That was the message from Chamber President Jim Bilyak and Southern Pines Town Manager Kyle Sonnenberg, who heads the Chamber’s economic development steering committee, at a recent meeting of the Village of Pinehurst Business Guild.
The report done by Wadley-Donovan Group, which cost $120,000, was released last May.
Since 1990, Moore County has lost more than 2,300 jobs due to textile, furniture and manufactured home plant closings and other industrial layoffs.
Although Moore County ranks in the top 10 percent of North Carolina’s 100 counties in terms of household income, the average working wage is in the bottom 10 percent in the state. Sonnenberg called that a “sad commentary.”
“Retirees with higher incomes draw the household income average up,” Sonnenberg said.
Three years ago, the county contracted with the Chamber to take over economic development and bring more private funding and involvement into the program. The Chamber has several committees working on various aspects of implementing the recommendations in the consultant’s report, such as developing a commerce park, transportation problems and workforce development problems.
A company is analyzing sites throughout the county to identify feasible places to develop manufacturing and office parks.
Developing such a site would cost several million dollars because the county lacks infrastructure, such as direct four-laned highways that connect to an international airport, a countywide water and sewer system, and a speculative building ready for occupation. Sonnenberg said the site would have to be developed as a public-private partnership.
“Most businesses are looking for an existing space,” he said.
Other recommendations from the report include:
n Eliminating high school dropouts and working closely with the community college to provide a trained workforce with the skills prospective employers want.
n Marketing the county as being a good place for business enterprise, not just solely as great place for tourism, golf and retirement.
n Establishing an incubator for business development, a centralized administrative center that can provide support services for fledgling businesses until they can get off the ground.
“The exodus of jobs should have been expected,” Bilyak said. “We should have been doing something about it. Luckily, we have this program that should pull us out of this disaster.”
There was a certain amount of complacency for decades in Moore County, but the global marketplace and free-trade policies have been hurting homegrown industries that tradiiotnally have paid higher wages, they said. The demise of the tobacco industry has also affected Moore County’s agriculture economy.
Moore County needs to become known for more than it already is, they said.
The county is known as a “premium” tourism and retirement center, and for having top-notch health care facilities, Sonnenberg said. The retiree community is well-educated and has a high per capita household income.
A number of qualified military personnel retire every day from the U.S. Army at Fort Bragg, and many of them are looking around the Sandhills for a second career, which could be a good drawing card to attract industry in need of skilled workers.
A disadvantage the county faces in attracting nonpolluting, light-manufacturing jobs could be eliminated when the U.S. 1 bypass of Cameron and Vass is completed. That will provide Moore County with a direct, four-laned highway to Raleigh and put Moore County within an hour of an international airport, which is something many businesses want, Sonnenberg said.
Lack of incentives to offer potential industries is another liability for Moore County.
The county’s perceived economic prosperity places Moore County in a higher tier by the statebecause of the high average household income. That prevents the county from receiving a lot of state assistance in recruiting new jobs.
But, if the state took into account the average wage, Moore County would rank much lower and would qualify for more state incentives.
In Hoke County, for example, the much lower household income there gives industries a tax incentive of $12,000 per job created. In Moore County, industries receive only $500 per job incentive, Bilyak said.
“Strategic change is a long-range process, it does not happen overnight,” Sonnenberg said.
