department of Commerce as “Tier One,” the highest level of economic distress.

The organization’s roots go back to the mid-1990s, when the N.C. General Assembly created regional economic development commissions to ensure each of the state’s 100 counties had access to impactful job creation strategies. When legislators dismantled the network in 2014, the Southeast shifted to a public-private model that leveraged resources and leadership from member counties and private investors. The move has shown impressive results. Since then, the organization has grown from 11 counties to 20. Earlier this year, Jones and Richmond counties joined the fold.

“We’ve had inquiries from counties we’ve had to turn away because they

just weren’t the right fit,” Yost says. “But nothing speaks more compellingly to our success than the fact that counties and private investors know our model, like our model and want to join us.”

It was during Gene McLaurin’s 15 years as mayor of Rockingham that he came to understand what all it takes to bring new companies and jobs to southeastern North Carolina. The town partnered with Richmond County to expand water and wastewater capacity and create new industrial parks. Later, as a Democratic state senator representing Anson, Richmond, Scotland and Stanly counties, McLaurin worked with Gov. Pat McCrory and his administration officials to establish a state supported non-profit to lead economic development service delivery.

“I was a businessperson, so it made perfect sense,” says McLaurin, who now chairs the board of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina (EDPNC), the statewide entity he helped champion.

“Economic development is a team sport and it’s regional, not just within county silos,” says McLaurin. “Criss-crossing the state, I see many examples of cooperation among counties.” When not traveling on behalf of EDPNC, McLaurin heads Quality Oil Co., part of the venture firm ZV Pate, Inc., an early, influential private investor in North Carolina’s Southeast. Based in the Scotland County community of Laurel Hill, ZV Pate has interests in agribusiness, forestry, restaurant services and other enterprises. McLaurin’s encouragement led several counties along the region’s western rim to become part of Yost’s regional marketing partnership.

“These are rural counties for the most part, and rural communities have only so much ability to market themselves,”

Mt. Olive Pickles production in Wayne County.

McLaurin says. “That’s where NC’s Southeast is a tremendous help.”

Despite the economic upheaval that accompanied COVID-19, the past two and a half years have been the most productive in the economic development organization’s 27-year history. Since July 2020, its leadgeneration and project management assistance have supported more than $627 million in announced investments by 29 companies. The commitments include the creation of nearly 2,800 new jobs.

Robert Van Geons, president and CEO of the Fayetteville - Cumberland County Economic Development Corp., calls the region’s recent run “a wave that’s really reaching its zenith.”

A WORKFORCE READY FOR AEROSPACE AND BEYOND

The tide began to turn for the region’s economy about 10 years ago, Van Geons explains, as its affordability, unique talent assets and accessible Mid-Atlantic location began gathering attention from executives and site-selection consultants.

As for workforce readiness, Fort Bragg alone channels more than 7,000 well-trained soldiers into the civilian job market each year, Van Geons says, about two-thirds of whom indicate a desire to remain in North Carolina should the appropriate career opportunity arise. A similar story is told in Onslow and Wayne counties with steady cohorts of Marines and Air Force personnel mustering out of Lejeune and Seymour

Johnson. Skill-sets range “from cybersecurity and drone operation to truck drivers,” according to Van Geons. Exiting military labor is also adept with international diversity, including foreign language expertise. About 80 native languages are spoken in the Cumberland County public school system, he notes.

Pentagon contracts crank some $1.8 billion into the economy surrounding Fort Bragg. and defense industry names with outposts there include General Dynamics, Boeing, Raytheon Technologies and CACI. The Southeast’s appeal as a military business destination extends across the region. At the N.C. Global TransPark near Kinston, Draken International has grown an 80-person workforce over the last three years that includes

PHOTOS COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA’S SOUTHEAST

retired fighter pilots from strategically important air bases like Langley, Shaw and Seymour Johnson. The Texas company owns several Douglas A-4 Skyhawks and sub-sonic F1 fighter jets used in aerial combat simulations for active-duty pilots. Seasoned Draken flyers, freshly departed from their military service, perform the role of “enemy” combatants.

The 2,400-acre Global TransPark has been a catalyst for the region’s aerospace industry, playing host to Spirit AeroSystems’ massive components plant and taking on overflow work from Fleet Readiness Center East, the U.S. Navy’s huge aviation maintenance and repair depot in neighboring Craven County. With space constraints complicating potential growth, FRC East is said to

be North Carolina’s largest industrial employer east of Interstate 95, and Global TransPark leaders hope to see their facility, just 58 miles away, accommodate more aviation jobs and operations.

“We have a very credible regional vision for growing aerospace manufacturing, maintenance and repair operations, aviation services, and defense and homeland security industries – and it’s starting to really get traction,” says Mark Pope, senior vice president of the NC Global TransPark Economic Development Region. In 2015, as Lenoir County’s economic development director, Pope led that county’s entry into North Carolina’s Southeast and was soon working with Yost and others to inventory their collective aviation and aerospace assets before crafting a

strategy for growing the cluster.

The result has been the packaging of an aerospace “corridor” stretching from Seymour Johnson in Wayne County down U.S. 70 through the Global TransPark, FRC East and terminating at Camp Lejeune.

“I give Steve and the Southeast a lot of credit for understanding the potential that was here and the opportunity we have for bringing in more jobs and investment dollars,” Pope says. “One of the major reasons our micro-region is seeing these solid results right now is that we have such strong partners, and I count the Southeast high on that list.”

In 2021, Pope’s collaboration with regional partners also helped land Grupporeco, an Italian maker of kitchen appliance components. The firm

Airplane assembly at Spirit AeroSystems in Lenoir County.

“We have a very credible regional vision for growing aerospace manufacturing, maintenance and repair operations, aviation services, and defense and homeland security industries – and it’s starting to really get traction,”

– Mark Pope, senior vice president of the NC Global TransPark Economic Development Region

selected Lenoir County for the site of its first U.S. manufacturing operation, a move that brought 100 new jobs and $28 million in capital investment to the Southeast. In unveiling the company’s choice, Grupporeco CEO Vincenzo Locatelli credited assistance received from local and regional leaders.

“The COVID pandemic made this a challenging and time-consuming process, but the support of the authorities and community has been outstanding, and we’re excited to have the project start very soon,” Locatelli said. Manufacturing accounts for a majority of recent announcements in the Southeast, and international companies seeking a cost-effective East Coast destination have been among them.

MAXIMIZING THE PORT OF WILMINGTON

Excellent multi-modal transportation systems make the Southeast a similarly popular choice for logistics and distribution companies. News broke last summer that leading third-party logistics provider Port City Logistics plans to build a $16 million facility at the Port of Wilmington. This validated the belief of Southeast leaders that Greater Wilmington and surrounding counties are poised to benefit from the fundamental realignment of global supply chains many economists predict. The Savannah, Georgia.based company will employ 75 people once its 150,000-square-foot transload warehouse opens in 2024.

Eric Howell, chief executive officer at Port City Logistics, says quick turnaround times at the Port of Wilmington will add value for his company and its customers.

“In the post-pandemic supply-chain landscape, customers need flexibility and optionality,” Howell says. “Wilmington gives us that.” Howell is bullish on the port’s future, believing the facility is roughly where the Port of Savannah was two decades ago in terms of harnessing its true potential.

“Wilmington can take market share and be a significant player on the East Coast,” he says. Continued improvements to the region’s highways – especially the completion of Interstate 74, could change the economic game for Southeast

communities within close reach of the port. “We see it as all positive,” says Howell, whose 22-year-old company currently operates 14 distribution centers around the U.S. “It can meet the needs of a lot of customers on a speedto-market play.”

Port City Logistics’ announcement followed on the heels of another big third party logistics expansion in Wilmington. Plans by homegrown MegaCorp Logistics to add 300 jobs to its workforce there provide additional evidence that the region’s distribution cluster has turned a corner.

“This is the latest evidence that our region is on the winning side of the post-pandemic economy,” Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo said last year upon announcing the news. “Wilmington has the assets, infrastructure and workforce growing companies like MegaCorp need, but we also have an unbeatable leadership network businesses look for when assessing destinations,” he added.

Founded in Wilmington in 2009, the company also considered Jacksonville, Florida, and Cincinnati, Ohio, where it operates large facilities, for the expansion.

Scott Satterfield, who has led Wilmington Business Development for the better part of three decades, says the excitement now surrounding the region’s logistics sector can be traced to a vision North Carolina’s Southeast began piecing together10 years ago after it examined the assets that had driven Savannah’s port-centered regional development strategy.

“Steve and his team are always looking around the next corner, and they realized we had many of the same basic advantages that communities around Savannah had,” says Satterfield, whose organization provides economic development services to the New Hanover and Pender counties and the city of Wilmington. The key would be creating an inventory of quality properties that logistics companies could lease or purchase.

“The potential around the port was obvious, but the model also means lucrative possibilities for rural communities in surrounding counties –assuming they are prepared to make the product development investments,” says Satterfield.

Opportunities quickly spread across Pender Commerce Park. Just 10 minutes from Interstate 40, the 330-acre property is home to several food and beverage distributors, as well as a FedEx Freight mini-hub and an Amazon delivery station currently under construction. Another welcomed newcomer, Atlanta-based RL Cold’s is building a 300,000-square-foot cold storage facility, which is expected to be an export-oriented supply-chain asset for the Southeast’s massive pork and poultry industry.

MEGA-SITE STRENGTHENS THE MIX

Farther away, the International Logistics Park of North Carolina straddles the line between Brunswick and Columbus counties. Its readiness for development is validated by a Certified Mega-Site designation from the state. The 1,000-plus acre property benefits from a multi-jurisdictional state statute that allows local governments to pool land and share tax revenues derived from it. Better still, the entire property and the companies that locate anywhere on it, enjoy the

Wilmington

benefits of Columbus County’s Tier 3 status, which is more generous than Brunswick County’s Tier 1 designation. This is a key consideration when it comes to state infrastructure grants and financial incentives.

“NC’s Southeast was a key player in getting the counties to talk and work together,” recalls Gary Lanier, director of the Columbus County Economic Development Commission for the past 14 years. Early on, the property

was considered by both Continental Tire and Caterpillar in high-profile site searches. It didn’t make the cut either time. Today, with full water and wastewater resources and other infrastructure in place, ILP is again drawing serious looks, Lanier says.

“That park is in a great location, and it’s getting ready to explode,” Lanier says. Well before it was completed in January 2022, for example, a 150,000-square-foot

speculative building known as the International Commerce Center was fully leased. Tenants quickly began asking about more space, and a plan for nearly doubling the building’s size is under discussion by its private owners. Among its tenants is Precision Swiss Products Inc., a California-based aerospace parts manufacturer that relocated its headquarters to the region two years ago with assistance from NC’s Southeast.

International Logistics Park

PROVEN RELATIONSHIPS

Lanier says the tactical guidance he gets from his regional partners has become more sophisticated in recent years. Recruitment is more data driven. Prospects are thoroughly vetted. Marketing resources are pinpointed on companies eager to learn about the Southeast’s enviable economic and business resources. Yost and his colleagues also receive high marks for effectively administering federal COVID-19 recovery funds for digital infrastructure development in 2020. North Carolina’s Southeast is also praised for obtaining and distributing $5 million in state funds for site readiness, master planning and infrastructure development over the past 15 months.

“Southeastern North Carolina has a lot to offer,” says state Sen. Bill Rabon, whose district includes Brunswick, Columbus and part of New Hanover counties.

“Public-private partnerships like NC’s Southeast are imperative to promote the region and land new businesses. NC’s Southeast plays an important role in establishing those long-term relationships,” says Rabon, who is now championing additional state funds for spec-building

development across the region.

Chris Chung is also impressed with the organization’s work. As CEO of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, Chung engineered a unique arrangement whereby his organization refers project leads to NC’s Southeast. In frequent instances when corporate site searches are time-sensitive, working with a single entity— instead of 20 counties — can speed the state’s response to incoming opportunities.

“That’s an efficiency for us and for the client company,” says Chung. It’s a collaborative model that boils down to trust. “Steve and his team have earned the trust and the vote of confidence from his communities to be an honest broker.

Investments in the region’s digital infrastructure, as well as its industrial properties, put the Southeast in a firm position for more success downrange. The work-from-anywhere era offers fresh opportunities for affordable but remote rural communities now that lastmile broadband is connecting quiet country residences with global markets and modern learning networks.

“Connectivity is hugely important in this new world,” says Chung. Pooling resources to market globally also helps

less populous places be seen on the national stage. Plus, with historically tight labor markets, growing businesses carefully consider regional labor sheds, not municipal boundaries.

“It’s a good idea to think regionally,” he says, “because companies think regionally.” ■

— Lawrence Bivins writes about business and the economy. He lives in Raleigh.

Chris Chung is the CEO of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina.

The warehouse at Coastal Beverage in Pender County.

NC’S SOUTHEAST REGION

Includes 20 counties:

Anson

Bladen

Brunswick

Columbus

Craven

Cumberland

Duplin

Hoke

Jones

Lenoir

Montgomery

Moore

New

Hanover

Onslow

Pender

Richmond

Robeson

Scotland

Sampson

Wayne

PARTNERING FOR THE GREATER GOOD

Collaborating with county partners is key to building the state’s inventory of megasites and bringing jobs to rural North Carolina.

Kevin Franklin is a believer in the power of partnership, and when Toyota Motor was exploring sites for a new battery manufacturing plant, collaboration was crucial to success.

As president of Randolph County’s Economic Development Corp, Franklin knew his county could offer Toyota the large slice of land it needed, but it didn’t have the population density and financial resources to build a shovelready megasite.

“We’re one of those communities that is relatively rural,” he said. “We’ve got lots of land mass, but our population is

still small, and so to be able to bite off a project like this on our own, it really would not have been feasible.”

Randolph County leaned into statewide and regional partnerships, collaborating with Greensboro and Guilford County for extending utilities to the site. The North Carolina Railroad Co. and Joseph M. Bryan Foundation helped with financing. Randolph County added $167.3 million in local incentives, while state incentives totaled $271 million. Also, the Golden LEAF Foundation put up $40 million.

The Greensboro-Randolph Megasite

in Liberty is nestled up against the Guilford County line. The N.C. Railroad corridor serving Norfolk Southern, cuts across the northern border of the property. U.S. 421 and easy access to Piedmont Triad Regional Airport helped pave the way to the top of Toyota’s leaderboard and seal the deal.

In 2021, Toyota announced it had chosen the Greensboro-Randolph Megasite as its new home for battery production with an initial investment of $1.29 billion and the creation of 1,750 new jobs. Last summer, Toyota decided to make an additional investment of

$2.5 billion, bringing its total investment to $3.8 billion. It now plans to create 2,500 total jobs. Production is set to begin in 2025.

North Carolina’s perennial ranking as a top state to do business is paying off, but the success means the state’s megasite inventory is filling up.

Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina CEO Christopher Chung said that companies have snapped up most of the state’s eight available megasites. So the General Assembly spent $1 million to identify more megasites, while Gov. Roy Cooper

wants to spend at least $100 million to prepare those properties.

In Edgecombe County, home of the Kingsboro Megasite, Norris Tolson is seeking additional sites through the Carolinas Gateway Partnership. This coalition of economic development partners in Edgecombe County, Tarboro and Rocky Mount works to bring jobs to Eastern North Carolina.

Tolson, president and CEO, says the partnership also works with the economic development efforts in up to 18 counties, including collaborating with the region’s community colleges.

“About three years ago we created RAMP East – Regional Advanced Manufacturing Pipeline in Eastern North Carolina,” he says. “We brought together a coalition of eight community colleges to work on a common curriculum we could offer across the board to help the 10 counties they serve be workforce ready.”

The partnership has also created laborshed potentials. Tolson points to Pfizer in Rocky Mount as a good example when he pitches the benefits of eastern North Carolina to industries looking for a home.

Toyota Motor announced its North Carolina expansion in December 2021. It disclosed more growth plans for the Randolph County site last August.

“Pfizer recruits employees from 22 surrounding counties,” Tolson says. “We currently are recruiting a large client that needs several thousand employees, and our work with Pfizer shows them how they can tap into the workforce not just from Edgecombe or Nash counties, but from other counties across our region.”

He added that partnering with other counties is the only way the region will be able to fully develop buildable sites.

“Rural counties like Edgecombe are among the poorest in the state, and they don’t have the financial means to build out sites, so it’s either partner or you don’t survive,” he says.

For places like Randolph County, that sentiment has a familiar ring to it.

“If we were not close to an urban center, I’m not sure Toyota would have been looking at our community,” Franklin says. “This was a hand-in-glove effort with a lot of collaboration with partners.”

It wasn’t so long ago that counties engaged in heated competition for lucrative projects to land inside their borders. And Franklin says taking a cooperative approach has not quenched their thirst for getting the upper hand in recruiting.

“Don’t assume that because we’re collaborating with each other we’re not still competitive,” he says. “But we have great relationships with our county partners and if a facility I want in my community turns us down, then I’d really like to work with other counties if that means having it close by because it benefits the workforce across our entire region.” ■

— Teri Saylor is a freelance writer from Raleigh.

CENTRAL CAROLINA ENTERPRISE PARK, WELL-CENTERED, SHOVEL-READY.

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Nearest line size - 16” & 12”

Available capacity - 1 MGD

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Size of nearest line: 12”

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FRESH START

BY KEVIN ELLIS

Growing up in Statesville, Brittany Marlow remembers a dead downtown, with both businesses and residents choosing Signal Hill Mall by I-77 over Main Street.

“We didn’t come downtown for anything,” says the 2004 graduate of North Iredell High School. “ ere just wasn’t anything here.”

Fast forward almost 20 years, and Statesville’s center city has turned from dull to destination. Several restaurants have opened, with live music heard Wednesday through Saturday nights.

“It’s always been a charming town, now we just have a nightlife,” says Gloria Hager, whose gi store, GG’s, has been a downtown xture for more than 40 years.

ings didn’t change overnight, says Marlow, leader of Statesville’s downtown business group since June. ings started moving a decade ago as city leaders replaced aging water and sewer lines. e city used the utility project as a catalyst to make its central business district more walkable and apt for beauti cation.

Sidewalks became wider as four lanes of tra c were narrowed to three, enabling 14 downtown blocks to expand their pedestrian paths. Extra room gives space for both dog walkers and co ee drinkers. Add over ow from the Charlotte-area’s population growth to a heated real estate market, and downtown has become the “heart of our community,” says Marlow.

Statesville businesses showed o downtown in mid-March to 750 visitors attending the annual N.C. Main Street Conference. e N.C. Department of Commerce launched the Main Street program in 1980. It now includes about 70 towns.

e Iredell County seat has about 28,000 residents, while the county is home to about 192,000, a 20% increase in the past decade. at’s nearly double the overall state’s growth. Most of the gains occurred in southern Iredell near Lake Norman and Mooresville. Home to several NASCAR teams and near giant retailer Lowe’s headquarters campus, Mooresville’s population has more than doubled to 51,000-plus in the past 15 years.

Growing at a measured pace has enabled Statesville to retain its small-

town feel, downtown leaders say. at hometown pride is apparent at Andrea’s Ice Cream and Sweet Shop, a storefront Andrea Coelho opened nine years ago, shortly a er she graduated from West Iredell High School in 2013.

“

ere’s so many nice people downtown. It’s very much a community here,” says Coelho. “I’ve seen families grow up, parents bringing in their 2and 3-year-olds, and now they’re in middle school. It’s just great.”

ree teenaged part-timers help Coelho at the shop, along with a host of family members. Her 84-year-old grandmother, Dolores Chimato, comes in on Tuesdays and Wednesdays to wash dishes, a er nishing league bowling.

e store’s best-seller may be her “New York’’ bagels, but only on Fridays and Saturdays, because they take three hours to prepare. She makes 10 dozen or so doughnuts most days, double that amount on weekends, as well as a host of brownies and other sweet baked goods.

“My customers really care about me, who we are and how we’re doing,” Coelho says. “When I got married, some of my customers bought me gi s.”

Almost all of downtown Statesville’s storefronts are lled, and those that are not have evident signs of remodeling work. Downtown has more than 100 housing units, mostly apartments, with plans for 10 more. Some will be o ered as Airbnb rentals. Just a few steps from the late 1800s-era City Hall sits the American Renaissance K-8 charter school.

Most people may be familiar with Statesville as they pass through on Interstate 77 or Interstate 40, which criss-cross on the town’s northern edge. A travel website likened Statesville’s downtown to a scene from a Hallmark Christmas movie. ose wanting a more comfortable pace ought to visit, says Liz Petree, who plans events for Downtown Statesville Development.

“You’re de nitely going to nd something good to eat,” says Petree. “You’re de nitely going to nd someone to talk to and see a friendly face.”

Some visitors nd even more. “You’re also probably going to nd the next place you’re going to move to,” says Marlow. ■

Statesville

displays a revitalized downtown with music, doughnuts and a peppier spirit.

Andrea Coelho of Andrea’s Ice Cream and Sweet Shop