Business North Carolina June 2022

WHO’S GOT THE BENJAMINS: STATE’S BIGGESTHOSPITAL BANKS, MONEY AND THE STATE’S TOP-RANKED IS ... MANAGERS 8 KEY MR.LOGISTICS ROGERS TACKLES LEADERS ECU’S • BENTONVILLE CHALLENGES BATTLES • ONLINE FOR SELLERS RELEVANCE GRAB SOME • DALE SPACE HALTON’S • BOOM UNDERDOG RINGS TRIAD ETHIC

JUNE 2022

CFO Tiffany Mason tracks 4,400 oil change, paint, repair and car wash outlets as Driven Brands presses to dominate U.S. auto service.

Price: $3.95 businessnc.com

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+ DEPARTMENTS

JUNE 2022

4 UP FRONT 6 DIGITAL COMMENTS 8 PILLARS OF NC: DALE HALTON The Charlotte trailblazer put the fizz back in her family business.

COVER STORY

14 NC TREND Bandwidth’s HR chief shares honky-tonk lessons; Filmmaker captures the story of a longdefunct blanket-making empire; Equestrian investors take a shot at reviving a Foothills golf course; What you missed from the N.C. Tribune.

FIXER UPPER

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No U.S. auto-service business has the national scope of Charlotte-based Driven Brands.

BY TED REED

72 GREEN SHOOTS A revitalized Robeson County mill creates opportunity for military technology enterprises.

+ SPONSORED SECTIONS 30 ROUND TABLE: BUSINESS & EDUCATION A panel of experts, representing education and business, met to discuss how their two groups can work together and why it’s important.

56 HEALTH CARE: WOMEN & CHILDREN

FINANCIAL 50

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Logistics industry leaders balance strong demand and unprecedented challenges.

BY ALYSSA PRESSLER

BATTLEFIELD SHIFT

60 COMMUNITY CLOSE UP: LEE COUNTY

June 2022, Vol. 42, No. 6 (ISSN 0279-4276). Business North Carolina is published monthly by Business North Carolina at 1230 West Morehead Street, Suite 308 Charlotte, NC 28208.

Telephone: 704-523-6987. Fax: 704-523-4211. All contents copyright © by Old North State Magazines LLC. Subscription rate: 1 year, $30. For change of address, send mailing label and allow six to eight weeks. Periodicals postage paid at Charlotte, NC, and additional offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA, 1230 West Morehead Street, Suite 308 Charlotte, NC 28208 or email circulation@businessnc.com.

BY DAVID MILDENBERG

SUPPLY CHAIN STRATEGY

How North Carolina health care providers are improving the lives of women and children.

Lee County is developing its offerings, making it attractive to new residents and businesses.

Many of the state’s largest banks and credit unions scored record profit in 2021.

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Leaders of North Carolina’s most important Civil War battlefield take a fresh look at its history.

BY MIKE MACMILLAN

Start your day with business news from across the state, direct to your inbox.

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UPFRONT

Ben Kinney V O L U M E 4 2 , N O. 6 PUBLISHER

Ben Kinney

bkinney@businessnc.com EDITOR

David Mildenberg

dmildenberg@businessnc.com ASSOCIATE EDITORS

Jennings Cool Roddey jcool@businessnc.com

Colin Campbell

ccampbell@businessnc.com

Cathy Martin

cmartin@businessnc.com SENIOR CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Edward Martin

emartin@businessnc.com

TEACH YOUR CHILDREN

O

ne of the sections you’ll be reading through this month is our Business and Education Round Table. We like to bring business leaders and, whenever possible, educators together to discuss ways they partner in the classroom to help students prepare for the workforce of the next generation. It’s always a great discussion, and I’m amazed at some of the ways they collaborate.

Whether it’s an apprenticeship program at Siemens Energy or providing laptops to students along with training from Lenovo, there are a lot of great things happening around the state. Teachers need this more than ever, believe me.

I come from a family of educators. My mom was a chemistry and physics teacher at, what seemed like, most of the high schools in Charlotte before she retired.

(She was teaching chemistry at my high school when I was there…weird.) I actually went through student teaching in college before deciding to go into sales and publishing — I couldn’t get used to the early hours. My sister is a kindergarten teacher at a Title 1 school in Charlotte.

She has a tough job. Most of her students don’t speak English as a first language and come from a variety of backgrounds. She has some war stories to tell, for sure.

Dealing with the pandemic, language barriers and other issues are daily challenges she faces head-on.

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I always wonder why she does it. Over the past year, I kept telling her to look for another job that paid better, had better benefits and less stress. Her response is always a deflection to a story about a student or a funny event that happened with her class as they walked down the hall.

She acts it out and will play two or three parts as she does so. My wife and I feel like we’re watching a one-woman play. It’s hilarious. As we watch and listen, I know why she won’t leave. She loves the kids, she cares about them. She’s not in it for the money, the benefits or the accolades.

It’s a calling.

I think this is what most teachers feel.

It seems like more and more teaching isn’t a profession looked on with respect as it used to be. In fact, it seems to have become yet another source of division among people as a result of the pandemic, perceived policies and political agendas.

That’s a shame. I think most teachers are there for their kids. We should celebrate that effort and determination. We in the business community should also support them. It’s a good investment.

SPECIAL PROJECTS EDITOR

Pete M. Anderson

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Brad King, Mike MacMillan, Alyssa Pressler, Ted Reed, Billy Warden CREATIVE MANAGER

Peggy Knaack

pknaack@businessnc.com ART DIRECTOR

Ralph Voltz

MARKETING COORDINATOR

Jennifer Ware

jware@businessnc.com

ADVERTISING SALES ACCOUNT DIRECTOR

Melanie Weaver Lynch, eastern N.C. 919-855-9380 mweaver@businessnc.com

ACCOUNT MANAGER AND AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT SPECIALIST

Scott Leonard, western N.C. 704-996-6426 sleonard@businessnc.com

CIRCULATION: 818-286-3106 EDITORIAL: 704-523-6987 REPRINTS: circulation@businessnc.com

BUSINESSNC.COM OWNERS

Jack Andrews, Frank Daniels Jr., Frank Daniels III, Lee Dirks, David Woronoff PUBLISHED BY

Contact Ben Kinney at bkinney@businessnc.com.

Old North State Magazines LLC PRESIDENT

David Woronoff

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BNC ONLINE We love getting feedback from our readers.

Here’s a sampling of what you had to say about Business North Carolina on social media last month.

Power List

Power List

Power List

Fields Jackson, Jr @fleejack

Fayetteville State University

Congratulations Geoff Foster, CEO @CoreTechMolding for making this year's @BusinessNC Power List of the state's most influential leaders in #manufacturing https://businessnc.com/2022-power-list/ manufacturing

Congratulations to Chancellor Darrell T. Allison, on being named as a @businessnorthcarolina 2022 Power List Member in Education.

The goal of this list, is to identify the people who lead North Carolina, based on interviews with business community officials, research and reader suggestions.

Its emphasis is on those who have made a particularly noteworthy impact in the last year. #ProudToBe #BroncoPride

Curi Proud to see our Jason Sandner on Business North Carolina's 2022 Power List. Thank you to the publication for highlighting such a dynamic group of leaders across NC. Read more.

Power List

Karyn Ostrom, PNC Power List

Greenville Eastern North Carolina Alliance Congratulations to individuals recognized on this year's Business North Carolina Power List!

We are excited to see many of our partners, supporters, and investors on this list including:

Power List

Fox Rothschild LLP @FoxRothschild Congratulations to @KimGatling and Jon Heyl who were honored on this year’s @BusinessNC Power List — an annual report that recognizes the state’s most influential leaders. #FoxLeaders #FoxProud

• ECU Chancellor Philip Rogers • Dr. Michael Waldrum, ECU Health and ECU Brody School of Medicine • Michael Overton, The Overton Group • Thomas Taft, Jr., Taft Family Ventures • Kelly Andrews, Pitt Co. Economic Development • Chris Chung, EDPNC • Andrew Schmidt, Visit Greenville, NC • Bradley Evans, Ward & Smith • Brian Allen, Precision Walls • Rob Barnhill, Barnhill Contracting • Sam Hunter, T.A. Loving Co. • Jim Hansen, PNC

Business North Carolina published its 2022 Power List today, complete with profiles of some of the state's most dynamic and admired leaders, including Jim Hansen, PNC regional president for Eastern Carolinas.

Read more about Jim and his thoughts on the key to industry success here: https:// lnkd.in/gJ-S-d7P.

Power List

North Carolina Biotechnology Center Check out Business North Carolina's 2022 Power List to learn more about the state's most influential life sciences leaders.

Power List

Economic Development Partnership of NC @EDPNC Congratulations to our CEO Chris Chung, VP of Business Recruitment & Development Melissa Smith, VP of Tourism Wit Tuttell and Chairman of our Board of Directors Gene McLaurin for being named to @BusinessNC's 2022 Power List! Read about them here: http://ow.ly/SscX50IXXzr

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SCAN ME to view the online version of Power List 2022 or go to linktr.ee/businessnorthcarolina.

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DALE HALTON A pioneering CEO helped put the fizz back in a struggling family business.

By Vanessa Infanzon

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fundraising, Halton envisions the program starting a charter school, focusing on vocational training for trades such as plumbing and culinary arts.

Halton has an extensive collection of Native American and Western American art from the many years she had a second home near Telluride, Colorado. She remains a big fan of UNC Charlotte athletics and is an avid consumer of Pepsi products.

Comments are edited for length and clarity.

I had been doing the advertising [before taking over as president.] I can be a very good organizer if I want. I had a lot of experience working with numerous groups. I think that must have helped. But we already had the people in place; they just weren’t allowed to do their job.

I couldn’t have done it without Darrell [Holland]. I’d known him since 1970. He was our adult Sunday-school teacher and was the last one to stop wearing white gloves to church on Sunday.

We knew and respected each other.

We had such a great team. In fact, after I sold the company, we met on the first Friday of every month at Pike’s Drugs. We had to stop during the pandemic, but we’ve started again. We go to Rooster’s in SouthPark.

‘It’s time for you to go out and be the face of this business,’ Darrell told me [in 1981]. I didn’t want to be the face of the business. If you want a woman, pick somebody else. He said, ‘No, it’s the right time.’

I got to meet a lot of people I would have never met. I got to understand politics a lot better. When I first got involved, they gave me the campaign donation checks to the women in our state legislature. At that time, Mecklenburg wasn’t making much noise in Raleigh.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF DALE HALTON PERSONAL PAPERS AND BUSINESS RECORDS, MS0567, J. MURREY ATKINS LIBRARY, THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHARLOTTE.

W

hen Dale Halton stepped in as president of PepsiCola Bottling Co. of Charlotte in 1981, she was a rare female CEO. The business was close to insolvency and, Pepsico’s corporate leaders were threatening to pull the franchise from her family, which had been affiliated with the soft-drink company for more than 70 years.

Halton and General Manager Darrell Holland, who had joined the company in 1970, reorganized the company’s business plan for its nine-county franchise and empowered the 400 employees to do their work with less meddling from headquarters, she says.

Within several years, the franchise was ahead of its larger Coca-Cola rival in overall soft-drink market share in the Charlotte region, Halton says. Success continued through her tenure until 2005, when Pepsi Bottling Group, then the world’s largest Pepsi bottler, bought her family business, the ninth-largest U.S. bottler, for an undisclosed sum. It was then Charlotte’s biggest femaleowned company, the Charlotte Business Journal reported.

Saving the company from ruin was personal for Halton, whose grandparents, Henry and Sadie Fowler, opened the business in Charlotte in 1905, 12 years after New Bern pharmacist Caleb Bradham created “Brad’s Drink.” It was renamed Pepsi in 1898.

Halton’s birth name is Barksdale Fowler Dick.

Since the sale, Halton has remained an active philanthropist best known for her support of UNC Charlotte, where the basketball arena bears her name, and Central Piedmont Community College, which has a Halton theater. She’s also served on many boards, including that of the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra.

While part of a privileged family, Halton brands herself as a fierce supporter of the underdog. Country clubs aren’t her style, she says, preferring to entertain a lunch group of longtime friends in her Myers Park neighborhood home.

Her latest passion is Aspire Carolinas Foundation, where she teamed with veteran Charlotte nonprofit executive Jennifer Nichols to create a school for third-through-eighth graders with learning disabilities related to Asperger’s syndrome and autism spectrum disorder. The Halton School has been operating for three years with a break-even budget. With additional

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PHOTO COURTESY OF UNCC

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▲ Halton celebrated Pepsi’s centennial in 1985 with Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt and PepsiCo CEO Roger Enrico.

Pepsi sent two of its lawyers down and met with my lawyer and myself (after she became president). They threatened to take the franchise away because I was female. I said, ‘Come on down to my courts, and we’ll work it out.’ They never did. A few years later, we were one of the top-performing bottlers.

We were a far second to Coke in the market [in 1981]. Maybe four years later, we had a better market share than Coke. Pepsi had a regional office in town, and we had to go down to see the latest dog-and-pony show. They said, ‘We’ve got the numbers.

You surpassed Coke.’ I almost cry now when I talk about it. I had to leave the room. It meant so much to me to do this. It was a really beautiful moment in my life.

When we moved back to Charlotte, my grandfather had his arm twisted by Bonnie Cone (who is considered the key founder of today’s UNC Charlotte). My grandparents were the first Pepsi bottlers — ever.

He was giving money every year. When he died, I couldn’t see all these flowers coming from all over the country because of his position in the company. I suggested no flowers but donations to UNCC and its business college.

We started going to UNC Charlotte games. I wasn’t into basketball, but I felt like UNC Charlotte was the poor little down-

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trodden school in the system. I didn’t like that. I have an affinity for the underdog. I sort of fell in love with the school.

About four and a half years ago, some of us got together and decided that these public schools aren’t taking care of the learning-disabled children. We decided to start a school for children with Asperger’s.

In the meantime, businesses were complaining they couldn’t get people to work. They’d hire someone and train them, and then they’d leave. Someone said, ‘Why don’t you do a trade high school.’ That’s what we’re doing now.

Up until last fall, there wasn’t that much money assigned to these [educational] grants. I started playing the political game, getting involved again. Last fall, lots of money was put toward education, including grants our children can get. Our school costs almost $24,000 a year.

Those little kids just stole my heart. If you went to the school, you’d feel the warmth, the caring and the love. These Asperger students have never had friends. These kids are having play dates and overnights. We teach them social lessons. We give them the ability to learn the best way they can. ■

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EMERGING TRENDS IN INSTITUTIONAL SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

New PNC survey validates the growing priority executives are placing on social responsibility.

This is the nineteenth in a series of informative monthly articles for North Carolina businesses from PNC in collaboration with BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA magazine.

When PNC Institutional Asset Management recently published its inaugural Social Responsibility (SR) survey*, the findings validated what Simmi Prasad, PNC Institutional Asset Management director for the Carolinas, experiences daily in her advisory work with institutional investors. At the most basic level, the survey concluded that social responsibility is a high priority for executives across for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations – and that serving the social good is perceived as becoming more important.

“C-suite and financial executives in large for-profit and nonprofit organizations are increasingly and more purposefully looking to invest in socially responsible companies that align with their values,” says Prasad, who also serves as co-lead for PNC Institutional Asset Management’s enterprise-wide DEI council and co-chair for PNC’s AMG Responsible Investing advisory group. “The purpose of this survey was to help us get a better understanding of how organizations are thinking about investing for change.”

SOME KEY FINDINGS OF THE PNC SR SURVEY, RELEASED IN MARCH 2022, INCLUDE: • The vast majority of executives (92%) rank corporate social responsibility as a priority for their organization, with two-thirds (65%) saying it is a “very high priority.”

“This survey suggests that internal and external pressures are playing a key role in the shift toward social responsibility, and we don’t expect that pressure to decrease anytime soon,” says Prasad. “Organizations are being asked to expand their missions and look beyond their balance sheets in how they measure success, and nonprofits and for-profit companies are taking that to heart by looking for opportunities to demonstrate their values and commitments in this space. This also means they are seeking guidance on how to most effectively implement these programs.”

TOP SR INITIATIVES When it comes to specific social responsibility initiatives, organizational priorities run the gamut – from reducing environmental impact, to improving employee wages and benefits, to championing social justice.

The survey found that the environment and DEI, specifically, represent the greatest priorities for companies and nonprofits. Nearly three in four organizations (73%) currently have an environmental sustainability program in place. DEI programs are nearly as prevalent, with 68% of organizations saying they have one and 26% indicating they are planning to implement a DEI program or initiative.

GROWING IMPORTANCE IN ESG INVESTING

• Both nonprofit and corporate leaders expect to see more SR-related policies in the workplace, with 94% of respondents predicting that social responsibility programs are here to stay.

• Most executives (91%) also believe companies and nonprofits can make a real impact on issues like climate change and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) through their social responsibility programs and initiatives.

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Together with a rise in social responsibility, the survey also revealed a growing interest in environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing. Four in ten executives (40%) reported their company or organization currently pursues at least some investing with an ESG lens, and nearly as many (39%) aren’t currently active in ESG investing but are in the planning process.

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“These executives view ESG investing as supporting and reinforcing their corporate values and social responsibility efforts,” says Prasad. “They believe ESG investing can make a difference and have a positive impact on society and corporate behavior. They also recognize it is critical that these investment opportunities are fully vetted and aligned with their own values.”

top business schools have challenged that assumption, demonstrating that these investment strategies do not inherently require tradeoffs. Meanwhile, examples of institutional investors achieving both financial and valuesaligned goals abound. North Carolina State University, for example, made national headlines in 2018 when its “socially responsible” fund outperformed its main portfolio.

There was a time not so long ago when the premise of ESG investing was perceived as an either-or proposition.

The concept that an investor could introduce non-financial factors into the investment process – without negatively impacting financial performance – was novel and easily dismissed. In recent years, however, research findings from

“Social responsibility among for-profit and non-profit organizations is no longer a fad or a niche approach, and it is very much top-of-mind for our clients in North Carolina,” says Prasad. “Organizations recognize that applying a social responsibility lens makes good business sense and is critical for continued growth, and it is also the right thing to do.”

To learn more about how PNC Institutional Asset Management can help your organization invest according to its values, visit pnc.com/iam or contact Simmi Prasad at simmi.prasad@pnc.com.

Regional Presidents: Weston Andress, Western Carolinas: (704) 643-5581 Jim Hansen, Eastern Carolinas: (919) 835-0135

*This information comes from a national survey of C-suite and financial executives at for-profit and nonprofit organizations with annual revenues over $25 million, conducted by PNC Institutional Asset Management (PNC IAM) in December 2021. The survey was conducted online and on an anonymous basis. Survey results represent responses from 240 individuals. The study was conducted by Willow Research, LLC, a custom market research firm and certified woman-owned business.

These materials are furnished for the use of PNC and its clients and do not constitute the provision of investment, legal, or tax advice to any person. They are not prepared with respect to the specific investment objectives, financial situation, or particular needs of any person. Use of these materials is dependent upon the judgment and analysis applied by duly authorized investment personnel who consider a client’s individual account circumstances. Persons reading these materials should consult with their PNC account representative regarding the appropriateness of investing in any securities or adopting any investment strategies discussed or recommended herein and should understand that statements regarding future prospects may not be realized. The information contained herein was obtained from sources deemed reliable. Such information is not guaranteed as to its accuracy, timeliness, or completeness by PNC. The information contained and the opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Neither the information presented nor any opinion expressed herein constitutes an offer to buy or sell, nor a recommendation to buy or sell, any security or financial instrument. Accounts managed by PNC and its affiliates may take positions from time to time in securities recommended and followed by PNC affiliates.

Securities are not bank deposits, nor are they backed or guaranteed by PNC or any of its affiliates, and are not issued by, insured by, guaranteed by, or obligations of the FDIC for the Federal Reserve Board. Securities involve investment risks, including possible loss of principal.

The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. (“PNC”) uses the marketing name PNC Institutional Asset Management® for the various discretionary and non-discretionary institutional investment, trustee, custody, consulting, and related services provided by PNC Bank, National Association (“PNC Bank”), which is a Member FDIC, and investment management activities conducted by PNC Capital Advisors, LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser and wholly-owned subsidiary of PNC Bank. PNC does not provide legal, tax, or accounting advice unless, with respect to tax advice, PNC Bank has entered into a written tax services agreement. PNC Bank is not registered as a municipal advisor under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. “PNC Institutional Asset Management” is a registered mark of The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. Investments: Not FDIC Insured. No Bank Guarantee. May Lose Value. ©2022 The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Leadership

Leadership History Development Public affairs Statewide

HONKY-TONK HEROINE A Bandwidth executive’s HR leadership style strikes a different tone.

By Billy Warden

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onky-tonk is known to fuel barroom brawls, boot-stompin’ floor dances and risky hookups — but a career in human resources?

“Yes, absolutely,” says Rebecca Bottorff with zeal as infectious as a Kitty Wells melody. “Honky-tonk, bluegrass, that kind of music led me to HR.” Not just HR, but an eventful run as chief people officer at Bandwidth, which has grown from 125 “Bandmates” to 1,200 during her 12-year tenure. The communications software company went public in 2017 and is developing a 40-acre corporate campus in Raleigh, which is slated to open next year. It will include a Montessori school, fitness facility and amphitheater.

Earlier this year, Bottorff was named to Bandwidth’s board.

Only 3% of Fortune 1000 corporate directors have HR backgrounds, CEO David Morken noted at the time.

For all that success, Bottorff remains rooted in the downto-earth lessons of the Americana classics she grew up with in Ohio’s Rust Belt. In the past 10 years, she’s gone from being an ardent listener of Americana classics to playing them as a self-taught guitar, banjo, autoharp and ukulele picker.

“Honky-tonk and bluegrass are both grounded in stories of the human condition,” she says. “They’re about the working man, men in prison, love and families struggling to get by.

When I was young, I would imagine those stories — the tough times of those men and women. Often, they had done bad things, but they were also human. And the consequences of a hard life are very real for most people.”

Bottorff’s family could afford one vacation per year, usually to Dale Hollow Lake on the Kentucky-Tennessee state line, near where most of her extended kin lived. She, her parents, her siblings and a herd of cousins would pile into their blue station wagon with the faux woodgrain plastered on the sides.

Bottorff made sure to squeeze into the front seat to focus on her father’s eight-track player and the hardscrabble songs of Earl Scruggs and Bill Monroe.

Merle Haggard’s “Sing Me Back Home” remains a favorite.

The ballad opens this way:

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▲ Bandwidth named Rebecca Bottorff to its board this year.

The warden led a prisoner down the hallway to his doom I stood up to say goodbye like all the rest And I heard him tell the warden just before he reached my cell “Let my guitar-playing friend do my request”…

Take me away and turn back the years To a song my momma sang.

Sing me back home before I die

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“It’s about how life can be beautiful, yes, but it is also a struggle,” says Bottorff, 54. “The person in the song has broken the law, but he also has a soul and a story that matters.

Even inmates on death row have a mama. Despite the decisions they've made, it doesn’t mean they aren’t worthy of music transporting them to another place.”

Her compassion and curiosity led her to earn a sociology degree at the University of Cincinnati and then work in human resources, first at Konover Property Trust in Louisville and then at Durham’s Motricity. In 2007, she launched her own firm. All along, she was honing an empathy-heavy approach to HR. “The trick is to understand that what you see that’s obvious about a person may not be what they are all about,” she says.

“Sometimes they have deeper needs than what they might be asking about. It’s about seeing the whole person and where they’re coming from.”

In 2010, Bottorff interviewed with Morken, a Marine veteran and triathlete who was roughly 10 years into leading Bandwidth, which he co-founded. The two were singing from the same hymn book.

“David was a self-made entrepreneur,” she says. “He had learned to be a leader through human interaction. And he wanted a way to treat people as human beings, not as tools of business.”

Morken saw a kindred spirit in Bottorff. “She has never been afraid to speak her mind and challenge the status quo,” he noted in a January news release. “(She) has been an essential partner during many different phases of building Bandwidth into the global company we are today.”

Bottorff says she’s worked on creating an approach to human resources that involves more traditional procedures for sickness or performance problems, along with emphasizing celebrations and connecting time.

“The goal,” she says, “is to provide ‘Bandmates’ with the opportunity to have both meaningful work and a full life.”

The “whole person” approach has helped Bandwidth maintain better-than-average retention rates. “Bandwidth’s culture has always been our differentiator,” Morken says.

Perks include a 90-minute lunch to encourage employees to escape their desks for food, exercise or whatever recharges their battery. Paid time off is deemed serious business. “We ‘embargo’ you,” Bottorff says. “Which means those at the office are not permitted to email you or disrupt your time off.”

Bandwidth also observes Mahalo Moments, a nod to the Hawaiian term for gratitude. “It’s about recognizing the beautiful things that happen to our people,” Bottorff says. “When, for example, you get married or have a child or a grandchild or move into a home, you get an extra day off. And while the day off is nice, it’s really about celebrating these wonderful moments of self-actualization with others on your team.”

Bottorff’s own Mahalo Moment has been her evolution as a musician. “I got a guitar when I was 7 or 8, but we had no money for lessons. I just couldn’t get it and gave up,” she says.

“But in your 40s, you realize that most of the things that pre-

vent you from doing what you want are baloney. So, at 45, I taught myself to play.”

Now, she regularly hosts jams at her home and is thinking about putting together a roots group. She especially enjoys the Lake Eden Arts Festival, scheduled for October in Black Mountain, which she says creates a “thriving global community generated by the power of cultural curiosity, connection, and preservation.’”

Even with her company’s fast tempo, she remains as entranced by honky-tonk as when she scurried into the front seat of her parents’ station wagon. She was surprised recently by the gift of a dulcimer from her friends, “I sat there and played it and sobbed. It just resonated with my Appalachian-rooted soul.” ■ Billy Warden is a writer, multimedia producer and musician who co-founded the GBW Strategies public relations firm in Raleigh.

Bottorff’s playlist “The L&N Don’t Stop Here Anymore,” Jean Ritchie: “I love music that’s rooted in the Appalachian experience and storytelling. Jean Ritchie didn’t want the oral traditions of our shared Kentucky mountain roots to die, so she preserved them.”

“The Little Girl and the Dreadful Snake” and “Molly and Tenbrooks,” Bill Monroe: “Songs from the family car trips when I was young.” ​​“Roar,” Katy Perry: “I also like a lot of pop music, and this is the song I play if I’m out for a run or if I need a pick-up.”

“Radar Love,” Golden Earring: “My all-time favorite.

It’s a love song and a driving song from back when driving was the ultimate freedom. It is alternately slow and driving mixed with reckless parts. It goes crazy then it calms down. And that’s how my brain works.

Unabashed and then coming down and being careful.”

“Trailer for Rent” and “Lemon Drop,” Pistol Annies: “Classic bad-girl music.”

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History

Filmmaker Rebecca Williams captures the essence of a famous Tar Heel business.

By Edward Martin

I

n the predawn of a September 2003 morning, a ruddy glow above the trees awakened Jerry Pope at his Swannanoa home. “Wake up! Beacon’s on fire!” he yelled at his wife.

Rebecca Williams jumps to her feet and they walk down the street near their home to where flames boil skyward.

Fire consumed the five-story, shopping mall-sized factory, once the nation’s largest blanket mill with as many as 2,200 employees. Scores of onlookers watched with them as 400 firefighters struggled vainly to control the blaze.

Local Fire Chief Anthony Penland says he'd told his men, “If that thing ever catches fire, it’s just going to have to burn.”

Inside, vast expanses of thick, oak floors had been routinely soaked in oil for eight decades to hold down potentially explosive wool and cotton lint.

Later that morning, Beacon Manufacturing in Swannanoa was reduced to rubble, torched by a teenage arsonist.

The real impact sank in a few days later.

“It had become a pilgrimage site,” Williams says. “You saw

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old guys in pickup trucks sitting a block away, crying.”

The fire was anticlimactic, in a way. Charles Dexter Owen II had moved the business to North Carolina from New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1925. The plant completed in 1936 had shut down in 2002, many years after the Owen family sold the company.

Still, it was more than just another of the 300-plus N.C. textile mills to die.

“Beacon was a way of life,” says Williams, an oral historian and documentary filmmaker who moved to Swannanoa in 1999. “These were not just jobs. People hoped Beacon would come back, but this was finality. Beacon was not coming back.”

It took Williams most of a decade and $70,000, much of it from grants from the N.C. Humanities Council and N.C. Arts Council. But earlier this year she finally completed Blanket Town, her story of Beacon Manufacturing. It screened at the Longleaf Film Festival at Raleigh's North Carolina Museum of History in May. She hopes it airs on public television and at museums and schools in coming months.

The film has input from more than 90 former mill workers, Owen family heirs and modern sources, such as historian Bill Alexander, whose family moved to the Swannanoa Valley in the 1780s. It chronicles an era when looms and shuttles were today’s pixels and bandwidth.

PHOTO COURTESY OF REBECCA WILLIAMS

BLANKET EFFECT

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POSTCARD IMAGE COURTESY OF KEITH HALL PHOTOGRAPHY, PHOTO COURTESY OF REBECCA WILLIAMS

Swannanoa ranked with Kannapolis, a Cabarrus County town once literally owned by towel-maker Cannon Mills, as an iconic North Carolina company village. “[Charles Owen II] loaded bricks from the family’s factory in Massachusetts on train cars and brought them to Swannanoa,” says Alexander, whose family was among the area’s first white settlers, nearly 150 years before the plant came to Swannanoa in the 1920s.

Critics deride that as paternalism, a view that Williams shares. Beacon paid wages and had benefits comparable to those of union members, but, she adds, “It was also a way of controlling people.”

Also, much of Beacon’s growth was in the Jim Crow era of workplace racism. Though it hired Black people, like other Tar Heel textile mills, it paid them lower wages and often assigned them dangerous or dead-end jobs, Williams says. They lived in segregated mill villages.

The Owen family started a competing blanket business a mile and a half from Beacon in the mid-1970s. It outlasted Beacon and was acquired by Springs Global of Fort Mill, South Carolina, in 2003. Today, only a few isolated steps to nowhere, unburned, remain on the weedy vacant lot where Beacon once stood. Blanket Town, though, finds its mark.

“It was a product of its culture and times,” says Williams. “It was an incredibly tight-knit community. I wanted to show why that building meant so much to so many people.”

A former employee, Betty Babb, in her ▲ A historic rendering shows the mill's magnitude. Homes remain while the mill land is vacant.

90s, describes her feelings in a cracking voice in the film. “I’d gladly go back there By the mid-1930s, in the heart of the Great Depression, the today if I could,” she says. “I’d take a few days off, but then mill covered 1 million square feet and employed 2,200 people. I’d go back.” ■ “Without Beacon, Swannanoa would have remained just a very small village,” Alexander adds. Today it has nearly 5,000 residents and is home to Warren Wilson College.

In Blanket Town, Williams relies on dozens of former millworkers and sources such as the Swannanoa Valley Museum and History Center. What emerges, often with black-andwhite starkness, are massive rows of looms, annual picnics attended by hundreds, textile-league baseball and women’s basketball teams.

The mill usually ran three work shifts around the clock.

That generated a critical mass that led to 24-hour grocery stores and cafes, several doctors and other accommodations.

Blanket Town doesn't portray Beacon and Swannanoa as a workers’ idyll. Charles Dexter Owen wanted to leave Massachusetts because of its labor unions, Williams says. ▲ Rebecca Williams has worked on artistic projects for 20-plus years.

“That’s why they moved here, and Beacon, unlike Cannon Mills, was never unionized,” Williams says. “Members of the family were always on the grounds and had a famous opendoor policy. If you had a problem in your personal life or an idea, the door was always open.”

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Development

Equestrian investors are restoring a foothills-area golf-course development with a rugged 50-year history.

By Brad King

L

ike its rolling golf course in the foothills of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, Cleghorn Golf and Sports Club in Rutherford County has experienced ups and downs through its half-century in business.

Despite its location on a major highway, about an hour from Charlotte, Asheville and Greenville, South Carolina, a variety of owners have struggled as Cleghorn battled for a niche in western North Carolina tourism. When Indiana golf pro Dave Long arrived in 2013 after his wife accepted a finance job nearby, the club had been closed for two years following the harsh recession of 2008-09.

“The course was overgrown, and it was a bit of a mess,” Long says.

“It was really unfortunate. My wife and I used to come out and walk the course when we moved here because it was closed down. As we walked around, I couldn’t believe how spectacular the layout was.

That's kind of what got me here.”

Now, the tide may have turned amid surging interest in golf and second-home properties.

In April 2016, Cleghorn was acquired by Tryon International Equestrian Center & Resort, which has attracted some of the world’s best riders since opening in Mill Spring in 2015. The group, led by Managing Partner Mark Bellissimo and President Sharon Decker, has invested more than $300 million at the Polk County site, about six

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miles from Cleghorn.

The equestrian center offers shuttles to the golf course, making it “a bit like going to The Greenbrier or The Homestead,” says Decker, referring to famous golf resorts in West Virginia and Virginia. Nearby attractions include Blue Ridge Parkway and Lake Lure. Decker is a former Duke Energy and Tanner Cos. executive. She also was secretary of the N.C. Department of Commerce.

Cleghorn dropped “plantation” from the resort’s name as part of a rebranding and increased the course’s maintenance budget and staff, including hiring Dan Fradley as turf director to restore the putting greens and fairways. “Dan has great pedigree, coming from Quail Hollow and Charlotte Country Club,” Long says.

Last year, Cleghorn Golf and Sports Club enjoyed its most profitable season ever.

“We had a great opportunity and kind of a strange opportunity to come in and open the golf course back up,” says Long, who had been a general manager of a course in northern Indiana before moving south.

“I wasn't sure if I made the right decision at the time. But it has definitely become the right decision now.”

Colonial roots It’s believed that England’s King George II gave a 2,000-acre “King’s Grant” at the site to a Scotsman named William Cleghorn in 1752. Cleghorn and his wife, Lettice, settled in Rutherfordton and developed a farm, planting corn, cotton and other crops. A subsequent owner built a manor house in 1837. Over the years, it was used as a primary residence, a clubhouse and a restaurant. It remains in disre-

PHOTOS COURTESY OF CLEGHORN GOLF AND SPORTS CLUB

STAYING THE COURSE

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pair, but Tryon Equestrian expects to restore it eventually.

In 1972, Cleghorn Plantation added a golf course with plans for adjacent housing, a project that received initial funding from lawyers, doctors and business people in Rutherfordton and Forest City. They hired golf architect George Cobb, whose 100-plus course designs include Charlotte’s Quail Hollow Club and the par-three

Boone I-77

I-40

Asheville

I-40

Hickory

Statesville 321

Cleghorn Golf & Sports Club Hendersonville

I-485 I-85

Charlotte

▲ The 18-hole course is located near Polk County's Rutherfordton.

course at Augusta National, home of the Masters.

From its start, Cleghorn had financial problems, and ownership changed hands various times. About 75 homes dot the golf course, while about 125 lots are ready for development.

Tryon officials expect the course’s appeal to spark greater interest, citing Cobb’s design that includes constant contouring and elevation changes offering a unique character to each of its 18 holes. Elevated tee boxes provide panoramic views of the surrounding countryside.

The tree-lined fairways steer golfers toward heavily bunkered and undulating greens. Water hazards come into play on several holes.

“It does have all the feel and look of a mountain golf course,” says Greenville golf course architect John LaFoy, who worked for Cobb and has helped restore some of Cleghorn’s characteristics. “The elevation is only around 1,000 feet, but Mr. Cobb created a lot of outstanding golf holes that play like a course in the mountains.”

Three-time PGA Tour winner Scott McCarron, who lives near Charlotte, visits the resort and Cleghorn regularly with his wife, Jenny, a competitive equestrian rider. Cobb’s design forces golfers to use every club in their bag, he says.

“At (McCarron’s) level, it’s usually driver-wedge, driver-wedge, driver-wedge,” Long says. “Here we’ve got the long par-3s, the short par-4s, long par-5s — something for everybody.”

Decker notes that McCarron raves about the course. “He says it’s one of the horse shows he enjoys most, because he can play great golf while they're here.” ■

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Public affairs Our paid daily newsletter launched in February, providing detailed interviews with key lawmakers, Q&As of other political leaders, and stories on 2022 election news and campaign finance. Plus lots of stories tracking daily happenings at the state legislature.

Here’s some of what you missed. Sign up today at nctribune.com.

MARSHALL EXPANDS SMALL BUSINESS PROGRAM

S

ecretary of State Elaine Marshall’s office is expanding a pilot program that helps new small business creators in rural counties. The Rural RISE NC (Resources for Innovators, Start-ups, and Entrepreneurs) program started in 14 counties to offer business counselors, lender information and a “checklist of crucial steps new business ▲ N.C. Secretary of should follow to be successful, such as imporState Elaine Marshall tant tax and reporting deadlines,” according to a news release.

The program will be available in all 78 counties classified as rural, with business owners receiving emails about it when they file paperwork to create a business.

“Our data shows that the first three years are the most challenging for new businesses,” Marshall said in a news release. “The sooner we put these entrepreneurs in touch with valuable business resources and funding opportunities, the more likely they will be making good money, creating jobs and supporting their communities.”

MEREDITH COLLEGE’S SPRING POLL Meredith College, a private women's college in Raleigh, released its spring poll covering a wide range of policy topics including Medicaid expansion, medical marijuana, abortion and distracted driving.

Here’s a few of the key numbers:

PHOTO COURTESY OF SOSNC.GOV

■ 38.8% back additional restrictions on abortion if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, although only 10% favor a total ban on abortion. But 52.6% support keeping the status quo or want easier access to abortion.

■ 60.5% support legalizing medical marijuana, while 37.7% back legalizing recreational marijuana.

■ 82.8% support a law banning drivers from holding a phone while behind the wheel.

■ 47.1% support a version of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law that would allow parents to sue if sexual orientation or gender identity is discussed in elementary schools.

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he Baptist preacher has represented Forsyth County in the North Carolina Senate since he was appointed to fill a vacancy in 2015.

He chairs the Legislative Black Caucus and serves on committees ranging from redistricting to finance to health and human services spending.

Last year, he was one of four Senate Democrats who crossed party lines and voted for the original Senate version of the state budget bill. He also worked with Sen. Jim Perry, a Kinston Republican, to co-sponsor the sports betting bill that passed the Senate as well as the “Derby Act,” which would pave the way for Kentucky Derby-style horse racing.

► What are the current and past jobs you've held outside politics?

■ Senior pastor at Shiloh Baptist Church in Winston-Salem since 1991 ■ Former adjunct professor at Shaw University Divinity School in Raleigh ■ Ministry and missions in the Bahamas, Germany, Ghana, Korea, the United Kingdom and South Africa ► What lessons from those roles have you applied to your

elected position?

I have learned that everything centers around relationships. You can always learn something from the people you work with. They can be wonderful resources. ► If you could enact a single piece of legislation into law today,

what would it be?

I would enact automatic voter registration and free community college.

► Where do you most enjoy taking an out-of-town visitor in your district?

In no particular order, I would take a visitor to Sweet Potato Restaurant, Village Tavern at Reynolda Village and West End Cafe. ► What are your favorite hobbies?

■ 71% favor Medicaid expansion.

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GET TO KNOW SEN. PAUL LOWE

I enjoy music, concerts, deep-sea fishing, hunting, golf and attending Major League Baseball games. ► Who do you most admire?

Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King Jr. Harriet Tubman escaped slavery herself and then went back to save the lives of so many others, and she did so with sheer tenacity, guts, and will. Dr. Martin Luther King sacrificed his life for the benefit of others. ► What is the best advice you have received about how to get

legislation passed?

Pick your battles and make relationships. Like I said before, the people you work with can hold a wealth of knowledge. This means that working together with them, making strong relationships and focusing on what you can truly get done are important.

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Statewide

ATRIUM’S SECOND CITY ADVANCE

▲ Jim Skogsbergh and Eugene Woods will be co-CEOs of Advocate Health.

C

harlotte-based Atrium Health CEO Eugene Woods made good on his goal of creating one of the nation’s largest hospital companies, inking a partnership with Advocate Aurora Health, which mainly operates in Wisconsin and Illinois.

No money is changing hands, and the two not-for-profit systems will retain their brands in local markets and remain responsible for their debt. But the headquarters will be in Charlotte, though Advocate Aurora is larger and is the dominant hospital system in Chicago, the third-largest U.S. metro area. Woods will be co-CEO for 18 months, while Atrium Health Chair Ed Brown will lead the combined board.

Pending federal regulatory approval, the combined system, to be called Advocate Health, will have annual revenue topping $27 billion.

The transaction marks one of the biggest M&A deals in North Carolina since the bank consolidation era of the 1990s and 2000s, when Bank of America and Wachovia built up two leading U.S. banks. The combined systems would rank fifth in the U.S. hospital industry, bolstering Atrium’s efforts to make the Queen City and Winston-Salem national leaders in health care innovation.

Atrium’s board hired Woods in 2016. He oversaw acquisitions in Macon and Rome, Georgia and formed a partnership with Winston-Salem-based Wake Forest Baptist Health. But a proposed merger with Chapel Hill-based UNC Health fell through, and Wilmington-based New Hanover Regional Medical Center agreed to sell to Novant Health of Winston-Salem, bypassing Atrium.

Those were smaller opportunities than Advocate Aurora, which had annual revenue of $14 billion and net income of $1.3 billion last year. Atrium has about $13 billion in annual revenue. It hasn’t disclosed its net income for 2021.

“This strategic combination will enable us to deepen our commitments to health equity, create more jobs and opportunities for our teammates and communities, launch new, game-changing

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innovations, and so much more,” Woods said in a news release.

Woods will be co-CEO for 18 months with Advocate Aurora’s Jim Skogsbergh, 64, then take on the post alone.

Woods says that Atrium and Advocate Aurora can drive savings to make their systems more efficient. Better partnership with insurance companies should also improve service for patients, he adds.

State Treasurer Dale Folwell, a persistent critic of Atrium, urged regulators, including N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein, to block the deal. He says research shows hospital M&A triggers “higher cost, reduced access and the same or lower level of care.” Folwell views the two systems as “tax-exempt, multibillion-dollar investment companies disguised as nonprofit hospitals.”

Hospital CEOs believe larger scale gives better clout in negotiating with insurers and federal payers and aids efforts to attract workers amid a severe shortage of nurses and other hospital workers, says Scott Becker, founder and publisher of Becker’s Hospital Review, an industry publication.

“Both Woods and Skogsbergh are highly regarded, very smart and very empathy-driven executives,” Becker says. “A combination of two larger organizations that don’t overlap too much in peer communities is more likely to get approved by the government in the antitrust process.”

The new board will include an equal number of Advocate and Atrium members. Brown, a former Bank of America and Hendrick Automotive Group executive, will chair the board through Dec. 31, 2023. ■

Atrium Health HEADQUARTERS Charlotte

Advocate Aurora Health Downers Grove, Ill., & Milwaukee

HOSPITALS

40

27

EMPLOYEES

73,000

75,000

2021 REVENUE

$13 billion

$14 billion

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CHARLOTTE CHARLOTTE Local development company Terwilliger Pappas is proposing a 20-story tower in Midtown that would include 350 apartments and 150 hotel rooms. The project near Pearl Street Park is adjacent to a 328-unit apartment building under construction that is owned by the same developers.

Duke Energy sold two center-city Church Street buildings for an undisclosed amount. They have a combined appraised value of $138 million. The buyers are Berlin, Germany-based Millennium Venture Capital and MRP Realty, a Washington, D.C.-based developer.

CONCORD Specialty packaging manufacturer Max Solutions is investing $27 million in a

CHARLOTTE Law firm Robinson Bradshaw will anchor the planned fourth office tower in uptown’s Legacy Union development. The firm will lease about 100,000 square feet and occupy the building’s top four floors. plant here with plans for 150 jobs and average salaries of about $67,000. Marc Shore is CEO of Max Solutions, which is backed by Jefferson Capital Partners of Richmond, Virginia.

GASTONIA Raleigh-based Edgewater Ventures and Stockbridge Capital Group partnered to buy a 541,609-square-foot industrial building in Gastonia. The partnership paid $44.3 million for the asset.

Premix Group, a Finland-based plastics manufacturer, will create more than 30 jobs in Gaston County by investing $47 million for its first U.S. plant.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE RELATED GROUP, UTZ BRANDS

KINGS MOUNTAIN Snack-food manufacturer Utz Brands acquired a 125,000-square-foot plant here for $38.4 million. The company expects to begin production later this year and plans to add at least 115 jobs.

CHARLOTTE Miami-based developer The Related Group wants to create what would likely be the SouthPark area’s tallest tower of at least 15 stories. Plans call for 730 apartments, 24 for-sale townhouses and more than 100,000 square feet of retail and office space.

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Statewide

TRIAD ASHEBORO Randolph Community College plans a program to increase the pool of truck drivers. It’s part of a collaboration between multiple institutions to create a truck driver certification program, with eventual plans for year-round classes.

GREENSBORO

MOREHEAD CITY The N.C. Ports Authority wants to use a site near here to create a multi-use terminal to support projects related to the automotive and offshore wind industries.

The state-run agency’s proposal calls for paving its 154 acres of undeveloped land on Radio Island.

Cone Health is expanding its heart and vascular care by creating and renovating more than 260,000 square feet of space across several locations.

in financial technology firm Finxact. Live Oak President Huntley Garriott said the bank will leverage that capital to improve its balance sheet, add staff and support community projects.

EAST

Atlantic Building Components, a manufacturer of wood trusses and building parts, will invest $6 million in Robeson County. The new plant is expected to create more than 100 jobs.

HAMPSTEAD Pender County’s population increased by more than 15% from 2010, according to the 2020 Census. Eastern Pender is starting to look like a booming beach town, as housing and commercial development continues, while population is declining in the western part of the county.

WILMINGTON Live Oak Bancshares gained $120 million from the sale of its interest

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WINSTON-SALEM Construction of two corporate hangars is planned at Smith Reynolds Airport at a combined cost of $9.6 million, after approval by the Forsyth County Commission.

Shelco is the contractor for the hangars, which will each house 15 smaller planes or three or four large corporate jets.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF N.C. PORTS AUTHORITY, CONE HEALTH, SMITH REYNOLDS AIRPORT

FAIRMONT

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IN NORTH CAROLINA, SMALL BUSINESS IS BIG BUSINESS. We are looking to find the best Tar Heel small businesses.

2022 marks our 27th year of honoring the contributions small businesses make to our state’s economy.

The winners will be profiled in the December 2022 issue.

We ask for your help to find the small businesses that best represent North Carolina.

Please submit your nominations by June 18, 2022.

To submit a nomination, you can either: 1) Go to businessnc.com/smallbusiness for online nomination forms, or 2) Fill out the form below and email or mail it to us, using the information below.

You may nominate as many companies as you wish, but they must be: • Smaller than 100 employees • Based in North Carolina • Independently owned with at least one owner active in the business • In business for at least three years

NOMINEE INFORMATION Company name: _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ Contact person: _____________________________________________________________________ Title: _____________________________ Address: _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Phone number: __________________________________ Email (if available): __________________________________________________

YOUR INFORMATION Name: ___________________________________________ Company name: _____________________________________________________ Phone number: __________________________________ Email _______________________________________________________________

We mail entry forms to the nominees so they have the opportunity to provide more information about their companies.

Visit businessnc.com/smallbusiness for more details. Nominations must be received by June 18, 2022.

Submit your nomination online at businessnc.com/smallbusiness or mail to: Small Business of the Year, Business North Carolina, 1230 W. Morehead Street, Suite 308, Charlotte, NC 28208 If you have questions, call Jennifer Ware at (704) 927-6272 or email jware@businessnc.com.

Sponsored by

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Statewide former town council member here, will have a seven-year term if confirmed by the General Assembly.

CHAPEL HILL The estate of Atlanta real estate investor Charles Ackerman, a UNC Chapel Hill graduate who died in 2017, gave $11 million to The Center for Sustainable Enterprise at UNC Chapel Hill’s KenanFlagler Business School. The center will be renamed after Ackerman and is part of a new building at the campus.

WINSTON-SALEM

DURHAM

Cybersecurity startup Salem Cyber raised $250,000 in seed funding. The startup says it plans to hire staff with the money.

Six partners from the Hagan Barrett law firm here are joining Bethesda, Maryland-based Offit Kurman, which has more than 250 lawyers. Those moving include veteran lawyers Chip Hagan and Alex Barrett.

80,000-square-foot building, and the total investment is expected to be $100 million.

TRIANGLE

WINSTON-SALEM Longtime CEO David Mounts stepped down at Inmar, a digital software company formed in 1980. Spencer Baird, president of Inmar’s Martech division, was named interim chief executive.

CARY Deputy State Budget Director Nels Roseland was appointed state controller

by Gov. Roy Cooper. Roseland, who is a

Bioventus, a life science company based here, withdrew a $415 million debt offering. It was planned to support the purchase of Israel-based CartiHeal Ltd, of which Bioventus has a partial stake.

FOUR OAKS A group called the I-95/I-40 Crossroads of America Economic Development Alliance wants Johnston Community College to relocate its industry training programs to a workforce center in Four Oaks Business Park. The alliance promotes job creation in Johnston and Harnett counties.

HIGH POINT High Point University received a $32 million donation from the Rick and Angie Workman Foundation to help establish a dental school. The Workman School of Dental Medicine will be in an

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DURHAM Heat Biologics, a drug development company based here, changed its name to NightHawk Biosciences.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF INMAR

▲ David Mounts

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Statewide

RALEIGH Sprout2 has raised more than $25 million in debt funding since November 2020, according to an SEC filing.

About 85 investors have participated, according to the filing.

ZEBULON

BOONE UNC Health signed a 10-year management services agreement with Appalachian Regional Healthcare System, the main hospital system serving the Boone and High Country areas. Officials say the move would improve health care and enable the system to hire more doctors and other staff.

MORRISVILLE Credit Suisse named local IT head Kevin Walker as site leader, succeeding Sophia Wajnert, who held the post for four years. The Switzerland-based finance company has a technology and operations center here.

WEST HICKORY The city is suing three companies over the collapse of 40-ton wooden arches along a pedestrian walkway in February, more than six months after being installed. The lawsuit names Neill Grading & Construction., Mooresville-based subcontractor Dane Construction and Oregon-based arch manufacturer Western Wood Structures.

MARION A loss of volunteers has forced the city to hire additional full-time firefighters, but federal funds could alleviate the financial impact. In April, the city moved its American Rescue Plan Act funds to its operating budget to enable the hiring of more staff.

WAYNESVILLE The town, which operates its own electric service, approved a policy aimed at making it simpler for customers who want to generate their own solar power.

Customers will receive data on the benefits of incorporating solar energy.

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF VISITNC.COM, APPALACHIAN REGIONAL HEALTHCARE SYSTEM

Devil-Dog Dungarees, which started manufacturing in 1952, has started making its own line of jeans again. President Jeff Rosenstock, who is the grandson of the company’s founder, said the company will continue its private-label business.

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ROUND TABLE

BUSINESS & EDUCATION

BACK TO THE BOOKS It wasn’t that long ago that workers did the same job for the same company for their entire career. But that’s rarely the case anymore. Companies operating in today’s dynamic economy require workers to gain a breadth of skills, including those not traditional associated with employment, and update them as business changes. Teaching them is no longer a singular effort either. Educators need businesses to shape curriculums, for example, ensuring graduates are properly equipped. Business North Carolina recently gathered a group of experts, representing education and business, to discuss how the two groups can work together and why it’s important.

PANELISTS

Coastal Federal Credit Union, Duke Energy and Lenovo sponsored the discussion, which was moderated by NCBCE’s Caroline Sullivan. The discussion has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Photography by John Gessner

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Caroline Sullivan (moderator)

Chris Babson

executive director, North Carolina Business Committee for Education

director of global education portfolio, Lenovo

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way for students to hear from professionals and industries outside of their community. It’s a good option for many schools.

SULLIVAN: Students need career awareness, especially when they’re young. NCBCE has been running Students@Work, an annual career awareness program for middle school students, for 12 years. It gives about 50,000 students the opportunity to spend some time with businesses in their community. It was done virtually the past two years because of the pandemic, and next year it will be a hybrid — a mix of in-person and virtual components. The virtual option has improved with technology, and it’s a

ECKEL: Students@Work has been highly successful. It evolved from discussions between NCBCE and Bob Eaves, former Gov. Bev Perdue’s husband and board member for several education-related organizations. He allowed NCBCE to take his idea, which was being used in Craven County schools, and apply it statewide. Its goal is simple: expose middle school students to industries within their community and the skills they need to work at them. A big reason that it’s a great program is it didn’t

take machinations to make it happen. It only required an understanding of how NCBCE members can engage with teachers and schools to bring students to workplaces or vice versa. NCBCE simply asked its members to participate. It never asked for an appropriation or anything else to make it happen. The business community can engage with teachers and students in many ways.

While companies are doing a mix of the same and different things, at the end of the day it’s our responsibility to do something. Teachers are our most important workforce. And students are our most important resource. So, we must ensure they continue to grow with us as employers and as a state.

Albert Eckel

Wendy Gressett

Michael Hogan

co-founder and partner, Eckel & Vaughan; NCBCE board member

career development coordinator, Moore Square Magnet Middle School

technical training specialist, Siemens Energy

HOW DO BUSINESSES HELP SCHOOLS BETTER PREPARE STUDENTS?

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GROUP PROJECT Creating a workforce that’s ready to meet the needs of today’s businesses is a complex endeavor. You don’t have to tell Creighton Blackwell that twice. The chief community and public affairs officer for Coastal Federal Credit Union, he’s been a financial education and community advocate for more than two decades, on both the local and national stage. He recently shared some of his insights into how businesspeople and educators can work together, ensuring students are prepared to enter the workforce and succeed in today’s economy.

WHAT DO TEACHERS NEED FROM BUSINESSES? In today’s environment, some important things that teachers need from the business community are public and private support, empathy and relevant resources that can aid the impact that they make. Each point is important, as they each lead to a broader proclamation and understanding of the incredible value of our teachers. They also represent the various types of resources that the business community has to offer.

WHAT CHALLENGES ARE TEACHERS FACING AND HOW CAN BUSINESSES HELP? Many teachers suffer from a lack of resources and feel isolated. Our teachers are the key and benchmark to the sustainability of our communities in various ways, but one that is important is their role in building our workforce. Without the daily commitment of our teachers, many of the jobs and careers that our communities depend on would be severely affected. Sharing our resources, work standards, expectations and appreciation, especially as teachers face shortages, increased student populations and scrutiny, are a few things that members of the business community can do to help them through these challenges.

WHAT ARE BUSINESSES LOOKING FOR IN THE WORKFORCE? HOW CAN TEACHERS HELP INSTILL THOSE TRAITS? The business community is looking directly for more students to graduate with a better preparation and expectation of work. There are many factors that businesses look for in its workforce and teachers can help by partnering with businesses to be aware and add that into students preparation for work. I have heard the quote various times in my career from business owners that they receive applications from many very smart students but during interviews, the missing piece was that they simply were not prepared for the expectations of work. Teachers can have a massive impact on helping to positively shape those expectations.

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BUSINESS & EDUCATION If we don’t engage, we’re losing out on an opportunity. The state’s major industries are changing. Once known primarily for manufacturing, textiles and agriculture, it has more of a knowledge-based and technology-based economy today. While those legacy industries will always be part of the state, today’s workers need different skills. Educators need to understand that their students will need them to join North Carolina’s workforce. So, we have to evolve education to teach them.

Teachers and students — K through 12 and beyond — need to understand the growing importance of soft skills, for example, such as showing up on time, running a meeting, understanding how to be successful and negotiating your way through an organization. An individual’s success depends on them.

GRESSETT: Moore Square hosted an NCBCE work-based learning takeover a few years ago. All classes were engaged by businesses, both local and from across the state. Representatives from Google, for example, helped students tear apart computers, and Red Hat employees wrote software coding with them. Teachers were impressed, and students thought it was super cool.

It also helped soft-skills development.

Businesspeople can teach them easier than a teacher or career development coordinator, like me. Those communication lessons are priceless. I enjoy helping students consider careers. They owe it to themselves to think about what they’ll do after high school. It’s not about creating stress for them. It’s simply food for thought and not written in stone. We’ve been working to create a career and college-going culture at our school. I like to expose my sixth-graders to college mascots, for example, starting them thinking about what is college. It gives them something tan-

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gible. But I list career first for a reason.

College requires an explanation. It’s not only N.C. State, Duke, UNC and other four-year institutions. It’s lifelong learning. I have a good relationship with people at Wake Technical Community College, which offers degrees and workforce training for people at different points in their careers. We include them in everything we do.

HOW IS TECHNOLOGY SHAPING SCHOOL-BUSINESS INTERACTION? BABSON: Lenovo has an education segment. It’s focused on meeting the needs of teachers and students by providing resources to them. There has been a technology explosion in education over the last 24 months, in large part because of the pandemic and its

associated stay-at-home orders. Getting devices to teachers and students is one thing. But as that investment has been made, it has been critical to assemble solutions for implementation, too.

Those have to help teachers bridge the digital divide and engage students.

Technology needs to be incorporated without interrupting the pedagogy.

Teachers cannot be information-technology support; that’s not their job. Technology opens new educational possibilities. The biggest is remote learning, which can be a challenge sometimes.

But technology also allows teachers and students to connect differently.

It’s one thing if a student misses a test question, but what if 10 students miss the same one? Machine learning and artificial intelligence, for example, can reveal patterns in how students learn.

That helps teachers identify issues and adjust how material is presented to improve comprehension. That’s a big one, but there are others. If a student didn’t understand a lesson the first time it was presented, technology allows them to review a recorded lesson plan. And video in the classroom gives teachers a closer view of their students, allowing them to pick up nonverbal clues that may have been overlooked before. Then they can talk to students through texts or emojis, ways that may provide a better connection. These are the types of things we see when talking to teachers, IT administrators and students. The pandemic has brought many negatives. We get that. But it also spurred changes in education that will instill more resolve in students moving forward. It will be interesting to watch unfold.

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BUSINESS & EDUCATION HOW DOES WORKING WITH BUSINESSES AFFECT STUDENTS? SULLIVAN: Lenovo sponsors NCBCE’s Ready, Set, APP! competition. It tasks high school students with developing an app that solves a problem in their school or community. When we built the competition, Lenovo leadership wanted to ensure that it was a level playing field. Many urban schools, for example, have more resources than rural and less funded schools. And it needed to have a statewide focus. We started with more than 44 teams from 20 counties, including nine that are Tier 1 — the most economically distressed according to N.C. Department of Commerce. Students who had never done anything like this before felt supported to tackle something difficult. Not only do they have to identify a problem, but they have to figure out a solution then write the code that makes the app work. But not every school district has a teacher who can help students accomplish that. So, we engaged paid student interns who had app-design experience. They work with the teams and in the process learn things such as scheduling office hours and supporting people. They understand that their team’s performance is a reflection on them because they’re the leader.

We’re providing that workplace-learning opportunity. In the final part of the competition, students pitch their app to a panel of judges. It’s a little like the TV show “Shark Tank.” Lenovo assembles a great panel of early career professionals. The most compelling speakers for a student are young professionals. Businesses want their president to speak far too often. While that has benefits, it’s easier for students to connect with a young professional.

BABSON: From Lenovo’s perspective,

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Ready, Set, APP! gives us the opportunity to help students develop important workplace skills. In a past competition, a team of Pitt County students developed an app that tracked the location of school buses. That is an acute problem that a student recognizes. A parent might not recognize it to the same degree. So, identifying and solving that problem is pretty cool. But it’s more than the technical skills such as writing the code that makes the app work. The challenge creates an opportunity to teach soft skills, too. The student intern leaders, for example, develop the ability run meetings, schedule workflow and respect deadlines. Many people only think of Lenovo as a technology company, which only hires technically trained people such as computer engineers.

That’s true, but to be someone who’s highly considered and successful at the company, you have to be able to communicate. You must prove that you can work with others. When someone says your idea is bad, you have to be able to accept that criticism. And you have to be able to tell someone their idea is bad without telling them that their idea is bad. Fostering those skills is as important as fostering the coding and engineering. It’s critical to bring all that together and a main reason that we’re part of the competition.

ECKEL: The challenge was never only about developing a technology platform.

In the real world, you have to communicate the value proposition associated with it. The communication aspect of it was a real component of judging.

GRESSETT: If students can visualize themselves in a career, school becomes easier. Succeeding in a math class they dislike or listening to a social studies lecture that’s uninteresting to them becomes more entertaining

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than interacting with their smartphone when they understand the reasons that they’re in it. Businesspeople can help explain that relevance. Students need help with their communication skills coming out of the pandemic, when most interactions were done in a chat box or on a screen. They speak differently to an adult who’s visiting than they do to a teacher or friend. Returning to person-to-person interaction, and being able to do it in a professional manner, has a new spin after being in front of computers for so long.

HOGAN: NCBCE is an opportunity for business and industry to lean into the classroom. Without it, they are like ships in the night. They pass right by one another. Apprenticeship is a big piece for Siemens. It’s in our DNA. It’s what we do as a German company. We develop students into valued employees through that process. We have a strong educational partner in Central Piedmont Community College. There are wonderful schools in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. They feed us many great students. It’s important for us to partner with other organizations to ensure that we’re providing opportunities. Our apprenticeship process starts in the fall, when we recruit students. They decide which company they want to apprentice with in the spring. It’s a two-way process.

We select apprentices, and students choose to apprentice with us. A lot of resources are involved in ensuring that apprenticeships move forward and are successful. Some students, usually those apprenticing in mechatronics, mechanical or welding, go in a separate direction when their apprenticeship is done. But they are few and far between. After being with us four years, during which they complete a degree at no cost to them and earn a regular

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paycheck, they choose to stay and are quickly hired. They easily progress at Siemens. I spent more than 20 years across several stops while working for the N.C. Community College System before I joined Siemens Energy.

Every school and company that does well has great leadership. There’s an advocate. There’s a principal or career development coordinator saying this is important. At Siemens Energy, vice president Brian Maragno, vice president of large generator product line, and Dawn Braswell, training manager and head of the apprentice program, are saying this is important to us.

Some may question these efforts when times get tough, but it’s who we are. It’s important for Siemens Energy, students and North Carolina.

HOW DOES WORKING WITH BUSINESSES HELP TEACHERS? HOGAN: As a large company, we hire for many different skills. We need engineers, project managers and human-resources folks. But what we really want is innovative people. They bring diversity of thought. They step up and share their opinion. It’s those soft skills that we’re looking to hire. So, it’s on us as an industry to help educators create the future employees that we’ll want to hire, moving North Carolina forward in the process. STEMersion was a beneficial summer program, which unfortunately was idled because of the pandemic. It involved Central Piedmont Community College, about 50 teachers from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and 10 industry partners. Each spent

a half or full day taking these teachers through their operations, explaining what they do and how they get it done.

It was an opportunity for teachers to connect what the industry partners do and expect of new hires with what is being taught in their classrooms. It was always interesting to hear what teachers identified as relevant to their lessons. A math teacher, for example, saw metrology — the science of measurement and its applications — during the Siemens Energy visit. Those skills, which directly relate to a local industry, can be discussed and taught in math class. That adds relevance to lessons.

Teachers are trained how to teach. They have classroom skills, but they don’t necessarily have industry skills. It’s key that we share that information. Where else will they pick it up?

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GRESSETT: Businesses bring relevance to the curriculum, whether by speaking in the classroom or participating in work-based learning. They can come to us, or we can bring students to them. Experiencing work firsthand is eye opening for students and teachers.

During the height of the pandemic, it would’ve been easy for businesses to lose their philanthropic focus. We need businesses to come back to the table and invite us to their places of business. Work from home isn’t going away. Flex schedules for businesses shouldn’t go away. And volunteerism shouldn’t go away. The company where my daughter recently started work, for example, pays employees for 40 hours

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of community service. That allows her to return to North Carolina from Texas to participate in a community leadership program. She wouldn’t be able to do that without it. That’s a big deal for that company, supporting philanthropic community outreach. Our economy is flourishing. I hope that as leadership teams at companies plot their course for exiting the pandemic, they consider volunteerism, especially for schools.

Schools need businesses in them, and we need to bring our kids to them. It makes a world of difference to educators and students.

BABSON: Lenovo has an advisory council, which includes IT administrators and teachers from K-12 schools and higher education. They share their classroom experiences and the solutions they need. That directs our help: What are their pitfalls that we can help them overcome through technology that we provide. That level of communication, keeping it open and the benefits it drives, is a big piece for me.

WHAT BENEFITS DO STUDENTS BRING TO BUSINESSES? BABSON: I had a college student on

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my team last summer. We assigned her to a sustainability and technology project, which was huge and had lots of visibility. She brought unique knowledge and her own viewpoint, which is completely different than mine. I thought I had a solid viewpoint on sustainability. I did not. I learned from her.

The ability to have someone come in with a fresh point of view, who can look at a problem or an opportunity differently, is probably the biggest takeaway.

It doesn’t matter that she was coming from the University of South Carolina. It could have been someone from middle school or Wake Tech. People of different ages bring different perspectives. Business leaders need to recognize that and bring it out. It’s a breath of fresh air. Their different backgrounds help you look at problems differently. When you look at a problem differently, you solve it differently. And maybe that solution is more efficient, allowing you to do something better in less time.

HOGAN: I had about a half-dozen students working on campus in summer 2020. They were supposed to return to school in August. My folks didn’t want to let them go. They wanted to extend their time through the fall because they

PHOTO CREDIT: NCBCE.ORG

SULLIVAN: They won’t pick up those skills and information anywhere else.

It also is important to recognize how things change. If you’ve been in the classroom for 20 years, the work world has become substantially different during that time. Businesses need to engage with students and teachers.

Teachers need to be able to make those connections but also hear from businesses about what their students need to become successful employees of tomorrow.

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did a great job. Some of them stayed.

Others had school responsibilities, such as athletics, so they couldn’t.

HOW CAN A BUSINESS BEGIN WORKING WITH STUDENTS? GRESSETT: I support teachers by finding businesspeople who can augment the topics that they’re teaching.

I regularly use NCBCE’s Navigator, a free online tool that connects educators to businesspeople and work-based learning opportunities. The Navigator is available statewide, so any school system, from big to small, urban to rural, can use it. The people it has helped me find have been incredible, even during the pandemic’s restrictions. Companies could’ve taken a year or two off

from working with students, but most didn’t. Many really came through. N.C. State chemistry department faculty, for example, dropped off activities for our students, then they explained how to do them virtually. Some businesspeople may feel intimidated by the prospect of speaking to 20 or 30 students, but most kids appreciate that attention. It may force you out of your comfort zone, but in the end, it’s rewarding, and you feel good about it.

SULLIVAN: I’ve never had anyone involved with the Navigator who didn’t enjoy engaging with students and teachers. They ask where else can they go. Most of us feel hurried, and we don’t think we have time to help. But the Navigator makes it easy to participate.

BABSON: If you ask someone to talk about their job, and they’re not totally geeked out to do it, then they’re in the wrong job. Whenever I’m asked to talk about what I do, I’m totally nerding out.

ECKEL: The thought of speaking to students may be intimidating for some businesspeople, but at NCBCE, we often hear them ask how to engage with students, teachers and schools.

It’s easy to do. Students are asking for it. Teachers are asking, too. They want other ways to drive skills within their classrooms because they understand their importance. If we aren’t taking time to engage those groups, then we’re, quite frankly, shirking our responsibility. ■

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No auto-service business paints, washes, repairs or changes the oil for as many vehicles as Charlotte’s Driven Brands.

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By Ted Reed

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he Take 5 Oil Change at the corner of Tyvola

dozens of other retailers. Roark has its fingers on 66,000

Road and South Boulevard in south Charlotte

locations. By comparison, there are about 40,000

stays busy, averaging 80 oil changes a day and

McDonald’s globally.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF DRIVEN BRANDS

annual revenue of $2.3 million. But this shop

On a recent morning, Tyler Cagle, the company’s

does more than its name implies: Charlotte-based Driven

director of franchise operations, was instructing a dozen

Brands uses the site to annually train about 200 managers,

trainees from several states. He started with Take 5 Oil

key cogs in a business with 4,400 locations. It’s part of the

Change nine years ago as a store manager in Charlotte,

largest U.S. auto-service company’s strategy to create a

before Driven bought the New Orleans-based chain in

fast-growth Wall Street darling by packaging thousands of

2016 for an undisclosed price.

small auto-service businesses into popular national brands.

Driven is a public company, though it’s controlled by

Franchise owners pick 200 trainees annually to visit Charlotte for a couple of weeks for training, while another

70% owner Roark Capital, an Atlanta private-equity

400 employees get online management training. The pitch

group that specializes in backing franchise businesses, such

is simple, he says. “You can go from pit technician to

as Arby’s, Dunkin’, Massage Envy, Anytime Fitness and

president [at Driven.]”

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Cagle cites Russell Benthal, who started as a technician in 2018 and was promoted earlier this year to director of operations for franchise partners in the Triangle, the Triad and Richmond, Virginia. Or there’s Forrest Snider, who started as a technician in New Orleans and is now associate vice president of operations for the Southeast.

Driven grows by acquiring smaller, typically family-owned companies in its three core businesses of oil change, auto wash and auto glass. Then it folds them into existing brands and attracts franchisees who pay a percentage of annual revenue in return for marketing, training and other corporate support. About 60% of its 4,400 outlets in the U.S. and 14 other nations are franchises.

“We’re sharing with Wall Street the fantastic unit-level economics of our three primary growth businesses,” says Tiffany Mason, the company’s chief financial officer and top Charlotte executive. She’s referring to vehicle maintenance, car wash and paint, collision, and glass. “Simple, convenient and fast (is) the operating model. It resonates with consumers, which means great throughput, which equals profitability.”

The auto-services industry is massive and fragmented. “Eighty percent of it is small chains and independents facing tough economic times and supply-chain pressure,” Mason says. “This is where scale really matters. Small independents don’t have flexibility, alternative supply-chain, consumer research, or the size

and scales of Driven Brands. That’s a little bit of the upper hand we have.”

The company’s revenue tripled over the past three years to nearly $1.5 billion, while systemwide sales gained 4% to $4.5 billion. Driven opened a net 247 stores last year after adding more than 1,600 through expansions and acquisitions during the two previous years. Plans call for another 220 new stores annually over the next five years.

The idea is to weave together service concepts to capture your share of wallet.

– Tiffany Mason, CFO, Driven Brands

In a tight labor market, the possibility of upward mobility is among Driven’s hiring advantages. “Our labor pool is not skilled labor,” Mason says. “We don’t need (to hire) certified technicians; we compete for labor with quick-service restaurants. One of our selling points is that we can lay out a career path. We can take an unskilled laborer, then train you as a pit tech. We can offer [advancement] as well as a competitive wage and favorable operating hours. It’s a compelling proposition.”

Driven’s scale also helps it buy bulk quantities of oil and paint at competitive prices. It also has a centralized sales team to promote service and collision-repair packages to rental-car companies and other large-fleet customers.

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Charlotte-based Carousel Capital and Washington-based Halifax Group buy Meineke for $68.5 million

Australia-based Brambles Industries merges with GKN

2006

United Kingdom-based GKN buys Meineke Discount Mufflers

2003

Ken Walker named CEO of Meineke

2001

1996

Sam Meineke starts a muffler business in Pasadena, Texas

1983

1971

— Key events in Driven Brands’ history

Name changed to Driven Brands

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▲ Chief Financial Officer Tiffany Mason, shown with colleague Tyler Cagle, worked for Lowe’s Cos. before joining Driven Brands in 2020.

Speedy acceleration

New York-based Harvest Partners buys Driven Brands

Roark Capital buys Driven Brands

Buys International Car Wash Group for $722 million

2021

2020

Since 2012, the business has been led by Dublin, Ireland, native Jonathan Fitzpatrick. He had been an executive vice president and chief brand and operations officer at Burger King in Miami, where he still lives.

The company’s ambitions have accelerated since Roark bought a controlling interest in April 2015. Over the next year and a half, Driven expanded in the collision-repair and quick-lube businesses, then added glass in 2019 and car wash in 2020. Fitzpatrick has overseen more than 80 acquisitions, with the largest being the $722 million purchase of International Car Wash Group in 2020.

Jonathan Fitzpatrick succeeds Walker as CEO

2015

2012

Buys Maaco Franchising

2011

2008

Driven’s 250-person downtown Charlotte headquarters is a legacy of its Meineke Discount Mufflers unit, which moved from Houston in 1986. Then owned by British multinational GKN, Meineke promoted its brand through boxer George Foreman as a TV spokesman from 1993 to 2010. The company changed its name to Driven Brands in 2006 and diversified with the 2008 acquisition of Maaco, a Pennsylvania-based franchiser of auto body repair painting. Between 2003 and 2015, several different private-equity groups owned the business for various periods, including Charlotte-based Carousel Capital.

Initial public offering raises $750 million. Roark retains 70% control

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I

nterested in nabbing a Take 5 Oil Change franchise in the Carolinas? It’s too late because Driven Brands doesn’t have any spots available in the Southeast.

The only place where Take 5 franchises remain up for grabs are some rural areas on the West Coast, says Ted Rippey, a senior vice president who oversees franchise development for Driven’s 14 brands. He was a co-founder of 1-800 Radiator & A/C, which had about 200 franchisee-owned locations in the U.S. and Canada when Driven bought it in 2015.

Driven had 2,770 franchised outlets as of December, out of a total of 4,412 stores. Franchises remain available in some of its other 13 brands, while existing operators have agreements to open more than 900 stores. Last year, 187 franchised stores for Driven’s various brands were launched.

Rippey, who is based near San Francisco, oversees a staff of about three dozen people who recruit and oversee franchisees.

Driven typically sells Take 5 franchise opportunities to multi-unit developers who are willing to operate eight to 20 shops, Rippey says. The average cost to develop a Take 5 is about $800,000, not including real estate.

The company collects about $17,000 upfront for each Take 5 outlet. Franchisees then pay royalties to Driven at 1% of gross revenue for the first year, 3% the second and third year, and 7% after that. Additionally, franchisors pay 5% each year to a marketing fund.

Royalties made up 10% of Driven’s total revenue last year, down from 19% in 2019. That reflects growth of its companyowned units and the expansion into the car-wash business, for which it doesn’t have franchises.

Obtaining a Driven franchise typically starts with a video call which “we would walk you through the investment, get you up to speed on our plans in your market,” Rippey says.

After that interview, the typical due-diligence period is three

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to six months. Driven offers guidance “in the real estate, training, marketing, back office, (and) demonstrates all the tools in the house,” he says.

A typical new franchisee meets weekly with coaches, enabling Driven to track every aspect of the business. For instance, Rippey says, “We know all the different technicians and how good they are at collecting email addresses. We communicate with them. If we’ve got one collecting 10% of email addresses and another at 90%, that is a coaching moment.”

Driven staffers visit each store a few times a year.

The company’s Meineke and Maaco brands have openings in parts of the Carolinas. “Both are solid businesses, growing like crazy,” he says. He estimates an initial expense of $400,000 to $450,000 for those outlets, again not including real estate.

“You don’t need new construction, and you don’t need expensive prime storefronts,” he says. ■

Franchise fees and royalties - 2021 Paint, collision and glass. . . . . . . . . . . . . . $79.1 million Maintenance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $35.9 million Platform service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $29.4 million

Franchise outlets - December 2021 Meineke, other car repair brands. . . . . . .

Maaco. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Carstar, Abra, collision-repair brands . . .

1-800-Radiator. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Take 5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

797 units 425 970 200 165

source: Driven Brands

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Roark took the company public in January 2021, raising $751 million with shares selling for $22. Roark retains control of the business. Since the IPO, shares have traded between $25 and nearly $35, with a mid-May price of $25, equating to a $4.2 billion market cap.

Fitzpatrick told analysts in February that Driven has less than 5% market share in a $300 billion, highly fragmented industry.

He describes the industry as dominated by “white space,” namely small companies that are likely to be willing to sell their businesses. Driven employs 10 staffers focused on mergers and acquisitions who make about 1,000 calls a month looking for deals.

When Driven bought New Orleans-based Take 5 in March 2016, it had about 62 stores and revenue of $43 million. Last year, the brand had 653 outlets and systemwide revenue of $565 million. Another 615 potential stores are in planning stages.

An example of Driven’s strategy is in the Dallas metro area, where it had 16 quick-lube stores in 2016. By late 2021, it had 72 stores in the region, including 52 quick-lubes and 20 car-wash outlets.

Plans call for significant growth in the car wash and auto glass businesses, which will be required whether cars are powered by combustion engines or electric batteries. In car wash, Driven has about 330 sites with more than 850 in development. Repairing auto glass is a $5 billion growth market in North America that is also highly fragmented, Fitzpatrick says.

Overall, the company’s cash flow has soared from $53 million in 2015 to more than $224 million last year. Earnings before taxes and interest costs are expected to reach $850 million in 2026, up from $465 million this year.

As vehicle owners can attest, cars and trucks must be serviced whether the economy is hot or cold. That makes for steady revenue at Driven. Sales of stores that had been open for more than one year grew at 1% in the 2008-09 downturn but have increased at a steady 4% to 6% annual range consistently since then, according to the company. (The year 2020 was an anomaly with COVID-19 causing a 6% decline that reversed last year.)

Analyst Elizabeth Suzuki, who tracks Driven for Bank of America, puts the company in the “do it for me” segment of auto care. “Within this channel, DRVN has an industry-leading position in a highly fragmented market, with superior margins compared to other public peers,” she wrote in an April report.

BofA research in April emphasized that U.S. consumers are spending aggressively. “The strength in (the) car wash business is consistent with what we see in recent Bank of America aggregated debit and credit card data,” Suzuki notes. She has a $53 price target for Driven’s shares, nearly double its mid-May price.

Other investors also see big value in buying auto service businesses and repackaging them. Private-equity funds have made many acquisitions of car-wash companies in recent years, paying prices that Suzuki and others have called “frothy.”

Fitzpatrick says Driven was ahead of the curve by entering the car-wash business about 16 months ago. Now it can build on its existing framework, he says.

One concern about the car-care business is that demand for repairs will lessen if there’s less commuting and car ownership in the post-pandemic world. But Mason says the average driver gets a monthly car wash, two oil changes a year and periodic repairs for window dents and window cracks.

“Everything has a frequency,” she says. “The idea is to weave together service concepts to capture your share of wallet. We have all that customer information about your vehicle (so) we can anticipate your needs (and) make sure we know what is your path to purchase. We want to make sure we can capture that.”

The information load enables Driven to reach out through email, social media pages, banner ads and even the Pandora music app. The company recently hired a chief digital officer, Matt Meier, from Whirlpool, where he worked on “connected” appliance experiences. “We’re just getting started on building a platform,” Mason says.

First or second asset Mason joined Driven on March 2, 2020, nine days after the NBA announced it would suspend its season because of the pandemic. She had no previous auto industry experience, having worked at Lowe’s Cos. for 14 years, most recently as senior vice president of corporate finance. But repairing cars has lots of similarities with home-improvement retailing, she says. “It’s a non-discretionary component. Either way, you help the consumer maintain their first or second largest asset.”

Mason moved from Baltimore to Charlotte in 2004 with her husband, Robert Mason, now chief accounting officer for Dole Foods. The couple lives in Cornelius, with a daughter in high school and a son in middle school. She likes working in the heart of the city. “There’s a lot of energy uptown, and there’s a different workforce, one that’s more diverse.”

Mason isn’t concerned about a threat to Driven as the auto industry shifts from internal-combustion engines to electric vehicles. With 275 million cars on the road today, “even with the most aggressive assumptions, it’s two decades before a tipping point,” she says. In the quick-lube business, she says, “We buy a site, great real estate, at Main and Main in any market we go into. These boxes are simple, 1,500 to 3,000 square feet.

As things evolve, we can embrace the change and change the service occasion.

“There will always be oil changes,” she says. ■

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GLORY DAYS The stars aligned for bank and credit union profits last year, contributing to a record year for many institutions.

Business North Carolina’s annual list of the state’s 50 biggest banks and credit unions shows more than half of the institutions reported profit gains of more than 50%.

Two key reasons suggest that probably won’t be repeated, according to Tony Plath, a retired finance professor at UNC Charlotte who consults with banks. First, many banks recognized their fee income from making Payment Protection Program loans as income. Second, unprecedented mortgage loan activity from both new originations and refinancing also sparked huge fee increases.

No one expects another PPP effort, while soaring mortgage rates are expected to cool the housing market.

Banks must find other ways to profit this year.

The rankings are based on information supplied by New York-based S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Here are 10 institutions that made news in the last year.

Bank of America (5-year total return: 75%) The last year marked a changing of the guard for the North Carolina leadership at the second-largest U.S. bank.

Longtime technology leader Cathy Bessant moved to Paris to become vice chair of global strategy, while 34-year bank veteran Andrea Smith retired as chief administrative officer. The bank’s senior N.C. executives include Aditya Bhasin, chief technology and information officer; Steve Boland, chief administrative officer; and Christine Katziff, chief audit executive.

1

Truist Financial (5-year total return: 34%) Former SunTrust Banks leader Bill Rogers succeeded Kelly King as CEO last September, then became board chair on March 12. Other top-level turnover at the seventh-largest U.S. commercial bank included the appointment of Donta Wilson as head of retail community banking and marketing, succeeding veteran executive Brant Standridge.

2

First Citizens BancShares (5-year total return: 92%) The nation’s biggest family-controlled bank completed its largest acquisition on Jan. 3, essentially doubling in size with the $2.2 billion purchase of CIT Group. It puts First Citizens among the 20 largest U.S. banks with more than 600 branches in 22 states.

3

over the last three years, even though its stock slumped 35% in the year ended May 6. In addition to strong revenue growth, Live Oak booked a $120 million gain in the first quarter by selling its Finaxct investment to Fiserv.

Coastal Credit Union CEO Chuck Purvis announced plans to retire next March after leading the second-largest N.C. credit union since 2012. Formed by eight IBM employees in 1967, it how has more than $4.6 billion in assets and about 23 offices in central North Carolina. It expanded beyond IBM employees in 1991.

7

Truliant Federal Credit Union The Winston-Salem-based institution continues its aggressive approach that has boosted its membership by 40% since 2016 to more than 280,000. It plans to add about 100 staffers to its 920-employee payroll this year, some of them joining the new operations center at Hanes Mall scheduled to open this fall.

9

First Carolina Bank The Rocky Mount-based bank raised $115 million in April, marking the largest private placement with local investors in N.C. history, CEO Ron Day says. The bank expects to end the year with nine offices including new branches in Greenville, S.C. and Atlanta. It has been among the state’s fastest growing community banks since an investor group led by Day acquired the institution in 2012.

20

State Employees Credit Union In September, Jim Hayes became the third CEO since Blueharbor bank 1979 at the second-largest U.S. credit union, which has Located in one of the state’s most affluent areas, the more than $50 billion in assets. A former chief of a much smaller federal Mooresville-based bank has five offices in suburban credit union near Baltimore, Hayes pledges to improve the institution’s Charlotte and one in Morehead City. The bank was started in 2008 digital platform and add new products for the 2.6 million members. amid the housing recession, but now has some of the state’s strongest profit margins and operating efficiencies among its peer banks, CEO Live Oak Bank (5-year total return: 86.3%) Joe Marshall Jr. notes in the 2021 annual report. The bank’s board is The fast-growing company that specializes in Small chaired by Kelley Earnhardt Miller, sister of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his Business Administration loans is among the state’s most partner in the JR Motorsports NASCAR team. volatile stocks. Its total return tops the state’s publicly traded banks

4

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5

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N O R T H

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FINANCIAL50 2022

2021

Company

LARGEST BANKS AND CREDIT UNIONS BASED IN NORTH CAROLINA

Headquarters

2021 revenue % change from (million) 2020

% change from 2020

$31,978

1

1

Bank of America

CHARLOTTE

$89,978

2

2

Truist Financial

CHARLOTTE

22,196

(-2.1)

6,440

3 4 5 6

3 4 6 5

First Citizens BancShares State Employees’ Live Oak Bancshares First Bancorp

RALEIGH

2,066 1,553 461

548 557 167

SOUTHERN PINES

325

7

7

Coastal Federal

RALEIGH

8 9 10

9 8 16

Local Government Federal Truliant Federal Vizo Financial Corporate

RALEIGH

189 177 174

11 12

11 10

HomeTrust Bancshares Southern BancShares

ASHEVILLE

152 149

MOUNT OLIVE

148

13

12

Fidelity Bank

FUQUAY-VARINA

14 15 16

13 14 15

Allegacy Federal Peoples Bancorp North State Bank

WINSTON-SALEM NEWTON

126 102 69

RALEIGH

59

17

24

Charlotte Metro Federal

CHARLOTTE

18 19

19 20

Uwharrie Bank Marine Federal

ALBEMARLE

49 45

20 21 22

25 21 27

First Carolina Bank Latino Community Dogwood State Bank

ROCKY MOUNT

23 24

18 22

Self-Help Union Bank

DURHAM

41 40

GREENVILLE

39

25

23

Farmers and Merchants Bank

SALISBURY

26 27 28

28 30 29

Bank of Oak Ridge Providence Bank Piedmont Federal

OAK RIDGE

34 26 24

29 30

31 32

KS Bank Carolinas Telco Federal

SMITHFIELD

23 21

CHARLOTTE

20

31

34

Fort Bragg Federal

FAYETTEVILLE

32 33

33 38

Piedmont Advantage Members

WINSTON-SALEM

19 18

34 35 36

39 35 40

Champion Summit Lumbee Guaranty Bank

CANTON

37 38 39

37 41 36

Surrey Bank & Trust Mechanics & Farmers Bank Lifestore Bank

MOUNT AIRY

40 41 42

43 45 44

First Federal Savings Bank of Lincolnton Mountain Telco Community

LINCOLNTON

43 44 45 46 47 48

46 47 48 N/A 49 N/A

blueharbor bank First Flight Federal Roxboro Savings Bank Triad Business Bank First Federal Bank Alliance Bank & Trust Co.

MOORESVILLE

49 50

N/A N/A

Nantahala Bank & Trust Co. Nova Credit Union

FRANKLIN

4.1 12.0 65.4 7.2 6.1 23.8 13.6 160.6 12.2 6.2 18.3 3.6 2.8 (-8.7) 54.4 6.7 9.8 53.3 9.8 85.3 (-9.3) 11.9 0 19.9 24.0 8.9 13.8 8.1 5.2 (-2.7) 15.0 14.4 0.9 12.4 0.6 23.7 -8.5 11.4 17.5 9.4 21.1 (-1) (-4.3) 27.2 (-1.2) 21.5 49.4 (-6.6)

RALEIGH WILMINGTON

WINSTON-SALEM GREENSBORO

JACKSONVILLE DURHAM RALEIGH

ROCKY MOUNT WINSTON-SALEM

WINSTON-SALEM GREENSBORO PEMBROKE DURHAM WEST JEFFERSON WAYNESVILLE ASHEVILLE CARY ROXBORO GREENSBORO DUNN GASTONIA CHARLOTTE

45 43 42

18 17 17 16 16 15 15 13 13 13 13 10 9 8 8 8 8 7

Red= Credit union.

Data compiled April 11, 2022. Includes banks, thrifts and credit unions that filed regulatory reports for the year ended Dec. 31, 2021.

Total revenue equals the sum of net interest income, noninterest income and gains on sales of securities.

44-45_Bank Intro_List_June 2022.indd 45

3.90%

Net income (million)

96 61 54 47 104 22 94 42 18 15 18 11 11 9 18 19 4 8 14 9 9 11 2 6 3 6 0 4 3 3 4 5 3 4 4 2 3 5 0 3 -2 1 2 6 1

Return on assets

Retun on equity

Total assets (million)

78.7%

1.10%

11.70%

43.7

1.2

9.3

541,241

11.1 124.6 180.7 17.4 212.2 172.0 63.3 415.4 10.3 109.7 31.3 59.7 32.8 0.1 182.3 28.4 176.3 73.1 2.1 N.A. 79.8 150.1 (-9.4) 108.5 39.6 47.2 13.4 94.5 103.5 NA 111.4 59.5 93.8 60.9 12.8 147.3 (-10.9) 60.1 176.3 29.7 46.4 (-42.8) (-15.2) NA 16.5 61.8 NA NA

1 1.1 2

12.3 14.2 25.6

58,308 51,653 8,213

$3,169,495

1.1

9.9

10,516

1.4 1.7 1.3

14.8 20.5 17.1

4,613 3,282 3,779

1.7 0.6

25.1 5.5

5,384 3,503

2.2

21.3

4,591

1.3 0.9 1

15.6 9 10.6

3,564 2,005 1,624

1.4

18.5

1,395

1.2 1.3

12.3 14.6

1,047 938

1.1 1.5 3

13.1 11.4 26.2

880 1,418 721

0.6 0.5

3.8 6.1

925 1,341

1.3

13.4

1,158

1 1.5 1.6

10.4 14.8 14

946 583 702

0.2 1.2

0.8 14.2

966 571

0.4

3.5

564

1.1 0

10.1 0.5

538 451

0.9 0.8 1.1

8.5 7.9 8.5

455 413 338

0.9 1.1 0.8

9.3 10 7.7

473 481 365

1.1 0.9 0.9 1.1

9.9 5.6 10 11.8

402 451 321 338

1.3 0.2 1 -0.5 0.3

12.8 1.4 5.2 -3.2 3.2

411 222 288 373 221

0.8 2.6 0.9

10.8 39.7 6.4

230 232 130

Net income equals the sum of net interest income after provision, noninterest income, gain on securities, extraordinary items less noninterest expense and taxes. source: S&P Global Market Intelligence J U N E

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North Carolina-based investment advisers who manage more than $1 billion

S

oaring stocks and bonds made 2021 a great year for most money managers, as is shown in our annual listing of the largest advisers based in North Carolina. Two-thirds of the companies on the list reported more than 20% gains in assets under management, reflecting higher asset values and client additions.

Unfortunately, the music stopped this year with the S&P 500 slumping 17%, the Nasdaq plunging 25% and bond prices declining at press time in mid-May. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, skyrocketing inflation and prospects of a recession spooked investors. Some selling stemmed from profit taking after three years of double-digit gains in stock-market indices.

The data is based on the companies’ most recent annual fil-

ings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which provides snapshots of the number of employees, assets under management and key owners.

Private-equity groups and large asset managers based outside North Carolina are not included in the list. That’s why advisers affiliated with major companies such as Fidelity and Morgan Stanley are not listed.

Among the groups showing 50%-plus gains in assets from a year earlier were Biltmore Family Office and Adhesion Wealth Advisors of Charlotte, Salem Investment Counselors of WinstonSalem and Cornerstone Advisors of Asheville.

No. 1 ranked CapFinancial Partners, which is the parent of CapTrust Financial, reported a 46% increase.

ASSETS UNDER MANAGEMENT (BILLION);

1. CAPFINANCIAL PARTNERS Raleigh

$655

$205

46%

The holding company of CapTrust has acquired several dozen advisory firms since 2006 and has 1,046 employees, Private-equity firm GTCR owns a 25% stake.

2. BARINGS $30

11%

3. STERLING CAPITAL MANAGEMENT Charlotte

$5.3

7%

Truist Financial owns more than 75% of the company that employs 176 people.

Alexander McAlister is president.

4. WELLS FARGO INVESTMENT INSTITUTE Charlotte

$51.2

$45.3

767%

Assets grew from $5.9 billion in 2020 as investment teams shifted accounts from other bank-owned units. It now has 212 employees.

5. ALIGHT FINANCIAL ADVISORS Charlotte

$32.1

$0.6

1%

The subsidiary of the Blackstone private-equity firm provides fee-based advisory services.

6. GLOBAL ENDOWMENT MANAGEMENT Charlotte

$13.2

$1.6

14%

Its 29 clients are mainly universities and foundations. Porter Durham is managing partner of the firm, which employs 68.

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B U S I N E S S

ALUMINA INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT Charlotte

$10.7

$1.5

17%

Former Carlyle Group managing director Greg Kares founded the hedge fund, which employs four people.

Charlotte

Mutual-fund adviser owned by MassMutual employs 1,019 workers. Insurance company clients have $224 billion managed by Barings.

$75.3

7.

8. WEDGE CAPITAL MANAGEMENT

Charlotte

$307

CHANGE FROM 2020

N O R T H

$10.2

-$0.6

-6%

The mutual-fund adviser, formed in ’84, employs 30 including 17 general partners. Assets have declined in each of the past two years.

9. INDEPENDENT ADVISOR ALLIANCE Charlotte

$9.8

$2.1

27%

Robert Russo founded the broker-dealer in 2014. It has nearly doubled its AUM over the last two years.

10. ADHESION WEALTH ADVISORS Charlotte

$9.5

$3.4

56%

The 32-employee firm’s AUM has nearly doubled in the last two years. It was acquired in 2018 by Maryland-based Vestmark, which manages $1.5 trillion.

11. TRUEBRIDGE CAPITAL PARTNERS Chapel Hill

$5

$1.3

39%

Founded by UNC Chapel Hill’s former endowment managers Ed Poston and Mel Williams, the 27-employee firm is owned by Dallas-based P10 Holdings.

12. PARSEC FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT Asheville

$4.2

$0.8

24%

More than $3 billion of the firm’s assets are from high net worth individuals. It employs 73.

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ASSETS UNDER MANAGEMENT (BILLION);

13. HORIZON INVESTMENTS Charlotte

$4

$0.6

18%

John Drahzal became CEO when Altamont Capital Partners of Palo Alto, California, bought a stake in November. Founder Robbie Cannon is now a strategic adviser.

14. FORTIGENT

$1.7

81%

The business is owned by LPL Financial, which has a major office in suburban Charlotte.

15. FRANKLIN STREET ADVISORS Chapel Hill

$3.5

$0.5

17%

Robert Newell is president of the 37-employee company, which is owned by Fifth Third Bancorp.

16. SALEM INVESTMENT COUNSELORS Winston-Salem

$3.5

$1.5

75%

David Rea leads the company that has 18 employees and about 730 individual investor accounts. CNBC has named it a top financial advisory firm.

17. BRAGG FINANCIAL ADVISORS Charlotte

$3

$0.7

30%

The family-owned business with 29 employees added $1.2 billion in AUM in the last two years. Benton Bragg is president and CEO

18. SMITH, SALLEY & ASSOCIATES Greensboro

$2.7B

$0.7

35%

Founder Gregory Smith Jr. leads the firm which has more than 700 clients. AUM grew by 30% in 2019 and 20% in 2020.

19. BILTMORE FAMILY OFFICE $0.8

51%

CEO Chris Cecil co-founded the 21-employee firm in 2008. It has about 60 high net-worth clients.

20. COLONY FAMILY OFFICES Charlotte

$2.4

$0.4

18%

Eric Ridenour leads the 12-employee wealth-management firm.

21. VERGER CAPITAL MANAGEMENT Winston-Salem

$2.4

$0.4

19%

The firm was formed in 2013 and is owned by Wake Forest University.

Jim Dunn is CEO.

22. DHG WEALTH ADVISORS

$2.1

12%

$0.2

Former UNC investment chief Mark Yusko’s firm specializes in alternative investment products. It has 39 employees.

$0.5

Cary

$2

11%

$0.2

James Sotell founded the firm that advises pension and profit-sharing plans. It has five employees.

25. CAROLINAS WEALTH CONSULTING Charlotte

$1.64

9%

$0.14

President George Edmiston Jr. opened the firm in 2001. It has 20 employees and about 525 clients.

26. ETON ADVISORS GROUP Chapel Hill

$1.8

26%

$0.3

The 12-employee firm is led by Robert Mallernee, a former executive at UBS and U.S. Trust.

27. CORRUM CAPITAL MANAGEMENT Charlotte

$1.4

7%

$0.1

The hedge fund has 12 employees. Jason Cipriani is co-managing partner and a former head of strategic investments at Bank of America.

28. NOVARE CAPITAL MANAGEMENT Charlotte

$1.4

17%

0.2

The business started by Bill Baynard and Don Olmstead in 1999 has 20 employees and more than 600 clients.

Asheville

$1.9

55%

0.7

Owner Ralph Bradshaw is president of the publicly traded Cornerstone Strategic Value Fund.

30. CAPITAL INVESTMENT ADVISORY SERVICES RALEIGH

$1.8 - NA NA The company is part of the Capital Investment group founded by Richard Bryant and Bobby Edgerton in 1984. It employs 115.

31. NEW REPUBLIC CAPITAL RALEIGH

$1.7 - NA NA It is affiliated with Charlotte-based New Republic Bank, which is led by Ralph Strayhorn and Tom Hoops. It is backed by the Belk and Close families.

Charlotte

$2.2

Chapel Hill

29. CORNERSTONE ADVISORS

Charlotte

$2.6

23. MORGAN CREEK CAPITAL MANAGEMENT

24. COMPERIO RETIREMENT CONSULTING

Fort Mill, S.C. March 31

$3.8

CHANGE FROM 2020

29%

Affiliate of the Charlotte-based CPA firm has 38 employees and more than 2,200 clients.

32. LINDEN THOMAS ADVISORY SERVICES Charlotte

$1.3

NA

NA

Owner Stephen Thomas formed his nine-employee company in 2005. He has more than 700 individual investor clients.

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No longer under the radar, leaders of North Carolina’s logistics industry discuss their work amid unprecedented challenges.

By Alyssa Pressler

ome students who walked across the stage in May to receive degrees at N.C. Central University in Durham and Fayetteville State University wound up borrowing caps and gowns from alumni. The supplier, Indianapolis-based Herff Jones, struggled to fill orders filed more than a month earlier because of material and labor shortages.

That is among a million examples of problems with the supply chain, a facet of the business world historically taken for granted. Now, shortages and delays related to goods and services affect and frustrate virtually every business and consumer.

North Carolina has a big role in the global logistics industry because of its central location between the Northeast and Florida; ports in Wilmington and Morehead City; major regional airports in Charlotte, Raleigh and Greensboro; significant rail infrastructure; and a history of entrepreneurial trucking and other transportation companies.

This story spotlights eight N.C. logistics industry leaders, representing global and local companies and institutions. Many of their businesses have benefited in recent years as digital commerce takes market share from traditional retailing and a robust economy has sparked strong demand. More consumers receive products at their front door rather than heading to a store, creating big opportunities for those involved in warehousing, brokering and delivering goods.

One beneficiary is GXO, a Connecticut-based logistics company that was spun off from XPO Logistics last year. Its North American operations center is in High Point, where Louis DeJoy operated New Breed Logistics before its 2014 sale to XPO. GXO now employs more than 800 people at the Guilford County site, and revenue gained 28% to $7.9 billion last year.

It isn’t just the big cities benefiting from logistics, either. Railroad company CSX opened its Carolina Connector intermodal terminal in Rocky Mount last year. Mocksville gained about $100 million in corporate investment and added about 550 logistics-related jobs over the past year because of its location on Interstate 40 near Winston-Salem, according to Davie County economic development leaders.

Solving supply chain problems is a global challenge. According to several executives interviewed, the challenges won’t go away anytime soon.

Responses are edited for brevity and clarity.

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Kevin Baker

Roy Cox

executive director Piedmont Triad Airport Authority Greensboro

B

aker joined the authority in 2008 after working for the Michael Baker International consulting provider, where his clients included the Greensboro airport. More than 9,000 employees work for various enterprises in the airport complex, including Honda Aircraft and Haeco. PTI made international headlines in January when Denver-based Boom Supersonic said it will build a $500 million assembly plant there.

The Pittsburgh native is a civil-engineering graduate of Lehigh University. The authority is a seven-member board with representatives from Greensboro, High Point, WinstonSalem, and Guilford and Forsyth counties. ► What is your most important duty?

Job creation. ► Most fun part of the job?

Job creation! ► Key mentor?

My brother. He passed away in December following complications from a surgical procedure. He was a great human being.

He was 21 years older than me and flew F-4s in Vietnam when I was a toddler.

He received the Distinguished Flying Cross and went on to become a full-bird colonel, then served as a United Way executive in Hawaii. ► Most important business decision in the past 5 years?

Spending huge amounts of money to get sites prepared speculatively for users. ► Will supply chain issues persist beyond 2022?

I have to think that it’s going to take longer than the remainder of this year to sort this mess out.

president Best Logistics Group Kernersville

T

he UNC Chapel Hill graduate became CEO in 2016 and oversees 400 trucks, 1,500 trailers and more than 500 employees.

He has worked at Best for more than 25 years.

Originally from Sanford, Cox started as a dispatcher for Best Logistics Group in 1994 and worked his way up to president in 2016.

He’s a former N.C. Trucking Association board chair. ► What do you consider your most important duty?

Hiring the right people for the right roles is my most important duty. ► Most fun part of the job?

Seeing the success of our people through creating new customer opportunities. ► Key mentor?

My mentors include Best Logistics Chair David Reich Jr., who is our former CEO, and Mike Herman, who was president from 2009 to 2016. ► Most important business decision in the past 5 years?

Removing businesses that weren’t in line with our overall business strategy and setting up Drive for $200 million in 2018.

It was a company-wide plan that set a goal for $200 million in revenue by the end of 2021. We met that goal, so the new challenge is Drive for 300 by 2025, or $300 million by 2025. ► Will supply chain issues persist beyond 2022?

Supply chain issues will continue to be a major issue and persist well into 2023.

Brian Clark

executive director North Carolina State Ports Authority Wilmington

C

lark is a New Jersey native and U.S. Merchant Marine Academy graduate who joined the state system in 2017 as chief operating officer.

He succeeded Paul Cozza in January 2021. He previously was a senior manager at ports in Port Elizabeth, New Jersey, and Mobile, Alabama, and worked for APM Terminals and Sea Land Services.

About 220 employees work for the coastal ports in Wilmington and Morehead City and the Inland Port of Charlotte. More than 1,000 ships call on the ports annually. The authority is affiliated with the state government, though it doesn’t receive direct taxpayer subsidies. ► What do you consider your most important duty?

Supporting the N.C. Ports team so that we can deliver on our mission to enhance the economy of North Carolina. ► Most fun part of the job?

Working with the team to determine and accomplish capital investment needs, as well as identify unique solutions for our customers. ► Key mentor?

Anthony Scioscia, one of the most wellknown and respected leaders in the shipping industry. ► Most important business decision in the past 5 years?

The completion of the State Ports Authority’s 2021 Five-Year Strategic Plan. The development of this plan sets the path for our future.

In particular, we saw the growth of cargo volumes and expansion of global coverage of vessel services. We also engaged and supported statewide economic development projects. ► Will supply chain issues persist beyond 2022?

Recent closures of major ports in China as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, continued high consumer demand and a lack of available capacity throughout the global supply chain will continue to have an impact for the foreseeable future.

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Bill Fraine

Ryan Legg

chief commercial officer GXO High Point

CEO MegaCorp Logistics Wilmington

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raine is a well-known logistics industry executive, having spent 20 years at FedEx during the Memphis, Tennessee-based company’s rapid growth in the 1980s and ‘90s.

After holding other industry posts, he moved to North Carolina from Massachusetts in 2011 to join High Point-based New Breed Logistics as senior vice president of marketing and business development.

After Greenwich, Connecticut-based XPO Logistics bought New Breed for $615 million in 2014, Fraine became division president and head of supply chain in America and Asia Pacific.

He was named to his current post as part of XPO’s August 2021 spinoff of GXO, which has about 890 locations in 27 countries. GXO has tripled its workforce to 3,900 over the past two years, Fraine told The Wall Street Journal in December.

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egg and his wife, Denise, founded the freight brokerage business in 2009. Denise Legg was initially CEO but took a step back to raise the couple’s two boys, at which point Legg gained the title. The West Virginia University graduate had previously worked for Cincinnati-based Total Quality Logistics. MegaCorp, which assigns truckload deliveries for clients, reported $700 million in revenue last year. It has more than 570 employees with plans to add another 300 over the next few years, aided by incentives from Wilmington and New Hanover County. ► What do you consider your most important duty?

To make sure all employees are secure and able to support their families and to steer this company for future growth so we will be around for a long time. ► Most fun part of the job?

Seeing employees succeed, buying new homes, cars, etc. Also seeing them start a family and raise their children. ► Key mentor?

My father. ► Most important business decision in the past 5 years?

Writing our own operating software.

Greg Gantt

► What do you consider your most important duty?

My principal duty is ensuring GXO’s customers succeed, especially at such a pivotal point in supply chain development.

CEO Old Dominion Freight Line Thomasville

► What’s the most fun part of the job?

Traveling around the globe, meeting with our industry-leading customers and visiting distribution centers, where dedicated GXO team members deliver game-changing solutions every day. ► Key mentor?

My dad. He taught me at an early age what it meant to be responsible, reliable, honest and kind to every person I encounter. ► Most important business decision in the past 5 years?

Joining GXO as the chief commercial officer, working alongside my executive teammates to build the world’s largest pure-play supply chain company and deliver industry-leading solutions to top global companies.

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he Appalachian State University graduate, who was a varsity collegiate wrestler, joined the company in 1994 and became the first non-Congdon family member to be CEO in 2018. He had been chief operating officer since 2011. The company had 2021 revenue of $5.26 billion, ranking second nationally to FedEx Freight among U.S. less-than-truckload carriers. Its 31% revenue growth last year was the largest among publicly traded truckers. Net income soared 54% to $1 billion. Gantt’s total compensation was $10.58 million last year, a 32% increase from 2020.

Gantt declined to comment.

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Tom Maxwell

Phil Peck

managing director, Mid-Atlantic hub FedEx Express Greensboro

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native of Indianapolis, Maxwell joined the Memphis, Tennessee-based logistics company as a senior engineer in 1995. He took his first position in the Carolinas as the senior manager of ramp operations in Raleigh in 2010.

About 1,100 employees report to the Greensboro hub location. FedEx processes about 28 flights daily at Piedmont Triad International Airport. ► What do you consider your most important duty?

Strategic planning for the FedEx Express Greensboro Hub Operation. I also consider the jobs that were and continue to be created in the community, the increase in flights at PTI due to the hub’s growth, and the expansion projects as important. FedEx Express has continued to hire personnel to support the increase in volume created by the pandemic’s impact on e-commerce.

► Most fun part of the job?

Watching the growth and development of the Greensboro hub location and its team members. This hub is the largest of the facilities in the Piedmont District, which includes 12 airport ramps in five states. They are all intertwined, and the success of the GSO Hub plays a huge part in the success of the district. ► Key mentor?

My father. He was a school teacher for 46 years, a veteran and the wisest man I have ever known. ► Most important business decision in the past 5 years?

I have promoted the growth at GSO, including the increase in the number of flights coming into PTI for FedEx. I also encourage our team members to strive to be their personal best.

president Epes Transport system Charlotte

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eck oversees more than 1,700 employees for the company, which he joined as a driver 27 years ago. He’s originally from northern Virginia and is a graduate of Virginia Tech University. He started working in the trucking industry at age 16 and, after college, moved to North Carolina to continue that career and be with his college sweetheart, whom he later married.

Epes, which was started more than 90 years ago, named Peck to his current post in 2021 after he had been vice president of operations since 1995.

Reading, Pennsylvania-based Penske Logistics bought Epes Transport in 2018 when the N.C. company had about 1,100 drivers and annual revenue of about $400 million. It now has more than 1,600 drivers.

► What do you consider your most important duty?

Helping people grow their careers and maximize their ability to achieve results at the highest level possible. ► Most fun part of the job?

No days, weeks or months are the same. It’s an ever-evolving business, with increased challenges that require companies to be flexible, to adapt and to pivot their strategies in order to succeed. ► Key mentor?

Britt Colley, our former president, had an untimely passing in 2017. He had the vision to hire me in 1995, the patience to help me learn from my mistakes and the willingness to give me enough rope that helped empower decisions. ► Most important business decision in the past 5 years?

Just about every decision that is included in the top five I have ever made has involved adding personnel and talent to the organization that drove greater results and pushed the rest of the team to improve performance. Talent is hard to find is an old adage, but the truth is more like “talent that changes your company results and/or furthers your company culture is the best investment for future success.” ► Will supply chain issues persist beyond 2022?

Although there are some signs of softening in the U.S. economy, I don’t anticipate it will be enough to overcome the greater issues affecting supply chain capacity such as driver shortages and driver pay, disruption and uncertainty in the flow of goods from China, among others. During the second half of 2022 and into 2023, we may see some exits from the industry in a reversal of new carrier entrants over the past two years.

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF VISITNC.COM, JOHNSTON COUNTY

olby Stevens, the 37-year-old site manager of the Bentonville Battlefield in eastern North Carolina, sits in his office on a hot May afternoon. A pair of Civil War rifles hangs on the wall, an 1858 Enfield, carried by the Confederates, and an 1861 Springfield, used by Union troops. A Confederate battle flag flies just outside the east end of the park. Its presence seems to annoy Stevens.

The site is seven years removed from the 150th anniversary of the battle, the last major action between North and South in the Civil War. Since 1990, Bentonville has marked the engagement with a quinquennial reenactment, the largest such event in the state and a significant source of tourism dollars for Johnston County. In 2015, it generated $4.7 million in visitor spending and a total economic impact of over $8 million, according to the Johnston County Visitors Bureau. There were 53,000 daily visitors, with about 14% of pre-ticket sales from out of state. Hotels up and down Interstate 95 were booked, representing 3,472 room nights across a four-county area.

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By all accounts it is highly entertaining — two days of living history, marching troops, cannon fire and campfire talks. But these reenactments are not what they used to be, and nearly everyone agrees that if they are to survive, they have to change.

The Old South symbolism fluttering in the breeze doesn’t help.

Perhaps the best-known recounting of the reenactment world is Tony Horwitz’s 1998 book Confederates in the Attic, which served more broadly as a meditation on race relations in America, past and present. Horwitz follows a hardcore reenactor to a series of battlefields in Virginia, eating hardtack, sleeping on the ground, and bearing witness to “bloating” (the grisly practice of pretending to be a battlefield corpse). This did not have the most salubrious effect on the reenactment industry. As Stevens puts it, people were “worried we’re going to give them dysentery or that they would have to be in first person all weekend.”

But, he hastens to add, that’s not the case. The Bentonville action is, as Stevens describes it, closely curated, an invitationonly event that involves “people we know and trust. Just because you have a cannon, you can’t just come down and shoot it,” he adds. The emphasis is on storytelling and, more and more, on including perspectives from all sides, both good and bad.

Patti Smith, president of Friends of the Bentonville Battlefield, charged with organizing the reenactments, puts it like this, “It’s important to hear the history. It’s not just playing army.”

A battlefield without a battle is just a field, but a good historian can make that ground come alive. Shelby Foote, a Mississippi native and UNC Chapel Hill graduate, was one of those. In his three-volume history of the Civil War, he said of Bentonville

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You can read all day about cannons being fired, but you can’t really experience it until you see it.

Reenactments done properly can be a powerful tool.

that “Seven Pines now had a rival for the distinction of the best-planned and worst-conducted battle of the war.”

In addition to poor execution, Seven Pines and Bentonville had at least one other thing in common: General Joseph Johnston (no relation to the county’s namesake) was in charge of the Confederate armies on both occasions. At Bentonville, Johnston’s 21,000 Confederates were opposed by about 60,000 federals under the command of William T. Sherman, who was making his way north from Atlanta to combine with Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia.

Uncharacteristically, Johnston took the offensive on the battle’s first day, attempting to isolate and ▲ Confederates in the Attic, destroy Sherman’s left a non-fiction work by journalist wing before it could be Tony Horwitz. reinforced. When that failed, Johnston was forced onto the defensive by Sherman’s superior force, a posture more in keeping with a record that had seen him backpedaling across a big swath of the South, from Tennessee and Mississippi to Georgia, before finally running out of ground in North Carolina. He withdrew from the field on March 21, having suffered about 2,600 casualties.

He would ultimately surrender to Sherman at Bennett Place, outside of Durham, on April 26, 1865, 17 days after Lee surrendered at Appomattox.

At 2,000 acres, the Bentonville Battlefield is among the state’s largest historic sites by land area; the facility itself has five full-time employees. The reenactment is staged by a nonprofit group called Friends of Bentonville Battlefield,

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which contributes the proceeds back to the park. The funds are used to acquire land and otherwise improve the property. About $250,000 was raised by the 2015 reenactment, underwriting the addition of four new tour stops.

But as an attraction, the Civil War has been in decline, and the number of people visiting major battlefields has been trending downward for decades. A May 2019 Wall Street Journal story reported that the five major Civil War battlefield parks operated by the National Park Service (Gettysburg, Antietam, Shiloh, Chickamauga/Chattanooga and Vicksburg) had seen attendance decline by 70% from 1970 to 2018, from a combined 10.2 million to just 3.1 million. Gettysburg, the war’s most iconic battlefield, saw 2.6 million visitors a year in the 1960s and ‘70s; today it averages around a million.

There is lots of speculation as to why this is so: an aging Baby Boomer population, greater interest in more recent wars, social media, politics. Likely for some of these same reasons, Civil War reenactment has also been in retreat.

For Bentonville, the 150-year anniversary of the battle stands as the most recent high water mark, drawing 4,500 “living historians,” as Stevens calls reenactors, including 2,000 from up north, a good turnout but well down from earlier years. In non-reenactment years, the park hosts about 50,000 visitors a year, mostly from in-state. Demographically, they are roughly 85% white and 15% black.

“The days of seeing 10,000 people in a field were over before [the pandemic],” Stevens says. “But the hobby is alive and well. You can read all day about cannons being fired but you can’t really experience it until you see it.

Reenactments done properly can be a powerful tool.”

While the number of reenactors may have declined, interest in historical places and events remains strong.

A survey by the National Trust for Historic Preservation found that 71% of Millennials “enjoy travel experiences that explore the history of an area,” with about a third of

PHOTO COURTESY OF COLBY STEVENS

– Colby Stevens, site manager

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PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHNSTON COUNTY

“That’s the challenge for the future.

We need to educate all children — black and white — that this was what war did. This is what war looks like.

You don’t want this to happen ever again. You don’t want to be that inhuman ever again.”

Regarding the reenactment itself, she says, “We’re economically challenged in Johnston County. The reenactment is an opportunity to teach history and build awareness while having a positive economic impact on the county and the region.”

“We’re all learning more,” she adds. ▲ Attendance at Civil War battlegrounds has declined sharply since 1970.

“To limit knowledge hurts everybody.”

Stevens believes the reenactment will go on, but it will those polled characterized as “true believers” in historic look different — smaller scale and more inclusive. At the preservation. Heritage tourism in North Carolina is a masame time, plans call for the park to add new events that jor industry: The growth in the number of visits to historic focus less exclusively on the battle and more on delivering sites outpaces museums and even craft breweries, accordan “old timey” experience to families and other visitors. ing to Visit NC, the state’s tourism promotion agency.

This would include an annual fall festival designed to Still, the world has changed a lot since the 2015 reengage a broader swath of the community as well as to enactment, and the rise of social justice movements like Black Lives Matter has compelled a further reconsideration provide a more consistent revenue stream. That’s set to happen this fall. Stevens says the land the site occupies is of these events. Monuments to the war are going down “more than a battlefield, it’s a greenspace,” noting that the across the South, including North Carolina. How the war state’s Mountains-to-Sea Trail passes through the park. is remembered is now undergoing a major reassessment More recently, the park hosted “Bentonville in Bloom,” throughout the region, and the narrative is opening up to a nature walk that attracted several hundred people, and include new voices and new points of view from those who “Heavy Thunder,” a demonstration of artillery fire that were once ignored or actively excluded. For Stevens, who drew more than 1,000 spectators. came to the site in March 2019, the need to change comes down to a heightened focus on “why are we doing this?”

The answer, as he sees it, is simple: preservation.

The 2020 event, ultimately cancelled due to COVID Bentonville was a battle that didn’t have to be fought concerns, was to feature Carolyn Cole, a descendant of in a war that had been long ago lost. As a bookend to Fort slaves who once lived on the property. She would have Sumter, it commands considerably less attention than been a planning partner and speaker, part of an ongoing Appomattox in Virginia, even though the army Lee sureffort to provide a broader historical context to the battle. rendered there was much smaller than the one overseen Cole traces her family history to the Cole Plantation,

by Johnston, which included soldiers still in the field in the which was part of the battlefield and, before that, to the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida. It was the largest surrender 1600s and Jamestown, Virginia. Cole’s ancestor, Levin of Southern troops of the war and perhaps Johnston’s finest Cole, is listed in The Early Architecture of Johnston Coun- moment, according to Stevens. “Johnston’s most lasting ty as the first former slave in Johnston County to have contribution was that he ended the war,” he says. owned a house. She’s also said to be related to the great For Johnston County and other reenactment sites, a lot jazz pianist, Thelonious Monk, who was born in Rocky is riding on the success of this reimagining — culturally Mount and, more distantly, she says, to Nat King Cole. and financially. At Bentonville, at least, the emphasis is In a March 2020 video interview, Cole discussed the firmly on preservation; there is no interest in courting conbattleground with the N.C. Department of Cultural and troversy. “If you want to talk about politics in 1865, have Natural Resources. “When I’m here, I connect to the pain, at it,” says Stevens about the reenactments. “But we’re not the suffering,” she said. “But I also connect to the fact that going to discuss presidential politics today.” ■ they were courageous and strong and survivors.”

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HEALTH CARE

WOMEN & CHILDREN

COMPLETE CARE

North Carolina health care providers are improving the lives of women and children by addressing ailments and issues that will affect them later.

Catawba Valley Medical Center in Hickory cares for patients from five surrounding counties. “As the region’s largest not-for-profit community hospital, our mission is to improve the overall health of our communities,” says Michelle Lusk, vice president and chief nursing officer. “We have built strong relationships with the people, businesses and communities in our region.”

Lusk says about 2,000 babies are born each year at CVMC, and it handles about 130 neonatal transports and 400 patients in its newborn intensive care unit. Their moms need care, too — before, during and after they give birth. “Rising rates of hypertension, hemorrhage and blood clots are the primary reasons mothers die during pregnancy, delivery or postpartum,” she says. “Other factors include the lack of education, money and resources to make healthy lifestyle decisions.” The National Center for Health Statistics reported North Carolina’s infant mortality rate was 6.8 per 1,000 live

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births in 2019, compared to 5.6 for the United States. In 2018, North Carolina’s maternal mortality rate was 10.9 per 100,000 live births, compared to 17.4 for the United States.

Health disparities and infant and maternal mortality issues are front and center in today’s health care landscape.

In response, health care systems are adding services for women and children, because when individuals thrive so do their communities. “We know healthy women are more likely to have healthy pregnancies, give birth to healthy babies and grow up to be part of healthier families and communities,” says Kelly Kimple, chief of the Women’s and Children’s Health Section at the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services. “Our work is to promote healthy and thriving children in stable, nurturing families, schools and communities, and to support the whole child and family health.”

The COVID-19 pandemic complicated all health initiatives. It caused serious illnesses, deaths and long-term effects.

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The simple fear of contracting the disease, for example, kept people from seeking care for illness not related to COVID, scheduling wellness exams and finding mental health support.

“During COVID, we saw a decrease in routine well-child check-ups and prenatal visits,” Kimple says. “The pandemic’s economic impact has negatively affected health, stress levels, mental illness and substance abuse disorders, and we’re seeing the rates of suicide increasing, particularly among our youth.”

Many of those issues are being addressed as the pandemic slows. At CarolinaEast Medical Center’s Women and Children’s Pavilion in New Bern, for example, lactation support services are returning to in-person after being sequestered in virtual sessions. The hallmark of the four-year-old Pavilion is its 16-bed mother-baby unit, which has five full labor-and-delivery rooms.

“Every improvement and change we have made has been patient focused,” says Shawn Klabo, CarolinaEast clinical SPONSORED SECTION

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nurse manager. “It’s all about keeping moms and babies together as much as possible, and all newborn care is done at the mothers’ bedside, where they can ask questions as nurses weigh their babies and administer tests.”

Klabo believes the sky’s the limit for future offerings at CarolinaEast Health System. “We are constantly evolving and improving care for moms and babies, and it’s a constant change,” she says. “We’re always learning and always growing, and we are just a part of different statewide initiatives to improve care and make North Carolina the best place to have a baby.”

CVMC is expanding its laborand-delivery team to include a doula program. A doula is a professional labor assistant who provides physical and emotional support to mothers and their partners during pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period.

“Doula programs have been shown to improve outcomes,” Lusk says. “We are also working with the state of North Carolina to align maternity patients to their best outcomes, whether their pregnancies are healthy, low risk or high risk.”

Health care professionals and administrators use a holistic approach at Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital in Greensboro. “Our women’s and children’s services extend beyond our beautiful building,” says Sue Pedaline, the hospital’s chief nursing officer and vice president of Cone Health’s Maternal-Child Service. “The Women’s and Children’s Center is a full-service women’s health facility, where we offer services across a woman’s entire lifespan.” About 6,000 babies are born each year at the Center, which offers obstetric services, gynecology, nutrition and mental health services, and postpartum support. It has a food pantry, too. “Food insecurity and lack of access to proper nutrition is one of the things we’ve identified as a barrier to health care,” she says.

Reversing unhealthy lifestyles’ impact on wellness is a focus at Iredell Health System in Statesville.

“Crucial issues impacting the health of pregnant women and their babies in our communities are obesity, diabetes, tobacco, alcohol and substance abuse,”

wrote The Birth Place Director Sharon Paul and 3 North Director Diane Hamby, leaders of IHS care for mothers and their babies, in an email. “Domestic violence and poverty also play roles in driving down good health, and social determinants impacting maternal health include … income and education levels, social support systems, physical environments and working conditions.”

IHS is responding to these concerns with myriad services, including outpatient laboratory and imaging. Iredell Women’s Health Center, for example, offers mammograms and bone density scans. And about 500 pregnant women as inpatients and hundreds more as outpatients use its personalized Pampered Pregnancy Program, which helps them prepare for childbirth and care for a newborn, each year.

FirstHealth of the Carolina’s Southern Pines Women’s Health Center recently experienced a baby boom.

“In 2021, we had 2,324 deliveries, our highest yet,” says Beth Tabor, FirstHealth’s administrative director of women and children services. “We average anywhere from 185 to 215 deliveries a month,” she says. “We aim to offer a place where women feel comfortable and where they can have the birth experience they want.”

A partnership between FirstHealth

and Pinehurst Surgical Clinic provides comprehensive care to women in Lee and surrounding counties. Services include prenatal care, annual gynecological services, surgical intervention, hormone treatment, treatment for infertility, mammography and continence treatment, says Lissette Machin, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Pinehurst Surgical Clinic. “Our partnership has made making referrals to other specialties seamless for patients.”

Many families turn to specialty providers such as Charlotte Eye, Ear, Nose & Throat Associates. It provides comprehensive pediatric and adult wellness services, along with treatments for various ailments and medical conditions, at 18 locations in the Charlotte region. “These are essential services for women,” says Lee Wiley, an ophthalmologist at CEENTA’s Pineville and Steele Creek offices.

“They have a longer life expect-ancy than men, so women are at a higher risk of age-related conditions such as macular degeneration, cataracts and glaucoma. Women also tend to have a higher risk of autoimmune disease, which can cause ocular inflammation and vision issues, too.”

CEENTA is welcoming back patients as the pandemic wanes. “COVID-19 resulted in delay of care for many

Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital is the largest medical center in Greensboro and the surrounding five counties.

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WOMEN & CHILDREN treatable conditions, which resulted in preventable vision problems,” Wiley says. “Luckily, hesitancy to see doctors is beginning to decline and patients are returning for routine care.”

Other providers are treating issues that are direct results of the pandemic.

IHS providers, for example, say mental health needs among youth in its communities are growing. “We need to have more discussions regarding the mental health of our pediatric population, including more counselors, facilities that treat pediatric mental health, and more education on mental health in general,” Paul and Hamby wrote. In addition to isolation during the pandemic, they cited drug abuse, family stressors, social media and constant peer pressure as causes.

Treating mental health issues often involves bringing help to the patients who need it. “During the pandemic, kids dealt with many stressors, and

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today we are working with school nurses, counselors and psychologists to continue helping meet their mental health needs,” says Kim Crickmore Osborne, vice president of James & Connie Maynard Children’s Hospital, women’s services, community health programs and nursing support at ECU Health. It’s the new banner for Vidant Health and East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine, which recently signed a joint operating agreement.

But even with those efforts, access remains a concern. ECU Health serves 29 counties in eastern North Carolina.

Most are rural and among the state’s most economically distressed, Crickmore Osborne says. “Some counties in our service area have only one health care provider, making it tough for those who need specialty services such as pediatrics and OB/GYN,” she says. “Access to health care is a big problem, and the majority

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of our women and children are Medicaid patients.”

Private OB/GYN doctors in the community help extend the health care system’s reach. “We work closely with our nursing school, and we have a nurse practitioner program, a physician’s assistant program, a rural health residency, and we have case managers and other health care professionals who engage with the community,” Crickmore Osborne says. ■

— Teri Saylor is a freelance writer from Raleigh.

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COMMUNITY CLOSE-UP

LEE COUNTY

Welcome, and thanks for your interest in Lee County!

The pace of change in our world has never been greater, but in Lee County, we’ve harnessed that dynamism to our advantage while maintaining the vitality of our rich agricultural heritage and preserving our outstanding quality of life. County and municipal leaders have collaborated on a shared vision for our future, and we have made significant investments in ourselves: A new terminal and hangars at the thriving Raleigh Executive Jetport, W.B. Wicker STEAM elementary school, Central Carolina Community College’s E. Eugene Moore Manufacturing and Biotech Solutions Center, the Buggy Building, a “one stop shop” for growth and development, Depot Park and the Historic Downtown streetscape, a multi-purpose sports complex, a new public library and more…

As a result of this visionary leadership and investment by the public sector, Lee County and its two municipalities, Sanford and Broadway, are currently at the epicenter of unprecedented business and residential investment by the private sector. Global industry leaders like Pfizer, Caterpillar and Coty have operated highly successful advanced manufacturing facilities in Lee County for decades and have recently invested in significant expansions.

Central Carolina Enterprise Park (CCEP), with its certified industrial sites, Class A shell building program, and strategic location just minutes from I-540 and the world-renowned Research Triangle, has prompted companies like Astellas Gene Therapies and Abzena to invest hundreds of millions to upfit the first two shell buildings in CCEP and create hundreds of well-paid new jobs in the life sciences sector.

Sanford’s strategic investments in water and sewer infrastructure have long sustained our local economy, and significant new investments have positioned Lee County to be a leader in the burgeoning EV industry supply chain. Bharat Forge Aluminum USA has already completed the first phase of its cutting-edge facility for the manufacture of lightweight aluminum parts, and Vietnamese EV manufacturer VinFast has announced a massive new investment and job creation in nearby Moncure, creating regional employment and supply chain opportunities and generating major ripple effects across Lee County’s entire economic ecosystem.

Private investors continue to capitalize on Lee County’s vision, with thousands of new residential units approved for construction, and more than a thousand acres of new industrial sites under development as well. On behalf of the Sanford Area Growth Alliance and all our public and private sector partners and investors, we’re excited to share our story with you in this special section. We invite you to connect with us directly to discover how you and your business can become a part of the next chapter of Lee County’s amazing success story.

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LOOKING INWARD, SEEING AHEAD Lee County is developing its offerings, making it attractive to new residents and businesses.

Draw a line on a map that encircles Raleigh, Greensboro and Fayetteville. Right in the center, you’ll find Lee County.

Its position is a result of simple geography. But it also reflects its importance to economic development efforts in the region, says Sanford Area Growth Alliance CEO Jimmy Randolph. “We have [Central Carolina Community College] that is a jewel in the crown of the state Community College System and serves three counties in Lee, Harnett and Chatham, and there are a great number of potential employees moving through that system,” he says. “And the U.S. 1 corridor from Raleigh to Southern Pines, we’re central to that route. [Lee County seat] Sanford is central to this dynamic region.”

Lee County and its communities offer new businesses and residents more than workforce training and a central location. Quality of life is being improved. Health care is expanding. And historical industries, such as agriculture, are being re-envisioned and revamped. Randolph says county leaders and residents are always looking to the future.

“Time and again, we have invested significant financial resources for infrastructure development, understanding that we were investing in a shared vision for the future,

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LEE COUNTY

not just reacting to the immediate needs of today,” he says. “Due to our strategic location in the center of North Carolina, our foresight and strategic investments consistently benefit folks far beyond the geographic borders of our relatively small county. We are a community of makers, a great place not only for large companies but for entrepreneurs. We’re a great place to bring your ideas.”

The efforts are attracting new businesses. Service Offsite Solutions, for example, announced in March that it’s building an $11.8 million factory in Sanford, where it will create 235 jobs and make modular floors, walls and roofs for buildings. North Carolina Railroad’s economic development initiative — NCRR Invests — will spend $300,000 to add a rail spur at the site. It will allow Atlantic and Western Railway to serve the new factory, moving about 150 more rail cars a year.

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agreement with Chatham County, is using a $50 million grant from Golden LEAF Foundation, which distributes the state’s portion of the national tobacco settlement for economic development projects, to provide water and sewer to 2,500-acre Triangle Innovation Point, the former Moncure Megasite.

Vietnamese automaker VinFast recently announced plans to build a $4 billion electric vehicle plant there, creating at least 7,500 jobs.

Production is expected to begin in mid-2024.

It was Lee County’s foresight — a decade ago — that led to the water deal. “The megasite property owner originally reached out to the city of Sanford to supply wastewater treatment,” says Vic Czar, Sanford’s public works director. “The city of Sanford then partnered with Lee County, Chatham County and Golden LEAF to extend sewer from the Big Buffalo Wastewater Treatment Facility to the megasite.”

Lee County and Sanford C A R O L I N A

IMPROVING QUALITY OF LIFE Lee County officials are making life better for current and future residents, many of whom will fill recently announced jobs.

“The communities of Sanford and Broadway have invested in themselves for the future, and

PHOTO CREDIT: PRATTWHINEY.COM

The Raleigh Executive Jetport in Sanford is used for corporate flights and recreational aviation.

collaborated to bring the line to the Raleigh Executive Jetport, then the county, with Golden LEAF’s support, extended it to Triangle Innovation Point. “This partnership made the megasite ready for industry,” Czar says. “When the site became a front-runner for VinFast, Chatham County needed a partner to meet the company’s expansive water demands. Partnering with Sanford was a natural fit, as Sanford is waterrich, and the two governments have such a great working relationship.”

Sanford will receive 20% of property taxes collected from companies connected to the system. “This arrangement benefits all involved,” Czar says. “Chatham County and Lee County residents will have access to high-paying, quality jobs. VinFast will have the infrastructure it needs to be competitive in the market. Sanford’s utility system will have the diversity of rate payers along with the additional revenue brought by the property tax.”

Czar expects Sanford’s foresight to continue attracting businesses.

“None of this would be possible without the infrastructure provided

by Sanford,” he says. “VinFast’s decision to locate at Triangle Innovation Point will have a significant impact on Chatham and Lee counties.”

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The Public Arts Initiative, which includes many murals, promotes Sanford’s roots and honors its hometown heroes.

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it’s led to opportunities,” says John Dean, SAGA’s economic development manager. “We see a new library coming online, new parks, new greenways, and we’re investing in ourselves and our infrastructure to create new job growth. And it’s important to Sanford and Lee County to not lose sight of that.”

SAGA’s Randolph agrees.

“We’re investing in ourselves as a community, and some of that — like the downtown streetscapes with the utilities underground and the historic theme of street lights — have made it a much more inviting place,” he says. “It’s been more than a $6 million investment, but it’s really paid off.”

A $25 million bond referendum for a multisports complex was approved by Lee County voters in 2020, two years after it was proposed. Plans, which were submitted in April, include fields for baseball, softball, football, lacrosse and soccer, along with playground equipment, 2 miles of walking trails and a splash pad. Once plans are approved, construction is expected to take 18 to 24 months. “It’s the idea of investing in ourselves and the quality of life for residents and visitors,” Randolph says. “So, we’ve also undertaken renovations at all our neighborhood parks.

Some places may not see the value in that, but we do. And we’re experiencing it.”

Lee County Manager John Crumpton says the multisports complex will offer year-round recreational opportunities. “As we move forward, the commissioners and key stakeholders will be discussing the naming of not

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only the park but also of major facilities within the complex,” he says. “Central Carolina Community College has expressed interest in starting men’s and women’s soccer programs using these fields. The county also has contracted with the Sanford Spinners [baseball team] of the Old North State Summer College League to play games at the county’s Tramway Park. The Spinners will move to the sports complex when it is finished. This facility will serve as a community and regional asset for years to come, hosting events that will contribute to area businesses, expand recreational opportunities and serve as a marketing tool for tourism and development.”

The multisports complex’s beginnings can be traced to 2013, when Sanford voters approved a $2 million parks-and-recreation bond to expand Kiwanis Family Park. A community survey, parks master plan and work with a consulting firm followed in 2015.

The master plan covers four more county parks, which have upgraded parking and new basketball and tennis courts and playgrounds.

“After the master plan was completed, the commissioners borrowed additional money when the W.B. Wicker School [was refurbished to become the county’s ninth elementary school] to address Phase One at these parks,” says county Park and Recreation Director Joseph Keel. “Phase One grew from $2 million to over $4 million of funding invested in park improvements.

The county also is in the process of upgrading the mountain bike trails at San-Lee Park. The county

PHOTO CREDIT: VISITSANFORDNC.COM

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is investing $200,000 into the redesign of the Gravity Park and single-track trails in the park and recently acquired an additional 16 acres of property to add parking and trails in the near future. The amount of use and attendance in our parks is remarkable following improvements. Parks truly bring the community together.”

From housing to retail to roads, improvements and developments are underway across the county and region, many under the direction of hometown Carolina Commercial Contractors and Sanford Contractors. They are improving quality of life, as are walkable downtowns. A bond referendum to fund upgrades to

downtown streetscapes in Sanford and Jonesboro has invited a wave of private-sector investment.

“There are new restaurants opening up,” Dean says. “You can walk on the greenways. We’re in an urban environment where you can walk everywhere. And it’s a place where no matter your age, no matter who you are, you can be a leader. You have opportunities here to make a difference. The trajectory is that there’s no turning back. The growth is coming, and I think it’s important that we embrace it.”

AUGMENTING AGRICULTURE Broadway, which covers just 1.3 square miles and counted

1,256 residents in 2019, according to N.C. Office of State Budget and Management, is a small town east of Sanford with deep agricultural roots. But its attraction is large for many people, especially those wanting to work in the nearby Triangle while owning land and enjoying a rural lifestyle. “Broadway has done a terrific job of leveraging its agricultural heritage,” Dean says. “Broadway has had a very strong history with brick-making then textiles and now advanced manufacturing, and we’re staying relevant with the manufacturing industry. The same can be said with agriculture. We have a diverse agriculture system with new technology, and Project Payton is

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LEE COUNTY an example of that.”

Project Payton, which was planted with research from N.C. State University and cultivated

by SAGA, is a research-anddevelopment farm set for 100 acres in Broadway and Apex in Wake County. Inside its 10,000- to 20,000-square-foot test lab and greenhouses, the focus will be stevia. A naturally sweet sugar substitute is derived from its leaves. Dean says Broadway has 45 acres currently under production.

Plant Pathways, a seed company that specializes in improving stevia varieties, will look at ways to grow more stevia and develop innovations from it. “The company wants to work with obesity and sustainable agriculture,” Dean says.

“It’s a direct correlation between N.C. State University and the new Plant Sciences Initiative. And we see Broadway and Lee County as a place for this new agriculture. With

the new Plant Sciences Initiative and Project Payton, it shows what’s possible in the future of agriculture in Lee County.”

N.C. State’s Plant Sciences Initiative aims to advance agriculture, developing approaches and products that feed more people on less land and under changing conditions. The university dedicated its $160 million Plant Sciences Building in April. It has 80,000 square feet of research labs and 16,000 square feet of greenhouses.

EXPANDING EDUCATION Investments in Lee County’s future happen every day at Central Carolina Community College. The biggest underway is the E. Eugene Moore Manufacturing and Biotech Solutions Center. It’s planned for the former site of Magneti Marelli, an Italian auto-parts manufacturer

Plans for the new multisports complex in Lee County include fields for baseball, softball, football, lacrosse and soccer, along with playground equipment, 2 miles of walking trails and a splash pad.

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that closed in 2021. Lee County spent $7.4 million to purchase the 22-acre property and its empty factory, which is adjacent to CCCC’s campus and turned it over for jobtraining purposes.

Funding will determine when the Solutions Center opens, says Margaret Roberton, CCCC’s vice president of workforce development. “Central Carolina Community College is committed to the success of the Moore Solutions Center and is dedicating college resources to its development. But that timeline will be significantly accelerated with additional support from our state and local partners.”

VinFast is interested in using the solutions center to train workers for its Chatham County plant. And CCCC is working with other regional businesses, including drugmaker Pfizer and manufacturers Bharat Forge, Boon Edam and A.D. TUBI, to develop custom training for their workers. “This includes awareness, recruitment and skills attainment for adult job seekers, CCCC students, high school students and incumbent workers,” she says. “The college is also working with local manufacturers within the Central Carolina Manufacturing Institute to identify recruitment and training needs for the many manufacturing occupations in the region.”

Robertson says workforce training will be phased in as the former factory is converted, with biotechnology, CDL and logistics, and custom space for VinFast training first on the list. “The facility will impact job creation both directly through CCCC faculty and staff needed to expand current programs and increase capacity to meet industry needs as well as indirectly

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by attracting regional training, supporting business growth and manufacturing business incubation,” she says.

Crystal Glenn has been named executive director of the Center, which will be the largest of its type in the state when complete.

Robertson says it will offer quick access to interstates and airports; state-of-the-art training equipment for biotechnology, computer integrated machining, industrial automation, robotics and 3D printing; space for entrepreneurs; a workforce recruiting center; and resources available through college partnerships with National Science Foundation, National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals, N.C. State University Manufacturing Extension Partnership, U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Department of Labor and N.C. Community College System. She says it will be a game-changer for workforce and economic recruitment in Lee County, the region and the state.

Workforce development

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begins in Lee County’s high schools. They offer a Career & College Promise program and career technical education clusters in agricultural and food, architecture, arts, communication, business, finance, health science, hospitality and tourism, human services, information technology, manufacturing, and marketing. Lifesciences programs will be added this fall. “We have these career academies, and we try to do as much as we can to tie them in with internships in the community and also give students the soft skills they need to be successful,” says Andy Bryan, Lee County Schools superintendent. “Our community is very united in working together to promote economic development for our citizens. There are a lot of good people working together.”

High school students in Career & College Promise earn college credits and certifications in their chosen career through CCCC. And after graduation, Lee County residents are guaranteed two years of free tuition at CCCC while pursuing

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work experience. Bryan says in the last six years, Lee County high school students completed about 16,000 college courses, and 276 students left high school with an associate degree during that time.

Some of them step into jobs at local companies, including Mertek Solutions in Sanford. It develops and builds automated machinery for manufacturers.

Local companies are behind these programs’ success. They include Caterpillar, which has manufactured building-construction equipment in Sanford for more than 20 years. “[It’s] an apprentice program in which students apply the second semester of their sophomore year [of high school] and take classes at CCCC to become certified in welding,” Bryan says.

“And that’s tied into an apprenticeship at Caterpillar. So, they’re leaving high school with a diploma and a welding certificate from the community college and real work experience that hopefully can lead to employment with that company.”

Lee Early College High School

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is offered on the CCCC campus.

It offers academically advanced students the coursework to graduate with a high school diploma and an associate degree. “Our school system takes an approach called ‘More than a Diploma,’ which means we encourage students to earn certifications, credentials and dual enrollment credits to add value to their diploma,” Bryan says.

“We have career coaches in our high schools. It’s tough sometimes for people to figure out what they want to do, and we try to provide opportunities and pathways for them to figure it out.”

ADDING HEALTH CARE Central Carolina Hospital in Sanford has more than 100

physicians practicing in a range of specialties, including cardiology, orthopedics, general surgery and pulmonary medicine. The Duke LifePoint hospital also has 137 beds, an ER, occupational therapy, rehab, and maternity and cardiac care.

Lee County residents also receive medical care through FirstHealth of the Carolinas, which opened its Lee County campus in 2018. CEO Mickey Foster grew up in the count. He says that gives him a personal interest in recent expansions. “For decades, residents of Lee County have trusted FirstHealth to provide quality health care,” he says. “With the region poised for dynamic growth in years to come, FirstHealth is expanding

its deep commitment to meet the needs of Lee County residents, the business community and the surrounding communities.”

FirstHealth has provided emergency medical services to Lee since last year and recently opened its third Convenient Care Clinic location in Sanford. Foster says it has plans to expand access to primary care providers in Lee County. It also has partnered with nearby Pinehurst Surgical Clinic and Pinehurst Medical Clinic. “Families in Lee County and beyond now have greater access to specialty medical services including gynecologic oncology, OB/GYN, orthopedics, urology, vascular and vein, and more,” he says. “Convenient Care Clinics offer non-emergency care

CREATING SOLUTIONS THROUGH PARTNERSHIPS SINCE 1990

PRODUCTS

Automated assembly and test equipment.

Robotic and packaging systems.

SUPPLIERS

International manufacturing equipment and service providers.

3913 Hawkins Avenue, Sanford, NC 27330 | 919-774-7827 | merteknc.com J U N E

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for a full range of needs, including acute illness and ailments such as broken bones, lacerations and more.

FirstHealth also recently partnered with Sandhills Neurologists to expand neuroscience services in Lee and the surrounding counties.”

FirstHealth is offering occupational health and wellness services to the Lee County business community. “Occupational health services are offered through on-site clinics, mobile clinics or at any of the Convenient Care locations,” Foster says. “From biometric screenings and DOT physicals to general acute care, the service provides the business community with a local and convenient option for employees.”

The Pinehurst-based health system also has a wellness program for executives. Customizable and comprehensive, it’s offered through concierge medicine physicians. “[It’s for] busy executives whose health is

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sometimes neglected in a high-paced work environment,” Foster says.

READYING FOR THE FUTURE Central Carolina Enterprise Park in Sanford attracts business deals to Lee County. San Diego-based life-sciences company Abzena announced its $213 million plan to locate in a 117,000-square-foot building at the park in April 2021.

It’s expected to create 325 jobs.

Randolph says N.C. Department of Commerce, CCCC, Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina and others collaborated on the deal.

A year earlier, San Franciscobased Audentes Therapeutics chose CCEP for its 135,000-squarefoot factory, passing over sites in California, Massachusetts and Colorado. The average annual wage at the factory is expected to be about $83,900, more than Lee

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County’s $45,743, according to N.C. Department of Commerce. And in January, Liberty Tire Recycling said it will open a factory, which will create about 30 jobs, at the same park. It will make rubberized mulch from scrap tires. “We are still showing lots at CCEP to perspective companies, including life-science manufacturers, food processors and distributors, and other advanced manufacturers,” Dean says. “Interest remains high.”

Randolph says CCEP is the product of a collaboration that includes SAGA, Lee County, Sanford and local private investors. He says the certified industrial park offers ready sites and an aggressive shell-building program facilitated by investors and [construction company] Samet Corp. That increases speed to market, he says.

“Lee County’s forward-thinking leadership and entrepreneurial approach to economic development

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is a virtuous circle of collaboration, innovation and strategic investment, valuing our past, but embracing the future, ever vigilant and attuned to the next opportunity for investment,” he says.

Dean says preparing for future success is a full-time effort in this corner of North Carolina.

“We’re investing in infrastructure and creating job growth, and it’s important for Sanford and Lee County not to lose sight of that,” he says. “I think for a long time Lee County has been an example of progress, and we’re continuing to do that and to see into the future.”■ — Kathy Blake is a writer from eastern North Carolina.

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GREENSHOOTS — Revitalizing rural N.C.

FRESH START A vacant mill is revitalized as a center for promoting technology in a rural setting.

BY DAN BARKIN

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sign a lease-purchase deal.

“In the special operations commands, [Freeman’s] been able to build trust,” says Kathie Sidner, the UNC System’s director of defense and military partnerships. “That’s the one and only currency.”

▲ James Freeman

ETI has been selected to work with N.C. State University’s Industry Expansion Solutions office as a partner on a new federal grant aimed at boosting national security-related innovation in the state. One big focus is advanced textile manufacturing for military applications. If they’re going to do something with textiles down in Red Springs, it’ll be with high-tech, sensor-embedded wearables for warfighters.

Freeman has built strong relationships with K-12 schools and with UNC Pembroke, Fayetteville State University and Robeson Community College. These connections help technology companies develop a workforce and shows students good job possibilities.

During a visit to ETI, a drone company called Near Earth Autonomy was running an autonomous drone through its paces, taking off and landing by itself, looking down with sensors at artificial boulders simulating difficult terrain. Near Earth’s work is based on research at Pittsburgh-based Carnegie-Mellon University.

The question I had come to Red Springs to answer was: What were robotics engineers from Pittsburgh doing here, 500 miles from home? One answer came from Spencer Spiker, the company’s chief test pilot: “It’s hard to find places to fly things like this.”

The better answer is: Because James Freeman made ETI happen, with help. Which is how it is supposed to work in our state’s defense innovation ecosystem. ■

PHOTO BY DAN BARKIN

L

ike a lot of small rural towns, Red Springs in Robeson County struggled to reactivate an abandoned textile plant that once employed 400 people in the community of about 3,100 residents.

As the U.S. industry struggled against foreign competition, the factory went through multiple owners. The last textile company left in 1995, donating the site to the town. Another company arrived in 2010 with a distribution operation but left in 2015.

The plant has some advantages that have helped transform it into a military and tech innovation company called the Emerging Technology Institute. It’s 28 miles from Fort Bragg and has 55 acres of empty, adjacent land.

Institute founder James Freeman concluded that he could offer flexibility that Fort Bragg lacks because of the base’s tight restrictions on ranges, airspace and spectrum.

Freeman’s company now employs 11 and has an impressive list of customers and partners, including high-tech contractors, elite military commands and university researchers. Recently, there was a demonstration of drones that can fly and land in rugged terrain and carry blood to the battlefield, for example.

At an upcoming event led by the Army’s U.S. Special Operations Command, vendors will demonstrate technology to help soldiers see the enemy, particularly in buildings, and how to communicate without being detected. Demonstrating this technology requires movement of all-terrain vehicles, the use of radio spectrum and airspace and an indoor range simulating a building with walls.

Freeman came up with the idea for the institute while working at UNC Pembroke, helping small business startups navigate Fort Bragg. One day, a Special Ops contact asked Freeman to meet with a soldier. It was a fateful meeting.

“He took me to a hangar space where I’d never been before,” recalls Freeman. “We went to another room where soldiers were learning to work with the flight controls of the drones, showing me how they see and stuff. And all of a sudden there were more soldiers populating this room. They were looking for airspace.”

Around the same time, Freeman’s brother-in-law took him to Red Springs to look at the empty factory, which the brother-in-law thought might make a good haunted house for Halloween.

Freeman saw it as just the kind of place the Special Operations needed. So he gave notice at UNC-Pembroke, put together a business plan, found investors and persuaded town commissioners to C A R O L I N A

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