Regionalism Spreads

One of the major trends that I’m seeing in my travels and tours is a trend toward more regionalism. Towns can no longer remain islands onto themselves, but must work together if they hope to achieve long term success.

An example of a burgeoning regional inititive is the Kerr-Tar Hub (www.kerrtarhub.org), a five county rural initiative, which Crystal Morphis explained at the IEDC Conference. “This area is north of the Research Triangle, but it is a very rural and poor area. The counties realized that they had to work together to be able to be a force for change.”

The five counties of Franklin, Granville, Person, Vance and Warren set up Kerr-Tar as a non-profit entity and decided to pool their resources to develop a high tech industrial park in the region. “Each county submitted a 500 acre site with the selection criteria established prior to doing the actual selection. We looked at over 3,000 acres and ended up selecting two adjacent sites that were submitted by different counties, rolling it into one park.”

The revenue from the tax base generated within the park will be split among the five counties based upon the percentage of the total dollars put in by each entity. They are rolling out a virtual spec building and making plans on how to develop.

Kerr-Tar got a $4 million grant from the state to option and develop the park and are getting ready to roll. I’ll be keeping an eye on this project and hope to have more to report in the future.