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With the number of solar farms popping up in the East, it seems that this may be the start of something good. Maybe a solar farm company could move their headquarters to Greenville and could have several farms located throughout the Eastern portion of the state. I'm guessing it would be considered a "high-tech" job, and I don't think we have had many of those types of jobs in this area.
Would you like to see solar farms popping up all over the place like they are shopping centers? Yes Pitt County has a lot of farmers but its a very different type of farming then solar. Build the solar farms somewhere else where there isn't a chance of doing any real farming. Sorry, i just hate solar farms. Not a bad thing if its only a few but I just would hate to see them pop up all over the place in every open field.
Some things we should do ourselves is all I'm saying. Paying outsiders a lot of money for a tag line is not only a waste of money, it's a waste of local talent.
Sometimes you need an outside opinion on things. Then you don't have any bias toward one industry or something that the city might think we should focus on when really its a waste of time and it would be better to focus on another new one. So this way we had a company come in, identify the strong parts of our city and identify things we need to focus on. Education and Healthcare are very strong in Greenville as we all know but now that we have focused on them for a while we need to start focusing on companies and bringing high tech jobs to the area. Although they would not have needed to get that company to come if they had just asked all of us on here.
I agree, but what industries is Greenville well positioned to attract? The health care industry ballooned in past years due to a high proportion of people on Medicaid and its designation as an underserved area.
The healthcare industry is booming in Greenville. Vidant or ECU are always building new buildings and upgrading their facilities but its time for us to focus on more diverse industries and not depend solely on education and healthcare. Those are typically industries that come because of large companies in the area(which in turn brings higher population) but its the other way around here in Greenville.
What I would like to see would be ECU offering more types of technology and engineering programs like NC State instead of focusing a lot of their programs on medical. Just saying but every new building you see ECU building is always a medical school but it would be nice to see them start to branch out more since they have built so much on their medical campus. That could provide a incredible opportunity for a research park like RTP since the only way RTP was started was with the universities' help.
Would you like to see solar farms popping up all over the place like they are shopping centers? Yes Pitt County has a lot of farmers but its a very different type of farming then solar. Build the solar farms somewhere else where there isn't a chance of doing any real farming. Sorry, i just hate solar farms. Not a bad thing if its only a few but I just would hate to see them pop up all over the place in every open field.
The question is how much are those farms worth with the current crops they are farming. There was significant talk about wind farms going into the Sounds, but of course the environmentalist, tourism and fishing don't like that idea. ENC has a good amount of sun and wind, in California they built their wind farms on the barren mountains.
I would like to see a Wind/Solar plan for ENC where enough power is generated to be self sufficient, i.e. you don't have to buy your power. IMO, that should be the goal so our energy costs stay level or go down. Then capacity can be increased as ENC develops. Consider all the electri-cities that run their own power...equip them with the ability to generate power via solar or wind.
That would mean taking some existing fields, especially those with good wind sources. One of the things ENC is blessed with is sufficient land...if we could just stop littering it with mobile homes.
I agree, but what industries is Greenville well positioned to attract? The health care industry ballooned in past years due to a high proportion of people on Medicaid and its designation as an underserved area.
Well its current industries include boat building, P&G type stuff, and Pharma....Not sure where the pharma industry is going, but more of those type of companies (Wilmington has a few).
Besides that, natural resource type companies can use Greenville as a home base. For example, Weyerhauser has three mills in the East and a packaging center...but it has its regional sales office in Raleigh and Distribution Center in Charlotte. Why couldn't Greenville have both of those combined. Greenville would have to do it alone because the state wouldn't support closing one place in NC to open another...but it would seem to make sense for consolidating purposes. It also has a East Coast corporate office in Washington DC (its main corporate is in Washington State), maybe you could entice them south with an incentive package that included a Green Building in the office park that could serve sales and distribution as well. Consolidate.
This is the type of stuff that has only been reserved for Raleigh and Charlotte previously (and encouraged in the Triad)...but it has never even been considered in Greenville. Why not? It has interstate access, rail access, is close to the mills, packaging plant and is smack dab in the middle of the East Coast. But the airport would have to get some more direct flights for it to be considered....that airport is a key issue with recruiting companies and corporate types.
Would you like to see solar farms popping up all over the place like they are shopping centers? Yes Pitt County has a lot of farmers but its a very different type of farming then solar. Build the solar farms somewhere else where there isn't a chance of doing any real farming. (like a desert)
I'd like to see good paying companies that will help grow the area. I don't wish for them to pop up on every spare patch of land in the East. I would like to see the corporate headquarters in Greenville, while they have some farms spread around the East. One or two in Pitt County, others in surrounding counties (Martin, Bertie, Beaufort, Washington, etc.)
For instance, here is an article about the future solar farm in Bertie County:
Quote:
Duke Energy, the largest electric utility in the state, contracted Sunenergy1 last fall and the company constructed a solar farm in just 11 weeks at the Washington White Post project in Beaufort County.
Just this month, Duke Energy announced it will be adding to the Beaufort County facility located near Bath. Once the addition is complete, the solar farm will be the largest in the state.
Now Bertie County hopes the growth of its facility, once begun, will be on that scale.
“This will mean a great deal to our area,†said Windsor mayor Jim Hoggard. “They’re projecting approximately 200 construction jobs and that means they’ll be filling our restaurants and they’re trying to find places now for a lot of these workers to stay.
“They’re going to try to hire everyone they can from our local area, buy as much as they can from local merchants, and we are just very, very pleased to have them here,†Hoggard added.
Windsor, as well as the county, has been working to bring this project to fruition for about a year. Sunenergy1 is based in Mooresville in Iredell County, just outside Charlotte; and Bill Long, Executive vice president, was on hand Thursday when his company made the $25,437.75 deposit to the Board of Commissioners and the Town Council.
“We’ll hire 40-to-50 people locally and have about 200 of them working at one time,†said Long. “The economy will really trickle down.
“It’ll be a nice boom-time,†he added with a smile. “Everybody’ll have a good Christmas.â€
That farm will be a total of 52 acres, which is about .08 of a square mile...In a county that is 741 square miles in size. I doubt that having 10 or so of these Solar farms (spread around various counties) owned by a company would cut greatly into the farming capacity of Eastern North Carolina. No one is suggesting that these become the next Frozen Yogurt shops. But farms like this can be an immediate shot in the arm for many of these small communities. A company like this with a headquarters or regional corporate offices would be an asset to the city and surrounding area.
But you have to get them to locate their headquarters in the East...in Greenville. Not just poach off the land and be located in the Triangle or Charlotte. Nucor has a facility in Hertford Co and its corporate offices are in Charlotte.
In Wilmington the State used incentives to move the world headquarters of GE Nuclear to their plant in Wilmington. Wilmington also has PPD world headquarters. Greenville has to position itself to be a headquarters for companies outside of Vidant.
But you have to get them to locate their headquarters in the East...in Greenville. Not just poach off the land and be located in the Triangle or Charlotte. Nucor has a facility in Hertford Co and its corporate offices are in Charlotte.
In Wilmington the State used incentives to move the world headquarters of GE Nuclear to their plant in Wilmington. Wilmington also has PPD world headquarters. Greenville has to position itself to be a headquarters for companies outside of Vidant.
I agree. It will take many incentives for the companies to move their headquarters here. Maybe they could offer a large incentive on land prices with a condition that at least a regional office at least be built in Greenville. I feel like this Solar farm thing will pick up a bit.
Research should be done to identify the latest upcoming technology/fields that will have growth in the future.
it will take time, but at least Greenville is marketing itself as a future business expansion/creation target.
Well its current industries include boat building, P&G type stuff, and Pharma....Not sure where the pharma industry is going, but more of those type of companies (Wilmington has a few).
Im pretty well acquanted with the pharma/biotech industry and I have to agree. The major players have been contracting from some years now. Especially their R&D, which doesn't bode well in terms of their pipelines. Merk just announced the layoff of 8500 people, some of whom might be working in the Durham and Wilson areas.
Nevertheless, since they seem to be working the efficiency angle, offering incentives for relocating some of their manufacturing to Greenville could be an angle. The manufacturing portion of the business usually employes non-degreed or entry level degreed people. This would also provide opportunities to retain some ECU graduates rather than have them head off to other areas.
Due to construction on First Street, and other areas downtown that have lost parking, the City is restriping 80 spots as free parking. It should be done by November.
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