By Rick Farmer

Lately, things have been dry in many rural North Carolina communities. With the continued decline of agriculture along Tobacco Road combined with the steady loss of mainstream rural manufacturers like furniture plants and textile mills, many of these small crossroads communities seem like rain-starved crops abandoned in the fields, dried up and ready to blow away.

In 2003, the future seemed bleak for little Clarkton, N.C., a small farming and textile town of some 800 residents. Back then the area’s number one employer, Harriet & Henderson Yarns, closed its doors for good, leaving about 260 workers behind and taking about half the town’s tax base with it.

“Clarkton was on the brink of shutting down,” said Chuck Heustess, executive director of the Bladen County Economic Development Commission. “But we’ve been able to overcome those losses and have created more than 400 jobs in just the past few years.”

So how did Bladen County do it? By thinking big.

It’s not that unusual to find small communities that think big, but anyone can think. Turning big thinking into real jobs and big investment is another matter. By using every tool at its disposal and creating some of its own opportunities, in addition to traditional industrial recruiting, the County has brought Clarkton back from the brink. 

Keith Croom, one of Clarkton’s three Town Commissioners, said the mood was one of despair in the days following the closure announcement.

“We (on the Town Commission) were thinking ‘What do we do now? How do we provide services to our people?’ ” Croom said. “Those industries had been such integral parts of this community for so long that when you wake up and they’re no longer there, it’s hard to swallow.”

But while some despaired, Heustess set about marketing this community equidistant between Myrtle Beach, S.C., and the cities of Fayetteville and Wilmington in North Carolina. He had two newly available buildings that were in good shape and a trained, willing workforce ready to go back to work.

In 2005, Heustess and Bladen County struck pay dirt when Can-Am announced a $25 million investment in Clarkton. The new spinning plant would occupy one of the closed 210,000 sq. ft. plants and create 130 jobs.

Bladen County added to that good news earlier this year when Millwork Specialties, a door manufacturer, announced that it would invest $750,000 and hire 35 workers, also in Clarkton. And later in 2006, the second vacant Harriet & Henderson facility in Clarkton sold to Flanders Corp., an air filtration products manufacturer. That announcement was good for another 200 jobs and about $12 million in investment.

Most recently the county announced an expansion by Danaher, adding 13 jobs and up to $2.5 million in investment. Also, Birdsong Peanuts has purchased 43 acres in the Bladenboro Industrial Park for a new peanut buying station, an investment totaling $6 million. And the Sioux Honey Association, makers of Sue bee Honey, has optioned a 40,000 square foot building for the manufacture and distribution of its wares, an investment that could bring $3 million and six new jobs.

Heustess doesn’t attribute the new jobs and investment in this small town to any one thing. But when he combined the right state incentives with the available buildings and a solid, trained and available workforce, it created a recipe for success. 

But Clarkton is just one success story wrapped in a larger one that is Bladen County. In the last seven years the rural county has witnessed $250 million in capital investment and created 3,200 jobs. In addition to Clarkton’s new successes, the County saw DuPont invest $50 million and create 15 new jobs at its Fayetteville Works site, and a 111,000 sq. ft. addition to Carolina Cold Storage, an expansion that will create 20-30 new jobs. Most recently Danaher Corporation announced a 19-job, $1.5 million expansion.

One tool the rural community uses to spur growth is the “Bladen’s Bloomin’” revolving loan fund, a pool of US Dept. of Agriculture Rural Development Administration loan funds. As the loans were doled out and repaid, Bladen County accumulated more than $1 million. It then used the interest from those loans, combined with a loan of its own, to establish a non-profit real estate corporation, similarly named “Bladen’s Bloomin’ Agri-Industrial Real Estate Corp.”

“We buy, build, lease and sell our own real estate,” Heustess said.

With these new funds, the County built its first 11,000 sq. ft. business incubator in the Elizabethtown Airport Industrial Park. Even before construction was complete, the County had leased the building’s two bays to Aeromark Uniform Rental and Westwood Robotics Technologies.

Later it built a second business incubator, a 20,000 sq. ft. facility in the town of Bladenboro that met with similar success. And its now in the process of constructing a third incubator, a 13,000 sq. ft. facility that will have three bays, one that will house Heustess and the Bladen County Economic Development Commission.

Most recently, the County built a winery of all things, which it then sold to Lac Belle Ami Winery & Vineyard. The new business will open in the spring of 2007.

“By focusing on smaller buildings, we not only help the startups, but we also avoid competing with the private sector,” Heustess said. “We’re here to create opportunities for people, not to compete with our existing businesses.”

So while other rural counties complain about withering on the vine, Bladen County is, well, bloomin’.

“I’d say the mood has gone from despair to very optimistic,” said Croom, the Clarkton Town Commissioner. “Right now we’re just very excited about our future.”