Community Collaboration Growing in Small Town North Carolina

The Richmond Fed’s recent Community Conversations visit to communities south and east of Raleigh, North Carolina, revealed the positive impacts of strategically growing a workforce, consistent collaboration and innovating for the future.

During a mid-May visit to Johnston County, North Carolina, and Wilson, North Carolina, Bank President Tom Barkin, Regional Executive Matthew Martin and Community Development Manager Erika Bell met with community, civic and business leaders who shared how each locality is adapting to evolving workforce and economic needs.

In Johnston County, the team held discussions with leaders of the housing, manufacturing and agriculture industries, as well as with civic leaders. While the county is still considered rural, an area called Clayton sits approximately 15 minutes south of Raleigh, making it an ideal sightline for industries seeking places to locate business operations, including pharmaceutical and manufacturing facilities.

As is typical, along with a growing workforce comes a need for housing, Martin noted, and the challenge has become finding enough available land on which to build homes that workers can afford. Surprisingly, developers have managed thus far to construct homes in the $300,00 range, which is unheard of in some areas of the Fifth District and nationwide, he said.

“The issue with the fast growth is the competition for land between the industries coming to the area and the developers seeking to providing housing, which may challenge the ability to keep housing affordable,” said Martin, whose work covers North Carolina and South Carolina.

Beyond Clayton, agriculture is an important focus, and the Community Conversations team talked with farmers about their unique economic insights during the visit.

Day Two of the visit to the region took the team to Wilson, North Carolina, which, with a population just shy of 50,000, has become a city to watch by national leaders who are interested in its regional transportation solutions and the fact that Wilson’s city government was a forerunner in providing citizens with easy access to broadband.

“A couple of decades ago they went ahead and put in their own broadband – called Greenlight – something no other cities were doing at that time, and in fact, something the state no longer allows localities to do,” Martin said.

Additionally, several years ago, city leaders conducted studies that led them to shut down Wilson’s fixed bus route system in favor of a ride share program, through which citizens needing transportation are paired with drivers, for a fee of just $2.50 per ride. The city’s review of the program shows that more than 50 percent of the requested rides are scheduled to transport customers to and from work.

“City Leaders acknowledge that it works for them and may not work as well elsewhere,” Martin said, yet leaders from similar-sized communities have come calling, seeking to explore the model.

In other ways, such as grappling with a shortage of workers for certain sectors of jobs, Wilson is like many other communities, including Johnston County. While the economy is doing well, financial distress for lower income households appears to be on the rise. “Some of this is bound to be a mismatch between available jobs and the skills of these who aren’t working,” Martin said.

To ensure that more of their citizens are employable, Wilson leaders are working with the K–12 education system to build a stronger workforce and have collaborated with Wilson Community College to establish the Wilson Academy of Technology, which serves as a pipeline for high school students interested in careers in the trades, said Bell, who visited with community college leaders while in the area.

Starting in ninth grade, students can apply to attend and graduate in one of several tracks that can help them secure trade-related certifications and jobs upon graduation.

“The community college also has several trade-related certification tracks, including an automotive track, and they are developing a facilities management track,” Bell said. “They are finding innovative and collaborative ways to feed the workforce.”

The Community Conversations team also convened a minority business owners roundtable during their visit to Wilson and quickly realized that the business owners’ decision to join forces across sectors has helped Wilson make moves that have caught the attention of other communities.

“They convene partners to make things happen,” Bell said.

One fun, and typically profitable, fact that rural residents of both Wilson and Johnston County proudly shared is that sweet potato (which the locals spell as one word, “sweetpotato”) is king.

“North Carolina produces three times as many sweet potatoes as the second producer in the nation, which is California,” Martin said. “We are the sweet potato capital of the world.”

The insightful findings the Community Conversations team garnered during the visit will be shared with other communities across the Fifth District where helpful, and will be a key reason to return to this area and track the continued successes and evolution, Martin and Bell said.