Bethany Fuller | .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | April 28, 2008

The year was 1988.

Just off Interstate 77, Highway 150 was a two-lane road surrounded by farmland and a few service stations; Burlington Mills was still the largest employer in town; NASCAR driver Bill Elliot won the Winston Cup; and “Rain Man” won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

It was also Iredell County Manager Joel Mashburn’s first year on the job. One of his first tasks was to finish up a grant that funded extending water and sewer lines to Exit 36, which helped usher in the urban sprawl and retail centers the area is experiencing today.

Over the past 25 years, the county’s employment base — which once relied on textiles, furniture and agriculture — has become more diverse, welcoming the racing community, Lowe’s Companies Inc. and highly specialized and advanced manufacturing.

Langtree at the Lake developer and Iredell County commission hopeful Brad Howard said parts of Iredell County are emerging as an employment center and are no longer considered a potential suburb of Charlotte.

“We are not Mecklenburg County; we are not Cornelius or Huntersville,” he said.

Mashburn said the new businesses are helping to solidify the county’s future.

“A lot of our college graduates would not necessarily find the jobs here that they went to school for,” he said. “They would have to go to Charlotte or Winston-Salem to find a job. I think certainly a major drive for economic development is to make sure there are enough jobs here for our children.”

While congested retail corridors like River Highway and Turnersburg Highway are the most visible changes to Iredell’s business landscape, they represent just a fraction of the new manufacturing, service and professional jobs that have infiltrated the county.

Recruiting industry
Becoming an employment center was a three-step process for Iredell, starting with the almost county-wide evaluation of industrial recruitment in the 1980s.

The new jobs required new skill sets in the professional and blue-collar arena that some in the county didn’t quite have.

Mashburn said there are definitely more service jobs today than there used to be.

From 1990 to 2006, the number of people working in manufacturing dropped by 37 percent, according to the N.C. Department of Labor. At the same time, the number of people working in the service industry more than doubled, jumping from 22,297 in 1990 to 48,172 in 2006.

Mooresville Convention and Visitors Bureau chairman Ron Johnson said in the mid- to late-1980s, leaders in Mooresville started looking closely at economic development. It was evident the town was relying too much on the textile industry and needed to diversify.

Mooresville became more aggressive with economic development and built industrial business parks, suck as Lakewood Business Park, Mooresville Business Park and South Iredell Business Park.

This move opened the door for companies like Panasonic and Cardinal Glass, and nonwoven products started to make an appearance in South Iredell.

Statesville made a similar move by creating the Greater Statesville Development Corporation. Until then, former Greater Statesville Chamber of Commerce President Danny Hearn was charged with overseeing chamber activities and recruiting industry.

Statesville had been focusing on recruiting a more diversified industrial base for some time, Hearn said. Like Mooresville, Statesville decided to get more hands-on with their economic development and built an industrial park on U.S. Highway 70.

“There was a lot of textile; we progressed into automotive, automotive parts, metal-working industries,” Hearn said.

In the mid 1990s, the textile and furniture mills started to close, creating an opening for new employment. By that time, the racing industry had geared up in Mooresville, while Statesville continued to recruit other companies.

As the population grew and the median income increased, big-box retailers began entering the Mooresville market.

In the past couple of years, developers have taken the retail market to the next level by developing high-end retail centers like Morrison Plantation and Mooresville Town Square.

In 2003, Lowe’s finished the first phase of its corporate campus and brought in a new breed of professionals to the area. As a rule, Mashburn said, county commissioners usually don’t give retailers economic incentives for opening. However, the promised tax and employment base Lowe’s promised convinced the board to make an exception.

The future
County officials and business owners said there is a bright light to all the growth.

“We are very blessed with the diversity of our businesses,” said Mooresville-South Iredell Chamber of Commerce President Karen Shore. “Perhaps it was a bedroom community at one point. We are very focused on being an employment center.”

The county isn’t without options either, said GSDC director Michael Smith.

The manufacturing sector is still a vital part of Iredell County’s business environment, but aerospace and life science might direct its future.

Smith said Iredell County’s location near two international airports coupled with the major improvements at Statesville Regional Airport gives it a bit of an advantage for economic development.

He said GSDC is working with a prospective company that is looking at one of two 90-acre industrial sites next to the airport.

“It remains to be seen if this project is going to keep us under consideration,” Smith said. “I think that, all in all, we are very fortunate that things continue to go well here.”

Photo: Not that many years ago, The Trading Post was the center of commerce in the Brawley School Road area. The property is now “For Sale or Lease.” Bruce Matlock photo

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