Focal Point Local

Strategy For Northwest North Carolina Economic Development County-Based

By Miles Tager

The consultants hired to prepare the Northwest North Carolina Economic Development Strategy are focusing on individual counties, including Ashe, according to one of the company’s principals coming to the area soon.

AngelouEconomics of Austin, Texas, hired to carry out the grant –funded CEDS - or Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy – is going to focus on the needs and potential of the individual counties in the region, according to Angelou Vice-president for Economic Development Amy Holloway.

Holloway will be part of the company’s four-person team coming to Winston-Salem and the NW North Carolina region, including Ashe as well as Alleghany, Surry, Davie, Stokes, Rockingham, Yadkin and Forsyth counties, on Monday, February 24 for the project kick-off event.

The team will include Angelou founder and principal Angelos Angelou, who will lead the team in a presentation of “what to expect” from the 10-month long-term plan for regional economic growth and development from the western Piedmont to the most northwest corner of the state.

“We are finalizing the agenda and format now,” Holloway said; the event is attracting business and community leaders from all over the region, including a bus traveling to Winston-Salem that day from Ashe County.

The kickoff event is being sponsored by the NWNC CEDS Committee, which includes Ashe County Chamber Executive Director Kitty Lawrence.

“We are very excited about this project, which is the largest we have ever undertaken,” Holloway said.

AngelouEconomics specializes in “technology-based economic development,” and for the NWCEDS plans to tailor their strategy to each individual county, ranging from urban Forsyth to rural Ashe.

“We decided early on to approach it on the micro-level, then come to the big conclusions” Holloway said; so as not to impose a region-wide solution that ignored local conditions.

Three other CEDS are currently underway across North Carolina; the one involving Watauga County is being approached only on a regional basis.

Representatives from the consultant firm came out to the area in December on “something of a stealth mission,” Holloway said, helping to gain an understanding of the differences within the region.

After the Winston-Salem kickoff, the team will stay in North Carolina and drive throughout their CEDS region, coming to Ashe “sometime between February 25 and March 4.

AngelouEconomics was founded in 1995 and has advised cities, states and national governments in Europe, South America and across the United States, providing services from site selection to planning and marketing.

AngelouEconomics of Austin, Texas, hired to carry out the grant –funded CEDS - or Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy – is going to focus on the needs and potential of the individual counties in the region, according to Angelou Vice-president for Economic Development Amy Holloway.