ASHEBORO – Randolph County is aiming to attract a new manufacturing business with the approval of a new economic incentive package.
At its Feb. 3 meeting, the Randolph County Board of Commissioners approved an approximately $92,000 economic development incentive package for a concrete manufacturing company to establish a facility in the county.
While the name of the company wasn’t revealed, the project is titled Blue Crab.
“Their goal is to construct a precast concrete manufacturing facility to serve the southeast region as the company expands their customer base,” said Crystal Gettys, Randolph County EDC’s business recruitment director. “It’s a 100-year-old company that is family owned and actually the president is the fifth generation of the family.”
If the company were to relocate to Randolph County, it would have a capital investment of approximately $9 million and would create 60 new jobs across five years with an average wage above $63,000 which exceeds average county wage of $49,335.
The incentive package will be paid out during a five-year period based on whether the company has met the criteria of job commitment and investments.
Gettys said the project also qualifies for potentially more than $350,000 in state grants and any local matches from those are included in the $92,000 incentive package.
The board also approved a $165,000 contract with Signage Industries for the construction of the agricultural center’s road sign and a $987,000 contract with Eastern Structures for the Bush Creek Pedestrian Bridge.
“This is located on Andrew Hunter Road at the edge of Franklinville’s existing trail and trailhead,” county engineer Paxton Arthurs said. “It will basically go from that existing trail west on the old railbed all the way out to Sapona Manufacturing.”
The bridge, which is located north of Deep River, will be 150 feet across and will connect an additional 1.5 miles of trail.
Initially, the county estimated the cost for the bridge to be $555,000, but staff found out that estimate was well below reality.
“We discussed this and thought it was probably low,” Arthurs said. “The Sandy Creek Bridge came in just under that, so the thought we were gonna build twice as long a bridge for not much more just didn’t sound right. So we were expecting it to go up, just not expecting it to go up as much as it did.”
However, the county has $860,000 in grant funding that is set aside specifically for this project which will help to offset the cost.
“I’d hate not to use that,” board member David Allen said. “Plus there’s been a lot of work done on this already. This is not just something that happened overnight. I’d hate to not utilize that money. The trail, the cost of building the trail, upgrading whatever is there, is not going to be a million dollars or something like that. The bridge is the big thing. We can then mix and match and put together enough to utilize that trail.”
The Board of Commissioners next meet March 10.
