Building blocks: Pitt County is creating its future on a solid foundation of economic assets.

• Author: Blake, Kathy
• Position: SPONSORED SECTION: FOCUS ON PITT COUNTY

The 10th Street Connector has a complex price tag--$37 million--but a basic goal: uniting Greenville. It will connect Vidant Medical Center, Pitt County's biggest employer, East Carolina University and the heart of the city. It will have lanes for pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists, along with transit stops, when it opens in spring 2019. There also will be a unique piece of art. A 16-foot tall sculpture by internationally recognized artist and ECU professor Hanna Jubran will stand at what locals consider the city's entrance, the intersection of 10th and Evans streets. "We're sending a signal to visitors and residents that this place matters," says Bianca Shoneman, director of Uptown Greenville, a nonprofit dedicated to revitalizing Pitt County's seat.

Jubran's creation--Into the Future--has two vertical stainless-steel forms that are perforated. The holes look like stars in a constellation when illuminated. Each form will be topped with a 5-foot diameter globe filled with components that turn with the wind. One will be placed on each side of the intersection. "The two forms are visually connected to make a gateway," he says. "The globe represents economy, industry, technology and celestial motion. It is a new generation, a new way of thinking. We selected stainless steel because it is a modern material and rust-resistant, so it represents industry and technology. And the way I sand the surface, it will become reflective at night, and that's another reason we decided on stainless steel. That was the goal of me and [his wife, Jodi, a fellow artist and ECU professor]. How do we see Greenville and Pitt County moving into the future?"

That future is unfolding nearby. American Tobacco Co. opened offices in Greenville in 1893. At that time, it was a community of blacksmiths, shoemakers and mariners who plied the Tar River, which winds its way to the Pamlico River and eventually the Atiantic Ocean. It had six tobacco factories, along with knitting and grist mills, six churches and a dozen barrooms a decade later. Export Leaf Tobacco Co. built a Greenville plant in 1911. The massive brick building has a towering smokestack, and its long facade, which is adjacent to railroad tracks, is covered with color in spring and summer, when a row of dogwoods and crape myrtles bloom. It has a new name --Haynie Building--and a new owner--East Carolina University. The building joins neighbors, the former American Tobacco Co. and Prichard-Hughes warehouses, on the National Register of Historic Places. They are part of the Tobacco Warehouse Historic District, a more than 20-acre portion of Greenville that's a block from where Jubran's sculpture will stand.

The Haynie Building became part of ECU's East Carolina Research and Innovation Campus in April 2015, when the UNC Board of Governors made it the statewide system's eighth Millennial Campus. It provides a place where education, industry, government and other partners intermingle and innovate. The research campus comprises four sites: the health-sciences portion of campus in downtown Greenville; the Stratford Arms and Blount Fields properties near Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium, where 50,000 fans gather to watch the university's NCAA Division I football team play; and the warehouse property. "The historic warehouse district will probably be the piece of property where the first facilities are constructed," says Ted Morris, ECU's associate vice chancellor of innovation and economic development. "We're going to restore the Haynie Building and make it into an economic and development hub."

ECU's Millennial Campus is part of an economic transformation that's underway in Pitt County. Economic staples are being harnessed for new opportunities in advanced manufacturing, health care, education and entrepreneurship. "Our interest in the uptown area is how we might continue to impact development for the city of Greenville in the part surrounding the main campus," Morris says. "The Warehouse District will be a catalyst to Greenville's assets and innovation. We've been a natural resources-based economy, and tobacco isn't going away; fisheries aren't going away. They're being enhanced with technology. Our job is to grab that line of prosperity that ends in Raleigh and drag it one more link eastward. The line doesn't go from Charlotte to Raleigh, but from Charlotte to Greenville. There has...