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High Tech, High
Up
Asheville, long known for its
culture
and urbane flair, quietly emerges as
an information technology hotbed
By Lawrence Bivens
From
his computer workstation, Ian MacDonald gazes out an office window at
the Blue Ridge mountains. It is a panorama sparkling in a kaleidoscope
of red, yellow and orange leaves against a cloudless afternoon sky. So
idyllic is the view that MacDonald, a 32-year-old programmer at
Asheville’s e-Worker Technologies, struggles to conceal his
giddiness at having such working conditions. It is, after all, only
his first week at the company, having just moved from Atlanta, but his
expression belies a man who knows he made the right choice.
“My wife and I have always loved Asheville and talked about living
here,” the Fairfax, Va., native says, “but there just weren’t
that many of these types of companies here.”
Such is surely the sentiment of many who have visited Asheville, seen
its extraordinary quality of life and pondered making a home for
themselves here. Until recently, chasing such dreams likely would have
meant grappling with a labor market top heavy with low-tech, low-wage
jobs in heavy industry. But with the arrival of companies like
e-Worker, which designs and runs software agents for a diverse list of
clients, professional opportunities for the likes of MacDonald and
other urbane technophiles fleeing the Big City are becoming more
commonplace.
e-Worker announced the selection of Asheville as its headquarters back
in June. Moving from a site in nearby Brevard, the company quickly
leased office space and ramped up a youthful 15-person workforce with
an average wage than is more than twice that for Buncombe County
overall.
“We basically outgrew our space in Brevard and had to go
somewhere,” explains Rich Purcell, the company’s founder and CEO.
After considering Atlanta and Charlotte, Purcell chose Asheville
because of an interest he noticed its leaders had in growing software
ventures like his. “We were really impressed with the overall vision
this community has for attracting high tech firms,” he says.
It turns out that vision was not created by accident. Working
together, the Asheville Chamber of Commerce, the Buncombe County
Economic Development Commission and other community and business
leaders set out in 2000 to bring technology companies to Asheville,
which they see as just the sort of environment in which today’s
knowledge workers would love to live and work.
A Tradition of Creativity
 Left:
A view of Asheville City Hall
Given Asheville’s pleasant climate, strong educational resources,
top-notch health services and easy access to key business destinations
such as Atlanta, Charlotte, Greenville-Spartanburg and Knoxville, one
would assume its appeal as a corporate outpost is self-evident. But
more was needed, and leaders systematically set out to highlight the
assets that could get the attention of technology industry executives
and entrepreneurs.
Since before the time of Thomas Wolfe, Asheville’s favorite son, the
city has tended to attract and inspire creative types: artists,
writers, designers, musicians. Thus, it seemed a natural fit for the
softer side of the Information Age — the multimedia content
providers who work with video, audio, animation, images and text using
the World Wide Web, CD-ROMs and DVDs as their delivery vehicles.
It is not a corner of the technology world that is void of economic
opportunity. The computer graphics industry, of which multimedia is
part, is expected to achieve annual revenues of $150 billion by 2005,
according to Machover Associates Corp., a White Plains, N.Y. research
firm that tracks the sector. The figure represents more than twice
what the industry earned in 1999, and economic impact models estimate
that for every multimedia job created, six more arise in related
fields to support it.
“We also learned that most companies in part of the technology
industry are niche oriented with 50 employees or less,” explains
Nancy Foltz, an Asheville marketing consultant who helped author the
city’s technology recruitment strategy. “That means they have a
fairly small footprint,” one that can easily be accommodated in a
community without a large supply of sprawling industry-ready land. It
also minimizes the adverse impact economic growth might have on the
area’s fabled quality of life.
Such a strategy also leverages the excellent educational resources at
Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, the numerous private
institutions nearby and those at the University of North Carolina at
Asheville (UNC-A). In 1998, for example, UNC-A unveiled a unique
program in multimedia arts and sciences, the only one of its kind in
the 16-campus UNC System. Students may concentrate their studies on
music, video, 3-D animation or interactive design, but all must
complete multi-disciplinary coursework that includes computer science,
mass communications, drama, art and music.
“As a liberal arts campus, you don’t tend to think of us as a
technology resource,” says UNC-A Chancellor Jim Mullen, “but we
are.” The school’s computer science program, he says, is highly
regarded nationally, with a faculty that routinely consults with
businesses in Asheville and around the United States.
Laying Down the Lines
Becoming a prime technology destination requires more than just access
to workers. Asheville leaders know that they will also need a
telecommunications infrastructure that can match those found in large
metropolitan areas. That is part of the vision behind 750-acre
Biltmore Park, the neatly planned community that blends office space,
housing, retail, education and more — all wired with the latest
fiber optics and networking hardware.
“There is a world class technology infrastructure here,” according
to e-Worker’s Purcell, whose firm consumes about 3,200 square feet
of space at the park.
Just like access to water, rail and power has long been a basic
criterion for arriving companies, being able to count on a speedy
Internet and strong digital voice connections is now seen as critical
to Asheville’s economic development efforts on all fronts.
“What we’ve done here is far more than real estate development,”
explains Jack Cecil, president of Biltmore Farms Inc., the century-old
company that controls the park. “It’s about putting together all
the pieces that make a community.”
Cecil’s strategy is not entirely original. It is, in fact, the
modern incarnation of what his great-grandfather, George Washington
Vanderbilt, strived for when he began erecting Biltmore Village in the
1890s — a sustainable community where diverse residents could live,
work, learn and play together. “The historical context was already
here,” Cecil says. “We’re just putting a 21st Century stamp on
it.”
Beside e-Worker Technologies, there are other tenants at the park,
including the North American headquarters for Volvo’s Construction
Equipment unit. In the late-1990s, the Sweden-based automaker moved
its offices from downtown after considering a move to other cities. It
now occupies 50,000 square feet at Biltmore Park.
For major employers in and around Asheville, there is a noticeable
European flair. Sonopress LLC, part of the Berlin-based media
conglomerate Bertelsmann AG, employs more than 1,000 workers at its
local production site. The 410,000-square-foot facility makes DVDs,
CDs and CD-ROMs. Earlier this year, Continental Teves, a German
manufacturer of automotive breaking systems, added 125 high-paying
jobs to its already significant Asheville workforce. Others, like
Chicago-based Bussman Industries and Ohio’s Eaton Cutler-Hammer,
have major manufacturing sites here that ship much of their product to
markets overseas.
At times, Asheville’s positioning as a technology outpost yields
dividends in its recruitment of industrial manufacturers. Such was the
case earlier this year when BorgWarner Turbo Systems selected the city
for a new corporate headquarters and technology center. The firm had
maintained a production site in Asheville since 1980. “The fact that
companies like Volvo and BorgWarner, which have had a presence in
Asheville previously, have brought additional operations here speaks
well about the quality of our workforce,” says Dave Porter, who
directs the Buncombe County EDC.
“The decisions by BorgWarner, Cutler-Hammer and others to locate
engineering and technical support centers here are very
encouraging,” says Gordon Myers, an executive with Asheville-based
Ingles Markets who chairs AdvantageWest, an economic development
partnership that represents 23 western counties, including Buncombe.
“The fact that many of these companies already had a presence in the
region says a lot about the quality of our workforce.”
In collaboration with others in the region, AdvantageWest has led the
way in researching the rapidly changing labor force needs of arriving
companies and those already here. The partnership also recently
launched an Internet-based resource directory, on the web at
www.workready.net, which will be especially valuable to small- and
mid-sized firms in minimizing the red-tape that comes with recruiting,
hiring, training and managing their workers. “The site further
demonstrates our region’s friendliness both to business and
technology,” says Myers, who currently chairs NCCBI and serves on a
list of statewide leadership roles.
Opportunities at Enka
Even when a prominent corporate name chooses to consolidate its
operations elsewhere, Asheville leaders turn the move into an
opportunity. That was certainly the case in the suburban Asheville
community of Enka, where BASF, the Swiss chemical giant, is shuttering
most of its local presence, a move that is expected to shower an
ironic array of benefits to the area.
The company, whose Southeast operations are being consolidated in
South Carolina, announced in October 2000 that as it vacated Asheville
it would deed over its leafy corporate campus to the local community
college. With 37 acres and 225,000 square feet of space, the move was
hailed by then-Gov. Jim Hunt as “the largest property donation in
history to any community college in the country.”
It was an offer officials at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community
College couldn’t refuse, even though it meant they would have to
sink some major capital funds into bringing the 1960s-era buildings up
to modern safety and accessibility codes. With help from the state’s
higher education bond proceeds, A-B Tech has embarked upon an
ambitious plan to convert the site, originally home to American Enka
Corp. before it acquisition by BASF, into a small-business incubator,
corporate training and conference center, Cisco Systems Networking
Academy and more. All told, the campus is projected to generate $3
million in economic largesse annually, according to a study done by
the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce.
“We plan to use much of the space there as a bio-technology
incubator,” says K. Ray Bailey, president of the college. Much of
the campus is tailor-made for such use. Among other activities BASF
conducted there were extensive research, development and testing, and
its abundant wet-lab space can readily support bio-tech innovation.
“About $1 million of the $14.1 million we’re getting from the bond
package will be going to Enka,” Bailey says. The new facilities will
offer welcome relief for A-B Tech’s crowded main campus, which
accommodates some 25,000 students enrolled in the school’s
curriculum and non-credit programs.
Bio-tech is another arena ripe with exciting economic development
opportunities for Asheville and surrounding communities. Given such
unique topographic, climatic and other geographic conditions, there is
a capacity to cultivate an enormously diverse array of plant life,
much of which can offer medicinal qualities.
“Our region has the second most diverse flora anywhere in the
world,” explains George Briggs, director of the North Carolina
Arboretum. A unit of the University of North Carolina General
Administration, the 15-year-old arboretum conducts research and offers
educational programs about the area’s vegetation and how its
commercial potential might be harnessed. “A-B Tech is already one of
our major partners,” continues Briggs, who is eager to see the
Enka’s bio-tech incubator move ahead.
Western Carolina University (WCU) and UNC-A also are joining in the
redevelopment of the Enka campus, with plans to offer programs and
courses that complement the center’s entrepreneurial mission.
“We’ve already begun discussion for the three of us (WCU, UNC-A
and A-B Tech) to collaborate on a bachelor’s degree program in
bio-technology,” says John Bardo, chancellor at WCU. His institution
already maintains a visible presence in Asheville, offering
undergraduate and master’s-level courses in business, public
administration and nursing.
“We’ve been in Asheville since 1937,” Bardo says of WCU, whose
main campus in Cullowhee is about an hour’s drive away.
Among the industries benefiting from the steady stream of allied
health graduates coming out of WCU and A-B Tech is the city’s huge
medical community.
“We get terrific support from WCU’s graduate nursing program,”
says Bob Burgin, CEO of Mission St. Joseph’s Hospital, “and
we’re blessed to have access to one of the best community colleges
in the state.”
The hospital has more than 500 physicians on staff, a testament not
only to the role it serves as a regional health center but also to the
fact that the city has become a sought-after posting for medical
professionals. “In most communities, physicians come and go,”
Burgin says. “But very few of those coming here ever want to
leave.”
The ubiquity of Mission St. Joseph’s — it is the largest North
Carolina employer west of Hickory — is symbolic of Asheville’s
rich history as a sort of Mecca for health and healing. Since its
earliest days, the city has been a destination for those needing
health services, be they from Western North Carolina or beyond. More
recently, the city and surrounding region have become a haven for
retiree migrants from around the nation. Though most coming to the
area are relatively youthful, healthy and engaged, Burgin points out
that there is an inevitably high demand for health services by those
over age 65.
Asheville’s burgeoning health care industry is also a factor in its
technology vision. It is an industry, Burgin and others point out,
increasingly reliant on advanced technologies. Thus the community
might make an attractive location for software development ventures
oriented toward applications in health care delivery.
“There is another hidden benefit there,” explains Nancy Foltz.
“Asheville’s doctors may also be a good source of investment
capital to drive some of those companies.” She adds that the
city’s leadership in the hospitality, outdoor recreation,
electronics and industrial equipment industries offers the same
potential for software design firms looking to cultivate markets in
those industry clusters.
Something for Everyone
Asheville’s population of both new arrivals and those who are proud
to be natives is a unique mixture of young hipsters, casual mid-career
adults and active retirees. It is one of the very few cities that can
boast of being named by Rolling Stone as “Amerca’s New Freak
Capital” at the same time Money was calling it “One of the Best
Places to Retire.” There is a one-of-a-kind mix here that some label
“Mayberry-meets-Berkeley.”
That vibe, local leaders contend, can only complement the city’s
efforts to grab the attention of the technology industry, which can
count on a multi-generational pool of Internet-bred worker bees,
seasoned managers and savvy elders who’ve watched many a business
fad come and go.
The third plank in Asheville’s technology vision calls for making
the city an outpost for large technology companies — the Oracles or
Microsofts of the world — who may view a small satellite office in
Asheville as the perfect vehicle for rewarding “high value”
employees they’d like to retain. The objective is admittedly
something of a stretch, but one that could well catch fire if the city
could just land its first big-name tech firm. “Our credibility as an
up-and-coming tech center would immediately rise,” Foltz predicts.
Yet, for the time being, most seem content working to land the smaller
firms like e-Worker, then watching them blossom. At a time when many
tech start-ups are stumbling, e-Worker is signing lucrative contracts
with state Medicaid programs and forming partnerships with major names
like EDS and PeopleClick. Year 2001 sales figures are expected to
triple last year’s, according to Rick Purcell. That is certainly
music to the ears of Ian MacDonald, who doesn’t relish a return to
the hurly-burly of Atlanta, Northern Virginia or another crowded tech
center. Having just purchased a 100-year-old home in nearby
Waynesville, he and his family are settling in for what they hope will
be the long haul.
“We’re realistic about what can happen, good and bad, in the
technology industry,” he says, taking his gaze momentarily off the
autumn foliage. “Hopefully, this will be the last stop for us.”
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