High country commerce: Buncombe County leverages its quality of life and picture-perfect surroundings to attract manufacturers, entrepreneurs and long-term investment.

PositionBUMCOMBE COUNTY ROUND TABLE - Interview

Buncombe Cannot has been getting a lot of press lately and the reviews are good The hub of Western North Carolina's economy, Buncombe and Asheville, its county seal; are nicking up accolades, including being named one of Forbes's Best Places for Business and Careers and AmericanStyle Magazine's No. 2 Small City for the Arts. To spur recovery after the recession, the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce and the Economic Development coalition of Asheville-Buncombe County launched the Asheville 5x5 Camping n a year ago to raise $3 million to create 5,000 jobs and help existing businesses expand. The money will go to promote five job sectors: advanced manufacturing, health care, arts and culture, science and technology and bowie-based entrepreneurship. The chamber projects the jobs created by the campaign will generate $192 million in wages, $137 million in consumer spending and $5.5 million in annual sales-tax revenue the region, with an overall economic impact of $672.2 million per year at the end of five-year initiative. Gathering to discuss this campaign and Buncombe's business and economic future were Jack Cecil, president of Biltmore Farms LLC; Chuck Cloninger, a construction-law attorney at na and Smith P.A.; Kit Cramen president and CEO of the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce; Rick Manske, managing partner of Parsec Financial Management Inc.; Dr. Ronald Paulus, president and CEO of Mission Health System Inc.; Anne Ponder, chancellor of UNC Asheville; Troy Tolle, co-founder and chief technology officer of DigitalChalk; and Oscar Wong, president of Highland Brewing Co. The round-table discussion, held at UNC Asheville's Wilma M. Sherrill Center, was moderated by BUSINESS NORM CAROLINA Publisher Ben Kinney and sponsored by Parsec Financial, Ward and Smith and UNC Asheville. Following is a transcript, edited for brevity and clarity.

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How's business in Buncombe County?

Cramer: We're having a good year. We've got another $208 million in our pipeline for economic development projects that represent over 1,700 jobs.

Have patient visits at Mission Health increased lately?

Paulus: Our volumes are up in many areas. We recently have taken a look at a strategic-planning model that forecasts future demand. Based on aging of the population alone, we're going to see an explosion of need for physician and inpatient services. The average person under 45 uses less than one hospital day per year. You get up to 65, and you're using two to three days per year. At 85, you're using almost 15 days per year. So there's a big, big explosion in demand.

Is development activity picking up for Biltmore Farms?

Cecil: I'm glad we made it through the Great Recession. We're starting to see an uptick. The apartment business is going very well. The hotel and hospitality business has turned around nicely in the last 12 to 18 months. We've leased 95% of our office space. We're still a little soft in residential homesites, but they are starting to come back. We've seen more business and more volume in The Ramble and Biltmore Lake developments in the last six to eight months than we've seen in the last three or four years.

UNC Asheville has received a lot of positive recognition lately.

Ponder: Making the Kiplinger's and Princeton Review and U.S. News & World Report quality and value rankings is very, very exciting. We also made the top 20 universities located in cool college towns and the top 20 nationally for students...

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