8 minute read
COVER STORY: NEW DIRECTIONS
RECRUIT & RETAIN
NEW SPINS ON BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
BY NEIL COTIAUX PHOTOS BY MADELINE GRAY, MICHAEL CLINE SPENCER & TERAH WILSON
WHEN RIVERFRONT PARK HELD ITS GRAND OPENING ON JULY 4, THE CITY OF WILMINGTON MARKED ANOTHER MILESTONE IN ITS QUEST TO MAKE THE PORT CITY AN EVEN MORE ALLURING DESTINATION FOR VISITORS.
Six months later but with much less fanfare, civic leaders are celebrating the steady arrival of new businesses that are setting down roots as the pandemic wanes and business leaders select “Wilmington and Beaches” as their home.
The region’s increasing popularity with business can be credited to any number of attributes including a comfortable climate, strong work-life balance, the availability of a skilled and knowledgeable workforce in key industries – and, behind the scenes, the hustle of a growing number of economic development professionals.
For decades, Wilmington Downtown Inc., the organization that manages the city’s Municipal Services District, had an events-focused mission and produced 15 nights of concerts a year to attract more visitors. But with the Wilson Center’s emergence as a respected entertainment venue and the amphitheater opening this past July – not to mention live performances at downtown bars and restaurants – it didn’t make sense for WDI to continue focusing on concerts, said Holly Childs, who in January became the organization’s president and CEO.
“The board made it clear that they wanted to be more directly involved in downtown transformation,” she said. “We have made a thoughtful and intentional decision this year to get out of the concert-production business and start spending our time and energy on identifying transformative downtown projects to push forward for a better downtown.”
While the Port City’s Central Business District is generally defined as “bridge to bridge, river to Fourth,” Childs said, neighborhoods outside the CBD are included in DWI’s planning, and the organization’s leadership is now collaborating with other economic development players to recruit and retain businesses both inside and outside the district.
The CBD, which has the same footprint as the Municipal Services District, is currently home to 487 businesses. The occupancy rate for downtown retail stands at 98.1%; office space, 96.1%.
“These numbers make a further case for both new construction and adaptive reuse of space,” Childs said.
Genesis Block staff and participants
ACCELERATING INTEREST
Over the past half-year, different sets of community partners have closed deals with companies to set down roots in the Wilmington area.
“In just the past six months, more than 140 new jobs have been announced with the location of three new tech companies – Litify, Grover Gaming and Suzy – and the addition of 22,000 square feet of coworking space at Common Desk has brought dozens more new employees into our downtown market,” Childs said.
Suzy (market research), Litify (legaltech), Grover Gaming (programming) and Vantaca (HOA software) represent the latest additions to the region’s technology hub. In September, Vantaca, outside downtown on Wrightsville Avenue, announced the addition of 104 employees to its existing 100-person workforce over the next five years. Meantime, Suzy, Litify and Summit Logistics, a ground transportation firm, were recruited for space in the former Bank of America building at 319 N. Third St.
Several organizations were credited for landing New York-based Suzy: Wilmington Business Development (WBD), the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce, Network for Entrepreneurs in Wilmington (NEW), UNCW’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) and the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina.
“Laura BrogdonPrimavera (formerly at CIE), now with the chamber, and Jim Roberts, leader of Network for Entrepreneurs, had developed a relationship with Suzy chief technology officer William Mansfield that led to an introduction to the chamber,” chamber president and CEO Natalie English recounted. “WBD and WDI provided an assist as we provided Suzy with the information they sought to determine whether Wilmington would be the right site for their new tech hub.”
“The fact that we’ve got many worthwhile organizations working to advance our regional economy is evidence of Greater Wilmington’s potential,” said Scott Satterfield, CEO of Wilmington Business Development. “We don’t view it as an ‘us versus them’ equation. Today’s economy is complex and fast-changing. No one organization is capable of being all things to all businesses.”
The Wilmington chamber has a permanent ex-officio seat on Wilmington Business Development’s board and WBD has a seat on theirs, Satterfield noted, which helps both organizations engage in strategies when pursuing prospects large and small.
“Our strategy usually
puts us in front of larger, globally-minded companies because their arrival and expansion here brings new wealth from outside the region,” Satterfield said. “In turn, they feed a host of local suppliers and vendors, and their economic impact reaches well into our small-business community. The same logic works in reverse: Much of Greater Wilmington’s appeal to growth-minded corporations is that we have a vibrant small-business sector that’s capable of supplying high-quality products and services to them reliably and conveniently.”
AN EXPANDING DOWNTOWN
With strong occupancy rates in the CBD and an economy now healing from the pandemic, business recruiters are casting an eye on available sites in nearby neighborhoods.
The Soda Pop and Castle Street districts are two that could be on the cusp of sustainable commercial growth.
In October, Parastream Development unveiled plans to add manufacturing, retail and residential space in buildings located within 7.8 acres that it purchased along Princess Street.
The anchor building, the former Coca-Cola bottling facility at 921 Princess St., will be converted to urban flex space that offers tenants the ability to manufacture goods but also have office or showroom space.
Craftspace, a locally owned firm that repurposes shipping containers for commercial and residential use, has already morphed from 2,500 to 4,000 square feet at the site and plans on expanding to 14,000 square feet. The firm was WDI’s first recipient under a microloan program inaugurated in April.
Seven blocks away from Craftspace, another for-profit company hopes to spread its wings at 1110 Castle St., the former site of WAVE Transit.
Genesis Block, which opened its downtown headquarters at 20 Wrights Aly last year, views the 8,800-square-foot space in the historically underserved neighborhood as an initial steppingstone in a plan to create business incubators throughout Southeastern North Carolina.
Led by Girard and Tracey Newkirk, the firm offers services such as technical assistance, skills training, mentorship, networking and access to capital to young companies.
The Newkirks believe an innovation
Nick Boccabella, Coast Capital Partners (from left), and Andy Hewitt and Sandy Thorpe, Parastream Development, are shown inside the former Coca-Cola bottling plant on Princess Street that they bought as part of a 7-acre deal to revitalize the properties.
Craftspace cofounders Bryan Kristof and Gregg Howell
corridor on Castle Street will be “a hub for small businesses, innovation and entrepreneurship training in the center of Castle Street in an inclusive mixed-use development.”
Their goals for the proposed campus, dubbed Genesis Innovation Neighborhood at Castle, include servicing 75 companies a year, generating over 50 new jobs annually, generating $10 million in economic activity in the corridor and providing flexible housing, “which will make our residences inclusive and affordable,” Girard Newkirk said.
The Newkirks said an innovation corridor on Castle Street also will provide multiple food entrepreneurs with low-cost entry into the marketplace using a food hall, and without being burdened by the overhead of outfitting a kitchen.
“This model lowers the cost for food entrepreneurs to launch and grow their businesses,” Tracey Newkirk said, adding that 20% of Genesis Block’s clients are food companies and are already interested in the Castle Street concept.
Girard Newkirk said their strategy is building block by block.
“With that we want GB (Genesis Block) throughout the community,” he said. “We will maintain our downtown campus to serve the exploding downtown population. Ultimately, we build entrepreneur communities, and we provide coworking, entrepreneur training, technology solutions and now flexible housing to support this movement to build the entrepreneur class.”
GROWING SMALL BUSINESS
As the area’s economic development players continue to chase new business, Wilmington Downtown Incorporated and the Wilmington chamber have added staff members who will focus on retaining existing businesses.
The chamber has named Josh Hallingse as vice president of small business development and business retention. Hallingse, who previously was executive director of the Transylvania Economic Alliance in Brevard, started Nov. 1.
“Josh’s work will focus on retention and expansion of existing smaller businesses and assisting smaller business owners with locating here,” English said.
That position is new for the chamber and is supported in part by $181,000 in funding this year from New Hanover County’s economic development budget. It was the first of three years of funding the county set aside for the chamber’s new small business retention, expansion and recruitment initiative.
Christina Haley, who joined DWI in September as its business outreach representative, will visit business and property owners this winter to gather data on the health of the downtown economy. WDI has partnered with Peer, a local tech startup, on an app and software that will gather and track data as Haley meets with all 487 businesses in the services district. WDI plans to update the data annually.
“We need to be aware of what each other is doing and be knowledgeable about the assets and expertise we all bring to the table,” Satterfield said. “That begins with an acknowledgment that our regional economy isn’t a monolith. It’s a tapestry. And it ultimately requires leadership and expertise from a number of committed players working vigorously toward common goals.”
DETERMINING THE 100
The WilmingtonBiz 100 is an annual Greater Wilmington Business Journal initiative to recognize the top 100 Power Players, Influencers, Innovators, Connectors and Rising Stars impacting Southeastern North Carolina’s business landscape.
Those included in this year’s group were announced in October, but on the following pages you can read a little more about why they were picked.
Readers sent in names to consider during a nomination process, and the Business Journal’s editorial team selected the WilmingtonBiz 100. We’ll do nominations again next year for the annual issue.
To be considered, individuals had to either work or live in the region. Elected officials and individuals at the primary economic development agencies weren’t considered because of their clear influence on business in our region.
– Compiled by Jenny Callison, Johanna Cano, Vicky Janowski, Cece Nunn, Johanna F. Still
25 POWER PLAYERS 33 INFLUENCERS 49 INNOVATORS 59 CONNECTORS 67 RISING STARS
