Water/sewer service makes area northwest of Wilmington attractive to large, traded-sector businesses.
Are you a newcomer? You might be interested to learn that Wilmington’s economy hasn’t always relied as heavily on tourism and retirees as it does today. Going back to the days of naval stores (tar, pitch and other products from longleaf pines), fertilizer and the railroad industry, the Port City has a rich industrial history.
Even in more modern times, factories such as Dupont, Hercules, Babcock & Wilcox and others employed thousands in mostly well-paying jobs. The U.S. 421 North corridor has long been seen as an appropriate place to revive similar industries. Infrastructure improvements to that area have been a dream for decades.
And now, after two years of construction, water and sewer lines from the Isabel Holmes Bridge to the New Hanover-Pender county line are about to become reality.
This is good news for the entire region, which is lacking in so-called traded-sector businesses — companies that sell their goods and/or services to regional, national or global customers.
That stretch of U.S. 421 has functioned as a sort of industrial corridor for years, but factories have had to rely on on-site wells and septic systems.
With the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority plugging in, these new lines ought to mitigate the possible damages from sewer spills and the longer-term risks of depleting water aquifers.
More to the point, it should help the region’s economy grow a better mix of job-generating (and tax-generating) enterprises.
A healthy local economy can’t rely exclusively on service-industry wages and retirees’ Social Security and pension checks. We need some manufacturing jobs, especially the high-wage kind.
And, with a guaranteed, plentiful supply of water and a system of waste control, we should be in a better position to attract many more of these — not just the chemical factories of old, but a better balance.
The new I-140 corridor will provide these potential industrial sites with a first-rate transportation artery and the nearby Port of Wilmington is booming.
Building a better industrial corridor won’t solve all our problems. There will still be an issue of air quality; we don’t want to spoil our recreational/vacation business. And, if those businesses do attract workers, we need affordable houses and apartments for them — at a time when (according to Mayor Bill Saffo) Wilmington is 98 percent built up, and New Hanover County is probably not far behind.
But these are the problems of growth and progress, the kind we like to deal with. Thanks to those who pushed the U.S. 421 corridor project through, the area’s economic future looks considerably brighter.
