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Many
believe that prosperity has become a stranger in Eastern North Carolina. And to
be sure, there are communities across the region that have been ravaged by the
global economy. But Greenville and Pitt County are not among them. The county is
a shining example of how a low-tech economy can bootstrap itself into relative
prosperity and provides a role model for what all of North Carolina can be.
While some remnants of the old economy survive in Greenville and Pitt County,
they are overshadowed by new economy companies engaged in knowledge-based
manufacturing, biotechnology development, media and logistics.
Entrepreneurial-minded university leaders are spinning off and nurturing small
firms marketing cutting-edge products. A growing healthcare community serves
patients from across the region and beyond, while making headlines for the new
treatments it is pioneering. Diversity is encouraged, not simply tolerated.
Newcomers from all corners of the planet are joining with longtime locals in
building programs that improve on an already-enviable quality of life.
This is the desired end-game of countless communities. But planning, patience
and partnerships have made it a reality in Pitt County and Greenville, the
vortex of its government and culture and particularly its commerce.
“Our goals have always been diversification and attracting companies that have
real staying power,” explains John Chaffee, executive director of the Pitt
County Development Commission. “We’ve never sought quick fixes when it comes
to our economy.”
With so much success in recent years have come an influx of new residents. Once
a sparsely populated farming community, Pitt County is now a leader in growth.
From 1980 to 2001, Greenville’s population surged by 71 percent to more than
61,000. “We’ve been a county of net in-migration for the last three
decades,” says Chaffee, who has helped foster much of that growth in his 20
years as lead developer. But along with additional headcount, the flavor of the
community also has grown spicier thanks to leaders with a knack for creative
solutions. “There’s been a tremendous transformation in the character,
quality and diversity of this community,” Chaffee adds.
ECU’s Unmistakable Presence
While diligence and smarts on the part of Chaffee and other local leaders have
gone far in shaping Pitt County into a highly competitive business destination,
one can’t underestimate the role that East Carolina University continues to
play in the community’s vitality on every level. Since its founding in 1907 as
East Carolina Teachers Training School, the fortunes of the university and Pitt
County always have been entwined.
ECU is now the state’s third-largest university, with nearly 20,000 students
seeking degrees across more than 200 programs, including 13 doctoral offerings.
The university’s solid academic culture has been recognized by the likes of
U.S. News & World Report, Yahoo! Internet Life and other publications. It is
also making waves as a hub for research. Last year, for example, ECU faculty and
research staff secured more than $40 million in grants and contracts. But when
it comes to service, ECU’s reputation is unmatched. “Service has enjoyed a
long tradition at ECU,” according to Tom Feldbush, vice chancellor for
research, economic development and community engagement.
Since the early 1960s, the university’s Regional Development Services unit has
performed a key research and advocacy role for all of Eastern North Carolina.
Through its Regional Development Institute, ECU’s leadership is even being
felt in the halls of the U.S. Congress, where it is now helping shepherd the
passage of legislation that would establish a Southeast Crescent Authority. The
idea, modeled along the lines of the Appalachian Regional Commission, is a
Marshall Plan of sorts for hard-hit rural communities throughout the coastal
South. A host of other service initiatives are based at ECU’s Center for
Applied Technology, its Survey Research Lab, the Small Business & Technology
Development Center and the ECU Outreach Network, a voluntary network of students
and faculty that assists small communities with grantsmanship.
ECU’s activities in economic development were made even more prominent with
the arrival in 2001 of William Muse, ECU’s 10th chancellor. Muse made regional
development one of the university’s four focus areas, along with human health,
performing arts and teacher education. “What that did was put economic
development on the front burner,” explains Feldbush. The move has translated
into joint strategic planning efforts between the university and local and
regional development groups, and it has meant reaching out to businesses with
ambitious student internship programs and faculty expertise. “We will not see
ourselves as a success until we’ve helped improve the economy of Eastern North
Carolina,” says Feldbush, who chairs the Pitt County Development Commission.
Another hallmark of ECU lies in its willingness to innovate with
inter-institutional programs and cross-disciplinary curricula. It partners, for
example, with National Defense University in offering a masters of science
degree in digital communications technology. ECU works with Craven and Edgecombe
community colleges in extending upper-division education courses off-campus so
that more students can complete their bachelor’s degree. Its excellent Coastal
and Marine Studies program draws in elective coursework from anthropology,
biology, geography, planning and other fields.
ECU’s business programs are also noted for their linkages with other
disciplines. In addition to their core studies in accounting, finance and
marketing, business students are encouraged to pursue elective tracks in areas
such as allied health, hospitality management, international affairs,
educational administration and planning. “All those programs cater to
industries operating in Eastern North Carolina,” says Ernest Uhr, dean of
ECU’s School of Business. The 67-year-old school is one of the state’s
oldest and largest. Also unique is ECU’s joint MD/MBA program, a five-year
curriculum that inserts health economics and business administration coursework
into traditional medical studies. The program enrolls about 20 students per
year, Uhr says. “We also have business programs designed for practicing
physicians from around the region,” he explains.
 Left:
A doctor performs the latest miracle of modern medicine -- robotics surgery at
the Brody School of Medicine.
The Heart
of the Matter
It is impossible to overstate the transformative role that ECU’s Brody School
of Medicine has played in Greenville and Pitt County. Founded in 1975, the
school’s reputation in primary care and rural medicine has risen to the top
national tier. Its commitment to upgrading the quality and accessibility of
healthcare throughout the region is unmistakable. It admits no out-of-state
applicants, for example, because it expects its graduates to remain in North
Carolina, preferably practicing in an underserved setting. The school’s work
in the burgeoning realm of telemedicine is recognized as one of the nation’s
very best, pioneering important treatment delivery technologies that have
applications in military medicine, space travel, disaster relief and more.
But it’s the Brody School’s work in robotic surgery that has captured the
imagination of the medical world. Surgical teams from around the globe have
begun descending on the school’s Heart Center to receive instruction on a
system known as daVinci. Developed by Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Intuitive
Surgical, daVinci enables heart surgeons to operate on patients via a computer
console a few yards away. A system of Velcro rings helps translate the movement
of the surgeon’s hands into the tiny arms of a robotic probe that has been
inserted, along with a miniature three-dimensional video camera, into the
patient. Software compensates for differences in dexterity from right hand to
left and corrects any manual tremors that a surgeon might have. But most
valuable of all, daVinci allows surgeons to repair leaky heart valves without
having to saw a foot-long gash through the patient’s breastbone the
traditional way, instead relying on three dime-sized incisions between the ribs.
Patient recovery time, and thus the total cost of treatment, are dramatically
reduced.
“It’s pretty remarkable, really,” says Dr. Wiley Nifong, director of
surgical robotics at the Brody School. “Patients spend three and a half days
in the hospital compared to a seven-day average with traditional surgery, and
they can resume normal activity in about two weeks instead of the usual six.”
ECU physicians were the first to use daVinci just months after the technology
was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2000. Led by Nifong,
the school soon developed a two-day training curriculum around the procedure,
and currently Greenville is the only site in the world where such instruction is
available. On a recent day, trainees from Holland and Israel were among those
looking on as Dr. Randolph Chitwood used daVinci to mend the ailing heart of a
67-year-old Charlotte woman. “Surgeons have gone as far as we can go with our
eyes and hands,” says Chitwood, whose prominence in medical circles inside and
outside Greenville approaches rock-star status. “Technology has to take us to
the next level.”
daVinci, which sells for $1 million, also has obvious significance for distance
medicine. Physicians in New York City recently used it to operate via the
Internet on a patient in Strasbourg, France, for example. But that’s not
really the point, according to Chitwood. He would rather see the technology and
the skills required of it dispersed as widely as possible. “This is not about
keeping new treatments in the hands of just a few doctors,” he says.
Chitwood, whose boyish exuberance defies his 57 years, was recently invited by
Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston to join its staff.
He declined. “We’ve got a really great team here,” he explains, “and
there’s far more I can do in Eastern North Carolina.” The region suffers
from alarmingly high rates of heart disease, among other things. And surgical
innovation is only part of Chitwood’s grand design for addressing Tar Heel
health problems. Along with improvements in tertiary care, he would like to see
more innovation from primary care providers on early detection and treatment.
There is also much more than can be done through advocacy and education programs
to promote heart-healthier behavior on the part of individuals. “That, of
course, is something that requires a generation or more to change,” says
Chitwood, who appears to be settling in for the long haul.
From Manufacturing to Media
Taken together, ECU and Pitt County Memorial Hospital, the Brody School’s
practice arm, maintain a workforce that is 8,220 strong. But a long list of
corporate residents accounts for the bulk of Pitt County’s eclectic employment
base. Operating along the northern edge of Greenville is a diverse array of
firms that are holding their own against a sluggish national economy, with some
even growing. Chief among them is DSM, a Dutch multinational that counts a
600-acre Greenville campus among its 200 global sites. In late 2000 the firm
acquired the two million-square-foot plant, which had been built in the early
1970s by Burroughs-Wellcome. The mammoth operation employs 1,300 in the contract
manufacture of everything from pills and tablets to cough syrups and topical
ointments, products that are shipped to top pharmaceutical companies such as
GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly and Pfizer.
“The biggest thing that Greenville offers us is a very solid workforce,”
says Terry Novak, senior vice president for commercial operations at DSM. Novak
says the company has benefited from the plant’s access to Greenville’s
extensive medical community and from education and training programs provided by
ECU and nearby Pitt Community College. “We have nine interns from ECU right
now, and we are sponsoring an adjunct professorship there,” Novak says.
“That’s been a huge positive for us.”
So pleased with Greenville are DSM executives that they are now building a $100
million facility at their campus that will be part of the company’s high
performance materials unit. The plant will make a product called Dyneema, said
to be the world’s strongest fiber, which is integral in the bullet-proofing of
cockpit doors in commercial airliners. The expansion, which will bring 75 new
jobs to Pitt County, is slated to be complete in early 2004. “We expect to be
here for a long time,” says Novak.
A few steps from DSM is ASMO Greenville of North Carolina, a Japanese maker of
small vehicle motors. As important as the 550 jobs the firm maintains here is
the fact that the company’s arrival in 1994 opened the door for other Japanese
manufacturers. A year later, North Carolina Asahi, a maker of wiper blades and
an ASMO supplier, announced its move to Greenville, as did Nippon Wiperblade in
1997. Fuji Silysia Chemical, Ltd, a developer of specialized silica gel,
brought a $16 million investment to the county in 1999. “We’ve been very
fortunate with Japanese companies,” Chaffee says, “and we’re anticipating
other ones will join us in the future.”
Nearby, NACCO Materials Handling Group employs 1,100 in the manufacture of
forklifts and other gear used to move heavy containers. The Portland,
Ore.-headquartered company also chose Greenville to base its Warehouse Product
Development Center. Its presence there, which dates from 1974, has resulted in
numerous acknowledgements through the years. “NACCO is an excellent example of
the ultimate value of economic development over several decades,” says
Chaffee, who also serves as a member of the N.C. Economic Development
Board. “They continuously re-invest in our community and embody the whole
notion of corporate citizenship.”
Not far away, Grady-White Boats adds further diversification to the Pitt County
manufacturing base. The homegrown firm traces it founding to 1958 and occupies a
more than 300,000-square-foot production complex that churns out as many as
2,000 sportfishing boats each year at prices ranging from $34,000 to $225,000.
The privately held company and its products have received awards from various
publications through the years. In February 2003, Grady-White was honored with a
top customer service award by the National Marine Manufacturers Association at
the Miami International Boat Show. At the same time, the company’s owner,
Eddie Smith, was inducted into the National Marine Hall of Fame.
Nestled nearby amid the pines at Indigreen Corporate Park are the
administrative, sales, editorial, and production operations of The Daily
Reflector, Greenville’s century-old daily newspaper, along with those of its
parent company, Cox NC Publications. The unit of Atlanta-based media titan Cox
Communications purchased the Reflector and a handful of other Eastern North
Carolina daily and weekly papers in the mid-1990s. The company relocated from
downtown Greenville to a 20-acre site at Indigreen shortly after the
acquisition, and now maintains a total of 93,000 square feet of space there.
But Pitt County’s industrial activity isn’t limited to the confines of
Greenville. Ayden, about 15 minutes south of the city, is home to several firms,
including Phoenix Fabrication, which bases its laser-cutting, welding and
assembly operations out of two buildings at the town’s Worthington Industrial
Park. Ayden is also near a large Weyerhaeuser mill producing hardwood lumber
products for domestic and foreign markets. Located at the midway point between
Greenville and the Kinston’s Global TransPark, the town’s economic fortunes
could easily bloom should the TransPark ultimately gain traction.
In Farmville, DIMON International operates a sprawling tobacco processing plant
that employs 300. Collins & Aikman, a Michigan-based multinational that
produces automobile upholstery, employs another 500 there — more than
one-tenth of the town’s total population. In recent years, the town’s
economic prospects have received a shot in the arm — and not just due to
spillover from neighboring Greenville. Farmville’s proximity to I-95 has made
the community an appealing destination for distribution projects such as the $5
million Coastal Beverage distribution center at Farmville Corporate Park. The
freshly minted U.S. Highway 265 Bypass around Wilson will likely bring Farmville
added attention from logistics firms.
But Farmville also has been smart about the way it organizes its business
development operations. In the 1990s, it folded its local chamber of commerce
together with its downtown association and economic development council to form
a single lead entity known as the Farmville Development Partnership. The unique
arrangement has brought an impressive degree of cohesion and focus to the town,
which retains stately vestiges of its one-time status as a bustling agribusiness
hub. “The organizational arrangement has really allowed us to get some things
done,” says Lathan Williams, vice president of the partnership. “It’s
given Farmville a real boost.”
Farmville recently completed a 7,100-square-foot small business incubator that
was designed to give promising start-ups a helping hand. The site contains two
large manufacturing spaces, along with a suite of administrative offices and a
conference room. Below market rent and on-site business expertise support the
growth of tenants, who later “graduate” to free-standing sites in the
community and continue generating jobs. The $206,000 incubator was erected with
the help of grants from the federal government and cash raised by the local
economic development council. “Our goal for the incubator is to create 50 jobs
in five years,” Williams says.
The Best of Many Worlds
Firms large and small find that Pitt County’s enviable quality-of-life adds
value to them and their employees. Education, most say, is central to that
livability. In addition to its obvious higher education assets, the county also
boasts excellent K-12 schools. High expectations on the part of parents and
business people are behind an aggressive drive to make local schools the finest
they can be. Qualitative targets have been set through a unique “Education
Compact” between the county commission and the school board. But business
leaders also have extended their own resources. Last year, the Greenville-Pitt
County Chamber of Commerce made education a priority, sponsoring an education
summit and leading a clarion call to local firms to give whatever they can —
cash, volunteer hours or in-kind support — to help area schools meet federal
No Child Left Behind Act goals.
“The chamber identified several key areas of focus,” explains Larry Seigler,
a retired pharmacist and past chamber chairman who now chairs the county’s
Education Cabinet. The cabinet was established in the wake of the summit to
provide a permanent venue for dialogue between county education leaders and
business people. Seigler, a Greenville resident for the past 31 years, was plant
manager at earlier incarnations of what is now the DSM Pharmaceuticals plant.
Having firsthand knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the local
workforce, as well as watching his three daughters rise through the county’s
public schools, Seigler was the ideal choice to chair the cabinet. “People
here have a tremendous work ethic and a strong desire to contribute,” he says.
But the nature of today’s business has strained the capacity of schools to
prepare graduates for the workforce. The burden is thus on business to work with
educators in order to guarantee students finish high school with relevant
skills, he says. “We’re moving in the right direction now.”
Another chamber program, Organizations/Businesses Assisting Schools in Success
(OASIS), offers public recognition to firms and nonprofit groups who support
local schools in real ways. Each year, the program acknowledges those groups
that give the most of their time, money or in-kind gifts. Last September, local
leaders set a goal of recruiting 50 OASIS partners during the following 12
months. By December, it had already brought 35 on board. “Partnership is a key
theme in our community,” according to Susanne Sartelle, president of the
Greenville-Pitt County Chamber of Commerce. Her organization has reached out to
local churches to encourage their involvement in the lives of at-risk youths,
and also has worked to bridge the divide between white- and minority-owned
businesses. “Inclusiveness is not only the right thing to do. It’s good
business,” she says.
Along with other groups, the chamber is pushing hard to revitalize downtown
Greenville. With a major enrollment boom expected at ECU in the coming two
decades, the city is bracing itself for its own population surge. It plans to
improve the business district that sits between ECU’s main campus and the
Brody School of Medicine. “We’re in the process of doing a master plan in
conjunction with the university,” says Don Parrot, the mayor of Greenville.
His vision calls for upgraded transportation thoroughfares for motorists,
pedestrians and bicyclists, as well as a possible monorail connecting the two
campuses. “We’re partnering with the university in building new parking
lots, a new performing arts center and, hopefully, attracting a major hotel
downtown,” Parrot says. He would also like to see a magnet school downtown, as
well as highway upgrades along the Greenville’s southern rim.
Retaining his city’s parochial charms while embracing economic opportunity and
an increasingly cosmopolitan vibe is the key to Greenville’s future, Parrot
says. “We’re growing at a faster clip than anywhere in the state,” he
notes, “but we still have a small-town atmosphere.”
It was Pitt County’s quality of life — anchored by its high quality medical
care, strong education, pleasant climate and manageable pace — that drew
DSM’s Terry Novak here two years ago from his previous life in northern New
Jersey. Sure, he’d like to see more restaurants and better local air service.
But all in all, the county is an ideal fit for the needs of his family and
his company. “I used to commute an hour and forty-five minutes each way to
work,” he recalls. “Here, it takes me all of eight minutes to get home from
the office.”
Above: The
centerpiece of Greenville is the rapidly growing -- both in size and
reputation -- East Carolina University |
Biotech
Teaches a Critical Mass
Biotechnology
is the latest Holy Grail for communities aiming to grow good jobs in the 21st
Century. But in Greenville it’s no pipe dream. It helps when you have a
university and medical school ranked No. 2 nationally for technology transfer by
The Chronicle of Higher Education. Add to that the headquarters of University
Health Systems of Eastern Carolina and a growing outpost of DSM Pharmaceuticals,
two of the county’s largest employers, and you’ve already hit critical mass.
The city’s Technology Enterprise Center appears to be where the most exciting
new biotech operations are taking root. Opened in late 1997, the incubator sits
in the renovated 59,000-square-foot site of a defunct shirt mill. The center is
a partnership between the county development commission and ECU’s Center for
Applied Technology, though it pulls in resources from Pitt Community College,
the Small Business & Technology Development Center and N.C. State
University’s Industrial Extension Service. Firms are expected to meet certain
guidelines in order to reside there. But once inside, they benefit from
submarket rent, shared security, conferencing facilities and clerical support,
and considerable on-site business expertise.
The center’s tenants include Encelle, a life sciences firm developing
revolutionary tissue regeneration treatments, and PhytoMico, which is exploring
therapeutic applications based on the extracts of plant life gathered from
around the world. Both companies base their business operations in Raleigh,
while conducting their lab work at the Enterprise Center. “Wet lab space here
rents for about half of what they would have to pay in the Triangle,” says
John Chaffee, executive director of the Pitt County Development Commission.
Elsewhere at the center, Janus Development Group, a more recent tenant, is
developing groundbreaking devices that eliminate stuttering. “We started out
here with little more than a desk in the corner,” recalls Darwin Richards,
Janus’ CEO. Gradually, the firm grew into an office suite and a lab area.
Janus Development, which employs four at the center, was spun off from faculty
at ECU’s Department of Communication Science and Disorders.
Down the hall, Ideations LLC, which relocated to Greenville from Syracuse, N.Y.,
is developing a bedside tool for communications, education and entertainment
known as Dreamstation, which it hopes will benefit ill and disabled children.
“We’re here because the ECU Telemedicine Center is the best in the
country,” says Matt Carbone, the company’s owner. A comfortable climate, low
cost of living and access to top-notch business and technical resources were
among the assets that attracted Carbone and his company to Greenville. “People
have been nothing but supportive of us,” he says. “It just made sense and
felt right to be here.” — Lawrence Bivins
New
Convention Center Boosts Travel Industry
If
you haven’t visited Greenville in recent years, it’s high time for a road
trip. What was once a placid college town has grown into a dynamic city alive
with stimulating culture, shopping and recreation. Overall, some $134 million is
generated each year by visitors to Pitt County, according to an estimate by the
U.S. Travel Data Center. That’s not bad considering the county contains
neither a beach nor a mountain.
ECU’s football program alone brings in 150,000 visitors each season, which
translates into about $2 million in economic impact on each fall day that Pirate
fans file into 43,000-seat Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium. “Beyond ECU athletics,
Greenville has become a popular site for numerous sporting events,” says
Debbie Vargas, executive director of the Greenville-Pitt County Convention &
Visitors Bureau. In recent years, the city has hosted NCAA regional tournaments,
the Babe Ruth Girls softball playoffs, the Special Olympics and the Senior
Games.
Greenville’s medical care and retail assets draw many in from elsewhere in
Eastern North Carolina, as do the nightly entertainment attractions at local
music clubs. “Entertainment does bring a lot of people here,” says John
Chaffee, executive director of the Pitt County Development Commission. “But
we’re also a convenient hub for family reunions.”
Festivals account for much of the county’s tourism product. Farmville’s Main
Street decks out in Kelly green for its annual St. Patrick’s Day celebration.
Each September, Ayden hosts a well-attended Collard Festival. “This will be
the festival’s 29th year,” according to Don Russell, Ayden’s town manager.
“It is our biggest event of the year.”
Business and convention travel to the county got a boost last year with the
completion of the 32-acre Greenville Convention Center. The complex contains
74,000 square feet of meeting space, along with a 40,000-square-foot exhibit
area. Hilton Hotels, which operates adjacent to the new hall, partnered with the
city and the CVB in making the $12 million project a reality. The hotel invested
$2.5 million in upgrading and expanding its ballroom and overnight
accommodations.
Thus far, sizable trade groups such as the N.C. Pork Council and the N. C.
Association of CPAs have held major meetings there, as have several large church
groups. “We’re able to accommodate up to 2,800 people,” says the CVB’s
Vargas, which means Greenville could well play host to regional or even national
organizations.
In recent years, the youth-oriented city has quietly become a destination for
retirees. “It’s a great place to live for people at any stage of life,”
according to Larry Seigler, a retired pharmaceutical industry executive.
“You’re 20 minutes from Pamlico Sound, close to the beach and right next to
the state’s third largest university.” A plethora of low-cost cultural and
educational options, along with its high-quality medical care infrastructure,
have put Greenville on the map as a haven for active retirees, says the
56-year-old Seigler. — Lawrence Bivins
Grady-White Boats is a
homegrown firm that traces its founding to 1958 |
Singing
the Praises of Greenville Culture
Most
people know that music means big business in Nashville and Branson. If you live
outside of Pitt County, however, you might not know that there is similar
evidence in Greenville.
While not nearly as large as that of the other cities, Greenville’s music
scene is nothing if not eclectic. On any given night listeners can attend
performances ranging from the Brandenburg Concerto to a Jimmy Buffet cover band,
and most increments in between.
Like many things in Greenville, the trend is fueled by East Carolina University,
which established the town’s musical roots when it began building an
outstanding music education curriculum in the early 1960s, lessening its
reputation at that point of being little more than a teacher training college.
Three decades later, those early faculty members began retiring, and in their
place the School of Music began beefing up its ranks with concert virtuosi.
“As a result we now have a full complement of performance faculty — all of
whom are astoundingly good,” explains Ed Jacobs, an associate professor of
music composition at ECU. “It’s kind of ironic because we’re not in the
top tier of funding, nor do we have the cultural history of other
communities.”
Each March, Jacobs, who could easily pass for Greenville’s version of Billy
Crystal, organizes a festival known as New Music@ECU, which utilizes faculty,
student and guest artists in the performance of late 20th Century works. The
festival routinely features world premiere performances, often with their
composers seated in the audience. Founded three years ago with funding from
local and out-of-state foundations, New Music@ECU has become a highly popular
draw, filling nearly every seat at the university’s A.J. Fletcher Recital
Hall. “There’s a lot of excitement from both the students and the
community,” Jacobs says.
The campus also hosts the Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival and an annual Jazz
Festival named for the legendary Billy Taylor, a Greenville native. A nominal
charge, if any at all, is charged for admission to most concerts. “We have
over 400 free concerts per year here,” says Jacobs, a Boston native who came
to ECU five years ago.
And just what does any of this have to do with business?
“Quality of life is a very important consideration for any business
community,” explains Tom Feldbush, ECU’s vice chancellor for research,
economic development and community engagement and chairman of the Pitt County
Development Commission. Knowledge Age firms want to be sure they can recruit
talented workers to their community, he says, and a vibrant music scene ranked
highly on a recent national survey of technology workers. “It helps provide
the ambiance people require in their lives,” adds Feldbush. “I’d put it
right up there with the quality of our schools.”
As for Jacobs, he hopes the reputation of ECU’s music school as one of the
finest in the southeastern U.S. soon translates into additional funding and new
graduate programs. Additional classroom and performance space is already on its
way, courtesy of ECU’s share of the state’s $3.1 billion bond package.
“It’s really a very exciting time to be here,” Jacobs says. “It’s like
getting in on the ground floor of a promising new business.” -- Lawrence
Bivins
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