News

In a 'big deal,' county, airport creating large industrial park

By Bill Moss, Published: June 26, 2022

Henderson County and the Greater Asheville Regional Airport Authority are joining up to create a 125-acre industrial site that they hope could attract a major manufacturer in the class of Pratt & Whitney, the jet-engine maker that’s investing $650 million in a 1-million-square-foot plant that will bring 800 high-paying jobs to the region by 2027.
“This is a big deal,” County Commission Chairman Bill Lapsley said last week when he disclosed details of the deal for the first time during the board’s regular meeting.
Commissioners voted to spend $4½ million to buy the remaining 35 acres owned by the developer of Ferncliff Industrial Park, Brite Stars Inc. and the Fitzpatrick family. Combining that acreage with 100 acres owned by the airport authority will create a large tract “that would be unique in the sense that it will be only the site of this size immediately adjacent to a major airport in the state of North Carolina available for a significant industrial development in our state and in our county,” Lapsley said. “This is consistent with what this board has done with industrial development in the past,” including its role to create the Garrison Industrial Park off Upward Road in partnership with the city of Hendersonville and the Partnership for Economic Development and its Economic Development Fund.
Commissioners and the county’s jobs-recruiting agency are hopeful that the large site in the industrial park that’s also home to the Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. and G.F. Linamar would be attractive to a Pratt & Whitney-magnitude manufacturer — “somebody of that size and caliber,” Lapsley said. “And we hope it’s somebody in the aeronautical industry.” Another sweetener to the sales pitch is the fact that the site will have access to the airport runway.
Brittany Brady, the executive director of the Partnership, has told commissioners numerous times that as the county loses more vacant land to residential development it risks missing out on the bigger quarry in economic development.
“She has told us that over the last year or so the state Commerce Department has notified economic development groups when they have a prospect that’s looking for 75 or 100 acres near an airport, and she’s told us there’s been two or three,” Lapsley said. “And we’ve had to say, ‘Sorry, we don’t have one.’ So we’re optimistic that once this gets all nailed down we can actively work with the state and market the property.”