BRIGHTER FUTURE: A new industrial park sparks optimism in southeast North Carolina.

• Author: Barkin, Dan
• Position: POINT TAKEN

Robeson County is where Interstate 95 enters North Carolina from the south, and that is relevant, because in economic development as in real estate, location matters.

Another interstate, east-west 1-74, intersects with 1-95 on the southwest side of Lumberton--the county seat--and that has set up an interesting story about a new 215-acre industrial park that will be able to send trucks to much of the nation's population in less than a day. The first building, a distribution center, is going up right now.

What you know about Robeson County may be out of date. It is a county that has struggled economically, but there are good things happening. You have to go see them.

That's what I did last April, when I was working on a story about a Robeson County company called the Emerging Technology Institute, which turned an old, empty textile plant in Red Springs into a test facility for defense contractors. That led me to talk to more folks in Robeson, and that led me to the industrial park and Channing Jones, the county's economic development director.

And, so, recently I was walking around the park with him, where Elkay Manufacturing's new southeastern distribution center is being built, a 388,000-square-foot facility. Elkay, a century-old business based in a Chicago suburb, is the leading manufacturer of sinks, water fountains and bottle-filling stations in the country. It has been manufacturing in Lumberton for more than 40 years. In the early 1980s, Elkay Southern had 50 employees. Now it has hundreds in buildings a few miles from the industrial park, folks who make more than 1 million sinks a year.

The new distribution center will employ about 40 people when it opens in the first quarter of next year.

I asked Ken Blazer, Elkay's director of global distribution and logistics, what makes the site so good, because it would also give a window into what other companies might think about Robeson County in general. Here is what he emailed me:

"The transportation ecosystem starts with a strategic location midway between New York and Florida along 1-95, and the 1-74 corridor forms an ideal east-west crossroads. This unique location is served by excellent trucking and rail lines, nearby major airports, and easy access to deep-water ocean ports, so critical to our international supply chain."

Its construction also frees up space at the manufacturing plants that had been used for distribution, which could mean more jobs. More important, perhaps, is that the distribution center made the park possible, and the park helps create a new narrative. Earlier...