Craven County unearths success by working together.
If you are from the Raleigh suburbs, as I am, the quickest way to Atlantic Beach, where we have an 85-year-old cottage, is down U.S. 70. So, like many folks, I drive through Craven County, passing New Bern and Havelock.
But there is a lot you can’t see from U.S. 70, like the Craven County Industrial Park on the west side of New Bern, screened by trees. The park has been a success story and its 300 or so acres are almost sold out. The county needs another big park, which is a good problem to have.
Much of Craven County is rural. Weyerhaeuser, the global timberland company, owns tens of thousands of acres. A large swath of Croatan National Forest runs along U.S. 70.
Craven is also home to Fleet Readiness Center East, the Navy repair depot on Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point. It employs 4,000 engineers and artisans who overhaul military aircraft.
Decisions affecting FRC East are made by the Navy and Congress. Craven tries to influence things by being a hospitable base community, but that’s basically all it can do. Craven has more control over non-military economic matters, and that is where it has been strategic and effective.
CHUGGING AWAY
The first time I rode through the industrial park was in Jeff Wood’s car last December. Wood is the county economic development director.
The two biggest companies in the park are BSH Home Appliances, with around 1,500 employees, and Moen, a manufacturer of faucets and sinks, with around 700. In all, there are more than 20 companies and organizations in the park.
“Titan Fuels,” he motioned as we drove along Executive Parkway. “They provide fuel to airlines.”
We also passed by Chatsworth Products, which makes server racks and electrical enclosures. “These guys are always growing by 15 jobs. Fifteen jobs and a million-dollar investment,” Wood says. “Fifteen jobs and a million-dollar investment,” he repeated. “I love it. Just a group that just chugs away.”
The last acreage he has to sell in the park is a wooded tract split into seven lots of roughly 6 acres each. A new road through the acreage and water and sewer will require another $950,000 investment. The county will pay for this with part of the $2.45 million that it got from the General Assembly in 2023.
“How many other 6-acre lots are there in eastern North Carolina?” he asked. Cleared and grubbed, with roads and utilities, not many, I guessed.
The 6-acre lot size is strategic. A realistic approach means going after companies with 20 or 30 employees that can grow some, because there are only so many BSHs and Moens. Maybe the owner of a small company has vacationed in Nags Head and likes the idea of moving the business down from New Jersey.
One CEO who was looking to relocate was trying to get Wood to give him land for free. Wood said no. Maybe some incentives at the back end. But he would sell him the land for $20,000 an acre. (It would be $25,000 today.) That took the CEO by surprise. “He said, ‘I’ll write you a check today for that amount.’”
“That hit me,” says Wood. “That eastern North Carolina is in a strong value proposition. Six acres. $20,000 an acre. Eastern North Carolina’s value proposition is that we are effectively priced.”
LUCKIER THAN MOST
Wood, who came here in 2019 from West Virginia, is also the executive director of a key element of Craven’s economic development strategy — the Craven 100 Alliance, known locally as C1A.
The nonprofit, public-private partnership has a board with representatives from local businesses and local government, plus ex-officio members from the schools, community college and local chambers. Cherry Point is represented.
In recent decades, many eastern North Carolina communities have coped with population and job losses. Manufacturing declined, and big cities drew away talent.
Craven was luckier than most. In part because of the military and its retirees, the county population grew by double-digit percentages each decade, from 1980 to 2010. Then it stalled. Population declined slightly between 2010 and 2020, although it has picked back up over the last few years.
Coming out of the Great Recession, Craven developed a strategic plan to chart a path forward, and one of the ideas became the Craven 100 Alliance. Revitalizing the economy would be a heavy lift, and county government needed help.
GET THE BALL ROLLING
A few weeks ago, C1A had a 10th anniversary dinner at Carolina Colours, a 2,000-acre planned community that opened in 2006. It has a prominent sign off U.S. 70 on the south side of New Bern, about three miles beyond the newly renovated airport.
The airport has about 90 acres for aeronautical companies that Wood and the airport director, Andrew Shorter, are trying to recruit. Breeze Airways, a startup launched by the same guy who co-founded JetBlue, started flying in May. A Breeze executive, Bud Hafer, spoke at the anniversary dinner and says New Bern has done better than expected. One of its destinations is Orlando. There are a lot of young families in and around Cherry Point.
The chair of C1A is Owen Andrews, whose family has been in the printing business for 120 years. The dinner kicked off the group’s third fundraising campaign, for $1.5 million, to bankroll what C1A will put in with the county, and probably the state, to assemble and develop the next big industrial park. It will be 300 or so acres near a natural gas pipeline and a major highway, U.S. 70 or U.S. 17.
“The concept [for C1A],” says Andrews, going back 10 years, “was to streamline the process of evaluating companies evaluating Craven County.”
Companies wanted incentives such as land, money and infrastructure. Which ones were right for Craven, and how could decisions be made quickly in the fast-paced economic development competition?
Ten years later, the C1A has raised more than $3 million in pledges and grants, and attracted about $175 million in investments and 1,400 new jobs.
“In a lot of cases, getting the first commitment of a grant or funds is what gets the ball rolling,” he says. “The county, the city, the state, the federal government, they can’t always make decisions that quickly.”
This struck me as what leadership looks like. It is a scene that gets played out in some, but not all, towns in a region that hasn’t had it easy.
“The main reason that we started this was to keep all of us working together,” says Andrews.
“For this-sized community, when you come to New Bern and Craven County, it’s impressive that we are all together as one collective entity. So you don’t have to go to four or five places to talk with someone to get some decisions made. That is big-city stuff, and we’ve got it right here in our smaller community.”
“We’re going to be asking you for more money real soon.” ■
