Greenfield Assisting Greater Topsail Area Chamber of Commerce with Regional Growth Planning
Wilmington Business Journal
By Jenny Callison
April 11, 2023
Topsail Chamber Initiates Effort To Plan for Regional Growth
A fast-developing section of coastal North Carolina is organizing to address growth. In mid-March, the Greater Topsail Area Chamber of Commerce and Tourism convened the Greater Topsail Area Economic Planning Summit to begin work on what it calls Envision Penslow 2040.
The purpose of this inaugural event, according to chamber director Steven Hill, was to bring together all the public, private and nonprofit entities within a 25-mile radius of its offices to identify their concerns and goals. With the assistance of Greenfield, a regional economic consulting firm, and Jacksonville-Onslow Economic Development (JOED), the forum was a first step toward developing a regional approach to planned economic development.
“The idea was to put all the entities in the same place under the same umbrella,” Hill said Tuesday, noting that the area contains two counties, multiple municipalities and unincorporated communities, several utility providers and a major military installation.
“The [Greater Topsail] chamber is here to support all of them. We’re not trying to create another group,” he continued. “We want to make sure we identify all the agencies and start trying to describe what they are doing and what their goals are. We thought if we could identify common goals, we could communicate them to Sen. Thom Tillis’s office and support the kind of legislation we need.”
In an email Tuesday, JOED Executive Director Mark Sutherland outlined the challenges facing the region.
“The Greater Topsail Region will continue to be pressed relentlessly for the provision of community services,” he wrote. “Roads, water/sewer, public safety, parks and rec, schools, housing, commercial centers, etc. will all be in great demand and come with high price tags. Aside from funding, the single most complicating factor to implementing this fierce planning and funding chore list is the limited available land that is suitable for development. The region is already seeing competition for the scarce resource that developable land is, and it will get much more intense in the coming years.”
The area surrounding Holly Ridge, where the chamber offices are located, is one of the fastest-growing areas in North Carolina, according to Hill. The small municipality of Holly Ridge itself has grown over 430% since 2000, according to Census estimates. Population growth in the region attracts new residential and business development.
“We are all struggling to keep basic utilities and all that happening,” he said. “UPS just announced it is going to build a distribution center in Camp Davis Industrial Park in Holly Ridge. How do we take advantage of what’s happening? Where do we need to go? Everybody needs to have a voice.”
At the summit, leaders addressed growth-related issues that cross county, municipal and military boundaries. The event focused on five: water resources, business and industrial development, transportation mapping, utilities expansion and community planning, according to a news release following the summit.
Sutherland said that the projected growth brings opportunities, and gave chamber officials credit for getting the planning ball rolling.
“In the opportunity column, the unprecedented growth and investment that was forecast at the summit will bring a higher standard of prosperity to the region, yielding good jobs and a more diverse and resilient local economy,” he wrote in the email. “Economic development takes a symphony, with all sectors of the community playing together. The summit in Holly Ridge was a vivid display of the kind of regional unity required to realize the maximum benefits of growth while limiting the negatives. I think the Chamber did a magnificent job pulling all those myriad interests together for a half-day.”
The chamber was tasked with forming a focus group to follow up with needs and resources identified at the session. Hill is working with chamber staff and board members to survey all the groups that attended and ask them to nominate a representative to serve on the focus group. Hill hopes that the makeup of the group will be determined soon and the group will meet early this summer. Sutherland said JOED will be involved.
“Our non-profit (JOED) will continue to provide comprehensive economic development leadership to the entire community,” he said in the email. “We will reinforce the efforts of the Greater Topsail Chamber, and all our local government and private sector investors, by creating industrial sites and buildings; recruiting and retaining industrial businesses; and providing a wide array of technical assistance.”
Plans are for the economic development summit to be held annually or semi-annually, with focus group work ongoing in the meantime.
By Jenny Callison
April 11, 2023
Topsail Chamber Initiates Effort To Plan for Regional Growth
A fast-developing section of coastal North Carolina is organizing to address growth. In mid-March, the Greater Topsail Area Chamber of Commerce and Tourism convened the Greater Topsail Area Economic Planning Summit to begin work on what it calls Envision Penslow 2040.
The purpose of this inaugural event, according to chamber director Steven Hill, was to bring together all the public, private and nonprofit entities within a 25-mile radius of its offices to identify their concerns and goals. With the assistance of Greenfield, a regional economic consulting firm, and Jacksonville-Onslow Economic Development (JOED), the forum was a first step toward developing a regional approach to planned economic development.
“The idea was to put all the entities in the same place under the same umbrella,” Hill said Tuesday, noting that the area contains two counties, multiple municipalities and unincorporated communities, several utility providers and a major military installation.
“The [Greater Topsail] chamber is here to support all of them. We’re not trying to create another group,” he continued. “We want to make sure we identify all the agencies and start trying to describe what they are doing and what their goals are. We thought if we could identify common goals, we could communicate them to Sen. Thom Tillis’s office and support the kind of legislation we need.”
In an email Tuesday, JOED Executive Director Mark Sutherland outlined the challenges facing the region.
“The Greater Topsail Region will continue to be pressed relentlessly for the provision of community services,” he wrote. “Roads, water/sewer, public safety, parks and rec, schools, housing, commercial centers, etc. will all be in great demand and come with high price tags. Aside from funding, the single most complicating factor to implementing this fierce planning and funding chore list is the limited available land that is suitable for development. The region is already seeing competition for the scarce resource that developable land is, and it will get much more intense in the coming years.”
The area surrounding Holly Ridge, where the chamber offices are located, is one of the fastest-growing areas in North Carolina, according to Hill. The small municipality of Holly Ridge itself has grown over 430% since 2000, according to Census estimates. Population growth in the region attracts new residential and business development.
“We are all struggling to keep basic utilities and all that happening,” he said. “UPS just announced it is going to build a distribution center in Camp Davis Industrial Park in Holly Ridge. How do we take advantage of what’s happening? Where do we need to go? Everybody needs to have a voice.”
At the summit, leaders addressed growth-related issues that cross county, municipal and military boundaries. The event focused on five: water resources, business and industrial development, transportation mapping, utilities expansion and community planning, according to a news release following the summit.
Sutherland said that the projected growth brings opportunities, and gave chamber officials credit for getting the planning ball rolling.
“In the opportunity column, the unprecedented growth and investment that was forecast at the summit will bring a higher standard of prosperity to the region, yielding good jobs and a more diverse and resilient local economy,” he wrote in the email. “Economic development takes a symphony, with all sectors of the community playing together. The summit in Holly Ridge was a vivid display of the kind of regional unity required to realize the maximum benefits of growth while limiting the negatives. I think the Chamber did a magnificent job pulling all those myriad interests together for a half-day.”
The chamber was tasked with forming a focus group to follow up with needs and resources identified at the session. Hill is working with chamber staff and board members to survey all the groups that attended and ask them to nominate a representative to serve on the focus group. Hill hopes that the makeup of the group will be determined soon and the group will meet early this summer. Sutherland said JOED will be involved.
“Our non-profit (JOED) will continue to provide comprehensive economic development leadership to the entire community,” he said in the email. “We will reinforce the efforts of the Greater Topsail Chamber, and all our local government and private sector investors, by creating industrial sites and buildings; recruiting and retaining industrial businesses; and providing a wide array of technical assistance.”
Plans are for the economic development summit to be held annually or semi-annually, with focus group work ongoing in the meantime.