News

Job recruiters forecast need for industrial land

By Bill Moss, Published: June 16, 2015

The Henderson County Partnership for Economic Development can count a long list of successful courtships of industrial prospects: Sierra Nevada, Empire Distributors, Elkamet, Legacy Paddlesports, Raumedic and more.

The pursuit of job creators is getting tougher now that much of the “easy land” has been developed for new factories and warehouses.
“There is no single-tenant industrial building with over 12,000 square feet with full utilities available in our inventory,” said Andrew Tate, president of the Partnership. “And when you think about our average industrial target, they’re typically looking for 25 to 100,000 square feet. We’re in a difficult situation because more than half our inquiries are looking for an existing building. We have to say, ‘We don’t have that,’ or try to convince the client to consider new construction.”
That happened when the HCPED recruited Raumedic. Although the German maker of medical parts wanted an existing building, no suitable one was available. Instead, the HCPED persuaded the company to build new. Raumedic is investing $27 million in its plant in Mills River.
If a tire company needs rubber and a carmaker needs steel, Tate and the HCPED need raw land — what he and HCPED Chairman Dave Modaff call inventory. The inventory is shrinking. To meet the future needs of new factories, the organization wants to create a new nonprofit that can accept donations of cash and land, apply for grants that the Partnership is not eligible for and fund preliminary studies of land to cut development costs for promising prospects.
“You can absolutely wait until you reach a critical point where you have no inventory,” Tate said. “Our choice was as we approach this depleted inventory that we felt like it was prudent to be pro-active, because this is going to take a while to get up and running, to encourage partners to support it and to do the work.”
The new nonprofit, tentatively called the Economic Investment Fund of Henderson County, would incorporate as a 501(c)(3) under the U.S. tax code. Through the “Made in Henderson County” initiative the Partnership started to connect schools and industry, the new nonprofit could pursue grants available only to a 501(c)(3).
In the budget it adopted Monday night, the county Board of Commissioners appropriated $125,000 in seed money for the new fund.
“The consensus of the board is to use that money to leverage other money,” County Manager Steve Wyatt said. “There is definitely a need we believe, if we’re going to remain competitive — not just remain competitive but win — to ensure going forward that we have sites.” The commissioners intend the contribution to be “an incentive for the municipalities to match these funds and get a working budget of around $250,000.”
Hendersonville officials have expressed interest in helping.
“The city’s role could be infrastructure,” Tate said. “We don’t know. Our hope is to seed this effort. … We’ve been discussing the value of having everybody (from all the towns) in the room at one time.”
Besides receiving donations of money and land, the Investment Fund could also pay for environmental assessments, soil borings and other due diligence work “that would reduce risk for a prospective client and add value to (a site’s) marketability,” Tate said. “We don’t intend to be an entity that holds land. We don’t want to be in the real estate business. If this (c)(3) owns land or buildings, it’s not taxable, which fights the purpose” of the Partnership to create jobs and expand the county’s tax base.
Once it identifies property that would be suitable for industrial development, the new organization would reserve it for industrial prospects.
“There will be infrastructure extensions required, the zoning may not be exactly what it needs to be,” Tate said. “Our hope then would be to option those properties. It’s kind of a preservation mindset, knowing that you’ve got to preserve this property now so you have the capacity to grow your quality employment in the future.”
Modaff, president of Friday Staffing Services, said the need for land is clear.
“Every time we get a new project it just reemphasizes how urgent it is,” he said. “Like Gov. McCrory said, you can wait till there’s a crisis and everybody’s on your side but we can’t wait. We know. It’s going to happen (that land is snapped up). We have a product analysis of the whole county and we know the next ones are not going to be easy.”