The neighborhood of Doherty Heights has seen better days. Once a vibrant residential neighborhood that was home to families and retail businesses close to the downtown core, Doherty Heights is now better known for its vacant storefronts and dilapidated houses. The majority of the city’s housing code … Read more

After sitting empty for twenty odd years this abandoned department store was in need of a total transformation.  The property had a solid foundation, a beautiful facade, and held rich memories for the locals, but behind the broken/boarded up storefront was a building begging for a wrecking ball.  Th … Read more

The shovels are out and the hard hats are on. One of the newest development projects in downtown Wilmington, North Carolina broke ground this month. USAInvestCo is building Northern Riverfront Marina and Hotel next to the City’s new Convention Center.  It will include a 204-slip marina, a hotel, ret … Read more

Blight City has fallen on hard times. Its population has declined significantly since the 1990s, due in large part to the shuttering of two large manufacturing plants. Emblematic of the city’s decline is its central downtown area. Once a vibrant community center, it is now comprised mainly of run-do … Read more

Food is connecting communities to each other in new ways in western North Carolina. Last spring, Western Carolina University (WCU) held a forum on the causes and consequences of poverty in western North Carolina.  The result was the new Western NC Food Policy Council.   The overall mission of the Co … Read more

Al Czervik is a real estate developer who has invested in several shopping malls and mixed-use developments across the Tar Heel state. He is planning a mixed use development called “Gopher Commons” in your community, but “in order to make the numbers work,” he claims that he needs local government a … Read more

This is the fifth in a series of posts to illustrate different ways that counties in NC organize to carry out economic development activities (links to parts I, II, III, and IV). Each post will profile a different county’s economic development entity, including its structure, funding, staffing and r … Read more

Economic development and large commercial customers contribute greatly to the financial success and stability of utility operations, but an over-dependence on these customers can put a utility’s revenue at risk. The table below compares non-residential water customer summary statistics from the Town … Read more

This is the fourth in a series of posts to illustrate different ways that counties in NC organize to carry out economic development activities (links to parts I, II, and III). Each post will profile a different county’s economic development entity, including its structure, funding, staffing and repo … Read more

Special assessments are a public finance mechanism that some may consider “old as dirt,” as use of this public finance instrument dates to pre-colonial Britain and seventeenth-century America. Today, special assessments are often used in many states to back what many refer to as “dirt bonds” to deve … Read more