Fortunately for Christopher Chung, CEO of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, he had a conflict on the bitterly cold afternoon of Jan. 26, 2022.
Gov. Roy Cooper and others shivered in the parking lot of Greensboro’s Piedmont Triad International Airport. That’s where Denver-based startup Boom Supersonic announced plans to spend $500 million and employ more than 2,400 people assembling passenger jets that can travel at the speed of sound.
‘I understand it was very cold and pretty miserable,” Chung says. “But thankfully, everyone was there to talk about something good.”
That’s proved to be the track record for the EDPNC, celebrating its 10th anniversary as the state’s lead economic developer recruiter. The group was formed as a public-private partnership, taking over recruitment and marketing tasks formerly handled by the N.C. Department of Commerce.
Over the past decade, companies have announced more than 1,300 projects, which have pledged investments of nearly $68 billion and promised nearly 178,000 jobs, according to Chung, the partnership’s first and only CEO.
“The results speak for themselves,” says Anthony Copeland, a Raleigh lawyer who was North Carolina’s commerce secretary from 2017-21. “Under Chris Chung’s leadership, it has been quite successful.”
The partnership’s early recruitment efforts sought to deflect what Copeland called “the perfect storm”— the state legislature’s elimination of some economic incentives and the passage of House Bill 2, the so-called “bathroom bill.” Before its repeal in 2017, the measure had cost North Carolina economic investments and led to the cancellation of sports events and concerts.
In recent years, the EDPNC has contributed to a string of economic announcements that included the biggest project in state history. Slated to start production next year, Toyota’s electric battery facility in Randolph County represents a $13.9 billion investment projected to create 5,100 jobs.
Other huge wins include Durham-based semiconductor maker Wolfspeed’s plan for a $5 billion, 1,800-employee factory near Siler City and Natron Energy’s sodium-ion battery factory in Edgecombe County. The latter $1.4 billion project may eventually create more than 1,000 jobs.
The successes were decades in the making, according to Chung and Copeland. They cite North Carolina’s efforts to improve its infrastructure and support the state’s education system to prepare students for in-demand jobs. The two leaders spread the credit around, to the governor and the Department of Commerce, academic leaders and state, regional and local economic development officials.
State lawmakers appropriated about $120 million this fiscal year for the EDPNC to replenish North Carolina’s inventory of industrial recruitment megasites. The appropriation set a record for the partnership, pushing its budget to about $160 million, compared with $41.5 million last year, Chung says. It has 76 employees and is led by an 18-member board. It also leads state tourism marketing.
The partnership’s mission, according to Chung, revolves around “figuring out how we can market and sell and position this great product as effectively as possible” to win economic development battles against other states.
This past summer, the EDPNC suffered a blow when Virginia unseated North Carolina as the best state for doing business, as ranked by the CNBC TV channel. The Tar Heel state came in second after ranking first in 2022 and 2023. CNBC dinged the state for its “quality of life” and ranked it behind Virginia in infrastructure.
“It’s not great to slip to No. 2,” says Chung. But EDPNC’s website notes that CNBC has ranked the partnership in the top three for the past five years.
“Being able to tout that kind of superlative really catches the attention of the kinds of business decision-makers we want to get
on our radar,” he says.
“We think it helps companies validate their decision to choose North Carolina as one of the top best business climates in the country.” ■
