Related Links

• The Power of Partnerships in Western North Carolina
• The Economic and Business Impacts of Hurricane Helene

Transcript

Tim Sablik: Hi, podcast listeners. In today's episode, you'll be hearing about a recent visit our engagement and community development team made to western North Carolina. Members of the Richmond Fed's Research team regularly organize visits to communities across the region we serve to learn about the unique economic conditions in each of those places.

First, I'll introduce Matt Martin and Erika Bell, and longtime listeners will remember them from past appearances on the show. Matt is the regional executive in the Richmond Fed's Charlotte branch. He leads the Bank's outreach efforts across North and South Carolina. Erika is the Richmond Fed's community development regional manager for North and South Carolina. Matt and Erika, welcome back to the show.

Matt Martin: Glad to be back.

Erika Bell: Great to be here.

Sablik: You were both on the team that recently visited western North Carolina. Matt, can you tell us a little bit about the places you visited and what drew you there?

Martin: This visit was part of a two-day trip to western North Carolina, with stops on day one in Hendersonville and Brevard before we headed out to Rutherford and Polk Counties. The first day included discussions with manufacturing firms, farmers, and regional leaders. We discussed the current state of those industries, as well as the overall health of the regional economy.

One of the things we've been following is the region's recovery from Hurricane Helene that hit in the fall of 2024. That was an ongoing topic of discussion as well.

Sablik: Yeah, and we'll get to that in a moment. I wanted to talk about one of the other places that you visited, which is Mill Spring. What did you see there?

Bell: On Wednesday, we began the day at Tryon International Equestrian Center in Mill Spring, which is a driver of the economy in this rural area. Leaders of the center explained a vision and build-out which employs 250 full-time employees and more than 500 staff at peak season. While there are cabins for rent and an on-site hotel, the events at the facility are attracting new hotels and dining in the surrounding area.

While at the equestrian center, we learned about the unique construction of the on-site hotel. Room units were manufactured in a nearby facility that uses a novel automation process, then the units were put together like building blocks on-site. Traditional construction tradesmen were used to complete the structure and put on the finishing touches. The nearby manufacturer hopes to replicate this design and method for future properties as they expand regionally and nationally.

Sablik: That's really interesting. I know housing is a recurring theme that comes up in nearly every place that our teams visit. What stuck out to you about the manufactured rooms you saw in Mill Spring? Are there any lessons that might apply to the housing challenges you've learned about in other places?

Martin: My first reaction was surprise when I learned that the hotel we were meeting in actually had been constructed using these prefabricated units that were then assembled. My second reaction was that this process holds out a lot of promise in making housing more affordable. I really look forward to seeing how the company progresses once they start full-scale production.

As Erika indicated, the factory is going to be heavily automated, so robots are going to do a lot of the tasks such as cutting wood. As you look at housing construction, a lot of the cost is on-site labor costs. This could reduce costs [and] certainly could reduce the time of production quite a bit. So, I think it holds out some promise.

Sablik: Another stop in your trip was Spindale, North Carolina. What stuck out to you from that visit, Erika?

Bell: In 2024, we visited Asheville. During that visit, we had the pleasure of meeting with Dr. Susan Mims, who leads Dogwood Health Trust. She mentioned the transformational work underway in Spindale and their part in it. Immediately following that visit, we added a visit to Spindale to our list.

The Spindale revitalization is an example of how innovation and collaboration can uplift a community. In a familiar story, many mills closed at the turn of the century, including the Stonecutter Mill there in Spindale, which was only a few blocks removed from its Main Street and once employed nearly 1,000 local people.

This revitalization project is transforming the community with affordable and market-rate homes, senior apartments, and essential home repairs to create a vibrant, mixed-income community. This work is now spreading throughout the region, from what we understand. With key partners, we explored the collaborations and funding that made it all possible, and also the work that continues.

Martin: I was really impressed by the unity of purpose in the town of Spindale. They had the city and various nonprofits and philanthropic organizations all working closely together to restore and add to the housing stock of the town.

After our meeting, I drove around the town and you can clearly see where homes have been built or restored. That included some homes that apparently had been in some pretty heavy disrepair. But I also think those efforts may have increased neighbors' attentiveness to improving the appearance of their own properties in the town in general.

Sablik: Yeah, and I'll be talking just a bit later to the town manager of Spindale to hear more about those things.

Matt, as you mentioned earlier, a lot of the communities in western North Carolina were devastated by Hurricane Helene in 2024. How are the places that you visited on this trip managing the recovery from that disaster?

Martin: The region really depends heavily on tourism, and that industry is finally approaching "normal." It's not quite fully recovered yet, but it's much better.

In the meantime, federal disaster and other funding has been slow to arrive to help with home repairs, business rebuilding, and other purposes. It appears that more progress has been made recently in securing those funding. So, regional leaders are hopeful that recovery efforts will be able to move faster from here on out.

Bell: While in the area, we had the great opportunity to meet with Sharon Decker. She has temporarily stepped away from her role as president of Tryon International to be the senior advisor for long-term recovery for the Governor's Recovery Office for North Carolina. This role was created because of Hurricane Helene's impact on western North Carolina. She shared with us the state's ongoing recovery efforts, so that was a great conversation, too.

Sablik: What is one thing you each took away from this visit that furthers the Richmond Fed's understanding of the economy in this region?

Martin: Over the last year or so, we've been talking more broadly about the resiliency of the U.S. economy. We saw a lot of resilience in action in the communities we visited. With the additional challenge of Hurricane Helene on top of broader economic and policy trends, they've had a lot to deal with. You can see the progress they're making across business and community efforts. There's still work to do in this area and it could benefit from a period of relative calm, given what's happened over the last couple of years.

Bell: For me, collaboration is key. It was striking to see the partnerships and collaborations that really are transforming Spindale, North Carolina, and the whole area as they recover from Hurricane Helene.

Sablik: After speaking with Matt and Erika, I next talked with one of the people they met on their visit, Scott Webber, the town manager of Spindale.

Scott Webber: I've been in local government now for almost 28 years — started off in a neighboring town and worked my way up through the ranks to a finance position there. Then, an opportunity opened up here at Spindale to become town manager. I seized the opportunity and what a wonderful opportunity it has been.

Sablik: Matt and Erika were sharing some of what they learned from their visit about the challenges that Spindale faced after the closure of Stonecutter Mill. How have you and the other town leaders in Spindale approached rebuilding the community after that loss?

Webber: Back in the '90s when the textile industry was largely going overseas, we lost our identity. The industry literally built the town around it.

Our approach was to start with what we as a municipality had at least some control over, which was to continue to invest in ourselves. We wanted to show that this was a community worth investing in. We looked at public projects that we could do and started with a streetscape project and other community projects like Thermal Belt Rail Trail that we partnered with our neighbors on. Also, we started looking at the housing component because that was in decline also after the loss of the textiles.

Sablik: I would imagine the loss of a major employer like that has a very visible impact on the downtown and surrounding areas. What were some of the key ingredients necessary as you were looking to achieve a successful revitalization of Main Street and the surrounding downtown areas of Spindale?

Webber: It was leveraging our existing assets and finding those local partners that would help us along the path. Those public sector investments are costly, so we had to really lean on and leverage our local resources to bring in outside investment.

The key was, of course, having the community and local buy-in to that vision. We started early on, especially with the streetscape project, with a community steering committee. Having that buy-in from the community gave our local elected leaders the confidence that they needed to move forward with those truly transformative projects.

Sablik: You also were focused on expanding and improving housing options alongside this downtown investment. How did you go about tackling the housing aspect of this project?

Webber: We knew that there was a critical need for housing in Spindale, but we hadn't really studied it. We hadn't really defined it. We weren't sure of all the various aspects of that. So, the housing needs assessment was step one and really helped us define that issue. That project led us to finding additional resources and partners to help move the needle on addressing the housing needs.

One of the interesting outcomes from that study was that we were a net importer of employees into Spindale. Certainly, some of those workers in Spindale would prefer to live in Spindale if there were only housing available for them.

Sablik: That's a really interesting and good point about doing that study to assess what you needed to be successful. Did you learn any other things from this revitalization process that would inform kind of the advice that you might give to other town leaders that are facing similar challenges?

Webber: Small rural communities just lack internally the resources to do a lot of the truly transformative work alone. Municipalities don't typically get into the construction of new homes. So, I think the biggest takeaway is finding those local community partners that share in your vision to help in filling those gaps — so, in this case, new affordable housing, workforce housing. We were fortunate to have some existing relationships with local partners like Rutherford County Habitat for Humanity, Rutherford Housing Partnership, and philanthropic support from the Stonecutter Foundation, which interestingly was born of the Stonecutter Mills Corporation that we spoke of earlier that had closed back when the textile industries left.

Sablik: Yeah, that's definitely a theme that we've heard on the show before — the importance of partnerships for these sorts of development projects. What's next on your plate?

Webber: The next thing we're looking at is a very important project for Spindale and our neighboring town of Rutherfordton. We have partnered with that town and also NCDOT on a transportation corridor. It's a RAISE grant-funded project, which is a federal program. We secured a little over $20 million for transforming our Main Street into a Complete Streets model, looking at transportation more holistically as opposed to the old model of just moving vehicles from point A to point B — pedestrians, cyclists, all modes of transportation, public transportation.

That project is going to let at the end of this year and will really connect our two communities and citizens better. It's continued investment in our downtown because Main Street, obviously, is our central commercial district. Just the beautification and enhancement that will come with that, outside of the safety component, I think is going to really spur additional economic development in our core downtown district.

Sablik: Well, Scott, thanks so much for joining me today to talk about your town and everything that is going on there.