Leaders from Burke County, City of Morganton, Town of Valdese, Town of Drexel, the Town of Rutherford College, and Western Piedmont Community College gathered on Wednesday for the official groundbreaking of the industrial spec building at the Burke Business Park off I-40 at exit 96.
Leaders from Burke County, City of Morganton, Town of Valdese, Town of Drexel, the Town of Rutherford College, and Western Piedmont Community College gathered on Wednesday for the official groundbreaking of the industrial spec building at the Burke Business Park off I-40 at exit 96.
There will soon be visible progress on Burke’s $9.2 million industrial shell building, marking another step toward addressing the county’s economic stagnation.
County officials broke ground at the site in the Burke County Business Park on Wednesday afternoon. The building is funded by money originally earmarked for the Great Meadows megasite project.
The shell building will be a preconstructed facility designed to attract companies that seek to quickly start operations without building from scratch. The design is flexible, enabling a buyer to expand it from 100,000 square feet to 180,000 square feet.
County Manager Brian Epley said in a previous article that the business park is a critical asset to the county, because “it is one of our only marketable tools for economic development.”
“Burke County has largely struggled and lagged behind in the world of economic development in the region,” Epley said previously. “Our GDP (gross domestic product) is less today than it was in 2017 (and) our workforce has contracted. We haven’t, as a county, done a good enough job of reinventing ourselves after the exodus of textiles and furniture.”
The business park, located at Kathy Road (exit 96) and Interstate 40, was purchased about 25 years ago, Epley said, and is not solely the county’s property. The 83-acre industrial park is owned in partnership by the county, the City of Morganton, the Town of Valdese, the Town of Drexel, and the Town of Rutherford College.
Currently, the only other building in the park is a 95% complete location for Unix Packaging. Epley said the business park has grown slowly because at the time of its purchase, there was no investment into vital infrastructure such as water, sewer, and gas.
Charlotte-based contractor Matthews Construction was awarded the $9,231,000 bid for the spec building in mid-October.
Mica Banks is the County Government reporter for The Paper. She can be reached at 828-445-8595 or mica@thepaper.media.
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