Anson Economic Development reveals the Atlantic Gateway Logitistics Park coming to Lilesville during a kick-off event in September of 2020.
Liz O’Connell | Anson Record
WADESBORO — An ambitious five-year strategic plan for Anson County has been revealed and approved during the Anson Economic Development Partnership’s annual meeting on March 18.
Anson Economic Development Corporation organized the plan which will stretch through 2025. Included in this plan are visions of expanding the Rural Economic Vibrancy (REV) co-working space into Peachland-Polkton, creating stronger relationships between companies in the Charlotte region and Anson, and opening new industrial buildings in the county.
There will be an estimated $25 million of new property tax, sales tax revenue and revenue from utilities coming in during the last two years of the strategic plan.
“First of all, we run very lean, which allows us to funnel a high relative percentage of our funding into product development, which is the most ambitious part of the plan,” John Marek, Anson EDP executive director, said. “But the real key will be leveraging our relationships with the private and public sector to double or triple or quadruple the impact of every dollar we spend.”
Projects like the Atlantic Gateway Logistics Park are an example of how partnering with businesses speeds up the EDP’s timeline. The Atlantic Gateway Logistics Park partnership between Pee Dee Electric and North Carolina South East was revealed in 2020. The industrial park is estimated to bring about 300 jobs to the county, according to Marek.
A Wadesboro Industrial Park is also in the works for a scheduled kick-off in 2022. The plan was to start last year, but that timeline was scratched because of the pandemic.
“The building we envision for Wadesboro Industrial Park will be around 50,000 square feet and cost about $2.7 million,” Marek said. “The private investor will be picking up roughly 90% of the cost. The Town of Wadesboro will provide the land and Anson EDP will contribute about 10%.”
Since 2016, EDP has been saving a portion of the “524 tax dollars” for development projects such as the Wadesboro Industrial Park.
Other plans include expanding the REV co-working space into the Peachland-Polkton area, although this is still in the very early stages and there is no specific location picked out.
REV Uptown includes Speckled Paw Coffee Shop, the Anson County Chamber of Commerce, Veteran Services and Anson EDP. A Portuguese company, Borgstena, also shared the co-working space before returning to Portugal because of the pandemic. Marek expects Borgstena to return in May or June.
Anson EDP has been working on updating the website and marketing tools to bring in new businesses to the area. According to Marek the greatest change is the implementation of a tool for businesses to search a site or building within Anson. By clocking on a specific site or building, a business can see reports on how many potential employees live within 10, 20 or 30 minutes, an average of those people’s salary and how it compares to different communities.
The strategic plan also reflects what EDP is seeing from the pandemic. Instead of announcing about 100 new jobs a year, Marek and his team adjusted it for the impacts of COVID-19. Last year EDP estimated 36 new jobs. He expects about 50 new jobs for 2021.
“Our prospect activity has been down 30 to 40%,” Marek said. “We hope that will rebound in the second half of this year and into 2022.”
