Catching Up With AnsonEDP's John Marek

If you want to catch up with AnsonEDP executive director John Marek these days, you'd better be wearing running shoes, because the county's chief business recruiter and champion has been a blur of activity for the past couple of months. We finally managed to track him down at Allen's Restaurant in Peachland and joined him for a cup of coffee and a brief Q&A session.

There has been a flurry of activity from AnsonEDP over the past few weeks, five announcements in six weeks. What is the story behind that?

Ideally we would like to spread things out a little more, but they happen when they happen. We've been working on the winery project for two years, and yesterday's Loba-Wakol announcement for eight months, it's just a coincidence that everything came to a head around the same time.

So we shouldn't expect this pace to  continue throughout the rest of the year? 

As much as I would love to do 50 announcements this year (laughs), no, there's nothing in the pipeline that I expect to announce in the next 30-60 days, so the news wire will be settling down. Of course, you never know about these things and there are still plenty of promising projects on the board; any one of them could break loose at any time.

The Loba-Wakol announcement yesterday, that was a pretty big deal, wasn't it?

It was, for a lot of reasons. When JJ Haines announced they were relocating their distribution operation last year, there was some misinformation circulated about how that went down and significant concern about the loss of one of the county's larger employers and about having a big empty building right at the entrance to town. Putting a new tenant in that facility was a major point of emphasis for the county, the town and my organization. And we hoped to be able to do that without displacing the 40 remaining Haines employees, which, honestly, was a pretty tall order. We were very fortunate to find exactly the right partner to make it happen.

The county, the town and AnsonEDP are giving Loba-Wakol more than $250,000 in incentives to locate here. How do you respond to criticism that you "bought the business?"

Our incentive policies are completely consistent and transparent. They are posted on the AnsonEDP website. Loba-Wakol is getting exactly the industrial tax grants from the county and the town they qualify for based on their level of investment and job creation. Any company that meets those criteria would get exactly the same assistance. The $20,000 building upfit grant from AnsonEDP is tied specifically to the building, not the project, and anyone who purchased that building and opened a new business there would have received that same amount. Our incentive policies are designed to allow us to compete with surrounding counties. We don't buy business--we don't need to--but we certainly offer competitive programs to assist new and expanding industry.   

Because of everything that has happened since, it seems like a long time ago that you announced the REV Uptown project, but it's really only been a little over a month; how is that going?

It has been every bit as much of a challenge as we thought it would be. Anytime you refurbish a building that has been vacant for ten years you are going to run into some unexpected issues. Actually, you expect them, you just don't know what they are going to be. The building has a few "quirks," and one of the contractors who has been doing some work there at night claims maybe even a few ghosts. Ultimately, though, the incubator portion of the building was ready on May 1st, as promised, and the remainder of the space will be open by the end of the month. We have a seminar program scheduled for the Boardroom next Wednesday and we will be ready for that. Speckled Paw Coffee will probably be opening the week of the 20th. We are more or less on schedule.

You mentioned the incubator space. Tell us more about Borgstena, the company that is going to be locating there.

Borgstena happened very quickly. They contacted us around the first of the year looking for some temporary office space. We had several meetings with them and it became clear that they were a perfect candidate for the incubator space at our proposed REV Uptown project. Fortunately, we had already done some of the planning and legwork on that, and were in a position to be able to meet their very aggressive timetable. They are an automotive textiles company; specifically, this division makes headliners, the padded fabric on the interior roof of the car. They currently supply several assembly plants in the U.S. and Mexico. Their plan is to start off with a technical sales and service center here and eventually move toward manufacturing product. The timetable on that depends on several factors, but could be as soon as a year.

And they would locate that manufacturing plant here in Anson County?   

Well, we hope so. At the very least we hope to be on their short list of potential locations. Clearly, having their offices here is a plus. And they have looked at a couple of existing manufacturing buildings in the county which might fit their long-term needs.

The winery and the equestrian center; two sort of similar projects on opposite ends of the county.

Yes, again, it just worked out that way. Agri-tourism is a sector where Anson County is well positioned for growth. The Vineyard at The Old Place and Lake Tillery Equestrian Center have similar business models in that they plan to supplement a core business, winemaking and equestrian services respectively, with a tourism component, and that is great for Anson County.

Any big vacation plans for the summer?

I wouldn't say "big" plans, but once REV Uptown is up and running, my wife and I plan to take a week in the mountains; hiking, fishing, kayaking. There's a Taste of Scotland Festival in Franklin in mid-June, and we'll probably head to Murphy and stray over the Tennessee line for a day or two.