In this park, trees aren't the only things growing.

• Position: University Research Park, Charlotte, North Carolina - Special Advertising Section

Charlotte's economy, like the state's, has come a long way in 30 years. Back then, a lot of the city's growth came from unskilled, low-wage distribution jobs. Its narrow economic base caused several high-profile relocation prospects to jilt the Queen City.

To prevent the pain of being stranded at the altar, W.T. "Bill" Harris, a Charlotte supermarket mogul and the local Chamber of Commerce president, helped create what has become one of the area's top economic-development tools, its very own research park. "We had to move away from the total warehouse/distribution type of business and get more research and people with more education," Harris, who died a few years ago, said in a 1979 interview.

By luring world-renowned research-and-development companies to the area, University Research Park has helped diversify and add vitality to the Charlotte economy. These companies, many of which later expanded their operations or relocated their corporate headquarters here, brought a multitude of top-flight workers and jobs to town. That improved the tax base and broadened the region's economic foundation -- largely transportation and textiles -- to include high-tech and other important, high-wage industries.

"Research parks are magnets for new business, not just within the parks but statewide," N.C. Commerce Secretary Dave Phillips says. "Research parks have become a major tool for recruiting industry, which creates growth in other parts of the state."

Charlotte's University Research Park came into existence 10 years after the much-publicized Research Triangle Park. Even though URP was modeled after the RTP site in Wake and Durham counties, Harris and his helpers changed the formula to fit the Charlotte market more precisely. Unlike its big brother to the north, the Charlotte park was primarily a private effort. The prosperity of URP has come from within.

By adding a successful business incubator and by changing the mix of tenants, URP has chosen a different, less-publicized path. "The park should be construed as an extension of, and not a competitor with, the Research Triangle Park," Bill Harris wrote, in the book University Research Park: The First Twenty Years. This may still be the case, but it sticks in the craw of the park's current management.

"In any other state, we'd be a big shot," laments Seddon "Rusty" Goode Jr., president of University Research Park. "We've done an outstanding job in the data and headquarters arena, but nobody knows about...