Anson Economic Development Corporation

I just returned from Wallace, North Carolina, where I attended a two-day joint NCSE/EDPNC meeting. NCSE and EDPNC are the regional and statewide organizations, respectively, that AnsonEDP works with to try to bring jobs and investment to the county. As examples, the Columbus McKinnon expansion we announced last week was in cooperation with the EDPNC, while the King Charles Industries announcement last year was a project we worked on with NCSE. This was the second of these joint meetings I have attended. The first, about this same time last year, came after I had been on the ground here for just a few months, and the conversations I had with the regional and state economic development leaders back then were very different than the ones I had the past two days. A year ago, there was a general lack of familiarity with Anson County; our available sites and buildings, our workforce or our key selling points. And in some cases, what they did know -- or thought they knew -- tended toward ...

Anson Economic Development Partnership is pleased to announce that Columbus McKinnon Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCO), a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of material handling products, technologies and services, will expand operations in Wadesboro, creating 19 jobs. The company plans to invest $5.4 million in its Anson County facilities, enabling the introduction of its STAHL line of crane products into the North American market. The average wage of the new positions will be $49,897, which is above the Anson County average wage of $32,584. Columbus McKinnon, with headquarters in Getzville, New York, enjoys a rich 140-year tradition of excellence providing products and services such as hoists, actuators, cranes, and lifting and rigging tools. Last year, the company completed its acquisition of STAHL CraneSystems, a well-known brand of hoists and crane components based in Germany. The Anson County expansion will position the company to manufacturer STAHL products in North Carolin...

This May, Anson County Airport will mark 77 years in operation, making it one of the best-established aviation facilities in the state. Still, it’s a safe bet that the majority of county residents have never taken a flight from there, and many have never even visited the facility. Anson County Airport, or AFP as it is called by the Federal Aviation Administration, does not offer scheduled service from commercial carriers like Delta or American, so the traveling public tends to know more about Piedmont Triad or Charlotte Douglas than they do the airport in their own back yard. This lack of understanding about what Anson County Airport is and how it contributes to the local economy sometimes leads observers to question the investments the county makes in maintaining and upgrading the facility, such as the runway light replacement project last year or the runway expansion and terminal upgrade in 2006. Air traffic is growing in large metropolitan areas and spilling over into the top-ti...

In October of 2016, John Marek took the reins of the newly formed Anson Economic Development Partnership (AnsonEDP). We checked back in with him to see how things were going after his first full calendar year on the job. So, we're in the final days of 2017 and you've been on the job for 15 months; what are your general impressions of Anson County? I came into the job with few preconceived notions. Although I'd driven through here a few times on my way to the coast and actually had some business with the then Coffing Hoist back in the late 90's, it was pretty much a blank slate. The thing that stood out to me and still does is how welcoming the people here have been. Everyone's just been fantastic to work with. From an economic development standpoint, I have been pleasantly surprised by how much structure was in place. I was tasked with building AnsonEDP from the ground up and was prepared to start from nothing, but found that some key pieces were already in ...

Starting around the first of the year, I began to notice a trend; there were for more "sold" and "sale pending" signs on homes around Wadesboro than there were six months earlier. Initially, I thought it might be a case of randomness or sample size, but conversations with two of our local real estate agents confirmed that, indeed, home sales in Anson County have accelerated significantly in 2017. The agents offered a couple of possible explanations, including a relative shortage of available properties in neighboring counties and the fact that real estate prices in Anson County offer prospective buyers more bang for their buck. While I think those are both factors, I think there are several other reasons why home sales in Wadesboro are surging: A lot of the county's housing stock, especially around Uptown Wadesboro, was built pre-1960. The proliferation of home "fixer-upper" shows have made buying an older home with a lot of character and restoring...

North Carolinians sometimes take the quality of our community college system for granted, but as an Ohio native who has worked with companies from all over the U.S. and the world, I can attest that what we do here in terms of technical training and education is the envy of nearly every other state, and the handful of states who are on a par with us are in that position largely because they have copied our model. Community colleges were the engine that propelled a mostly agrarian North Carolina economy into the Industrial Age and created factory jobs for hundreds of thousands of workers during the post-war boom of the 1950's and 1960's. As the global economy changed in the 1980's and 1990's, our community college system kept pace, diversifying into technology, medical and advanced manufacturing training. There are currently 58 community colleges serving the 100 North Carolina counties. Virtually every person living in the state is within a 30 min...

As Americans, we tend to take the availability of safe, clean drinking water for granted, but water is an extremely important resource, not just for individuals and families, but for industry, as well. As recent drought conditions, both across the country and more locally, have demonstrated, water is literally the lifeblood of our economy. I was working in another community in 2007 when a summer long drought brought the heavily-stressed Catawba River, that community's primary source, to near-crisis level. A series of fall rainstorms alleviated the situation just days before mandatory conservation measures were scheduled to go into place, potentially impacting several industries. Although the planet is about 2/3 water by surface area, freshwater makes up only 3% of that total. Only 1% is stored as groundwater and surface sources, while an additional 2% is locked up in the polar ice caps. Around the world, more than 1.2 billion people struggle daily to find enough water to ...