This program would include the purchase and speculative development of a sizable “corporate campus” to induce various corporations and light-manufacturing industries to move here. The study suggests that our resort atmosphere, our small-town ambiance, and our unspoiled environment would be inducements for business to relocate here. It also cites the relatively high income and education level of the county as attractive to industry.
I groaned when I read the proposal because of a similar Chamber of Commerce approach to growth that Hilton Head Island, S.C., experienced during my 11-year residence there. I moved here last fall after Hilton Head became intolerable as a retirement community, its ambiance gradually destroyed by traffic and crowds, brought about in large part by prodigious advertising and business development efforts by the Hilton Head Chamber of Commerce.
An unintended result of the Chamber’s effort has been the loss of the island’s appeal to many of its former devotees. Unfortunately, the community characteristics that appeal to an educated and moderately affluent retiree population are not the dynamic growth qualities that inspire the Chamber of Commerce.
The Sandhills has unique qualities that will continue to appeal to the nation’s retiree population and to its golf enthusiasts. There should be no fear that the area will stagnate without some massive effort toward growth. Even modest growth brings problems that must be addressed, but we must avoid the kind of growth that unwittingly endangers our ambiance and environmental well-being.
I offer these thoughts as an appreciative newcomer. I hope the Sandhills community will not undertake this industrialization program.
Robert Wilson
Pinehurst
