The Greater Fayetteville Chamber held its State of the Community luncheon last week, providing an excellent overview of some key initiatives under way in the state’s sixth-biggest city.
The region’s economy remains dominated by Fort Liberty, which has nearly 49,000 active duty personnel and 16,200 civilian employees and contractors. The annual military payroll totals $3.1 billion, with a civilian payroll of $900 million.
But in the state’s rankings of North Carolina counties, Cumberland is in Tier 1, the most distressed tier, pulled down by a higher unemployment rate than other counties, and a lower per capita property tax base.
That is why Project Aero was such a big deal for Cumberland, the American Titanium announcement in July for an aerospace-grade titanium mill in Fayetteville, bringing 300 jobs paying an average annual wage of more than $123,000. That compares with the county’s median private-sector pay, around $46,000.
To get more Project Aeros, Fayetteville and Cumberland have to build more infrastructure. That was the message a the luncheon from Fayetteville Mayor Mitch Colvin, citing the need to “think forward in all of our decisions.”
Fayetteville missed the chance to get Interstate 95 to come through town years ago. Now. he said, the Carolina Core corridor from the Triad offers another opportunity. “Leadership has to make sure we are connected to the Carolina Core-685 corridor,” said Colvin. That’s up in the air now. It will generally follow the U.S. 421 corridor as it makes its way east from Greensboro, but future I-685 could go a number of ways as it gets closer to its terminus at Interstate 95.
Several neighboring counties have seen faster growth than Cumberland County. In the last 10-year census, Harnett, Hoke and Moore counties had double-digit growth; while Cumberland’s population grew 4.7%. “So how do we fix that? We know that infrastructure will lead the way. You have areas that are primed for development if the infrastructure’s ready.”
The medical school
One of the most important community initiatives is the partnership between Cape Fear Valley Health and Methodist University to create a medical school on the medical center’s campus. A groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled for next week, and the first class will enter in 2026.
Michael Nagowski, Cape Fear CEO, described “the doctor desert in the region.” Cape Fear has one of the busiest emergency departments in the nation, he said, in part because of the lack of physicians in the region. Per 10,000 population, Cumberland has half the number of physicians, 17.7, as Mecklenburg, 35. People tend to use emergency rooms when they don’t have their own doctors.
To increase the supply of physicians in the region, Cape Fear created a residency program, and more than half the doctors who have completed the program have stayed in the area. “We’re not done,” he said. “Every year we’re working on growing that.”
The public schools
Another challenge facing the county is the age of its schools. Superintendent Marvin Connelly oversees 86 schools, and 68 of them are over 40 years old. The Board of Education has proposed a $470 million, five-year capital improvement program to deal with its facility needs. Plans call for a new $160 million E.E. Smith High School on a portion of the Stryker Golf Course on the edge of Fort Liberty. The high school has been in its current location since 1954.
The garrison is in the E.E. Smith zone, so many families on the base send their children there. The Stryker plan offers free land and the potential of DoD funding to help with construction. But it would pull the high school out of the community where it has been for 70 years, and move it five miles away. The plan has drawn opposition from the community and alumni.
This is an important project for Fort Liberty. In April, Lt. Gen. Chris Donahue, commander of the XVIII Airborne Corps and Fort Liberty, met with 230 residents, along with Connelly, at E.E.Smith.
“Why does Fort Liberty want to get involved in this? Well, it’s our high school,” said the general, according to an account of the meeting. “This is in all of our interest.”
Real estate trends
Megan Berger, president of the Longleaf Pine Realtors regional trade organization, provided a briefing on Cumberland real estate trends.It’s a sellers’ market, with just under 4 months of inventory. A balanced market would have 6 months. Prior to the pandemic, said Berger, there was a 10-month supply.
Interest rates are keeping both buyers and sellers on the sideline somewhat. Buyers are waiting for the expected Federal Reserve rate cut in two weeks at the September FOMC meeting, and homeowners who got low rates a couple of years ago are sitting put.
“Some sellers are holding on to their homes. They had a 2.2% interest rate. It’s really hard for them to make the move to another property at a 6.25% rate,” she said.
Average housing sale prices for single-family existing homes in the county are up nearly 7% so far this year, to around $257,160. New single-family housing is pricier, at $376,014, up 3.8%, and sellers are getting the listing price.
Around 60% of military families around the country live off-base, by some estimates, renting or owning.
More product
The end of the luncheon featured Chris Chung, CEO of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, the state’s chief industry recruiter. The state, Chung said, has had a lot of success since 2020, with 600 announcements by companies that have located or expanded in the state, bringing 92,000 announced jobs and more than $50 billion in new investment.
Fort Liberty helps recruiting in several ways. It is a magnet for defense contractors. And thousands of soldiers transition out of Fort Liberty into the civilian economy each year, supplying the region with skilled veterans, many of whom start their own businesses.
Chung emphasized the need for more industrial sites that can be ready on the short timelines of manufacturing companies the state is trying to land. Next to Chung in the front of the room was Robert Van Geons, the CEO of the Fayetteville Cumberland Economic Development Corporation, the county’s industry recruiter.
“We’re not just talking about any old piece of dirt,” said Chung. When a Fortune 500 company is looking for a site for a thousand-job factory, “If [Van Geons] doesn’t have anything here anywhere in Cumberland County that’s ready on the timetable for that company, guess what? That’s game over for Cumberland County. We’ve got 99 other counties that we can talk to.
Developing industry-ready sites isn’t easy. Local economic developers have to find the money, from county commissioners and elsewhere, for land acquisition and infrastructure like roads and utilities.
The Fayetteville EDC has been improving its 159-acre Sand Hill Road site between I-95 and NC 87, with the help of $262,000 from the N.C.’s Southeast Regional Partnership in 2022, plus $937,000 to the county from Golden LEAF.
