EASTERN ECONOMY HEATS UP: From agriculture to industry development, the Nash-Edgecombe region dons many hats.

• Author: Blake, Kathy
• Position: REGIONAL REPORT: NASH AND EDGECOMBE COUNTIES

Endless fields of cotton and rich green tobacco epitomize Nash and Edgecombe counties, an agriculturally blessed coastal plain landscape an hour east of Raleigh.

Five years ago, farms and forest accounted for 24.8% of Nash's total economic input and 18.9% of its employment. In Edgecombe, a study by the N.C. Agriculture Development & Farmland Preservation Trust Fund found that 46% of its land is prime soil for agricultural production. About 3.8% of the county's 56,552 people list agriculture as their full-time job.

But Nash-Edgecombe is changing. Rocky Mount, straddling the county line, ranked eighth on a 2017 Forbes list of best small U.S. cities for cost of doing business. And industrial giants and young developers alike are betting on Nash-Edgecombe.

In 2017, Raleigh media company Capitol Broadcasting Co. purchased 200-year-old Rocky Mount Mills, a 50-acre former cotton mill including a factory and mill houses, to develop as retail, restaurants and residential units. LarGerKo LLC, a Durham-based real-estate investment company started by three young entrepreneurs, bought the May & Gorham Drug Store, built in 1904; the Alford Building; and the historic Carleton House restaurant and hotel in downtown Rocky Mount. They expect to reopen the hotel, with 60 rooms and four suites, in the second quarter of 2019.

And the $48 million Rocky Mount Event Center, a 165,000-square-foot sports, entertainment and convention complex on 4 downtown acres, is scheduled to open this fall.

"Our native sons and daughters are moving back home to live and raise families, and they're starting to invest in their own companies," says John Jesso, downtown development manager of Rocky Mount.

International businesses also are moving in. China's Triangle Tyre is spending at least $580 million on its car- and truck-tire manufacturing facility at Edgecombe's Kingsboro megasite. Nutkao Inc. of Italy, maker of hazelnut, cocoa and dark chocolate spreads, is increasing its Battleboro plant workforce. Belgium-based Poppies International Inc., India-based FarmTrac, Japan-based Keihin Corp. and Switzerland-based ABB Inc. also have settled in Nash-Edgecombe. Corning Inc. announced construction of an $86 million warehouse and global distribution center adjacent to the Kingsboro site for its new glass-packaging product, Valor Glass.

"The most exciting thing about this is we have a real story to tell. I see the face of the Twin Counties changing," says Oppie Jordan, vice president of the Carolinas Gateway Partnership, the counties' economic development and recruitment agency. "We're having new success with a tremendous amount of advanced manufacturing."

Don Williams, chairman of the partnership, moved to Rocky Mount in 1969 as co-founder and creative director of Lewis Advertising and has witnessed the transformation.

"When my wife and I moved to Rocky Mount from Richmond, there were eight tobacco warehouses and several very large international tobacco processing facilities in operation here," he says. "They are all gone now. During the last 50 years, the Rocky Mount area has worn a variety of different hats. Thanks to having such a strong base of international companies, we're now more aggressively targeting advanced manufacturing."

Norris Tolson, president and CEO of the partnership, says location was key to attracting Triangle Tyre Co., which Tolson calls the largest development in rural North Carolina history, along with the Corning distribution center. Together...