Sunday, May 29, 2011 | $1
New construction limited Few companies building in Rowan as Great Recession lingers BY EMILY FORD eford@salisburypost.com
SALISBURY — You can count on two hands the number of new businesses going up in Rowan County. While dirt is turning in a few places, construction of new plants, medical offices and restaurants mostly eludes the area, which is still feeling the effects of the Great Recession, officials say. “There is very little new construction going on in the commercial world,” said
Preston Mitchell, a Salisbury city planner. While crews are building the Sheetz gas station on Jake Alexander Boulevard, the Webb Road Flea Market off I85 and Duke Energy’s new power plant near Spencer, the majority of commercial construction is limited to upfits and remodels. It’s not the boost to the tax base that Rowan County and the municipalities would like to see as officials struggle to fill budget holes on the heels of property revaluation.
Industrial recruitment efforts continue, however, and Rowan County has landed new companies including Boral Composites, which is building a facility in East Spencer and is expected to invest $12.8 million in Rowan County. “There is more activity than there has been, but this increase moves us up from the bottom, and there’s no way to go but up from there,” said Robert Van Geons,
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Jon C. LaKeY/SALISBURY POST
construction work continues on the new Sheetz convenience store going up at the corner of Jake Alexander Boulevard and Old concord Road.
SOME SCAMS NEVER GO AWAY Yard sale passes goal Cystic fibrosis fundraiser’s second day icing on cake after $100,000 BY SHAVONNE POTTS spotts@salisburypost.com
SALISBURY — Alane Mills estimates she’s shopped for about six years at Helen Brown’s annual spring yard sale that benefits cystic fibrosis research. She shops and it’s a way to help donate to a worthy cause. Mills said she’s always looking for one item in BROWN particular: “I’m always checking for silver,” she said. Mills is moving to Chicago to be closer to her son after living in Rowan County since the 1970s. She’s also retiring. But even though she’s downsizing, she still has room to add to her silver collection.
shavonne potts/SALISBURY POST
Alane Mills has been finding deals for years at Helen Brown’s yard sales. Mills also shops for books to add to the Spencer Library. She’s a member of the Woman’s Club and they often gift books to the library. Brown achieved her goal before Friday’s sale had barely begun. By the time the sale started at noon, Brown had
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andY mooneY/SALISBURY POST
Best advice: Don’t get caught up in something that sounds too good to be true BY SHELLEY SMITH ssmith@salisburypost.com
SALISBURY — Hazel Erwin has entered the Publisher’s Clearing House sweepstakes for several years. So when she received a letter and check in the mail claiming she had won $325,000 from what appeared to be Publisher’s Clearing House, it sounded too good to be true, but she decided to look into it anyway. “I thought, ‘Oh my God!’ ” she said. “Then I got to reading the letter and everything, got to looking at it more closely, and it wasn’t really the Sweepstakes print of Publish- scams among er’s Clearing those that House. ... I knew it never end, 2A was probably a scam.” She called the “claims agent” named in the letter anyway, to see what she had to do to get her winnings. Instead of a phone ringing, she heard a message with music: “Welcome to Publisher’s Clearing House.” Then a man picked up the
Don’t believe you’ve won
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One ruse coming back around: pretending to be a grandchild in distress
phone. “I told him why I was calling, and he put me on hold,” she said. “And then apparently he came back on the line, but I could hear in the background just people talking at their house or something, and he hung up.” She called back, but no one picked up. “Once I called that number, that was a dead giveaway there,” she said. Ask any law enforcement officer what comes to mind when they hear: “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” They’ll likely think of the same four-letter word: scam. Scams have evolved over the past 40 years, N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper said. In the 1970s, the Nigerian letter scams were the most popular. Then the phone calls began, authorities said, and faxes. And now scammers target their victims through email. Authorities say scams are always changing, disappearing and reappearing in homes and businesses across the United States. And they say it’s important to understand how to recognize a scam,
SALISBURY — The “Grandma/Grandpa” scam is making a big comeback, N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper said. And the caller usually doesn’t know who he or she is calling, just hoping they’ll take the bait. When the senior citizen answers the telephone, the caller, sounding distressed, will say, “Grandma?” If the senior citizen believes the caller is a grandchild and uses a name, the scammer takes that information and runs with it. “Yeah, it’s me,” the caller says, using the name of the grandchild just provided by the intended victim. The scammer then “asks grandparents to wire money to a certain place,” Cooper said. “They’ll say they’ve been in a wreck overseas, something like that, and they need money,” he said. In 2011 Cooper’s office has heard from four victims of this scam and has taken a total of 23 complaints. The victims were
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Today’s forecast 86º/65º Early fog clears way for sun
Deaths
ssmith@salisburypost.com
Joe W. McCommons Ralph Goodnight Jr. Samuel A. Garland Terry R. Morris
Martin H. Liggins Joyce W. Allen James E. Alston David A. Dockins
ASSOcIATed PReSS
A firefighter goes through a devastated neighborhood Saturday in Joplin, Mo., where tornadoes tore through much of the city last Sunday and killed at least 139 people.
BY SHELLEY SMITH
2011 deadliest year for tornadoes since 1950 JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) — The numbers look increasingly bleak for families hoping for the best after a monster tornado that devastated the town of Joplin, as the city has raised the death toll to at least 139 and state officials say 100 people are still missing. Thousands more people far beyond Joplin had been waiting for good news about a teen believed to have been ejected or sucked from his vehicle on the way home from graduation. Several social-networking efforts specifically fo-
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cused on finding information about Will Norton. But his family says he, too, is among the dead — found in a pond near where his truck was located. “At least we know that he wasn’t out there suffering,” his aunt Tracey Presslor said, holding a framed portrait of her 18-year-old nephew at a news conference. “Knowing that he was gone right away was really a blessing for us.” Joplin City Manager Mark
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