Anson Economic Development Corporation

Thread Capital, a nonprofit subsidiary of the NC Rural Center, announced today the launch of its second disaster recovery loan program for North Carolina small businesses affected by Hurricane Florence.   Resilient Recovery Loans   are Thread Capital's new long-term loans designed to meet the extended challenges faced during a business's recovery from a natural disaster, including mitigating for future disasters, repairing physical damage, and recouping significant economic losses. Resilient Recovery loans are designed to ensure the business is fully stabilized and is able to handle future economic shocks.   Owners of small businesses with at least one employee (including the owner) that have been impacted by Hurricane Florence can apply for Resilient Recovery Loans of up to $250,000. Loans can be made for a period of up to ten years. To be eligible, a business must demonstrate economic or physical damage as a result of Florence. In the aftermath of a natural disast

Today was Megan Sellers last day with AnsonEDP. She is leaving to become the Marketing Project Manager with North Carolina's Southeast, an economic development agency which provides support services for an 18-county region, including Anson. Megan joined AnsonEDP in December of 2016 as Existing Industry Coordinator. She has been a tremendous asset to the organization and her presence will be missed around the office and across the community. To thank Megan for her service and to wish her well in her future endeavors, we held a drop-in party for her today at the Chamber. Dozens of board members, elected officials, community leaders and other people she had touched during her relatively short time with us stopped by to say farewell. It was a proper send-off... because that's the way civilized people are supposed to treat each other. By way of contrast, on my last day at Statesville Regional Development there was no party, no cake, no parting gifts, no well-wishers dropping

At the start of every calendar year, the State of North Carolina issues a listing of wage standards for each county. While these standards are derived through a complex formula that takes a number of factors into consideration, they can be thought of as the "average" hourly wage a private-sector worker in the county can be expected to earn. These wage standards, in addition to providing a rough gage of the economic vitality of the community, are used by the Department of Commerce to determine eligibility for a variety of different economic development programs. As a general rule, to qualify for state-level incentive programs, the new jobs created by a project must meet the wage standard for the county in which the company plans to locate. This makes the wage standards something of a double-edged sword; a lower wage indicates a less prosperous community, but could also give that community a recruiting advantage compared to neighboring counties with higher wage standards. T

As a rule, when all is said and done about workforce development, more is generally said than done. Communities understand that the key to future growth and prosperity is having a skilled and ready workforce, but the path to acheiving that goal can be elusive. Too often, we hear that training programs are inconvenient and expensive or that nobody knows about them. Well, those excuses went out the window this week as South Piedmont Community College announced a workforce development program for the new year with a postcard mailed to EVERY residence in the county. Called the Career in a Year Anson Advantage, this new initiative offers FREE tuition and fees for Anson County residents in more than a dozen in-demand career training classes ranging in length from just four weeks to ten months. And most of the classses will be offered during convenient evening hours at the L.L. Polk Campus in Polkton, less than a 30 minute drive from virtually every corner of the county. Career options