As demand for counseling soared, Karin Kassab’s savvy response triggered a pandemic-era success.
4 UP FRONT
8 RETAIL REVIVAL
Empty storefronts dot downtown as Raleigh seeks a pandemic rebound.
12 NC TREND
Ten newsmakers; raising the bar of interior design; rural hospitals; innovation in downtown High Point; newly public N.C. companies.
86 TOWN SQUARE
Whiteville’s blend of old and new attracts global-minded residents.
30 ROUND TABLE: TRAVEL & TOURISM
Experts discuss the industry’s recovery since the height of the pandemic.
68
CELEBRATING NURSES
Nursing schools are using innovative approaches to retain seasoned professionals, add capacity and attract students to meet staffing needs.
72 N.C. PORTRAITS: DOWNTOWNS
Several of our state’s center cities are thriving, despite an unusually difficult year.
78 COMMUNITY CLOSE UP: PITT COUNTY
Greenville’s growth is replicated in several nearby towns.
DECEMBER 2021
pSMALL BUSINESSES OF THE YEAR
Our Small Business of the Year winners include a structural engineering company, hot sauce distributor, taco shack and counseling service.
Hopes at a ballyhooed Asheville life-sciences company are
BY ED MARTIN
not
Doctors identify state specialists considered to be the best in their fields.
HOLIDAY HABITS
The pandemic created unexpected winners, losers and impacts while forcing everyone in business to make adjustments. For those who’ve changed in effective ways, it’s common to hear twinges of regret from achieving success during a very difficult time.
This month’s cover subject, Karin Kassab, expressed that view when we discussed how her Wilmington counseling service expanded rapidly amid COVID-19. Clarity Counseling Center was one of four companies selected in our annual Small Businessesof the Year competition from more than 50 strong nominations. The final selections including Lynch Mykins Structural Engineers of Raleigh, Elijah’s Xtreme in Gastonia and Shaka Taco in Surf City were made by previous winners and experts on entrepreneurship including our publisher, Ben Kinney.
Spotlighting great small businesses is a highlight of our work. Selling tacos and creating tasty hot sauces is very different from designing buildings or providing therapy. But each company is led by inspired leaders whose insights offer some terrific lessons for Business North Carolina readers.
I work with great folks who are backed up by terrific families. I thought it would be fun to share some of their favorite holiday traditions.
Ben Kinney: “We always try to have oyster stew on Christmas Eve and watch 'It's a Wonderful Life' that night. I'm usually the only one who watches the whole movie.”
Sue Graf: “My favorite holiday tradition is making the Graf Gumdrop cookies. As one of four kids in a large extended family, we would start preparing for Christmas weeks ahead of time. This delicious cookie stems from my Mom's childhood. I’ve never seen it featured in a cookbook or by Martha Stewart. Email me for the recipe.”
Peggy Knaack: “Our favorite Christmas tradition is to visit a North Carolina tree farm in the mountains. The day includes hiking, a hayride, hot chocolate and a search for the perfect tree. We’ve done this every year for the past 15 years, and it’s always a great adventure.”
Jennings Cool: “On Christmas day, my family and I have a steak lunch. We have quality cuts, delicious sides and the occasional lobster tail. It is one of my favorite meals.”
Colin Campbell: “Our family goes to a Christmas parade, usually in a small town east of Raleigh such as Archer Lodge, Bailey or Knightdale. Raleigh's got a great big city parade on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, which is too early to get in the spirit. Small-town parades usually happen on a chilly December afternoon, and it's fun to see the local high school marching bands, hand-decorated floats from local businesses and civic groups, and seemingly every fire truck in the area.”
Ralph Voltz: “My wife, Laura, buys a tree as soon as possible. It is my job to make sure it is straight in the stand.”
Jennifer Ware: “No matter where you are, you must put on proper attire and get back home to Florence, S.C. by 5 p.m. on Christmas Eve for the cocktail hour of champagne and cheese straws. An evening of traditions and revelry makes Christmas Eve the peak of family and friend celebrations."
Scott Leonard: “I started making or buying a tree ornament for my mom when I was a kid. Some were crafts, some were from local stores, and some were from my travels. Her tree is now covered with very personable ornaments — each with its own unique memory or story. We share those stories with our six-year-old son, Oliver, and now he can carry on this tradition."
David Mildenberg: “My wife Janet’s family had dozens of great Christmas traditions before her parents died. One of my favorites that continues in their absence is a stocking filled with practical gifts such as shaving cream, dental floss and oranges. And there’s always a handwritten note saying ‘Respect,’ a response to my joking request on a gift list during my first year as part of the family, many years ago.”
Happy Holidays!
Contact David Mildenberg at dmildenberg@businessnc.com.
PUBLISHER Ben Kinney bkinney@businessnc.com
EDITOR David Mildenberg dmildenberg@businessnc.com
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
Jennings Cool jcool@businessnc.com
Colin Campbell ccampbell@businessnc.com
Cathy Martin cmartin@businessnc.com
SENIOR CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Edward Martin emartin@businessnc.com
Jack Andrews, Frank Daniels Jr., Frank Daniels III, Lee Dirks, David Woronoff
PUBLISHED BY Old North State Magazines LLC
PRESIDENT David Woronoff
Weisiger family tradition
Stacey Perrow
Trusted Communications Advisor
Thank you Business North Carolina for the feature! Terrific story about a company and family celebrating 95 years of business.
Regional Director of Customized TrainingNortheast Region at North Carolina Community College System
should be a great presentation!
We love getting feedback from our readers. Here’s a sampling of what you had to say about Business North Carolina on social media last month.
Building NC
The Variable
We're proud to call North Carolina and the Triad home, which is why we've rooted ourselves in the heart of the Innovation Quarter in downtown Winston-Salem. And last year, we moved into our brand new offices in Bailey South -- which has been recognized as having the "Best Overall Design" among new commercial real estate projects in the state by Business North Carolina.
As David Mullen tells David Mildenberg about Baily South, "We wanted our fingerprints to be a part of it. It's an incredibly special development, from the overall building design to the design of our top two floors to the proximity of amazing outdoor spaces, restaurants and entertainment options. It helps us attract incredibly talented people from across the country to join The Variable and fosters amazing collaboration and work-from-office options for our team."
you for the awesome write up! So happy to be part of the small
I’m
reverse the
tiny
or go to linktr.ee/businessnorthcarolina.
SEEKING REVIVAL
Major developments add empty storefronts as Raleigh anticipates a pandemic rebound.
Downtown Raleigh’s newest developments include large courtyards perfect for outdoor dining and socializing, but they’re eerily empty — for now.
The mixed-use high-rise buildings that finished construction this year were planned well before the pandemic. Long before downtown employers told staffers to work from home. Long before violent protests left behind boarded-up windows and damaged storefronts.
Collectively, the developments are adding nearly 100,000 square feet of street-level retail and restaurant space. They’re looking for tenants at a time when the downtown retail and dining scene is still in recovery mode and a number of vacant spaces remain where a business closed during the pandemic.
Leasing agents responsible for filling the new storefronts say interest from new businesses has increased dramatically in recent months, making them optimistic that many of the newly built spaces will come to life sometime next year.
“There’s been more robust leasing in the second half of this year than has ever occurred,” says Charlie Coyne, a senior vice president with CBRE, which leases retail space at multiple downtown properties. “It’s really a bet that downtown Raleigh will be fully reoccupied” as office workers return in the coming months.
It will take months for the leases under negotiation to lead to business openings. Back when the newest buildings were planned, developers assumed that a fast-growing downtown would quickly make them the new hotspots.
Downtown boosters hope the pandemic challenges are ultimately just a speed bump in more than a decade of massive growth. Since 2015, developers have built or planned more than $4.9 billion in
residential, office and retail projects, according to the Downtown Raleigh Alliance. That has led to more than 12,000 downtown residents, 3.5 million square feet of new office space, and 732,000 square feet of new retail and restaurant space.
Smoky Hollow is Kane Realty’s massive complex of apartments, offices and retail space, anchored by a Publix grocery store where
Kane Realty’s Smoky Hollow development won’t open many of its retail and restaurant spaces until 2022, even though the buildings were completed in 2021.
Peace Street meets Capital Boulevard. It can house as many as 20 retail storefronts totaling 40,000 square feet, surrounding a central courtyard known as The Hollow.
The construction barricades came down in April, and while five businesses signed leases — most notably the popular Charlotte barbecue restaurant Midwood Smokehouse — most aren’t expected to open until this spring.
The Hollow’s outdoor space has hosted a few special events such as a craft market, but most of the time it’s quiet. “If this was opened two years ago, it would not look like what it looks like now,” says Stacey Buescher, managing director of operations for Kane.
Some openings have been delayed by construction supplychain issues and labor shortages. About two-thirds of the property is still seeking tenants, while Buescher says four more leases are under negotiation.
In addition to Midwood, the current line-up includes Milk Lab, a bubble tea and rolled ice cream shop; Dos Yoga, a yoga studio and smoothie bar; the Madre tapas restaurant and cocktail bar; and J. Lights, a coffee, sandwich and cocktail cafe.
“Our investor has been open to us taking time on this to make it right,” Buescher says, adding that the focus is on local businesses rather than chains. She expects most tenants will be restaurants, bars and service businesses such as salons and fitness studios, as demand for soft-goods retailers remains low.
A few blocks south of Smoky Hollow at the corner of Glenwood Avenue and Hillsborough Street, the Bloc[83] development has a similar courtyard set-up for its 45,000 square feet of storefront space. The second phase of the development, known as Tower Two, opened in April.
No tenants had been announced by mid-November for Tower Two’s ground floor. A large TV screen and piped-in music in the
▲
▲ “The Hollow” courtyard area will eventually become a hub for outdoor dining.
courtyard plays to no one. In the first phase of Bloc[83], the One Glenwood office building, the cocktail bar Dram & Draught held on through the pandemic by selling groceries. An Australian burrito chain next door closed.
Coyne, whose company handles leasing for Bloc[83], expects several new tenants will be announced by Jan. 1. He’s bullish on retail and dining prospects in downtown’s newest developments, noting some downtown businesses will relocate to take advantage of the courtyard setup. “It’s new space, where you’re going to get a bigger patio,” he says.
The COVID-fueled shift toward more outdoor dining could hurt demand for spaces in other downtown buildings where seating is limited to a portion of the sidewalk, such as Fayetteville Street. Two restaurant spaces in the Charter Square building near City Plaza have been vacant for more than a year, as has a former Italian restaurant in the Duke Energy building and the former Pizza La Stella in the city-owned Exchange Plaza building.
While food and beverage sales in the Fayetteville Street district are improving, they were still at 68% of pre-pandemic levels this fall, according to the Downtown Raleigh Alliance. The absence of many office workers is a key factor, but Coyne says he hears that most will be back in person in early 2022.
“Retail and restaurant [owners] feel comfortable that the office reoccupancy will happen,” he says.
In the third quarter of 2021, the Downtown Raleigh Alliance reported 14 storefront business openings and four closings. Several of the newcomers filled existing spaces where a business closed during the pandemic. Union Special bakery is in the former Tama Tea on
Fayetteville Street and (ish) delicatessen is in the former Pharmacy Cafe on Person Street.
The closings included two art galleries and two restaurants. From January 2021 though the end of September, downtown had 48 new storefront openings or expansions, up 71% from the same period in 2020.
If that momentum continues, the scene at the new courtyards at Smoky Hollow and Bloc[83] could look a lot different a year from now. By that point, retail leasing agents hope to be working on the next several mixed-use projects that are under construction now. ■
STOREFRONT SPACES
Crossing (Hillsborough and Dawson streets):
400H (Hillsborough and Harrington streets): 16,000
Station (Peace and Halifax streets): 30,000
(West Cabarrus and South Saunders streets): 26,740
WHY ORGANIZATIONAL FINANCIAL WELLNESS MATTERS
For this month’s informative monthly article from PNC in collaboration with BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA magazine, we revisit an article from the March 2021 issue.
During the past year, companies have communicated extensively with their employees about wellness –particularly in the context of health. Not to be overlooked, however, is financial wellness, which extends beyond the framework of financial literacy and empowers employees to build strong financial habits – while also contributing to a more confident, productive workforce.
Financial wellness is the No. 1 employer benefit that employees would most like to see added to their benefits in the future.1 And as companies and employees continue on the road toward economic recovery, financial wellness will remain an important consideration.
HOW EMPLOYEES’ FINANCIAL STRESSORS IMPACT EMPLOYERS
When PNC Organizational Financial Wellness Market Managers Adam Butler and Stephanie Hughes sit down with N.C. businesses to discuss financial wellness programs, it’s not uncommon for them to share the following pre-pandemic data points2, which help bring context to the impact employees’ financial stressors pose to employers:
• Financially stressed employees cost American businesses $500 billion annually in productivity.
• 49% of employees admit to spending three or more hours per week thinking about financial stressors at work.
• 47% of employees say that finances are a distraction.
• 26% of employees admit their productivity has been impacted by financial stressors.
• 10% of employees miss work occasionally due to financial stressors.
Furthermore, the cost of financial stress on an organization, in lost productivity and absenteeism, translates to more than $1,900 per employee, per year.3 “When you consider this impact, it’s clear to see that the cost of implementing a financial wellness program pales in comparison,” said Butler.
IMPLEMENTING A FINANCIAL WELLNESS PROGRAM
Financial wellness programs that are mutually beneficial to both employers and employees should take into account the unique needs at all levels of the organization. And while there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach, Butler and Hughes say the following four elements are foundational to a solid financial wellness program.
1. Workplace banking: A strong bank-at-work program should offer a variety of account options for employees. It also should offer onsite and virtual financial services, as well as workshops and informational events that address topics such as direct deposit sign-ups, applying for mortgages, understanding various credit card programs and how they meet employees’ needs, and how to use digital money management tools. It’s important to note that this program should come at no cost or burden to the employee.
2. Consumer-directed healthcare: A Health Savings Account, or HSA, has become a common way to pay for healthcare; however, there are benefits of an HSA that are often overlooked. Therefore, it is vitally important for employees to know how to use the tools they have available to them.
3. Digital financial assessment and resource center: To help motivate employee participation and improve their financial acumen, a successful financial wellness program should offer a customizable, digital tool. This tool should allow employees to assess their financial wellness, access a complete financial education curriculum, and earn points for tracking progress toward their goals. It also should allow the company administrator to gather insights on employee engagement and data trends, and provide reporting insights to assist with employee priorities and education.
4. Retirement plan and fiduciary investment services: Financial independence includes the ability for employees to retire on their own terms – without worrying if they can afford to do so. Successful retirement plan programs focus on everything from investment selection to policy assistance. These programs also offer a dedicated resource for annual education campaigns, which often include surveys, online tools, live and virtual meetings, webinars and more.
THE PNC ORGANIZATIONAL FINANCIAL WELLNESS APPROACH
In October 2020, PNC launched the formation of a new financial wellness business called PNC Organizational Financial Wellness. While PNC has offered a number of financial wellness solutions across its lines of business for years, it has now established a cohesive team and strategy to better deliver comprehensive solutions and value-added guidance.
Through this offering, PNC is providing comprehensive financial wellness guidance and workplace solutions to clients through Financial Wellness Consultants, who serve as key business partners to the human resources suite.
“Financial Wellness Consultants collaborate closely with organizations’ human resources decision-makers or dedicated benefits managers to design custom programs, taking into account the unique needs and goals of organizations and their employees,” said Hughes.
For more information, please contact your PNC Relationship Manager or visit www.pnc.com/wellness
THE OUTCOME OF FINANCIAL WELLNESS PROGRAMS
Employees say financial wellness programs have helped them1:
• Prepare to retire (47%)
• Control spending (29%)
• Pay off debt (29%)
• Save more for major goals – e.g., home, education (29%)
• Better manage investments and asset allocation (29%)
• Better manage healthcare expenses (18%)
Regional Presidents:
Weston Andress, Western Carolinas: (704)
Jim Hansen, Eastern Carolinas: (919) 835-0135
NC TREND
2021 PACE SETTERS
THESE TEN N.C. NOTABLES SCORED SIGNIFICANT VICTORIES THIS YEAR.
LaMelo Ball Charlotte Hornets
He became the state’s most electrifying athlete.
The 20-year-old point guard is a rising superstar in his second NBA season. The 6-foot-7-inch Ball was recognized as the NBA Rookie of the Year in June. His exciting style attracts bigger crowds for the Michael Jordan-owned franchise, which hasn’t made the NBA playoffs since 2016. In 2020, he signed a four-year contract that guarantees more than $35.5 million, a bargain price by league standards. His brothers, Lonzo and LiAngelo, play for the Chicago Bulls and Greensboro Swarm, respectively.
Lynn Good Duke Energy CEO, Charlotte
She championed a reform law that solidifies Duke Energy’s leadership in N.C. energy markets.
Long one of the state’s most powerful companies, Duke showed its clout this year. Good and her team of lobbyists threaded the needle through a complex political dynamic to help pass a sweeping energy bill that includes Duke’s longtime objective of multi year rate hikes. The company made concessions along the way, but Gov. Roy Cooper and a major manufacturing group dropped their opposition to an earlier version and backed the final bipartisan compromise. Good personally supported key lawmakers with financial donations.
Ed
McMahan Falfurrias Capital Partners managing partner, Charlotte
A big new fund fuels one of the state’s hottest PE execs.
An $850 million capital raise last summer bolstered McMahan’s Falfurrias Capital Partners private-equity group. It was the fifth fund by the group that retired Bank of America leaders Hugh McColl Jr. and Marc
Oken founded with McMahan in 2006. Falfurrias, which named four new partners this year, typically puts $25 million to $200 million in midmarket companies ranging from financial technology, media and information services. It also gets attention for its food holdings, such as Duke’s mayonnaise and Duchess honey buns. McMahan, 47, earned a bachelor’s degree at UNC Chapel Hill in 1997, then an MBA from Northwestern University in 2003. His father was a longtime Charlotte business executive who served in the N.C. General Assembly for 12 years.
Laura Niklason Humacyte CEO, Durham
A pioneering biotech researcher took her company public.
Niklason is a world-renowned biomedical engineer who has been a professor at Yale University since 2006. Now her main focus is creating regenerative tissues to treat diseases on behalf of Humacyte, which she founded in 2004. In August, the company raised $242 million and started trading publicly after combining with Alpha Healthcare Acquisition, a special-purpose acquisition company. The 139-employee business has scant revenue so far and recorded a net loss of about $425 million since its inception. Backers include German medical products giant Fresenius Medical Care. Niklason, 58, and her husband, former Credit Suisse CEO Brady Dougan, own 22% of the company’s shares, which were valued at more than $200 million in mid-November.
Mike Praeger AvidXchange CEO, Charlotte
A much anticipated IPO valued his business at $5 billion.
Long celebrated as a leading N.C. tech executive, Praeger led an initial public offering in October that raised $660 million and valued the company at about $5 billion. Founded in 2000, AvidXchange helps about 7,000 companies automate their billing processes. Praeger and his wife, Cindy, chose Charlotte to build a company after he had achieved success at other tech ventures in the Northeast. AvidXchange has attracted capital from Mastercard, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Bain Capital Ventures. The Wisconsin native retains a 7.4% stake in the business worth more than $300 million.
Billy Pyatt Catawba Brewing founder, Morganton
Veteran N.C. craft brewer sells to a PE group.
Founded in Glen Alpine near Morganton in 1999, CEO Pyatt’s Catawba Brewing is an institution in the N.C. craft beer scene and perhaps best known for its White Zombie brand. With an
annual volume of about 30,000 barrels, Catawba was acquired by Montgomery, Ala.-based private-equity firm Wiregrass Equity Partners in October. Catawba brews its beers at five locations with six taprooms. Its beer is distributed in five states. Pyatt cites his age as a reason to sell. “One day you wake up and you’re 60-years-old. You realize it’s time we knock some things off our bucket list.” Terms of the sale were not disclosed.
Michael Regan Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Washington, D.C.
State environment quality chief gets bumped to key federal post.
Goldsboro native Michael Regan got a promotion this year when President Joe Biden picked him to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. He had been secretary of the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality in Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration. He’s the first Black man to serve as EPA administrator. Regan was back home this fall to announce the EPA’s plan to regulate PFAS “forever chemicals,” such as the GenX leak into the Cape Fear River from a Chemours plant near Fayetteville.
Eddie Smith Owner of Grady-White Boats, Greenville
Boat manufacturers benefit from soaring demand.
Grady-White Boats has been building watercraft in Greenville since 1958. Owner and CEO Eddie Smith purchased the business about nine years after founders Glenn Grady and Don White started the company. Since the start of COVID-19, GradyWhite saw a peak in sales thanks to increased interest in outdoor recreation but had to navigate the challenges of labor shortages, supply-chain issues and strong demand.
Tim Sweeney Epic Games CEO, Cary
He gained international acclaim for challenging Apple.
Only a supremely confident person would challenge computing kingpin Apple. Meet Sweeney, who in 2020 sued the Goliath, hoping to enable Epic’s Fortnite game to bypass Apple’s App Store or require Apple to take a lesser cut of revenue. A three-week trial led to a September ruling that mostly favored Apple, prompting Epic to appeal. Meanwhile, Sweeney, 50, keeps expanding his company and buying land in North Carolina for nature preserves. Epic paid $95 million for the Cary Towne Center for use as the company’s headquarters. In April, he donated 7,500 acres in western North Carolina to a nonprofit conservancy, a record land contribution in the state. His net worth keeps soaring with estimates now topping $7 billion.
Susan Wente Wake Forest University president, Winston-Salem
She instantly became the Triad’s newest powerbroker.
Wake Forest University’s first female president took one of the state’s most prestigious education jobs on July 1, succeeding Nathan Hatch, who had led the 8,800-student Winston-Salem university for 16 years. Wente (pronounced Wen-TEE) spent the previous 19 years at Vanderbilt University, including nearly a year as interim chancellor and five years as provost. During her tenure in Nashville, Vandy’s ranking among top U.S. universities rose to 14th from 16th. (Wake ranks 28th.) At Wake, she leads one of the Triad’s largest employers with nearly 6,300 employees, including the Wake Forest Baptist Health medical center that is now controlled by Charlotte-based Atrium Health. The cell biologist has a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California and previously worked at Washington University in St. Louis.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Rod Brind’Amour
Carolina Hurricanes coach, Raleigh
Luke Combs
country western star, Asheville
Marvin Ellison
Lowe’s CEO, Mooresville
Greg Gantt
Old Dominion Freight CEO, Thomasville
Michael Jones
Spoonflower CEO, Durham
John Kane
Kane Realty CEO, Raleigh
Chip Mahan
Live Oak Bancshares CEO, Wilmington
Sheila Mikhail
AskBio CEO, Durham
Cedric Mullins
Baltimore Orioles slugger, Greensboro
Todd Olson
Pendo CEO, Raleigh
Leon Topolian
Nucor CEO, Charlotte
Ted Williams
Charlotte Axios founder, Charlotte
RAISING THE BAR
BY JENNINGS COOL
German native Monika Nessbach came to Charlotte in 1999 to earn an MBA, landing an internship and then a job at the Continental Tire Americas headquarters, where she worked for 14 years. But a love for commercial design prompted her to take classes at Central Piedmont Community College for about eight years and make a change to a more entrepreneurial life.
Since 2009, she’s been building her own business, designbar, where she now works with a team of three.
“I started doing projects with friends and really found my love of [interior design],” she says.
Designbar’s clients include Continental Tire, Charlotte Motor Speedway, Biesse America, and The Vintage Whiskey & Cigar Bar in Charlotte.
Nessbach says her style tends to reflect a contemporary approach mixed with a ton of biophilia, or designing with plants and nature in mind.
She discussed her views on design in an interview that is edited for length and clarity.
► Tell us about your career change.
Designbar is my little baby that I started in 2009 as a side hustle and started full time in 2014. I was born and raised in Germany and came to the States about 20 years ago for graduate school at Pfeiffer University. I started working with a German company while I was still in school, and they offered me a job before I was done with my MBA.
I had a straight-laced corporate career for about 14 years, and about halfway through my career, I realized my heart wasn’t in it anymore. I did some soul searching and realized I wanted to do something creative. It always made me feel alive when I created something. Out of that, the idea of interior design started.
► Why commercial interior design as opposed to residential?
I dabbled a bit, but [residential design] wasn’t for me — which is probably because of my corporate career. I had a good understanding of what employers were looking for and what was important for a company.
I started with corporate design and then ventured into hospitality design, and now we are doing multifamily remodels. It just kind of snowballed into more and more. Commercial is the realm where we operate, and corporate design is where we started.
► What are the differences between residential and commercial design?
For me it is the spaces. As a residential designer, you take a look at the usage of the space for a smaller number of people. For commercial design, you think of tons of people you have to cater to, including people with disabilities and people facing different situations.
Residential design is also very emotional — which makes sense because it is dealing with people’s homes. Commercial design is less emotionally driven and more business driven with a strategy and goal in mind. Residential is a personal experience and more emotionally driven.
► Why should business owners care about interior design?
Because it is a reflection of their brand. If you come into a space that is very ill-designed, has bad lighting, is dingy, or feels dirty and dark, you already have a feeling as a client. I believe the same is true for an employee.
At the end of the day, design evokes emotions. Good design evokes great emotions.
Employers also want people to come back and work. They want them to come back to the office and collaborate with each other. I feel collaboration is easier when you are one-to-one with someone or with a team of people. And, it's a big incentive if you get to come back to a really cool space.
► How should business owners approach design?
From the perspective of what you would want to have, see, feel, experience when you come back to work. What would get you motivated to come back to a workspace and spend an hour in the car and do all the logistics to come back to work?
▲ Monika Nessbach
▲ Crave Dessert Bar in Charlotte.
► What should employers be considering in terms of design?
We believe we will start to see hospitality design jump over to corporate design. Employees will want to have experiences when they come to work.
I think the boutique design movement that has been going on for quite a while will eventually veer into corporate design — or what corporate design is supposed to be.
If you think about it, collaborative spaces and these huddle spaces and things that make workplaces less stiff and more collaborative have been around for years. It is becoming a point where people think these spaces are nice, but they want an experience at work. People may want to take their laptop and walk over to another space and feel completely different or sit outside and feel connected. I think everything is going to be all about experiences.
Employees want to stay home. So how do you get them to come back? You offer them something they can’t have at home. This is what draws people to travel; offering experiences and locations you can’t find at home.
► How do you see this shift altering your work?
It used to be that when you would come into a corporate environment, the design requirements would have more of an emphasis on schematic design — process flow, how people work together, how everything is laid out. It was less on the design side in terms of incorporating a “wow effect.”
For hospitality, it's almost required nowadays to have experiences and those ‘Instagrammable’ moments. While that wasn’t a case for corporate, it is slowly going in that direction. ■
▲ The Law Offices of Attorney Timothy J. Pavone in Charlotte
RURAL RESCUE
A VETERAN TEXAS HEALTH CARE
EXECUTIVE IS TURNING AROUND AN EASTERN N.C. HOSPITAL.
BY COLIN CAMPBELL
In two short years, the tiny hospital serving Washington County, about two hours east of Raleigh, has gone from the brink of closure to expansion mode.
Things looked bleak for 25-bed Washington Regional Medical Center in 2019, when its out-of-state owner, HMC/CAH Consolidated, filed for bankruptcy. Inpatient services were shut down, and 12,000 county residents had to make lengthy drives for health care.
The situation appears to mirror the case five years earlier in Belhaven, a Beaufort County town 30 miles south. Vidant Health closed its Pungo Hospital there in 2014, replacing it with an urgent care and multispecialty clinic. The old hospital was demolished.
Washington Regional in Plymouth, however, had an unexpected savior. Plano, Texas-based Affinity Health Partners bought the hospital in early 2020 through the bankruptcy proceedings and has the facility up and running. CEO and founder Frank Avignone declined to discuss financial details.
While many rural hospitals across the state have been absorbed into larger regional systems, Washington Regional is Affinity’s only hospital holding. It previously managed facilities owned by other entities, but Avignone was convinced his company could work most effectively at the hospital as an owner.
“We found out very quickly that management of a facility — when you're answering to a board that may not be as well experienced in health care — is not a winning combination,” says Avignone, who grew up in South Carolina and has been an industry consultant for more than 30 years.
Washington County Regional is the only hospital in Affinity Health Partners’ portfolio, but CEO Frank Avignone aims to have six to eight by next summer. The growth may start 22 miles west of Plymouth in Williamston, where Affinity hopes to close its asset-sale purchase of 49-bed Martin General Hospital by Jan. 1. The seller is Brentwood, Tenn.based-based Quorum Health Resources, which leases the hospital from Martin County, which is reviewing the sale and had not taken action as of late October. Terms haven’t been disclosed.
Martin General is double the size of the Plymouth hospital and is defined as a “prospective payment system hospital,” which means a different financial model and typically a wider range of services. “We'd love to add Martin to our portfolio of hospitals and our hope
When Avignone’s team arrived in Plymouth, they found a leaky roof, a broken CT scanner, messy patient rooms and a crumbling parking lot. Affinity has spent about $4 million on upgrades, including an overhaul of the radiology department and HVAC systems. The company added women’s health services and is restoring some pediatrics and cardiology care.
Washington Regional now has about 1,500 patient visits a month between the hospital and the primary-care facility next door, including 500 visits a month in the emergency room. The staff has expanded from 30 full-time employees when Affinity took over to more than 160 after reducing temporary contract staffers.
Avignone eventually hopes to build a hospital next door and use the existing facility as a behavioral health facility. “It's so hard to find a bed for a young child that has had mental issues or an older individual who may have dementia,” he says. “We have to hold patients in our ER all the time.”
Over the past decade, Washington County lost about 17% of its population, or 2,200 people, one of the state’s largest declines. But Avignone says the hospital can thrive financially with good management. “The hospital is doing quite well. It's not out of the woods completely, but they never really are until such time that they can absolutely support themselves without a whole lot of guidance and management oversight.”
▲ Frank Avignone
is that negotiations and discussions move in the right direction with Martin County and city officials, so that way we can transfer more of our patients at Washington Regional in need of a higher level of care to Martin,” Avignone says.
“We're going to focus on bringing surgery back up to levels where we believe we’ll service the community better,” he adds. “We'll continue to bring in different specialties which the community needs.”
Quorum Health, which operates 22 hospitals in 13 states, restructured in federal bankruptcy court in 2020 and was acquired by a new investor group. ■
▲ Washington Regional Medical Center is one of the state's smallest hospitals.
Washington County Manager Curtis Potter says community feedback about Affinity is overwhelmingly positive. Residents are talking about the changes, and patients are quick to tell their friends and family. “The smaller the place is, the more reputation and word of mouth travels,” he says.
While he’d like to see more communication between county leaders and hospital officials, Potter notes a closure would have been devastating. The enterprise is a major county employer, and it’s difficult to attract new business if a community lacks health care resources.
Avignone says the “secret sauce” is strict adherence to federal health care policies. “We follow the rules from A to Z,” he says. Showing personal interest also matters. “I get in scrubs. I will run the floors. People see me in that community caring for that hospital. And since we own the facility, we have a vested interest in making sure that the facility not only survives but thrives.”
The hospital gets a boost from Outer Banks beach traffic passing through Plymouth, some drawn by its billboard. As many as a third of emergency-room patients during the summer months are tourists experiencing “anything from a bad sunburn all the way through a cardiac event,” Avignone says.
Half of U.S. rural hospitals are losing money, says Mark Holmes, director of the N.C. Rural Health Research and Policy Analysis Center at UNC Chapel Hill. “You really need to know what you’re doing and have experience.”
Federal assistance for hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic has been a lifeline for many. Prior to March 2020, Holmes says, the country was on track to see the highest number of rural hospital closures ever. That didn’t happen because of the pandemicrelated funding.
“Many people, including me, are terrified
about what’s going to happen as the support starts turning off,” Holmes says. “What happens over the next six to 12 months will be really interesting.”
The increasing popularity of telehealth also means some rural residents may prefer a video appointment with a doctor in a larger city rather than a visit to a local doctor. “Telehealth could be worse for rural providers, but it may be much better for rural
patients,” Holmes says.
To help Affinity succeed, Washington Regional has converted into a nonprofit entity. Avignone plans to do the same with other acquisitions. The move makes the hospitals eligible for a variety of grants and, he says, sends a message. “I think that shows a lot of trust — that we're going to be advocating for them as community members as well as patients.” ■
▲ Affinity has renovated the emergency room entry.
DOMINION RESOURCES
HIGH POINT'S ENTERPRISING CONGDON FAMILY PUSHES TO ENLIVEN THE FURNITURE CITY WITH AN INNOVATIVE DOWNTOWN PROJECT.
BY EBONY L. MORMAN
High Point is known for its significant role in North Carolina's furniture history, serving as a national epicenter of both manufacturing and marketing. The markets that occur twice a year attract tens of thousands of designers and retailers from across the world, while exhibition space for showcasing furniture dominates the city’s downtown area.
But High Point’s center city is often hushed during the 11 months or so when furniture markets aren’t in session, and many key furniture and textile manufacturers have moved operations overseas or closed.
Congdon Yards — formerly a 1920s-era factory owned by nowdefunct hosiery maker Adams-Millis Corp. — is remedying the silence, helping revitalize the city’s downtown in a project spearheaded by one of its most famous families. About $40 million in funding has come from the Earl and Kathryn Congdon Family Foundation, which provides grants to area businesses.
“Our bottom-line goals for this project are downtown revitalization, feet on the street 365 days a year, and a sense of ‘place’ to design, innovate, collaborate, celebrate, and enjoy excellent dining and fun,” says David Congdon, who leads the foundation formed in 2015. It had net assets of about $45 million at the end of 2019, according to the most recent tax filing. “One of our goals as a new organization was to develop an innovative project around entrepreneurship, a business incubator, co-working and a maker space.”
Congdon is the board chairman and former CEO of Old Dominion Freight Line, a publicly traded, Thomasville–based trucking company that was started by his father, Earl, in 1934. Old Dominion’s annual revenue has tripled over the past decade to more than $4.5 billion. The company had a market value of about $41 billion in mid-November, making it among the state’s 10 most valuable public companies.
Along with the adjacent Truist Point ballpark that hosts the minor-league High Point Rockers, Congdon Yards aims to draw more year-round traffic to the area. The site includes a 94,931-squarefoot mixed-use space named Plant Seven, offering office and communal gathering spaces. The Congdon Event Center will be added in the near future as part of Congdon Yards, which is overseen by Business High Point – Chamber of Commerce.
The project has morphed well beyond the original vision of the local chamber, Congdon says. He’s excited about the nearly completed Plant Seven project, while noting that adjacent The Factory building is expected to be completed by the third quarter of
2022. Interior designers Barbour Spangle, fabric maker Culp, and the Change Often consulting firm led by High Point City Counselor Cyril Jefferson are among Congdon Yards’ first tenants.
“When all the tenant upfits are complete by year end, we will have around 250 people working in [Plant Seven] alone, not to mention all the people who come and go to utilize and enjoy the Commons and the Generator facility,” Congdon says. “The upfits to The Factory building will double the indoor space available for the Lofts event center, add two restaurants, an additional passenger elevator, a new central interior stairway connecting all four floors, and a gorgeous patio and distillery on the Elm Street side.”
The contractor for Congdon Yards is Landmark Builders, a Winston-Salem company. High Point–based Barbour Spangle Design is leading Congdon Yards’ interior design. Louis Cherry Architecture in Raleigh is the principal architect. Cherry’s experience renovating older buildings and building community centers sealed his selection for the project.
“The High Point business community and the political leadership have been focused on creating districts and uses that are year-round and providing a more robust civic life in High Point for people who are there all year,” Cherry says. High Point University and the furniture market “are the two big economic forces in High Point. This is part of a much bigger vision of creating essentially a new downtown district.” ■
▲ High Point wants Congdon Yards to be a downtown catalyst.
COMING SPRING 2022 NOMINATION INVITATION
Upcoming February 2022 magazine
DIVERSE LEADERS SPECIAL REPORT
We are looking for nominations for successful, for-profit N.C. companies that are minority-owned. The February edition will highlight N.C.-based businesses that have shown success in various ways including:
Staying Power: In business for at least three years. Solid Performance: Demonstrated revenue growth over the life of the business.
Community Impact: Added staff and formed connections with other local businesses. Innovation: Created new products, services or corporate culture.
DEADLINE FOR NOMINATIONS: DECEMBER 15, 2021
Scan the QR code above or visit www.geni.us/nominate-diversity
Coming Spring 2022 N.C’S MOST INFLUENTIAL LEADERS
In May 2021, we published our first Power List of the state’s most influential business leaders.
We are now accepting nominations for our second edition to be published in 2022.
We’d like your suggestion of an influential business leader.
Our goal is to identify the people who lead North Carolina, based on interviews with business community officials, research and reader suggestions. Our emphasis is on those who have made a particularly noteworthy impact in the last year.
DEADLINE FOR NOMINATIONS: JANUARY 15, 2022
Scan the QR code above or visit www.geni.us/nominate-power-list
*Featured images: Covers for the February 2021 Business North Carolina magazine and the Power List 2021
For questions or additional information, email jcool@businessnc.com.
NC TREND
NEW ON THE BLOCK
BY DAVID MILDENBERG
Shares of nine N.C. companies started trading publicly in 2021, reflecting a soaring stock market and the desire of private equity owners to profit from their investments. While most involved traditional IPOs, Humacyte and Sunlight Financial went public through mergers with special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs. Enact Holdings was spun off by Richmond, Va.-based Genworth. Seven of the nine companies reported higher trading prices as of mid-November, led by Charlotte-based Gambling.com, which gained 84%.
North Carolina’s new state budget includes significant tax changes for businesses, some happening soon, others a few years off.
Most notably, lawmakers approved cutting the corporate income tax rate from 2.5% to 2.25% in 2025, 2% in 2026, 1% in 2028 and then zero “after 2029.” That reflected a compromise with Gov. Roy Cooper, who generally opposed the tax cuts in favor of more spending on public education and Medicaid expansion. House and Senate Republicans wanted much faster tax relief.
The delayed start until 2025 means future lawmakers will handle budget implications of the tax cuts. They could also repeal the cuts.
A more immediate tax change for businesses affects the calculation for franchise tax payments. It would reduce the franchise taxes on businesses by about 25%, but the majority of businesses wouldn’t see a change.
Current law requires companies to calculate three different formulas — known as “bases” — and pay taxes on whichever of the three amounts is largest. Republican legislators want to simplify that and make every company use the same formula: $1.50 for every $1,000 of the company’s net worth in North Carolina.
The vast majority of companies already use that formula. Those that don’t typically have major real-estate and equipment assets in North Carolina, which typically triggers a higher tax bill.
North Carolina also agreed to allow tax deductions for businesses that received federal Paycheck Protection Program loans stemming from the COVID-19 crisis. Senate leaders had opposed the tax breaks, which total $427 million. But House leaders and Cooper agreed that the deductions are warranted, aligning North Carolina with most other states.
The state budget includes many other provisions that have big implications for N.C. businesses, including plans to spend nearly $6 billion on new and renovated UNC System buildings and $1 billion for broadband expansion projects. ■
EAST CAROLINA, VIDANT PARTNER TO CREATE ECU HEALTH
Eastern North Carolina’s health care landscape is shifting with Vidant Health forging closer ties to the ECU Brody School of Medicine, rebranding its operations as “ECU Health.”
Leaders of ECU and the UNC System approved a new joint operating agreement that officials say will enable the two
organizations to more effectively face key challenges. In 2022, most Vidant operations and ECU Physicians practices will convert to the ECU Health branding. The Brody School, which is receiving more than $200 million for a new building, will not have a name change.
Vidant CEO Michael Waldrum, who has been dean of the Brody School since June, will lead the combined entity and set up a new management structure and shared-services agreement. It will have a nine-member Joint Operating Committee consisting of leaders from ECU and Vidant. ECU Health won’t take on debt or own real estate.
ECU Health will also create a new compensation system for doctors that will be “at a market-based rate for benchmarked levels of productivity,” the agreement says. ■
ASHEVILLE TOURISM REBOUNDS
The Asheville area’s tourism economy had a strong year despite the pandemic, highlighted by surging demand for vacation rentals. Sales recorded through rentals gained 110% to $173 million in the fiscal year ending June 30, according to the Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority. That compares with a 5% gain, to $275 million, by the region’s hotel industry.
Asheville tourism slumped initially during the pandemic, causing the loss of about a quarter of the industry’s jobs. It has rebounded significantly as visitor demand for outdoor-oriented activity accelerated. About 97% of the 400 local small businesses that received COVID-19 relief grants from the authority remained in business a year later. By May, leisure and hospitality staffing was 15% lower than peak levels with many employers saying they are unable to attract workers.
In the 2020 calendar year, Asheville hotels reported a 30% decline in sales compared with the record level of the previous year. That was comparable to other Southeast tourism hotspots
TRIANGLE
APEX
Florida-based developer Reader Communities filed a master plan with the city for a mixed-use project on a 1,067-acre site by U.S. 1 and N.C. 55. New York-based Hudson Realty Capital has been assembling the land for 14 years. Plans call for more than 4,500 residential units and as much as 4 million square feet of office and retail space.
CARRBORO
Fleet Feet, a specialty footwear retailer, agreed to buy JackRabbit from affiliates of CriticalPoint Capital. Fleet Feet will take over all JackRabbit brick-and-mortar locations across 15 states and the Jackrabbit.com e-commerce business. Fleet Feet has more than 3,000 employees and had revenue of $230 million last year.
including Myrtle Beach and Charleston, S.C. and Wilmington.
“We’re still in the throes of the pandemic, but we’re on the road to recovery,” the authority said in its annual report published in November. ■
CHAPEL HILL
Oprah Winfrey’s annual “Oprah’s Favorite Things” list includes local baker Tonya Council’s Cookies Pecan Crisp. Council’s grandmother, Mildred “Mama Dip” Council, opened a famous local restaurant that is now operated by her children. A five-pound jar of Council’s pecan crisps retail for $43.
SAS Institute is pushing its HQ reopen date to Jan. 3, though 97% of U.S. employees show ‘proof of vaccination.’ SAS will continue to limit use of its U.S. facilities, and proof of vaccination is required before entering.
DURHAM
GeneCentric Therapeutics raised $7.5 million from investors including Labcorp, Hatteras Venture Partners and Alexandria Venture Investments. The company uses RNA-based diagnostics to improve precision medicine processes.
Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions plans to add as many as 300 staffers at its local plants over the next year, CEO Rance Poehler said. The company is currently hiring for 40 positions in the Triangle.
Aerami Therapeutics raised more than $20 million from 238 investors after sales commissions. The company changed its name from Dance Biopharm Holdings in September 2019.
The city council approved the sale of a town-owned business park to CCL Label and provide funding for a manufacturing site that is expected to bring 150 new jobs. The 150 jobs created during the next five years will have average wages of about $70,000.
JOHNSTON COUNTY
Richmond, Va.-based AdvanceTEC will construct a $10 million cleanroom facility and hire as many as 25 workers with average wages of $125,000. The site is between Smithfield and Clayton.
LILLINGTON
Dallas-based Reeder Land Development bought 348 acres here with plans to add 940 homes, citing the area’s rapid growth. The first phase of 220 units is expected to be completed by the end of 2022.
OXFORD
Meel Corp. will invest $5.7 million to relocate a production facility here from Miami. The new location will include a packing and cold storage facility. Miamibased Meel Corp supplies frozen foods through its own brand and private labels.
PINEHURST
The village council approved a 40 single-family lot subdivision despite strong opposition from local residents The zoning of the area is unchanged. The homes are expected to be priced at $500,000 and range from 2,600 to 3,400 square feet.
RALEIGH
Kane Realty announced plans for two mixed-use developments south of downtown. Construction will start soon on Park City South, a seven-story, 335-unit apartment building across from Dorothea Dix Park. Kane said it also plans a second, high-rise building on the property.
A 500,000-square-foot industrial complex in south Raleigh was sold for $55 million, a 140% increase in less than two years. Texas-based Pennybacker Capital bought the South 40 Distribution Center from LM Real Estate Partners of New York.
CARY
CHARLOTTE
Major area businesses and organizations announced plans to raise $250 million for racial equity programs. The public-private coalition said it had pledges of $196 million including $80 million from the city, $97 million from private companies, foundations and individuals and $19 million in low-return debt and equity. Plans include investing in historically Black Johnson C. Smith University and backing development projects on six underutilized corridors.
Allspring Global Investments is a $600 billion asset management company based here after completion of a spinoff from Wells Fargo Asset Management. The bank agreed to sell the unit earlier this year to private equity companies GTCR and Reverence Capital Partners for $2.1 billion. Wells Fargo still owns 9.9%.
Chicago-based Riverside Investment and Development plans three new buildings at a prominent corner near uptown and South End. Part of the $750 million project is slated to bring large outdoor open spaces.
American Airlines is expected to restart its direct flight between Charlotte Douglas International Airport and Munich, Germany in mid-December. The start date was pushed back numerous times. It will involve a Boeing 777-200 plane that has 273 seats.
Catalyst Capital Partners and Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based developer Stiles plan a 30-story apartment building in the South End neighborhood that will include 291 units. Construction is slated for late 2022.
Krispy Kreme said third quarter revenue gained 18% from a year earlier. The company reported a $5.66 million loss, an improvement from $15 million lost in the second quarter.
SALISBURY
Catawba College received a $200 million donation, tripling the size of the school’s endowment. It was among the largest donations ever received by a U.S. university. About 1,200 are enrolled by the college. Catawba didn’t disclose the donor, but sources familiar with the matter say it was local investor Fred Stanback.
TRIAD
GREENSBORO
LT Apparel is moving its national distribution center to a 800,000-square-foot facility in Greensboro. The New York-based childrens’ apparel maker said it would invest $57 million in property and create 116 jobs.
LEXINGTON
Samet Corp. of Greensboro received approval for annexation of 773 acres off Interstate 85 for a proposed industrial park. As much as 5 million square feet of industrial space is possible at the site.
MEBANE
Waltham, Mass.-based Thermo Fisher Scientific will open an eighth North Carolina facility here. The plant is expected to create as many as 200 jobs tied to a $192 million federal contract for lab equipment.
MEBANE
Amazon plans to occupy a new 300,000-square foot building in N.C. Commerce Park here. It would be the fifth Amazon property to open in the Triad in the last two years.
MOCKSVILLE
Rochester, Mich.-based pallet maker Palltronics will lease a 253,000-square-foot spec building here and add as many as 200 new jobs to Davie County. Hiring for production work is expected to begin in June. The company plans to spend $40 million on capital investments.
WINSTON-SALEM
Stan Law, president and CEO of the YMCA of Northwest North Carolina, was named to the same post at the YMCA of Greater Charlotte, starting in January. He came here in 2017 after leading the YMCA in Birmingham, Ala.
EAST
GREENVILLE
Minnesota-based Compute North pulled its plans for a data center in Pitt County after neighbors complained that the cryptocurrency mining project would create too much noise and use excessive amounts of energy. The company had planned to add 27 jobs with average salaries of $56,000.
WILMINGTON
New Hanover County’s ILM Business Park signed a pair of separate projects expected to bring a combined $120 million in investment. CIL Capital signed a ground lease for as much as 50 years and intends to construct a 500,000-square-foot storage and distribution facility. Edgewater Ventures signed a lease for up to 49 years covering 30 acres.
GREENVILLE
E.J. Pope & Son, a third-generation family company that started hauling coal here in 1919, sold its 36-store Handy Mart convenience-store chain for $112 million. The buyer is Richmond, Va.-based GPM Investments, which owns c-stores under various brand names.
SNOW HILL
New Jersey-based Precision Graphics will hire 70 employees and invest $5.1 million at a new plant. The electronics manufacturer chose Greene County because of the area’s diverse workforce.
Wilmington International Airport named Jeffrey Bourk as the new airport director, following a nationwide search and more than 100 applications to the New Hanover County Airport Authority Board. He has been executive director of Branson Airport in Hollister, Missouri.
WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH
The Biden Administration contends that beach towns can’t use sand from protected areas to nourish their eroding beaches, endangering Wrightsville Beach’s plans to use Masonboro Inlet sand. The move reverses a Trumpera decision and is prompting the Army Corps of Engineers to work with Wrightsville Beach to find offshore sites with sand.
WEST
ASHEVILLE
Area restaurants got $38 million from a federal pandemic aid fund that provided money for more than 100,000 eateries nationally. Katie Button Restaurants, one of the area’s most popular food businesses, received $1.8 million. The grants are for losses suffered by food and beverage businesses in 2020, minus aid received through the federal Paycheck Protection Program.
A downtown condo sold for a record $2.85 million. The third-floor residence inside a recently renovated historic building won HGTV’s Ultimate House Hunt competition. The new owner is from Charlotte and will use the 4,365-square-foot condo as a second residence.
Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority agreed to restart a grant program in 2022 to projects that help attract tourists. The fund was paused in 2019 after some community criticism. It has granted $44 million since 2001.
WILMINGTON
▲ Jeffrey Bourk
BACK TO WORK AND PLAY
Before most people had heard of COVID, North Carolina was a popular destination for business and leisure travelers. And the numbers proved it: 2019 visitor spending was $26.8 billion, an all-time high. But the travel and tourism industry soon found itself in trouble when COVID was everywhere and most of the world issued stay-at-home orders in the spring of 2020. Almost two years later, the industry is rebounding. BusinessNorthCarolina magazine recently brought together six travel and tourism experts and executives to discuss the industry’s recovery since the pandemic’s height, the changes it has to make, the challenges it faces and where it’s headed.
PANELISTS
Richard Geiger president, Visit Winston-Salem
Victoria Isley president and CEO, Explore Asheville
Beaufort Hotel; Explore Asheville; Pinehurst Resort; Visit Greenville, NC; Visit NC; and Visit Winston-Salem sponsored the discussion, which was moderated by Ben Kinney, Business North Carolina publisher. It is edited for brevity and clarity.
HOW HAS THE TRAVEL AND TOURISM INDUSTRY FARED OVER THE PAST YEAR AS THE PANDEMIC HAS WANED?
TUTTELL: We recently heard from a reporter who sat in on a Visit Florida state tourism board meeting. Every year the board does independent research to determine its closest competitors. They’re usually places such as California, Las Vegas and the Caribbean. The No. 1 competitor this year was the Carolinas. That’s great news. We have what people are looking for coming out of the pandemic — mountains, coast, golf and urban regions that don’t feel urban be-cause you can get outside. We have a bit of everything. North Carolina has recovered quickly, probably more so than most states. About a third of the state’s destinations are on record pace and about a third are still hurting, far from where they were. The rest are doing okay.
Charles “Bucky” Oliver II owner, Beaufort Hotel: founder and chairman
emeritus, Jetcraft
ISLEY: The pandemic brought a mixed bag. Outfitters and outdoor activities continued to excel over the past year. Indoor cultural venues were challenged, but it was heartening to see live music at outdoor venues thriving again. And while 2020 hotel occupancy dropped to 50%, which is the 2010 level, many people who were willing to travel or could work from anywhere chose vacation rentals. Occupancy-tax revenue for vacation rentals was up 110% for our most recent fiscal year. Hotels were up 5% on the strength of May and June alone. Our hotel partners are rebounding. Vacation rentals continue to climb, which is a win for residents who rent their homes.
GEIGER: People avoided crowded places during the height of the pandemic. We’re an urban center, so COVID crushed us, reducing occupancy-tax collections by about 50%. That’s consistent with recently released statewide numbers, which reported visitor spending was down 47% in 2020 compared to 2019. Business transient is about 60% of our hotel business. The pandemic stopped it. All urban communities were similarly hit. But we’re rebounding. This year’s hotel revenue surpassed 2020’s numbers by the end of August. Corporate-transient
business hasn’t returned. Businesses need to get their employees back in the office and traveling. The visitor industry won’t fully recover until were doing business as we have in the past. Convention and meeting business is returning. We were gearing up for a future of hybrid conventions, which mix virtual and in-person offerings. Those aren’t materializing. Many people are tired of teleconferencing. We’re not going to lose business to technology. People want to be with people. Most of the meetings have returned but with fewer people. Sporting events began returning before meetings and conventions, but most of those are outdoors. Our bookings are strong for 2022, 2023 and beyond.
CAUTHEN: We’ve held strong. Golf, which was permitted under stay-at-home orders, was our savior. The hotels were closed for two months last year, but they’ve been busting at the seams since. We’ve been sold out from July through the end of November. We have paused selling our hotels. Cancellations climbed a bit as COVID numbers increased slightly, but they have leveled off. We are selling a lot for 2022. We hope to pass 25,000 social room nights on the books. Our group business is
Andrew
Schmidt president and CEO of Visit Greenville, NC and president of North Carolina Travel Industry Association
Wit Tuttell
vice president of tourism, Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina; and executive director, Visit North Carolina
steadily increasing. We’re pickier about the meetings and conventions that we bring to Pinehurst. Since they all stopped last year, we’re able to focus on the most profitable ones.
SCHMIDT: Last year was challenging, but there were glimmers of hope. Outfitters reported that one out of every two people taking trips on the Tar River were from out of town, so we promoted outdoor recreation. Those visitors didn’t add occupancy-tax revenue, but they contributed to sales-tax revenue. Greenville and Pitt County are fortunate; their sales-tax revenue increased from the year prior. This year has been wonderful. The first three months were slow, but things started happening in April. Our sports tourism set a record this year. That’s a strong market for us. We host two or three tournaments each weekend. We had a few conventions and meetings this fall, though we lost some to the spike in COVID
Delta variant cases. This summer and fall felt more normal than 2020. East Carolina University home football games have had no restrictions. Our occupancytax revenue this year has surpassed 2020. The next two years look strong for conventions and meetings. That gives our hotels hope.
OLIVER: We opened in 2019, perfect timing to walk into 2020. The federal Paycheck Protection Program saved our business last year. This year has been positive. We’re running about 20% over our conservative projections. Our occupancy-tax collections were up 48% for the first eight months of the year. I watch Beaufort’s local sales tax revenue. It was up 34% for the first seven months of the year, so we’re shining here. We’re welcoming business meetings. Almost half of our revenue is from food and beverage, which has been heavily impacted by the labor shortage.
HOW HAS THE PANDEMIC CHANGED IN-PERSON MEETINGS AND CONVENTIONS?
TUTTELL: North Carolina took a measured approach to the pandemic, so people felt they could come here safely. It allowed meetings to happen. There were no large COVID outbreaks that made the news. Visitors and meeting planners avoided places that received negative publicity, such as outbreaks or lack of a response.
GEIGER: People no longer want to be jammed into meeting rooms or convention floors where it’s standing room only. It’s the same at restaurants and bars. Will you go into a crowded bar, for example, or chose to walk one block further to find one with more elbow room? Social distancing is beginning to happen naturally. Our layouts and floor plans include more space. We have to be conscious of the fact that people
Asheville’s downtown skyline
want it that way. While the pandemic has changed our ability to hold conventions, people still want them. We have to create an environment that’s safe for consumers because people that attend conferences are consumers. Research shows they also want more outdoor spaces, so we need to find ways to mix them into our meetings, cocktail parties
changes as an industry, we can recoup a lot of the business that was lost early in the pandemic.
SCHMIDT: We feel good about the future of conventions and meetings. We’re a drive-to market, which is a tremendous help. It lets people control
their environment, making them more comfortable. I’ve attended a few meetings and conventions recently, and people are happy to be with other people. We’re changing our pitches to meeting planners. We still sell venues and amenities, but we’re selling peace of mind, too. Most of us in the industry have created marketing materials that highlight safety protocols over meeting space. Planners are responsible for hundreds or thousands of attendees. And they have to sell those attendees on the destination. If you’re cognizant of each individual’s needs, sell the safety protocols and offer reassurance that they’ll be safe if they come, you’ll accomplish your meeting goals.
HOW HAS THE PANDEMIC AFFECTED SMALLER GATHERINGS SUCH AS WEDDINGS AND BUSINESS TRAVEL?
The lion’s share of our visitors come for leisure. Weddings, celebrations and sporting events have rebounded well. These are right-sized groups for Asheville and Buncombe County. It’s about the style of meeting. That determines where third-party or in-house meeting planners decide to meet. We recently had an automotive company buy out a hotel for their group over several days. It was more than 100 people here for product exploration and trial, experiencing the wide-open spaces, such as driving the Blue Ridge Parkway.
OLIVER: Nearly 50% of our restaurant space is outside. That helped with the transient and local markets. We also have a lot of indoor space, where we set tables far apart. You almost can see a sense of comfort among people when they enter the space. There’s no way you can do that at a cramped New
Shown above: Kayaking on the Tar River near Greenville and the 8th hole at Pinehurst
York City restaurant in a narrow building. We categorize weddings and social events with our meetings business. During the height of the pandemic, we could’ve closed our ballroom without anyone missing it. We’re starting to see bookings, and weddings are leading the way. We have 133 rooms, and all are individually conditioned. That gives guests a level of comfort from a safety standpoint. It’s an advantage beyond industry-wide precautions such as frequent cleaning and fogging.
CAUTHEN: We include our Pinehurst Promise, which details our COVID response on our website, in our emails to meeting planners and other communications. We abide by it, holding true to the protocols in place for the safety of resort guests, members and employees. We try to keep guests as comfortable as possible. We have become creative in our meeting space marketing. We push outdoor spaces, such as the Lake Pavilion and Carolina Hotel’s West Lawn. We also use our large ballrooms, where it’s easy to keep everyone socially distant.
WHAT IS TOURISM’S ROLE IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT?
GEIGER: Conventions and meetings positively impact the communities that host them. We bring corporate executives to town. It’s often the first exposure business leaders have to a market. It can open the door to a regional sales office, distribution center or business relocation. A company’s vice president or marketing executive comes to town, then they’re back at home talking to the CEO about what a great place they visited. It’s not a coincidence that major markets, such as Orlando and Dallas, have exploded with corporate relocations after a major convention center was built.
TUTTELL: Tourism is the front porch of economic development. We’re often a person’s first impression, whether they are here for a meeting, corporate travel or leisure. When it comes to business relocation, the most important factor is almost always available labor. Tourismfriendly places are where people want to live. That creates a workforce, which every business is competing for today.
ISLEY: We’ve built our reputation as a destination for leisure travel, and that’s been an entryway to companies, such as brewer New Belgium and aircraft engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney, which is building a factory and bringing up to 800 jobs to the region. We’re doubling down on that. We’ve aligned our proactive group sales team with the efforts of local economic developers to attract business from industries that best suit our region. Those include manufacturing, life sciences, climate and environment, and technology. A
test drive is still the best way to sell a car, and that’s what travel and tourism does for our communities. Asheville Regional Airport has bounced back quickly. It was offering 25 nonstop daily flights by June, which was the 2019 level. Allegiant Air is offering service between Key West, Fla, and Asheville, and Jet Blue will start service between Asheville and Boston this coming summer. Those regional connections are important for continued economic growth in western North Carolina and across the state.
HOW IS THE INDUSTRY DEALING WITH THE LABOR SHORTAGE AMID RISING DEMAND?
SCHMIDT: Our job is to bring that 1,000-person convention, sports tournament or what have you. But we need people to service them. Workforce is an issue for everyone who markets a destination. The past few months have
The Beaufort Hotel on North Carolina’s Crystal Coast
been nerve-racking. We had the Little League Softball World Series come in August. We had an influx of people, and you hope there aren’t any hiccups while they are spending 10 days in your city. So, we reached out to our partners, including East Carolina University’s School of Hospitality Leadership. We tapped into it to help fill voids, especially at our lodging and food-and-beverage establishments. I recommend inquiring if your local university or community college has something similar that could help alleviate workforce shortages. We also have to educate high school students about hospitality careers, especially where you can start and where you can end up. North Carolina Travel Industry Association and other tourism groups are doing a good job with this. The labor shortage isn’t going
away anytime soon, especially as we get into the holidays. Showing hospitality workers appreciation goes a long way to helping solve it. It’s heartbreaking how some of the industry’s front line workers are treated. The consumer may be frustrated because their meal, check-in or other interaction is taking longer than they want. But they need to understand that these workers are doing their best. We have people working double shifts. We have people working six or seven days a week. So, be kind to them. It’s an industry challenge not an individual worker’s fault or responsibility.
TUTTELL: ‘Demographic Drought,’ a recent paper by labor-market data provider Emsi, spells out how COVID exacerbated an existing condition. Baby
boomers are leaving the workforce, so all industries are struggling to find workers. Tourism will be best served by growing its own workforce. Travel and tourism businesses hire many people just as they’re entering the workforce. NCTIA has done a great job with a Charlotte pilot program, going into schools and encouraging students to choose a career in tourism.
GEIGER: Workers left the industry when the pandemic shut it down. But they aren’t returning for several reasons. They don’t have to work weekends, nights or crazy hours in other industries, which also offer better pay and benefits. Our industry has to discuss how we take care of our people, including pay and benefits. It has to be a holistic approach. It must be
or meet people. And it surely doesn’t happen if there’s nobody to deliver the experience on the other end.
a strategic conversation about what’s happening in our communities, North Carolina and nationwide. How do we come out of this with the needed workforce? While changes will affect how businesses operate, we must employ and keep people. Parents are a big hurdle to getting students excited about a hospitality career because they associate it with low wages. If we get parents excited about it, we’ll get more children into the pipeline.
ISLEY: It’s an issue of perception, reality and innovation. On the perception side, jobs in the industry are pegged as low paying. However, U.S. Travel Association’s Made in America report found that nearly four in 10 Americans’ first job was in travel and hospitality. And if you begin your career in hospitality, you end up earning more over your career whether or not you stay in it. Travel and hospitality can be the right job or career right now. When I went to UNC Chapel Hill, I had no idea my job existed. Now there are entire graduate programs dedicated to it. It’s incumbent upon us to tell that story by sharing
those personal journeys that happen in each of our communities. There’s an executive chef at one Asheville restaurant who once experienced homelessness. This industry changed his life. The reality part is making connections and giving people rewarding careers that don’t require higher education. There are plenty of general managers of hotel properties who started as a front desk person or bellman. There are more women entrepreneurs in travel and hospitality than any other industry because there are opportunities to grow. We have fewer people currently willing to do those jobs, so business owners are innovating. If you eat at Green Sage Café in Asheville, you order on an iPad. And there is a service charge, so its front and back of house staff can be paid $20 an hour. I hope business owners and industry leaders have a long memory about what we’re dealing with right now, so we can turn a corner on some of these perception and reality issues and make this industry what it is — a people-to-people business. Travel doesn’t occur if a person isn’t motivated or inspired to explore a place
CAUTHEN: One of our biggest challenges is attrition — people who decide they don’t want to work weekends or the night shift anymore, and they leave a few weeks later. We’re trying to get creative as an organization: How can we bring people in and entice them to stay? We have offered a sign-on bonus. We’ve done teamwork pay a few times this year. We offer housing for externs and interns. But we also need to take care of current employees. They’re burnt out, they’re busting their tails and they’re wearing many hats. So, we have increased wages. It’s about keeping people happy and bringing in more to help carry the load. It’s a challenge every day.
OLIVER: I’m an old guy, and looking back, I never would have ended up doing what I’m doing by plan. It was stubbornness and luck in my case. Talking to a first time 20- or 22-yearold waitstaff about career possibilities can be an eye-opening experience for both of you. As an industry, we could do so much more with career management and mentoring. Take my daytime job, selling corporate airplanes. I can remember thousands of young people who got a ride in the right seat of an airplane. I didn’t need a copilot, but somebody went because they had the desire. And now they’re a captain at a major airline. It’s getting that first break, that first indication of chasing an interest then mentoring and building a career around it. That leads to a happy and prosperous life.■
Bailey Park at the center of Innovation Quarter in Winston-Salem
Culture connection
In a year when many companies are still keeping workers at home, Lynch Mykins Structural Engineers has seen record growth as it does the opposite — getting its staff and clients together in person.
The company originally known as Stroud Pence & Associates has moved in a new direction since Anna Lynch and Dave Mykins acquired the business four years ago. Lynch had worked at Stroud Pence but envisioned a company that “would place greater emphasis on the soft skills [that] would set the structural-engineering firm apart from their competition in a hard-skills industry.”
It’s paid off: The staff at offices in Raleigh and Richmond and Norfolk, Va. increased by 28% to 62 employees in the past year, and the company hit its sales goals for 2021 by June 30. The staff had fun along the way, making YouTube videos that feature lip-syncing and a summer “Olympics” with executives in a dunk tank.
Lynch, 40, grew up in Clear Lake, Iowa and earned a bachelor’s degree in architectural engineering from the University of Wyoming and a master’s in civil engineering from N.C. State University. She loves to flip rundown houses in downtown Raleigh and enjoys ballroom and salsa dancing.
Mykins, 62, is a New Yorker, attending high school in Scottsville and earning a bachelor’s in civil engineering at State University of New York at Buffalo. He later received a master’s in structural engineering from Old Dominion University in Norfolk. He and his wife, Ann, like to golf and enjoy visiting Brooklyn to visit their son.
Comments are edited for length and clarity.
► Why did you decide to embrace in-person work?
Structural engineering is high-risk work. We’re designing the structures that make buildings stand up — the buildings where people live and work. We did not believe that our team could do laundry, take care of and teach their children, and do structural analysis safely. To ensure the quality and safety of our deliverables, much of our work is collaborative and there are protocols along the way that must be done a certain way.
We felt like it made the most sense to offer an open office for employees who chose to, or need to, continue working in collaboration. We made the choice a manageable one for them by offering child care and education tuition reimbursement. Most employees chose to come to the office. Because we hired and trained engineers to value human connection, they were excited to get back together. Our office is spacious, with large overhead doors that remain open most days.
Lynch Mykins
Structural Engineers PC
Structural engineering
Owners
Anna Lynch and Dave Mykins
Location
Raleigh
Number of employees 62
Year founded
1974; purchased and rebranded as Lynch Mykins in 2017
Projected 2021 revenue $10 million
Special sauce
Soft skills and culture
► How many employees are still remote?
Fewer than 3% of our employees are working from home full-time. Freedom is clearly at the core of who we are, so we do not regulate remote work.
► Has adding perks and creating a fun work environment worked?
Our attrition rate is 5.2%. Ten percent is our goal, and the industry standard is 22-30% currently. We attribute this incredibly low attrition to our healthy perks and benefits. We hear from new employees that something as simple as seeing one of our videos on YouTube was the turning point for them to choose work at Lynch Mykins. For others, it may have been allowing paid time off for community volunteering, the weekly happy hours, the beer on tap in the kitchen, unlimited healthy snacks, pool and ping-pong tables, free lunches or our pet-friendly offices.
The brand and culture of connection and open communication we have as a group impacts retention. People feel comfortable coming forward with any concerns or needs before they become real problems. We believe listening to your team is one thing. Taking action is way more important.
► You’ve engaged in staff discussions about “uncomfortable” topics. How has that worked?
We held company-wide roundtable conversations on COVID and racism during the Black Lives Matter movement. Both topics were a little scary and made some uncomfortable. We’re so glad our diverse group of employees felt free to offer their opinions and listen to others with an open mind. We’re a very close group and respect everyone’s opinions, even if they aren’t the same as ours. Our leaders always create space for people to share, explore and to be themselves without fear of judgement.
What are some of your recent projects?
The new Bandwidth Campus in RTP; Raleigh Ironworks; each new building on the new Wake Tech Community College campus in Wendell; multiple buildings on the SAS campus in Cary; Credit Suisse in RTP; Lenovo US Headquarters; The Stitch Triangle in RTP; Burt’s Bees headquarters in Durham; Bloc 83 development in downtown Raleigh; Raleigh Civic Tower; and the UNC/Rex Cancer Center in Raleigh. We work on more than 800 projects each year around the country.
► What sets Lynch Mykins apart from other engineering firms?
Two things: Culture and soft skills. We have a culture director at Lynch Mykins. Most engineering firms don’t. Culture has proven to be the catalyst in both employee and client retention. We invest in our people — personally and professionally. Plain and simple. We care deeply about creating a place for people to live and work with maximum freedom and flexibility. Where everyone has a voice. Everyone is heard. Our culture is about family, fun and authenticity. All ideas are welcome and valued.
We invest in engineers who understand and appreciate the value of soft skills in our hard skills world. We hire people who are interested in learning, growing and expanding these skill sets. It’s not easy and doesn’t always come naturally. But it has proven to be one of the attributes of our enterprise that our clients absolutely won’t work without. We provide clear, timely, honest, proactive communication every step of the way, from the beginning of a project to the end.
► Do you have expansion plans?
Our enterprise growth is focused on people, not financials, so growing into new markets will always be about meeting the right people to do the job. We’re always looking to meet new people and learn about their goals and ambitions for their future. If they match with ours, then let’s go start something new. ■
▲ The Lynch Mykins team provides structural engineering and sustainable design services to a variety of industries.
Bringing the heat
When Elijah Morey was 6 years old, he found his dad, Bret Morey, working in their garden and asked what he needed to do to be the youngest person to eat the hottest pepper out there. After sinking his teeth into a banana pepper, he was hooked on trying more spicy foods. About six years later, he asked his father if they could start making their own hot sauces.
After years of trial and error, the father and son duo perfected their hot sauce. In 2014, they started Elijah’s Xtreme Gourmet Sauces in Gastonia. Now, they sell five hot sauces with different heat levels and flavor profiles. They utilize various social media platforms, a weekly newsletter, social media influencer outreach and other strategic marketing tactics to continue to grow the business.
Elijah, 24, graduated from Highland School of Technology in Gastonia and attended Anderson University in South Carolina. His work with the business makes him wish he had dropped out of college sooner, he says.
Comments are edited for length and clarity.
► How did you quadruple sales in 2021?
There were a few keys to allow such amazing growth. First was figuring out the best social media strategy. We developed a structure to grow our audiences on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and pinterest.
Tiktok was huge for us. I sent direct messages to people I found on TikTok, mostly in the food space, and sent them free hot sauce in the hopes they would make a video. Now, our hashtag on TikTok has over 13.5 million views and incredible exposure to potential new customers.
Amazon was another huge area of improvement and continues to grow. By really understanding the algorithm and how it works, we have been able to maintain our products as best sellers in the hot sauce and sauce categories.
We also have tripled down on social media advertising. This one was tricky and took many months of failure to figure out the best structure. We now have a pretty intense breakdown of how we reach potential new customers and retarget them on almost every social channel possible. We currently reach over 5 million people each month.
Our team provides the best customer experience possible. When using social media advertising, it is great to get an initial
Elijah’s Xtreme Gourmet Sauces Inc
Hot sauces
Owners
Bret Morey and Elijah Morey
Location
Gastonia
Number of employees
7; 2 marketing & 5 in the warehouse
Year founded June 2014
Projected 2021 revenue
$2.5-3 million
Special sauce
Passion for quality flavor, then heat
purchase, but I knew in order to really — and I mean really grow — we needed to nurture our customers. By nurturing our customers, we have seen a massive increase month over month of returning customers. One out of four come back the next month. Lastly, passion. My dad and I work more than 80 hours a week because we love what we do — not because we have to do it. We add our passion into everything we do. I believe that is the final key to growing our company the way that we have.
► What makes your sauces distinctive?
It is our passion. From the beginning, our desire was to create hotter, better tasting hot sauces that are unique, thicker and full of flavor. Using all natural ingredients, such as fresh peppers, we work many hours, sometimes weeks and even months, as we handcraft each recipe with one goal in mind: flavor first, then heat. We have been honored with 58 industry awards for our sauces.
► How did you get TV star Mario Lopez to like your product?
We were accepted into a very exclusive part of Amazon called LaunchPad. This program allows you to have the backend insights as the biggest companies in the world do and get in front of some amazing people.
I submitted one of our most popular products to be shown to Mario’s team for a Father’s Day gift guide, and we were one of 10 lucky companies to get picked. This led to Christmas-like sales over the weeks leading up to Father’s Day.
► Is building strong ties with Amazon important?
Amazon is a necessary evil in today’s society. Our relationship with Amazon is one of the most critical relationships we hold, as more than 50% of our entire revenue comes from that platform. The biggest thing with Amazon is getting the right connections with reps and learning the algorithm to enable us to not just hold where we are in ranks, but to grow and gain higher positions.
► How much capital did it take to start?
We launched our Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce hot sauce in June 2014 with enough money to incorporate, register and trademark our name, Elijah’s Xtreme®, and our X®. We also had enough money to pay for our first pallet of our Ghost Pepper Sauce, all under $10,000. As we sold products, we continued to save to buy more, using those funds to then buy two pallets. We now order over 75 pallets a year.
► Why did you choose the hot sauce business?
When I (Elijah) was 6 years old, I came to my dad in the garden and asked what he needed to do to eat the hottest pepper in the world. My dad gave me a hot banana pepper and said, “Start here.” Each summer, we would challenge who could eat the hot-
test pepper from the garden and wait the longest before drinking any water — which led to us trying different hot sauces. I was about 12 years old when I asked my dad if we could make our own hot sauce, one that was still hot but tasted good.
It took three years and many moldy batches of homemade mash until we figured it out. After sending out over 100 samples, we received great feedback. We now have five hot sauces.
► What has been your biggest challenge in 2021? There have been a lot of privacy updates with social media advertising. This has led to bad data, so it is harder to figure out which ads have attributed sales. On top of that, we are running at such a high level with our ads; the video and creatives we use get saturated very quickly. This means I have to come up with new ideas, shoot videos, edit, and optimize them in social media forms every two to three days. It’s crazy. We have run more than 500 different video ads this year alone.
► What is the best advice you have received for growing the business?
“It’s not a problem; it’s a challenge” — Dad, 2020
► What is your favorite thing to do when you aren’t working?
Honestly, there’s little time we’re not working. We love it. We’re so passionate about our company. We’re always thinking of other ideas to share our passion.
► Do you personally enjoy the spicy, burn-downthe-house sauces?
I enjoy a medium to hot burn on most of my food to really get me going. I don’t want to suffer. A ton of people love to suffer, and that’s why our hottest hot sauce is our top seller. ■
▲ Bret and Elijah Morey make five handcrafted hot sauces, including Xtreme Regret.
Taco shop makes big waves
Fresh eats, fresh vibes is the motto at Shaka Taco in Surf City. Steve Christian, 33, and Cody Leutgens, 32, designed the walk-up taco stand with simplicity in mind, creating a place where sandy feet are welcome. Attached to the restaurant is Surf City Surf School, owned and operated by Leutgens. The duo were classmates at Topsail High School in Hampstead. Christian later attended UNC Charlotte, while Leutgens has a bachelor’s degree from UNC Wilmington and a graduate degree from Chatham University in Pittsburgh.
Long before the pandemic, Shaka Taco received a large portion of business from call-in or to-go orders. There is no indoor dining area. No wonder, then, that it thrived during the pandemic as tourists kept streaming to Pender, Onslow and other coastal counties. Two more locations are in the works.
Shaka Taco rolls with the punches — rain, COVID-19 shutdowns and slow seasons — as a way of life, Leutgens says. Comments are edited for length and clarity.
► What enabled your company to grow through the pandemic?
First, keeping staff clocked in and holding regular hours. Without staff, the business could’ve done nothing. Pushing our takeout aspect of Shaka also proved invaluable. With a large portion of our business already being call-in or to-go orders, we over-ordered our compostable packaging and created as many avenues as possible to keep orders coming — online ordering, window service utilizing social distancing, phone orders and even scheduled pickup times to further social distancing.
Once restrictions were loosened, our patio was one of the few places in the area prepared to have people dine outside safely. We were ready to rock and roll.
► How much capital did it take to start the business?
Steve and I each invested $5,000 to start Shaka Taco. We were able to reimburse ourselves after the first quarter we were open
► What was your biggest challenge in 2021?
There have been many challenges. Supplies across the board have been difficult to obtain or have become too expensive to resell. However, our biggest struggle has been management. We started the year strong and are in good shape now. But during peak season, we were unsure how to best utilize upper management. Therefore, we implemented shift leaders, who are employees with long-term experience at Shaka, as well as the knowledge base to keep a shift flowing.
Surf City Schoolhouse
DBA Shaka Taco
Taco shack
Owners
Cody Leutgens and Steve Christian
Location
Surf City
Number of employees
43
Year founded 2016
Projected 2021 revenue $2.3 million
Special
► What’s your bestselling taco?
The bestselling taco every week of every year since we opened is the fish taco. It’s light, crunchy, fresh and a delightful combo of flavors.
► How do sales incentives for your employees work?
The incentives function seasonally — sales incentives and summer labor incentives during the offseason. Managers will work together using set budgets. If they are under budget, that percentage is split amongst them. For example, if the disposable budget is $1,000 for September and only $800 is spent or old products are used and sold, the leftover budget will go to them. Managers can actively source alternative products, as long as the product meets standard, or they can work with suppliers to find sales.
The same applies for labor, our biggest expense. If managers can lower the labor percentage or improve from comparative weeks or months, without sacrificing service quality, they keep the difference.
► How do you keep customers loyal?
Keeping customers loyal truly rests in our duty to keep products consistent and fresh. We want them to have the same tasting fish taco every time they visit, even if it’s been three months. Because of the seasonality, we depend a great deal on locals in the off-season. We try to have their back in the off-season by running daily discounted specials, rotating breweries and dropping new merchandise that won’t be bought up by island visitors.
► How do you balance the restaurant and surf school?
The surf school began in 2013, so it is well established from a functional and operational standpoint. Balancing the two businesses, again, is dictated by staff. Organization and preparation are most important for the surf school, including ensuring instructors are trained and ready once the season arrives, solidifying retail and garment designs and stocking equipment. The last two years were especially difficult to obtain surfboards, but that seems to be bouncing back.
I’ve always said the surf school was my first child who is now old enough to make a PB&J and ride a bike to the beach. The taco shop still must be spoon-fed and burped but it is growing and becoming more self-sufficient each month.
There are a lot of staff members who double dip — lessons all day, tacos all night. This makes for knowledgeable employees, which is invaluable.
► Does the business stay profitable during the winter months?
We are able to stay in the green throughout the year. The area has grown so much, the offseason seems to get smaller and smaller.
With the local community growing, we’ve seen the winter months be surprisingly strong, especially on a sunny weekend. We want to keep as many staff members as possible, so labor becomes the biggest struggle in the off-season. The college and high school kids become far less available, so that allows more hours for full-time employees, which is a plus, but must be tightly managed.
Another huge variable is weather. We do our best to combat inclement weather with specials, a limited menu and bonus items with call-in orders and other ideas. But there are times when we must chock up the day as a loss. Such is the Shaka Taco way of life, rolling with all the punches coming our way — rain, shine, hurricanes, pandemics.
► What is the best advice you have received?
It would be hard to pin down one piece of advice for growth, but we value consistency in all things involved in our business, we treat staff like family, we always give back to our community, we strive to be good people and we laugh as often as possible. If we can continue to keep those aspects at the forefront, we will remain successful and our growth will happen organically.
► What is your favorite thing to do off the job?
Probably try to better the workplace. Realistically, Steve and I enjoy working together as much as we do playtime, of which is almost always done outdoors. Surf, golf, disc golf, building projects, anything on the beach or outside with our families and all of which is accompanied with laughter.
Steve and Kelsey have two adorable little girls, a 1-and 3-yearold, who are Shaka’s biggest fans and regular dilla destroyers. I just got married and got a puppy, so needless to say, both Steve and I are ready to have a stress-free off-season.
► What are your favorite three songs from Shaka Tacos’ usual playlist?
Geez, oh man. That is impossible. There’s close to 2,000 of mine and Steve’s favorite songs on that playlist. It is supremely dynamic. From local guys like The Turkey Buzzards, to gritty guitar playing Junior Kimbrough and bluesy rock like All Them Witches, back to singer-songwriter stuff like Van Zandt and Prine. The list goes on. ■
▲ Surf City natives Steve Christian and Cody Leutgens opened Shaka Taco in 2016.
Guiding through the darkness
An unforeseen outcome of the coronavirus pandemic was its devastating impact on mental health for many people, creating both challenges and opportunities for professional counselors. In a difficult environment, Karin Kassab, 37, moved swiftly to transition her team to conduct therapy sessions via telephone and online. For three months, she and a couple of colleagues ran the business out of her living room. With demand surging, her Clarity Counseling Center added 10 therapists, two interns and two administrative workers as revenue increased by more than $500,000. Profit also gained 13%, Kassab says.
A lifelong resident of coastal North Carolina, Kassab leads a team that provides counseling for a wide variety of issues including body image, depression, eating disorders, fertility, grief and trauma. Comments are edited for length and clarity.
► Where did you go to high school and college?
My family found its way to the North Carolina coast before I was born when my father was stationed at Camp Lejeune. We loved it so much we stayed and have been here since. My father is a proud retired Marine. I am a North Carolina native, born and raised. I attended high school in Sneads Ferry and graduated from UNC Wilmington. I love where I grew up, and that’s why I decided to build a business here.
► What sparked your interest in psychology?
I’ve always been intrigued by what motivates people to do the things they do on a deeper level. I took a psychology class in high school and then an internship in high school at a local inpatient mental-health facility. That experience impacted me deeply. As a 17-year-old, I came face to face with the ways the mentalhealth system worked and the ways it failed. I knew I wanted to be part of a positive impact, and I remember becoming curious about why some people got better and others didn’t. That led me to study psychology in college.
My parents thought the mental health field was saturated and that it would be difficult to make a living, so I kept a double major in elementary education and psychology. I finally dropped the education major halfway through college when I convinced my parents there’s always room for one more skilled person in any industry. Thank God; I would have been a horrible elementary school teacher.
► What prompted you to start the business?
Clarity was born to address pain points in the mental-health industry. Specifically, why was it so difficult for clients to con-
Clarity Counseling Center
Therapy services
Owner Karin Kassab
Location
Wilmington
Number of employees
26, including 22 contractors
Year founded September 2015
Projected 2021 revenue
$1.5 million
Special sauce
Effective response to the pandemic’s impact on mental health
nect with the right therapeutic fit for them? And why, ironically, in the mental-health field, were therapists undervalued and underpaid? Where was the focus on workplace health and experience?
Six years in and we’ve made good progress in those areas. We’re always working to be better but overall, it feels like a win. I come from a hard-working entrepreneurial-minded family. My paternal great-grandfather immigrated to the United States from Syria and was a self-starter. My mother’s heritage is a long family line of dairy farmers. When my father retired from the military, he started a business in land development, while my uncle owns and operates a consumer marketing firm in Dallas. Both of my cousins have started their own businesses.
► How did the company add $500,000 in revenue amid the pandemic?
The key was having the right team and the desire to serve more clients to meet the increasing demand. We knew we had
to meet the growing client need for psychotherapy during the pandemic. People were really struggling with loneliness, anxiety, depression and isolation. And they were turning to psychotherapy. We wanted to be there for them.
Our team’s readiness for change and ability to adapt to new circumstances put on us by COVID allowed us to meet client needs, and grow while maintaining our workplace culture. I am proud of many things about the business, but I am most proud of our high-performing team.
It feels strange to celebrate business growth that was birthed from COVID when so many have suffered. I feel honored and grateful to have had the ability to provide services to our community at such a crucial moment of need.
► What makes Clarity distinctive?
We say jokingly, “This isn’t your grandma’s therapy.” We offer modern evidence-based therapy. Finding the best therapeutic fit for each client is what sets us apart. I am obsessed, almost maniacal, about client-therapist matchmaking. No old-school formalities, no head nodding and awkward “How does that make you feel?” We want real bios and real super specialists who are the best fit for a client struggling with those specific issues.
► What were your biggest challenges?
COVID threw all business owners a curveball. We experienced fear and uncertainty regarding telehealth services, unsure even now if insurance companies will continue to cover mental health care at parity to in-person services. We knew that many of our clients would suffer if we couldn’t continue care.
We foresaw the mandated closure of our office. By preparing in advance, we were able to transition to telehealth, keep our team safe and continue to provide uninterrupted service to our clients for the following 18 months. We scrambled and prepped everyone. The administrative team worked out of my living room for three months. We returned to the office in July 2021.
On the bright side, being forced to go virtual made therapy services more available than ever and we saw an increase in clients. We created more accessible services and expanded to include the entire state.
The second greatest challenge was walking through the dark-
ness together. Our jobs are helping people walk through a frightening and uncertain time, while also up to our eyeballs in our own fears and uncertainty. I am honored to do the work we do. It’s my life’s work and I wouldn’t trade it, but it’s also heavy at times. Our team was at an all-time high risk of burning out. Our clients were struggling, we were struggling. I knew as a leader I couldn’t shield them from that experience, and I certainly couldn’t take it away and make it better. The part we could impact was reminding everyone on our team that they weren’t alone. We’re still connected. We are still a team.
► What did you do to boost morale?
We have focused on teamwork, perfecting our client-therapist matchmaking approach and putting our therapists’ mental health first. We have weekly YouTube “State of the Practice” updates, monthly virtual parties (masks and mimosas, virtual game nights, virtual pool party), and Slack groups (such as “taco-bout-gratitude” and “virtual-coffee”). We wanted every team member to feel valued and part of the team, despite being separated across time zones. We curated and delivered care packages to all staff members that were filled with facial masks, puzzle books, stickers, candy and more.
► Has the pandemic raised the awareness of mental health issues?
Absolutely. We were already on the road to becoming more aware as a culture and the pandemic just ripped that Band Aid right off. The struggle with loneliness, isolation, fear, anxiety and worry is undeniable.
► What’s the best advice you’ve received?
That growth is inherently destabilizing. It is often blindly celebrated, but the reality is business growth is destabilizing to the business core. Unchecked growth can be a business’s demise. With this advice, I’ve been able to make cautious deliberate decisions with the goal of incremental growth with built-in stabilization periods.
► What do you enjoy doing off the job?
I love to spend time exploring new places and eating new things with my husband; time with friends, family and our two adopted fur babies; being outdoors; and practicing yoga. ■
▲ Clarity Counseling Center’s therapists help treat a variety of issues, including anxiety, depression and postpartum.
dampened, not dashed.
By Edward Martin
His 1800s forebearers wrestled a living from the rugged Cataloochee Valley a hundred miles west of Asheville, and now, in his middle 50s with hair as white as his lab coat, Steve Woody is modest. “I’ve been blessed,” he shrugged during an interview in 2015, overlooking a humming clean room.
His Asheville company, Avadim Technologies, was pioneering microbiome skin products that work with the body’s billions of bacteria and other organisms to fend off infections such as the deadly MRSA superbug. Its brands such as Theraworx are becoming staples for preventing infections in more than 1,000 nursing and long-term care homes and acute-care hospitals. Hawked in television infomercials and used by major college sports teams, Avadim’s products are sold in 50,000 pharmacies and retailers including Dick’s Sporting Goods.
Impressed, the N.C. Chamber singled out Avadim as one of its manufacturers of the year. Inc. Magazine ranked the company on its list of the nation’s fastest-growing industries, citing growth of more than 2,500% from 2015 to 2017.
Woody sketched plans to expand to more than 550 employees and move to a $25 million plant in nearby Black Mountain, attracting 1,300 investors. Local and state governments provided $2 million in aid for what promised to be one of the region’s biggest economic developments. The nonprofit Golden LEAF Foundation, which metes out money from a nationwide tobacco-health settlement, anted up $775,000 to build water infrastructure at the Black Mountain site because of the company’s growth potential and plans to pay average wages of about $51,000 a year.
Avadim, circa 2015, is a gazelle.
“In economic-development speak, that’s a local company with national and international promise,” says Clark Duncan, the Asheville Chamber’s economic development head. “They would have a transformative impact for our economy out here in the west. We had lots of high hopes.”
Then the gazelle stumbled. In May, mired in $80 million in debt and having posted $138 million in losses between 2018 and 2020, Avadim filed for reorganization in federal bankruptcy court. It came as three dozen major creditors circled and efforts to find new money failed, partly because of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.
With potential new investors unwilling to top a secret minimum bid, the court handed control in August to an investor group led by the main debt holder, United Kingdom asset manager Hayfin Capital Management.
Avadim Health, renamed during the bankruptcy, now operates with nearly 100 employees. “We’ve stabilized things here and are looking forward to continued growth,” says New York restructuring specialist Keith Daniels, who Hayfin hired as CEO. “We had to reset the operation, but we have a good platform to build on.”
Daniels won’t discuss finances. “I can’t comment on that. We’re a private company.” To be sure, the business is a bit player in the $20 billion or so of assets managed by Hayfin, which was started in 2009 by the U.K.-based TowerBrook Capital Partners private-equity group.
In Western North Carolina, once-enthused elected officials, economic developers and community boosters wonder what went wrong at the company they expected to lead the region’s resurgence in the state’s burgeoning life-sciences industry.
“It was a really significant event in [Black Mountain’s] history when the governor — Pat McCrory — came here in 2015 to make the announcement at the Commerce Park site,” Mayor Larry Harris says. “Just the thought of all those jobs coming to Buncombe County made it a really grand occasion.”
Woody and other Avadim executives declined requests to discuss what happened. Daniels won’t say if Woody is involved anymore. “I can’t comment. Nothing has been formalized.”
Cash burn
Interviews and legal documents describe an innovative company that was hampered by too much borrowing and an unexpected pandemic.
“It’s not uncommon for companies in those first few years to be burning through a lot of cash,” says Ben Teague, vice president of strategic development at Biltmore Farms and former head of the Buncombe County Economic Development Commission. “But Steve’s a visionary, and this is still very much a viable product. I don’t doubt he’ll find his way through this and come out successful on the other end.”
That’s a common sentiment about Woody in western North Carolina.
The Asheville native was a high school soccer star who majored in math at UNC Asheville. After graduating in 1989, he joined Medical Action Industries, a Brentood, N.Y.-based manufacturer of surgical equipment. He stayed for a decade as its sales grew from $75 million to more than $300 million.
▲ Steve Woody
From his initial $4.50-an-hour job, Woody rose through the ranks in the heavily regulated businesses of medical devices and pharma development. He consulted with manufacturers, then formed his own company. He helped guide more than 30 medical-equipment businesses through regulatory thickets and plan for product launches.
In 2006, he came across a manufacturer of an antiseptic wash used to bathe nursing-home residents. A year later, he bought rights to the technology, and Avadim was born. (“Avadim” is Hebrew for servant or slave, depending on which scholar you ask.) His initial product, which could be sprayed or wiped on patients, was effective against urinary tract infections, the bane of long-term hospital stays.
“My vision is for Asheville to be for medical devices what Raleigh is for the pharmaceutical industry,” Woody told Business North Carolina in 2015. Avadim’s woundcare products have the potential to save millions of lives, particularly in developing countries with weak health care systems, he said.
The company continues to produce Theraworx Protect for immune health; Combat One, mainly marketed to first responders to prevent infections; three cosmetic products; and three homeopathic drugs for joints and muscle cramps, according to Daniels. A partner at New York-based Carl Marks Advisors, he was the court-assigned bankruptcy case trustee before becoming interim CEO.
Woody’s key partner was David Fann, recruited as president in 2012. Fann had been a CEO or president of several startup companies in Florida and California involving solar energy, finance and technology. From 1995 to 2002, Fann was CEO of Teraglobal Communications, a San Diego-based public company that disappeared following the dotcom bust of the early 2000s. From 2000 to 2002, Teraglobal’s board chairman was Asheville civic leader Jack Cecil, president
of the Biltmore Farms development company.
Along the way, Woody impressed many potential investors, several Asheville acquaintances say. It was easy casting him as a homegrown business talent who decided to stay put rather than relocating to a larger city.
Among the company’s directors was Charles Owen III, the former CEO of Beacon Manufacturing, once the world’s largest blanket maker. It closed in 2002. Owen is board chairman of UNC Health, one of the state’s biggest health care systems. He didn’t return calls seeking comment about Avadim.
Local acquaintances say Woody was believable in 2015 when he predicted Avadim would have 900 employees by 2021. “I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t like and respect [Woody],” says an investor who asked not to be named.
Avadim, despite innovative and popular products, had barely kept its financial head above water for years. In 201314, the cash-strapped company was rescued by grants from the Mission Foundation, a nonprofit organization affiliated with Mission Health that supported local medical initiatives, according to people familiar with the matter. After the sale of Mission Health to Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare in 2019, the foundation shut down and grant records are no longer available, officials say.
In 2016, Fann led local leaders on a tour of the company’s new manufacturing and distribution center in Swannanoa. It was in a repurposed, long-vacant Beacon warehouse. He told Business North Carolina the company had raised more than $4.5 million toward the $25 million it expected to need for a larger plant that never got off the ground.
Woody and Fann had raised more than $120 million in debt and equity, including investments from about 1,300 individuals, Daniels told the bankruptcy court in May. It’s unlikely they will recoup their investment, he said in early November.
As its Theraworx commercials became standard fare on cable television, Avadim’s losses were mounting. Starting in 2018, the company ramped up borrowing to support its growth. Not more than a year later, it was missing payments and begging lenders for more time to pay its debts, Daniels told the court.
“Net losses were $49.5 million, $34.8 million and $53.6 million for 2018, 2019 and 2020,” Daniels reported.
Company leaders pinned their hopes on an early 2020 initial public offering plan aimed at raising $75 million to pay for the Black Mountain plant and give the business some
▲ Avadim had plans to build a 100,000-square-foot plant in Black Mountain that never materialized.
breathing room. But it never materialized as the worldwide coronavirus pandemic chilled financial markets, stalling many IPOs. The virus was also strangling attempts to boost sales. It was difficult for Avadim’s sales force of more than 50 to line up face-to-face meetings because of COVID-19, according to a Midwest sales representative who asked to remain anonymous.
Like many N.C. businesses, Avadim benefited from the federal Payroll Protection Plan, receiving a $2 million forgivable loan while telling federal authorities that it then had 238 employees. It wasn’t enough.
“They just needed that IPO capital to make their business go,” says Black Mountain Mayor Harris. He believes Avadim was poised for its shovel-ready site. “We have an interstate exchange — Interstate 40 — already funded, with right of way to begin in 2023 and construction in 2025, and everything was promising and exciting,” he says. “They were going to build their headquarters there, and their product had great market appeal.”
In February 2021, Woody sent Harris and the Black Mountain Board of aldermen a statement canceling the plant, blaming the company’s travails on the pandemic.
“It limited the capital the company needed to grow and launch two of the new products we had ready to put on shelves in over 50,000 pharmacies,” Woody wrote, while killing “other expansion plans.”
Ever upbeat, he added that Avadim had record sales in the second and third quarters of 2020 “even though we couldn’t call on hospitals, long-term care facilities or even some pharmacies.” Avadim’s net revenue increased from about $11 million a year to more than $45 million between 2017 and 2019, internal records show. Continued growth was likely, Woody noted.
Costs, however, were rising even faster, Daniels told the bankruptcy court in Wilmington. Avadim was bleeding money, “despite the fact the company’s revenues have increased steadily over the past several years,” he says. Debt exceeded assets by almost $80 million.
The company had, for at least a decade, been pumping “tens of millions of dollars” into brand-building but failed to gain “sufficient market foothold to fully fund its operations.”
With its IPO hopes fizzling, Avadim was left with a wellknown brand, large stocks of unsold inventory and increasingly restive workers. In May of this year, just weeks before its bankruptcy filing, Avadim allocated $185,000 as bonuses to retain non-executive workers.
Then, in mid-August, the court transferred the company to its secured creditors.
On a recent steamy summer day, the Black Mountain Commerce Park site was quiet, its mountain backdrop shrouded in haze. The dream that the company would
proclaim the region as a major player in Tar Heel health sciences was in the hands of strangers from far away.
Avadim’s popular products, manufacturing technology and millions in patent value mean there’s more to this story, some observers say.
“It’s too early for a postmortem,” Ben Teague says. “This is not the buggy whip. I’d never give up on a company that has good products and good people. There’s hope.” ■
NORTH CAROLINA’S
North Carolina’s most respected doctors in 56 specialties are presented in this annual report. Those cited were selected by their peers with a goal of saluting the state’s leading medical practitioners.
Methodology and disclaimer: This report was produced by DataJoe Research, a software and research company specializing in data collection and verification. The Lakewood, Colo.-based company conducts various nominations across the United States on behalf of publishers. To create the “top doctors” list, DataJoe Research facilitated an online peervoting process, also referencing government sources. DataJoe then tallied the votes per category for each doctor to isolate the top nominees in each category. After collecting nominations and additional information, DataJoe checked and confirmed that each published winner had a current, active license status with the state regulatory board. If we were not able to find evidence of a doctor’s current, active registration with the state regulatory board, that doctor was excluded from the list. In addition, any doctor who has been disciplined, up to the time-frame of our review process for an infraction by the state regulatory board, was excluded from the list. Finally, DataJoe presented the tallied result to the magazine for its final review and adjustments.
We recognize that there are many good doctors who are not shown in this representative list. This is only a sampling of the huge array of talented professionals within the region. Inclusion in the list is based on the opinions of responding doctors in the region and the results of our research campaign. We take time and energy to ensure fair voting, although we understand that the results of this survey nomination are not an objective metric. We certainly do not discount the fact that many, many good and effective doctors may not appear on the list.
DataJoe uses best practices and exercises great care in assembling content for this list. DataJoe does not warrant that the data contained within the list are complete or accurate. DataJoe does not assume, and hereby disclaims, any liability to any person for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions herein whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause. All rights reserved. No commercial use of the information in this list may be made without written permission from DataJoe.
For research/methodology questions, contact the research team at surveys@datajoe.com.
► Addiction Medicine
Stephanie Newby Atrium Health Behavioral Health Charlotte, a facility of Carolinas Medical Center Charlotte
► Allergy Immunology
Maeve O'Connor Allergy Asthma & Immunology Relief of Charlotte Charlotte
Caroline Hobbs Atrium Health Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Charlotte
Vandana Patel Carolina Asthma & Allergy Gastonia
John Norris Carolina Asthma & Allergy Center PA Charlotte
Edwin Kim UNC Hospitals Children's Specialty Clinic Chapel Hill
Sean Lucas Allergy Partners Wilmington
Shannon Chadha Carolina Asthma & Allergy Center PA Charlotte
Mildred Kwan UNC Allergy & Immunology Clinic Chapel Hill
Heather Gutekunst Allergy Partners of Raleigh Raleigh
Sherif Taha Allergy Partners of Eastern Carolina Greenville
Sonia Bains Allergy Partners of Raleigh Raleigh
Ekta Shah Atrium Health Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Charlotte
Ranjan Sharma LeBauer Allergy & Asthma Burlington
Leslie Cristiano Wake Forest Baptist Health Allergy Asthma and Immunology Services Clemmons
Aaisha Haque WG (Bill) Hefner VA Medical Center Charlotte
Diane Laber Allergy Partners of Pinehurst Pinehurst
► Anesthesiology
Anthony Passannante UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
David Mayer UNC School of Medicine Chapel Hill
David Zvara University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Lavinia Kolarczyk UNC Hospitals Dept of Anesthesiology Chapel Hill
Bryant Murphy UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
Chuanyao Tong WFUBMC Dept of Anesthesiology Winston-Salem
Dale Buchanan Providence Anesthesiology Associates PA Pinehurst
Robert Shakar American Anesthesiology Wilmington
Kathleen Smith UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
Thomas Mulford Outpatient Surgery Center of Asheville Asheville
Ashraf Habib Duke Birthing Center Durham
Matthew Buck Duke Birthing Center Durham
Emily Teeter UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
Brian Thwaites Pinehurst Anesthesia Associates Pinehurst
Joshua Schwartz East Carolina Anesthesia Associates Greenville
David Chiu Salem Anesthesia Advance
James Winkley Pinehurst Anesthesia Associates Pinehurst
John Bryant Mission Community Anesthesiology Specialists Asheville
John Berry Pinehurst Anesthesia Associates Pinehurst
Ben Judd Pinehurst Anesthesia Associates Pinehurst
Jay ReVille Pinehurst Anesthesia Associates Pinehurst
Farrukh Sair Providence Anesthesiology Associates PA Charlotte
Elsje Harker Regional Anesthesia PLLC Mooresville
Shannon Page Regional Anesthesia PLLC Mooresville
Kimberley Nichols UNC Hospitals Dept of Anesthesiology Chapel Hill
William Kizer Associated Urologists of North Carolina PA Cary
Zane Basrawala Urology Specialists of the Carolinas PLLC Charlotte
Joseph Allen UNC Specialty Care Clayton
Matthew Young Mission Urology Asheville
Carmin Kalorin WakeMed Raleigh Medical Park Raleigh
Chad Gridley UNC Specialty Care Smithfield
Stephen Riggs Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Peter Clark Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute & Atrium Health Urology Charlotte
► Vascular Surgery
Frank Arko Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
Mark Farber UNC Hospitals Vascular Interventional Radiology Clinic Chapel Hill
Matthew Edwards Vascular and Endovascular Surgery Winston-Salem
Erin Murphy Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
Luigi Pascarella UNC Hospitals Heart And Vascular Center At Meadowmont Chapel Hill
Randolph Geary Wake Forest Baptist Health Vascular and Endovascular Surgery Winston-Salem
Wallace Tarry Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Concord
Mitchell Cox Duke Vascular Surgery and Vein Center at Brier Creek Raleigh
Robert Thomason Novant Health Vascular Specialists Winston-Salem
Katharine McGinigle UNC Hospitals Heart And Vascular Center At Meadowmont Chapel Hill
David Weatherford Coastal Carolina Surgical Associates Wilmington
Thomas Eskew Coastal Vascular Institute PA Wilmington
William Marston UNC Vascular Center Chapel Hill
Lemuel Kirby Carolina Vascular Asheville
Nestor Cruz Novant Health Heart & Vascular Institute Salisbury
H. Hobson Atrium Health General Surgery Shelby
Peter Ford Vascular Solutions PC Charlotte
Daniel Barzana Wilmington Health PLLC Wilmington
John Hobson Vascular Surgery at Pardee Hendersonville
FINDING A CURE
North Carolina’s nursing ranks are shrinking for many reasons, including the rigors of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nursing schools are using unique approaches to keep seasoned professionals, add capacity and attract students to meet staffing needs.
After Hurricane Florence made landfall in September 2018, few N.C. communities suffered as much as New Bern. Historic flooding along the Trent and Neuse rivers caused $100 million in residential and commercial damage. But CarolinaEast Health System’s staff stepped up and weathered the storm. “The hurricane was a horrible but also wonderful experience,” says James Davis, vice president of nursing. “We stayed at the hospital. We slept here. We took care of our patients and we all pulled together. That’s what we’re good at.”
But it can always be worse, as the old saying goes. And the COVID-19
pandemic made Florence seem more like a temporary inconvenience. “[It] has been like a hurricane that won’t go away,” Davis says.
The pandemic has made the past two years tough for most people, especially nurses. They’re risking their health to care for patients. But even as nurses are hailed as heroes, their numbers are shrinking. Baby boomers are retiring, and fewer people are choosing a health care career. Health care systems and nursing schools are rising to reverse that trend. They’re recruiting new nurses and keeping seasoned ones by fueling the passion that initially brings people to the profession.
Throughout Davis’ 27 years in the nursing profession, he has seen plenty of ups and downs. He says the current vacancy rate for nursing jobs at CarolinaEast hasn’t yet reached a crisis, but it’s still not good. “We have lost more nurses in the last year and a half than we have ever lost in any comparable amount of time,” he says. “We currently have about 600 nurses in the hospital and 40 open full-time equivalent positions.”
Pandemic burnout has taken a toll on nurses. “They have been working so hard and seeing so many people who are sick and dying,” Davis says. But there are other reasons nurses are leaving the profession nationwide.
Some are retiring early to care for vulnerable family members. Others are leaving hospital jobs for positions with weekday schedules and daytime hours or seeking their fortunes as traveling nurses, where they can earn as much as three times what they make in a traditional hospital setting. During the pandemic, hospitals recruited travel nurses to supplement their permanent staff, says Tina Gordon, North Carolina Nurses Association’s executive director. “They may decide to do travel nursing for six or eight months and then return home and get their former job back,” she says.
Some nursing professionals trace staffing shortages to fewer nursing school graduates. Some schools are throttling back enrollment because of a lack of instructors. “It’s a chicken and egg situation — a vicious cycle,” Gordon says. “We have a nursing shortage, but students are being turned away because there are not enough nursing faculty to teach them.”
The nursing instructor shortage is being addressed in several ways, including increasing salaries, particularly at the
community college level, where instructors are required to hold at least a master’s degree. “There’s a gap between what nurses can make in faculty positions and what nurses with the same level of educational preparation can make in a clinical environment,” Gordon says. According to the State Board of Community Colleges Fiscal Year 2019-2020 State Aid Allocations and Budget Policies, community college instructors with master’s degrees earn an annual salary of $40,371. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that as of May 2020, registered nurses in North Carolina earned an average annual salary of $68,950. NurseJournal.org ranks North Carolina as the 24th best state to work as a nurse, based on salary, cost of living and an average NCLEX-RN nursing exam pass rate of 92.2%.
Surry Community College in Dobson has one of the state’s most successful nursing programs. According to N.C. Board of Nursing Records, 44 of 46 nursing graduates with an associate degree have passed the NCLEX-RN exam this year. That’s a
graduation rate of 95.7%. SCC collaborates with Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk to give graduates the opportunity to earn a bachelor of science degree in nursing, says Surry Associate Dean of Health Sciences Yvonne Johnson. “Our program is so popular, they turn applicants away,” she says. “We don’t have faculty resources to admit everyone who wants to enroll. The need for nurses is huge, and if we could staff more nursing classes, we would fill them.”
Johnson says after graduating and passing their license exam, most fledgling nurses stay close to home.
“People who come to a community college for their nursing education are very vested in their communities.”
SCC’s service area is home to Northern Regional Hospital in Mount Airy and Hugh Chatham Memorial Hospital in Elkin. Wake Forest Baptist Hospital and Forsyth Medical Center are about an hour drive away in Winston-Salem.
Linda O’Boyle is a nursing professor at Barton College in Wilson and head of its RN-BSN program. She says the opportunity to transition to the class-
room from the hospital room can be a professional reward for nurses who are worn out by the rigors of daily patient care. “Nursing is hard,” she says. “It’s physically demanding and emotionally draining. The silver lining is that some of those nurses leaving the profession may be interested in teaching.”
N.C. Central University’s Nursing Department Chairwoman Yolanda VanRiel says the Durham program has averaged 75 graduates each of the past three years. “So far, we haven’t had any problems finding educators,” she says. “During the last academic year, we hired seven faculty members.”
NCCU’s Clinical Learning Resource Center, dubbed “Eagle General Hospital,” provides lab skills training and patient simulation experiences. But VanRiel says it’s real-world experience that prepares students for their nursing careers. In 2013, the nursing school established a community health initiative with McDougald Terrace, a public housing development in Durham. Students continue to participate in events at the development, helping residents who were victims of a carbon monoxide crisis in 2020 and three fires earlier this year.
Lisa Snow recently celebrated 40 years as a registered nurse. She is a retired nurse manager at Atrium Health and has spent the last seven years teaching at Randolph Community College in Asheboro. “We’re one of the smaller nursing programs with between 30 and 35 nursing students,” she says.
RCC’s health care programs recently received a boost with the opening of the $14.4 million Allied Health Center. The facility is 45,000 square feet and houses the college’s nursing, radiography, medical assisting and emergency medical services programs. “We have a state-of-the-art
facility in which to teach, and that makes it easier for nursing faculty to be able to contribute to the educational process of future health care professionals,” Snow says.
Many nurses share Snow’s love of teaching, but the low salaries discourage them from becoming instructors. Retirees have “earned enough to be able to accept less pay, but that also means that the average age of the nursing professors is inching up,” Gordon says. A 2019-2020 report from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing says the average age of nursing professors with a doctoral degree is 63.
The nursing school at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee logged a 100% NCLEX-RN pass rate for the 51 students graduating in December 2020. “Our faculty work very hard to ensure that students receive a robust educational experience that covers all the content needed to enter practice as a novice nurse,” says Terri Durbin, associate professor and director of WCU’s School of Nursing. “The faculty also gives students a great deal of individual attention,” she says.
In August, WCU School of Nursing started Keep Haywood Healthy, a partnership with Haywood County Schools that created a competition among public middle schools and high schools countywide to promote annual well-child visits, which are intended to keep children healthy and protected. “Kae-Livsey, a member of WCU’s nursing faculty, obtained $10,000 in funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for this project,” Durbin says. “The middle school and high school with the greatest percentage of students providing documentation to school nurses of a completed well-child visit in the past year will each receive a $2,000 cash prize.”
In addition to supporting their local community, health care professionals are an important economic development driver. “Having ample access to health care is a critical component when it comes to attracting new business and industry to an area,” Gordon says. “A critical workforce shortage can hamper economic development efforts, especially in rural regions of the state.”
In New Bern, CarolinaEast is Craven County’s second largest employer. “Hospitals are huge economic machines,” Davis says. “They draw a lot of business to the towns they serve. Having a strong hospital with strong nurses has a lot to do with that.”
While the N.C. Nurses Association focuses on filling the workforce pipeline with promising students, bootson-the-ground professionals continue to don scrubs and go to work every day. “Nurses are the heartbeat of the hospital,” Davis says. “People spend nights in the hospital because they need 24-hour care, and it is the nurses who are at their bedside providing that care.”
As Barton’s O’Boyle closes the book on her career, its final chapter is devoted to educating the next generation of nurses. She can’t think of a better ending. “Combining clinical practice with teaching certainly has been wonderful for me,” she says. “And I hope others who join the nursing profession receive as much personal satisfaction in their career as I have.”
— Teri Saylor is a freelance writer from Raleigh.
By Alyssa Pressler
North Carolina’s small towns are the backbone of the state. There’s a lot of attention devoted to the state’s fast-growing areas like Charlotte and the Triangle, but important and exciting work is happening in smaller areas as well. Our goal with this section is to celebrate that and make you aware of how well-rounded the state truly is.
Though SNL might jokingly call Charlotte the “gateway to Gastonia,” the town west of the Queen City is a powerhouse of development, technology and manufacturing. Their anchor project includes a ballpark, retail, apartments and more called the Franklin Urban Sports & Entertainment (FUSE) District.
With creative living spaces, breweries, mixed-use space and a technology park involved, the joke becomes a little more serious as we see more folks moving outside of Charlotte to escape the hustle and bustle of the city.
Gaston County also offers Bessemer City, located 25 miles outside of Charlotte with a population of just under 6,000. Though it might be considered small, Bessemer City is growing quickly and recently announced the transformation of the 250,000-square-foot Osage Mill downtown to become workforce housing apartments and commercial space. The city is also working on a 40-acre multi-use park for its growing population.
And not to be confused with the South Carolina town with the same name, Greenville is home to East Carolina University and continues to see its town grow as a diverse place to live. Perhaps the greatest example of this is the Uptown Greenville District, which has announced or completed $900 million in public and private investments in recent years.
We hope you enjoy reading more about these incredible towns in the pages to come.
OPPORTUNITY AWAITS IN GREENVILLE, N.C.
As the thriving hub of the eastern region, Greenville has become a well-rounded and diverse destination to live, work, learn, visit and invest. The downtown community, known as Uptown Greenville, is the heart of the city with unique restaurants, breweries, shopping, nightlife and outdoor adventure — all within walking distance.
visitgreenvillenc.com
Home to East Carolina University, the Uptown Greenville District is one of the fastest growing communities in the state with nearly $900 million dollars in public and private investments completed or announced in recent years. Development projects in the works include upscale living options, outdoor recreation complexes, an innovative research campus, trendy new restaurants and several chic hotels. This means more opportunity in the area to grow the market for business, research, sports and leisure.
The 19-acre master development project and innovative research campus, known as Intersect East, broke ground earlier this year. Located on nearby Dickinson Avenue is the newly-opened North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences at Greenville along with several projects in development, including an open-air container restaurant, boutique hotel and food hall. The newly-launched African American Cultural Trail of Greenville-Pitt County celebrates local history and recognizes the contributions African Americans made to the city’s growth and development. The Emerald Loop urban art trail featuring public art and vibrant lighting is currently underway. It includes the recently launched Emerald Express trolley system, connecting residents and visitors with dining, entertainment, and retail opportunities throughout the Uptown Greenville district. With ECU Athletics, local sports teams and tournaments, there’s always a game to catch. Plus, Greenville’s Stallings Stadium at Elm Street Park is the new host destination of the Little League Softball World Series, bringing in teams from around the world.
With a rich history dating back more than 300 years, Greenville embraces its distinct Carolina culture. Residents and visitors alike revel in everything, from the annual Pirate Fest, which draws swashbucklers of all ages, to the legendary BBQ joints and award-winning
craft breweries along the Pitt County Brew & ‘Cue Trail. With a lively art, music, and culinary scene in the Uptown and Dickinson Avenue Arts District, there are dozens of community events including an open-air artisan market, live-at-five gatherings and live concerts along the waterfront at the Town Common. There are top-notch dance and stage performances at ECU; antique shops and boutiques for browsing; historic sites for history buffs and pick-your-own farms aplenty.
It’s not called Greenville for nothing. The area is home to the 360-acre Wildwood Park, 324-acre River Park North, and the six-mile Greenville Greenway System that is part of the East Coast Greenway, in addition to several nearby golf and tennis facilities.
The development of additional parks, shops, restaurants, hotels, public art and mural projects, along with research sites and business opportunities will increase and improve tourism and residency, giving people from outside the region a chance to experience the wonderful people and incredible places in Uptown Greenville.
GREAT PLACE. GREAT PEOPLE. GREAT PROMISE.
Gastonia has become the talk of the town with a new ballpark, entertainment, retail, apartments, and new restaurants that make us a great choice for almost everyone. Our geographic location captures the natural beauty of the area, which is best taken in from the view atop Crowders Mountain. Residents and visitors can access great greenways, ample parks, sports facilities, and our City is just a short distance from Charlotte Douglas International Airport.
CHOOSE GASTONIA.
cityofgastonia.com
While our City’s history was built in a textile era, our Downtown has been attracting regional attention for its anchor project, the Franklin Urban Sports & Entertainment (FUSE) District. Several projects will secure a bright future for our City:
CaroMont Health Park – the jewel of our City and home to the Honey Hunters Professional Baseball Team.
Loray Mill Redevelopment, Trenton Mill Lofts, and Center City Crossings – three exciting projects that provide creative residential spaces, luring residents who are seeking a vibrant, healthy and growing community.
Durty Bull Brewery and the Coca-Cola Pad Development – these redevelopment projects will give even more choices for residents and visitors seeking the microbrewery culture and a one-of-a-kind, mixed-use destination for leisure living and entertainment.
Gastonia Technology Park (GTP) and Northpoint GATEWAY85 –technology is key in Gastonia. These two areas host several advanced manufacturing companies that make Gastonia an international proving ground for advanced manufacturing. The goal is to reach end-user customers in the supply-chain, as we become a destination of choice major retailers need to secure locations for last-mile delivery.
Exciting development in Gastonia is inspiring future retail and entertainment opportunities that fuse economic development projects with its downtown, aimed at growing and sustaining our economy for future generations.
COME TO GASTONIA!
Photo by Tom Hauer
DISCOVER THE BUZZ IN BESSEMER CITY.
Nestled in Western Gaston County, Bessemer City is a transforming community ready for growth and investment.
WinnDevelopment, one of the nation’s leading developers of historic mills for residential living, is moving to acquire the historic Osage Mill in downtown Bessemer City as the first step toward transforming the 250,000-square-foot, 125-year-old structure into workforce housing apartments and commercial space.
Working with city and state officials, the company plans to restore the mill and five-acre development site into 139 one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments, 30,000 square feet for ground floor commercial uses, multiple outdoor gathering spaces and play areas for residents and children, and 244 parking spaces.
bessemercity.com
“Bessemer City is extremely excited about the transformation that will be taking place at Osage Mill in 2022. The Osage Mill Redevelopment is a catalyst project that will, and already has, enticed additional investment and business development in downtown Bessemer City.”
-Becky S. Smith, Mayor of Bessemer City
“We’re excited for the opportunity to bring our expertise to this community with a strong demand for housing that’s affordable for the working people who fuel the region’s economy,” says WinnDevelopment Vice President Aimee McHale. “We look forward to moving forward with a development process that will lead to the start of construction in the spring of 2022.”
Osage Mill is located in a mixed-use neighborhood adjacent to the city’s downtown commercial area offering easy access to Interstate 85 for commuting 29 miles to Charlotte, or 47 miles to Spartanburg, SC, both strong employment centers for the area.
Bessemer City’s growth doesn’t stop with downtown. Currently, the City is working on a 40-acre multi-use park that will focus on tournament and local use. Stinger Park will drive additional investment in the community, including downtown small businesses.
Bessemer City is also home to Southridge Business Park, a business campus complex that houses six national and international companies, employing upwards of 2,000 people. Additionally, Livent, a lithium manufacturer who is currently working on a multi-million dollar expansion, provides Bessemer City with additional employment and investment.
Regional projects and amenities also have an impact on Bessemer City. These include: Two Kings Casino, Crowders Mountain State Park, Piedmont Lithium and Apple Creek Corporate Park.
Bessemer City is transforming and growing with opportunities for new investments and projects.
Bessemer City is building a hive for all.
RIPPLE EFFECT
Greenville is growing thanks to a booming biopharma industry, regional health care system and ambitious higher education institutions. The benefits are evident in adjacent Pitt County towns.
Head south from Greenville about 6 miles, and you’ll find yourself in downtown Winterville. Folks here still gather at family-owned Dixie Queen Seafood Restaurant, which has been frying, broiling and steaming catches of the day for 40 years. For nearly that long, the community has celebrated its Watermelon Festival, complete with music, a parade, carnival rides and a watermelon eating contest, every August.
Winterville’s beautiful neighborhoods and diverse community have a hometown feel, which has always attracted people to North Carolina, says Stephen Penn, the town’s economic development planner. “Much of our population is within
walking, biking and even golf-carting distance to our small but vibrant downtown,” he says. “Yes, golf carts! We allow golf carts on the local streets of Winterville, which means you can ride your golf cart to the grocery store, to work, out to dinner, for a joy ride or to one of the many businesses in downtown Winterville.”
Winterville packs all that into 4.6 square miles. That works out to about 2,150 residents per square mile, making it North Carolina’s 22ndmost densely populated municipality. Almost a third of its households earn more than $100,000 annually. “Over the past five years, we have seen a resurgence of life within our downtown,” Penn says. An upscale
restaurant, two craft breweries with outdoor seating and a cigar lounge have opened. “[The cigar lounge] will send you back to the 1950s with its smooth live-jazz nights.”
Penn says Winterville seeks commercial growth. Although a retail development anchored by a well-known grocery-store brand, restaurants and a hotel. “Though Winterville is already a great place to work or live, we are seeking to make Winterville even better,” he says.
“With our quick growth, low business costs, highly educated population and high quality of life, we have outstanding opportunities for new businesses and industries who are seeking to expand or relocate.”
Much of Winterville’s growth can be tied to its close proximity to Greenville, the county seat. It leads Pitt County’s booming biopharma industry and is home to 29,000student East Carolina University, Vidant Medical Center and more than 87,000 residents in 2020, according to the N.C. Office of State Budget and Management. The effects of Greenville’s big city living aren’t only impacting Winterville. They can be seen in some of Pitt County’s 17 townships, including Farmville to the west and Ayden to the south.
BIOPHARMA BASED
Waltham, Mass.-based life-sciences giant Thermo Fisher Scientific has more than 80,000 employees in 50 countries. It unveiled two expansions at its Greenville location, which already included 1,500 employees and 1.5 million square feet of buildings on 142 acres, within the past year. In December 2020, it announced a $500 million investment and 500 jobs over two years, expanding product development and commercial manufacturing of medicines, therapies and vaccines. And it announced a $154 million investment and 290 more jobs in September. That will expand sterile manufacturing of liquid fillings, prefilled syringes, oral solid doses and lyophilized products, which are easier to store and ship.
Pitt County Economic Development Director Kelly Andrews says Thermo Fisher expanded in Greenville for several reasons. “We also competed with Italy, and Thermo Fisher has plants all over the world,” she says. “But what we have in Greenville is a lower cost and the ecosystem of biopharma training that has been developed over decades, since the late 1960s. ECU and Pitt Community College have developed training to support that — very specific training with solid dose and bio-process engineering and chemistry. All that has been evolving, and
it’s not something you can develop overnight in another community. It just continues to grow and transform our economy.”
Winterville-based Pitt Community College is one of the state’s 58 community college campuses, all of which specialize in customized workforce development. PCC keeps skilled workers flowing through a pipeline to the county’s growing biopharmaceutical sector. But it doesn’t do it alone. ECU’s Eastern Region Pharma Center, which trains ECU and community college students for biopharmaceutical jobs, was awarded a $1.9 million grant in February from Golden LEAF Foundation, the Rocky Mount-based nonprofit that distributes the state’s portion of the national tobacco settlement to economic development projects. ERPC is in ECU’s $90 million Life Sciences and Biotechnology Building, which opened in November. It also is home to ECU’s biology department and offers research space to faculty and students.
The four-story Life Sciences and Biotechnology building is about 141,500 square feet. ERPC claims 4,500 square feet of that. “It’s primarily a workforce-development initiative focused on increasing student awareness and engagement in opportunities
leading to pharma industry employment as well as helping pharma companies with continuing education, customized training and collaboration on innovative projects,” says Harry Ploehn, ECU professor and dean of its College of Engineering and Technology. “The ERPC is developing a ‘grow local’ approach to talent sourcing and development through a geographically focused collaboration with community colleges and industry partners in each of the five BioPharma Crescent counties. Our Pitt and Johnston [Community College in Smithfield] collaborations have already been initiated this summer. We will equip expanded teaching labs to increase the numbers of graduates with degrees and expertise needed for pharmaceutical manufacturing.”
Edgecombe, Johnston, Nash, Pitt and Wilson counties make up the BioPharma Crescent. It is home to major players in the industry, including Thermo Fisher, Mayne Pharma, Pfizer, Sandoz and GlaxoSmithKline. They enjoy easy access to consumer markets via interstates, airports and deep-water ports along with an industry-specific workforce. “We have developed the North Carolina Pharmaceutical Services Network to deliver much of the training needs to
ECU’s new Life Sciences and Biotechnology building opened in November.
support industry needs,” says Mark Phillips, vice president of statewide operations and executive director of N.C. Biotechnology Center’s Eastern Region Office in Greenville.
Phillips works with school systems and higher education institutions in 27 counties, strengthening research, workforce training and commercial growth in biotechnology. Its Windows on the Workplace 2020 report indicates that statewide demand for skilled employees will increase by more than 5,000 in the next five years, with more than 50% needing a bachelor’s degree in science, technology, engineering and math — STEM — fields such as industrial technology and engineering. “Regarding the BioPharma Career Pathways, we are fortunate to have an excellent representation of the region, with the collaboration of partners, including university, community colleges, K-12 education, workforce development boards and economic development entities, as we are focused on supporting the workforce development and training needs of the industries included in the BioPharma Crescent,” he says. “The great thing about the pathways work is that it reaches back into K-12 schools. We have implemented the Pharma K12 program, which targets high school students who may not have either the financial means or interest to immediately further their education upon graduation. They apply to participate in the two-and-a-half-day training program
that takes place after graduation at the Pharmaceutical Services Network at Pitt Community College to learn the pharmaceutical manufacturing techniques associated in a regulated environment.”
The Pharmaceutical Services Network is a collaboration for workforce training that’s guided by company input. An $11 million Golden LEAF grant in 2015 went toward laboratory-based education at ECU, where the number of students enrolled in pharmaceutical skills training has quadrupled, according to the Network. It’s using a $650,000 Golden LEAF grant to offer training in theories and practices of oral solid dose manufacturing at PCC. “Upon receiving their certification, [students] are guaranteed an interview with Thermo Fisher Scientific, with many of them receiving an offer of employment,” Phillips says. “With all of these efforts, we’re hoping to reach people who never would consider a biopharma manufacturing job and demystify the available career opportunities. And we hope the stability, good pay and benefits make their lives easier in the long run.”
ERPC sponsored Pharma Fest at ECU with 18 Thermo Fisher associates and 120 students in October. “This was just the first of many and varied kinds of engagement we’ll have with Thermo Fisher as we work with them and Pitt Community College and the N.C. Biotechnology Center to help increase numbers of students to find their way along the many pathways
that can lead to pharma employment right here in Pitt County,” Ploehn says. Biopharma training efforts are incorporating other disciplines. “With the formation of the new ERPC, we are now turning our attention to supporting students beyond just the biologists and chemists to include various engineering students, industrial technology students and business students that are in high demand by the regional pharma companies,” says Jack Pender, director of pharmaceutical training and laboratory services in ECU’s Chemistry Department. “We are identifying the various courses and programs at ECU that teach students content relevant for working in the pharma industry and trying to inform those students about the opportunities available in the pharma industry as well as help them see educational paths that lead to those opportunities. We are also working with PCC and JCC on clarifying and streamlining the community college-to-ECU chemistry, bio, engineering, industrial tech part of the path for community college students before they even get here. We are also looking within the current course offerings to see where we can pull pharma-relevant content to be available as short courses for students and working people.”
WORK AND PLAY
Greenville is growing in other ways. “The uptown area has been booming over the last five years,” Andrews says. “There’s a lot of recreation and culture. We’re drawing people to uptown, and it gives it a nice feeling to see buildings lighting up at night. We’re recruiting industry, and we’re seeing people move into and around uptown, and that’s a big deal.”
One of the biggest additions is Intersect East, 19 acres between ECU’s main campus and Dickinson Avenue that was once home to tobacco ware-
Rendering of Intersect East, which will encompass 14 buildings.
houses. The eight-year project will repurpose 14 buildings into a mix of residential, office and cultural space. It’s a more than $150 million investment that’s expected to create up to 1,500 jobs, a $141 million annual financial impact and $3 million in annual tax revenue. Its first phase is expected to be complete late next year.
Based on the premise of N.C. State’s Centennial Campus in Raleigh, ECU’s Millennial Campus offers the opportunity for education, industry, government, community and military partners to support public-private ventures. “The ECU Millennial Campus also is coming to life,” Andrews says. “We’re going to rehab some old buildings, and some of it will be new. Some are mixed-use. Some are industry. We’re actively marketing that right now. We see international companies wanting to break into the U.S. market, not build a big plant but just get their foot in the door. But it will put them here in eastern North Carolina. Then maybe they’ll stay and build bigger.”
But it’s not all work. Greenville has time for fun, too. Uptown Greenville,
known for citywide upgrades and a Façade Improvement Grant to renovate historic properties, created Freeboot Fridays, a pre-game festival for ECU home football games. It offers live music, children’s activities and a street fair that features local restaurants and beverage-makers. There also is a First Friday ArtWalk and a farmer’s market — Umbrella Market — during the summer.
N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences’ Greenville branch opened in September. It offers science camps and fairs for students. Its e-mentoring programs for children spur interest in STEM courses. “It’s an educational piece that we haven’t had before,” Andrews says. “It’s going to draw people to our area, and all that adds to our appeal.”
RISING TIDE
Continue south past Winterville, and you’ll find Ayden. It’s feeling Greenville’s growth, too, including plans for four subdivisions with a total of more than 800 lots, says the town’s economic development director, Thomas Mallory Denham. “The town
broke ground on a new Community Resource Center on Aug. 18 and a new dog park opened Oct. 2,” he says. A pocket park — a greenspace behind Town Hall with a decorative sidewalk and fountain — was constructed with a $10,000 grant from the GreenvilleENC Alliance. The town is exploring an industrial park with rail access, but that project is in its infancy. “There’s more to come in the next four months,” he says.
Like Winterville, Farmville isn’t big. There’s no university, downtown condominiums or hospital. There aren’t any billion-dollar businesses. “But I promise you’ll find more happening in Farmville than any other town in the county — except Greenville,” says Town Manager David Hodgkins. “We’ve become somewhat of a bedroom community.”
Hodgkins says Farmville is tending to the needs of its changing demographics. “We’re trying to build on our amenities,” he says. “We’ve got a lot of younger families moving to town. We’re spreading out but growing closer to Greenville is more of an economic tie-in thing. A lot of people live here and work in Greenville or Wilson, so we’re getting a lot of the [Vidant Medical Center] spill over.”
The writing is on the wall, literally, for Farmville’s past and future. Colorful painted murals preserve its history, depicting Gulf and Sinclair service stations, a horse stable, H.B. Sugg High School that’s now a community center and Monk Tobacco Co., which was founded in the early 1900s and was a world leader in exports. A newer mural with large green lettering on a white background invites people and progress with an alliterative slogan: Find it First in Farmville. “We’re a little artsy,” Hodgkins says.
Farmville North industrial site is on N.C. 264 at the intersection with N.C. 258. It recently was certified for devel-
PHOTO CREDIT: AARON HINES, GREENVILLE, N.C.
City of Greenville, the Umbrella Market, and a bridge on the Greenville Greenway
opment. “Then there’s the Farmville Industrial Park, which abuts [N.C.] 264 and has about 35 acres remaining,” Hodgkins says. “And Farmville Corporate Park off [N.C.] 264-alternate is actively being marketed. We just interviewed architects [in early October] to build a shell building.”
A new library opened on the site of Farmville’s old one in April. There’s a new disc golf course along with a splash pad, soccer fields, pickle ball courts and sand volleyball. These family-friendly facilities complement new businesses downtown, including a French bakery and craft brewery. They share sidewalks with 100-yearold Farmville Furniture Co., historic churches and a second Dixie Queen Seafood location. “The other thing that’s a big deal is in 2022, the town is turning 150 years old, so we’re having a sesquicentennial celebration coming up in February,” Hodgkins says. “There’s a lot going on here.” ■
eastern North Carolina.
— Kathy Blake is a writer from
Clockwise: The Farmville Arts Center, downtown Farmville, Farmville building murals and the ECU Glass Station.
+ TALKING POINTS
WHITEVILLE
5,221
POPULATION IN 2020
73
FEWER PEOPLE LIVING IN WHITEVILLE IN 2020 THAN IN 2000
1832 YEAR OF INCORPORATION
$48,750 MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME
9
STATE BASEBALL TITLES WON BETWEEN 1983 AND 2018 BY WHITEVILLE HIGH SCHOOL
Ida Stephens Owens
GENETIC SCIENTIST WHO WAS THE FIRST BLACK WOMAN TO EARN A PH.D. IN PHYSIOLOGY AT DUKE UNIVERSITY
Columbus County Courthouse
ON NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES
A CHARMING BLEND OF OLD AND NEW
Former Parisians and longtime residents find pleasure in Whiteville’s small-town calm
BY BRYAN MIMS
Within the old brick walls of Anthony’s Italian Restaurant in Whiteville, families and couples sit at varnished wood tables eating plates of chicken parmigiana and shrimp alfredo. The lights are low, the red wine and sweet tea are poured, and owner Anthony Grippi is busy in the kitchen. Too busy for conversation. Maybe another day.
But after the mealtime rush, he spares a few minutes to give a thumbnail sketch of his journey from Italy to Whiteville, the Columbus County seat that is 50 miles west of Wilmington. He was born in Sicily and moved to New York as a child in 1973, where he worked in his family’s restaurants. His culinary skills brought him south to Wilmington and eventually to Whiteville, where he made a much-raved-about stromboli at Mama Rita’s Italian Restaurant.
Whiteville’s grand Victorian houses, with their wide porches, big trees and luxuriant yards, held him in thrall. “That’s what attracted me, you know,” he says in a thick New York accent. The small downtown also impressed him. “How quaint it was, you know what I’m saying? Very homey feeling.” When Mama Rita’s closed in 2014, he seized the opportunity to open his own restaurant.
Grippi is not the only restaurateur in Whiteville with a non-Southern accent. At nearby The Chef & The Frog, the chef is from Cambodia and “the frog” is from France. “If you don’t like French people, you can just refer to them as frogs,” says co-owner Guillaume Slama, citing the habits of some French-averse Brits during World War I. How he and his wife met and built a life sounds like a fairy tale. “We had a lot of different things happen to us,” he says. “The Cambodian princess kissed a frog, and she turned into a beautiful chef.”
▲ Built around 1830, the Reuben Brown House is a cultural center for Whiteville.
Slama and his wife, Sokun, met in Paris. In 1979, when she was seven years old, Sokun and her family escaped from Cambodia’s murderous Khmer Rouge regime and made their way to France. As a child, Sokun learned to fuse Cambodian fare with French cuisine, impressing both her family and the neighbors in her refugee community.
Guillaume and Sokun dated, fell in love and exchanged wedding vows. They moved to Atlanta when Guillaume took a job with an engineering company. But Sokun’s superb cooking prompted them to open a bed and breakfast with a restaurant in Washington, Ga. That lasted a couple of years until the Great Recession devastated the hospitality business.
As it happened, Whiteville businessman Jesse Fisher was visiting and told Sokun that her catfish sandwich was the best sandwich he ever ate. Fisher, whose family has been involved in local lumber and other businesses for more than a century, urged the couple to open a restaurant in downtown Whiteville.
The Slamas had never heard of Whiteville or been to North Carolina. But facing huge business losses and eventual bankruptcy in Georgia, they called Fisher three months later to take him up on his offer. “It was completely a leap of faith for us. Things were going so great that a year and a half into it, we bought him out,”
Guillaume says. After another year and a half, they bought 6,000 square feet of space on Madison Street, where they serve chimichurri steak, beef bourguignon and roasted pork belly.
Guillaume estimates half of his business comes from out-oftowners, those from the booming coastal communities of neighboring Brunswick County and from as far away as the Triangle. The blend of Cambodian and French dishes has earned the restaurant a glowing reputation.
The former Parisians are world travelers who have become enamored with a small N.C. town surrounded by cypress creeks, soybean fields and piney woods. “I love it. I really do love it over here,” she says. “It’s calmer; everything is slower. You make an adjustment.”
Hurricanes and a resurgence
Whiteville was named in 1810 for James B. White, who owned about 2,000 acres, including the original town site. As the seat of Columbus County, it continued to flourish when the Wilmington and Augusta Railroad came through, building a depot in 1903 known as Vineland Station. It earned its name from the area’s scuppernong vineyards, with the grapes being shipped out on the trains.
During the second half of the 20th century, Whiteville was an important banking town in North Carolina. It was the home of United Carolina Bancshares, which expanded through acquisitions of banks in Fayetteville, Greensboro, Raleigh, Greer, S.C., and other cities. It was the eighth-largest N.C. bank when it was acquired by BB&T for nearly $1 billion in 1997. BB&T’s successor, Truist Financial, still has a call center in Whiteville.
These days, the area has an industrial base. The vast pine tree plantations feed the International Paper mill in Riegelwood, 30 miles east of Whiteville, employing about 800 people. Atlantic Corp., maker of packaging materials, has about 250 employees in nearby Tabor City. National Spinning, supplier of fiber-dyed spun yarns, is located in Whiteville, with roughly 200 people on the payroll.
▲ Vineland Station, Pecan Harvest Festival
▲ Guillaume and Sokun Slama
The Chef & The Frog managed to rebound after Hurricane Florence swept through the region in 2018, flooding much of the downtown with about 2 feet of water. But a few other businesses never recovered from the second storm to pound the city in two years. Hurricane Matthew had flooded homes and businesses in 2016. “When you look at where downtown Whiteville was three years ago, and to see where this town is after going through COVID and everything, it’s just absolutely amazing,” Mayor Terry Mann says.
Mann is standing outside Vineland Station, the refurbished railroad depot, for an informal meeting with other city officials and organizers. They’re discussing the city’s marquee event, the North Carolina Pecan Harvest Festival, which draws several thousand of people on the first weekend of November. The celebration was suspended in 2020 because of the pandemic, but Mann says Whiteville has otherwise powered through. “We didn’t lose a single business in the city because of COVID.”
In June, Whiteville became a North Carolina Main Street community, a program of the state Department of Commerce that provides expertise for center-city economic development. Whiteville’s downtown Madison Street has some energy. There are popular old standbys for lunch, like Ward’s Grill and Ed’s Grill. You can sit down for an orangeade at an old-fashioned soda fountain inside Guiton’s Drug Store. You can grab a coffee or ice cream at Sophie’s Bistro-Café or a cupcake at Piggypies Bakeshop.
A branch of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences marks a smaller version of the Raleigh flagship museum, with
interactive programs and nature exhibits. Downtown also has a boutique clothing store, a gym, a dance studio, a yoga studio and apartments. Pat Edwards is a lifelong Whiteville resident who lives in one of the 10 apartments inside a former department store. She’s outside the building, walking her tiny dog Dollie.
“This building here, it was in bad shape,” she says. But now? “It’s absolutely nice on the inside.” Family and the small-town way of life have kept her attached to Whiteville, but she would like to see more recreational opportunities and enticements for visitors. “That’s the biggest problem with Whiteville,” she says. “We need people wanting to stay when they come.”
Traffic Flow
Whiteville is within an hour or so of both Wilmington and South Carolina’s Grand Strand, making for heavy tourist traffic along U.S. 74-76 and U.S. 701. Mayor Mann says Whiteville and Columbus County are on the right path for growth though not too much growth like its fast-growing neighboring county. “There are a lot of people from Brunswick County who moved from up north 15 years ago, and now it’s like where they left crowded and congested,” he says. Columbus is a quieter alternative. “I know three or four couples here that this is their second move since they retired. They just don’t want the hustle and bustle when you can be there in 35 or 40 minutes.”
The meeting at the depot included Stephen Bryan, whose long, silver hair is tied in a ponytail. He grew up in the area and left in 1967 to become a fighter pilot in the Air Force, swearing he would never return. “And here I am,” he says, returning eight years ago, lured by family and a longing for a less high-octane lifestyle. Bryan owns a 100-acre farm where he grows row crops and pecan trees. “It’s a place that has solitude while, at the same time, you have community around you. It’s as good as it gets.”
He traveled globally, met world leaders, lived in different countries, but missed the small town and big fields. His speech has lost its Southern-ness, though his Southern sensibilities are intact. Whether you’re from Sicily or Paris or you’re a wanderlust native son, the local color of Whiteville has a way of calling you home. ■
Bryan Mims is a writer and reporter at WRAL-TV in Raleigh.
