Assembling a future: technology is maintaining Catawba County's historic industries and booting up new ones.

• Position: SPONSORED SECTION: FOCUS ON CATAWBA COUNT

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It doesn't show on their bills, but iPhone users are making many calls to Catawba County. "Every Siri request, every Apple app operation goes through here," says Scott Millar, president of Hickory-based Catawba County Economic Development Corp. That's because the smartphone's creator --Apple Inc.--answers those requests at its 500,000-square-foot data center in Maiden. Since announcing it in 2009, the Cupertino, Calif.-based technology company has invested about $2 billion at the site, adding a second 21,000-square-foot building, solar farm and biogas energy plant along the way. Permits have been filed for a third building, this one measuring 14,250 square feet. The operation is one of the world's largest data centers and employs more than 300 people.

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Apple's growth is a bright spot in Catawba County, where the largest industry for decades--manufacturing--shrunk when companies shifted to less expensive offshore labor. In 2000, more than 43,000 Catawba County residents worked in manufacturing. By 2014, the number had declined to about 21,000, about a quarter of the county's workforce, according to the N.C. Department of Commerce. That contraction is a contradiction to the county's economy. Technology is magnifying local business assets--including plentiful low-cost electricity, water and transportation infrastructure--to maintain traditional industries and develop newer ones such as data centers.

State economic-development officials have anointed the region west and northwest of Charlotte the North Carolina Data Center Corridor. It's home to centers for companies including Menlo Park, Calif.-based Facebook Inc. in Rutherford County and India-based Wipro Ltd., Burbank, Calif.-based The Walt Disney Co., and Dallas-based AT&T Inc. in Cleveland County. They join Mountain View, Calif.-based Google Inc., which opened a Caldwell County data center in 2008, and Apple in Catawba County. The newest addition is Union, N.J.-based Bed, Bath & Beyond Inc., which in 2013 said it would create a $36.8 million, 46,000-square-foot data center in Claremont within two years.

Gov. Pat McCrory gave the state's data-center powerhouse reputation a boost when he signed the North Carolina Data Center Infrastructure Act in October. It offers property and utility sales-tax exemptions to data-center providers and occupants that have collectively invested at least $75 million in private funds in a data center. The law especially benefits smaller companies from noncompeting industries with similar needs. They can establish data centers in...