Trending west: Western North Carolina is bursting with cultural, civic and business opportunities.

• Position: WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA ROUND TABLE

WHAT ARE SOME INDUSTRIES THAT ARE EXPERIENCING GROWTH HERE AND SOME NEW TRENDS?

MANHEIMER Since 2012, we have seen 11% job growth in health care and social assistance, and professional, scientific and technical services are up 24%. Our food service and retail, like it's trending nationally, we're up quite a bit in those sectors. A chamber analysis indicated that we need to target jobs that pay good wages. There is a big push to try to bring tech in, and their recommendation was to grow it in the city. This generation wants to work and live in downtown areas and be able to walk to work. That would be ideal to continue growth in that area.

DILLS One of the areas I hear a lot about is connectivity, especially in some of the outlying areas from the metro area. When we talk to businesses looking to relocate here, they're looking at how connected employees will be outside of their jobs. That is a big question mark in drawing an employer to town.

GRANT When I think about this generation of students, they are looking at how they can have whole lives and have a job where they can put down roots and be part of their community. It's a very civic-minded generation, so in addition to the tech-savviness, they really want to be part of something bigger than themselves, and I think that's a big part of what Asheville has to offer. We are seeing increasing enrollment in sections like our mechatronics and computer science programs, but also in our writing and literature programs. So it's a really interesting generation coming through.

DEMPSEY One of the cool things, too, about this region is there is a certain amount of thought leadership that goes on here as it relates to creating new products, new markets and new services. We are in the business of designing hard goods. They are recreational, but they're traditional consumer goods. Since this is the birthplace of some of these product ideas, it's a great place because we are defining the new consumer trends ahead of the rest of the country. It's one of the very few places that actually thinks a little differently and leads in that thought, so that's one of the exciting parts about the region.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE MAJOR ECONOMIC-DEVELOPMENT TARGETS?

DILLS It kind of runs the gamut, but manufacturing is still a hot-button topic because it's a large employer. It brings lots of jobs to the area. The expansion that we're seeing is across all industry lines. There are a lot of retail companies that are expanding. The automotive industry has had some of the best years in the last decade, so they've seen tremendous improvements.

MANHEIMER Linamar came in and replaced Volvo. That's a good example. We saw GE Aviation. And we have on the horizon now, everybody knows, another big craft brewer looking at our region. [Oregon-based Deschutes Brewery is considering Asheville for an East Coast location.] We're crossing our fingers. So I think we're seeing a lot of different opportunities, and we're hoping to get advanced manufacturing. We actually don't do anything, really, to grow the tourism industry. It's just growing here, and I think that all kinds of things are helping to create that result. We're seeing four or five new hotels downtown, and we have 18 large-scale developments in the area with construction totaling...