Rowan County landed what local leaders are lauding as its largest-ever economic development announcement. Macy’s Inc. plans to invest $584 million into a 1.4 million-square-foot fulfillment center in China Grove with plans of employing nearly 2,800 workers.
The move was the culmination of many months of momentum for Rowan County, which has emerged as one of the region’s hottest industrial submarkets. Rowan EDC President Rod Crider told the Charlotte Business Journal he expects the county’s momentum to continue. While its location along Interstate 85 makes it attractive for logistics, the county is beginning to see interest in other sectors as well.
Among those are suppliers from Toyota Motor Co.’s $1.29 billion battery manufacturing plant in the Triad. A win like Macy’s could take the momentum Rowan County has seen to new levels.
“What we’re seeing now is being dictated by the market and that is right now e-commerce fulfillment centers,” Crider said. “But we’re seeing a lot of interest from manufacturers from these vertical farming operations.”
Henry Lobb was part of Avison Young’s team representing The Silverman Group, the developer for the Macy’s project, in Rowan County’s big deal. Silverman initially announced last year that it would develop a speculative project at the Macy’s site, one of the first big speculative industrial announcements in Rowan County.
Lobb said the Macy’s deal landing in Rowan County “is a natural progression of the market.”
The county has other big industrial projects in the pipeline. NorthPoint Development is under construction on a 676,000-square-foot building in Salisbury. Red Rock Developments is planning a 2.65 million-square-foot industrial park. Trammell Crow Co. is also seeking approvals for a large project in Salisbury.
The team of Silverman and Avison Young was high on Rowan County for industrial long ago, in part because of its location and proximity to labor in both Charlotte and the Triad. The team heading the Silverman project, which is just off I-85’s Exit 68 along N.C. Highway 152, has seen its confidence rewarded with landing Macy’s.
“It was just looking at the labor story, looking at the labor demographics in the county, we felt very positive that a large development like this would be successful,” Lobb said. “But also mixed with some things like the issues we were expecting to see with sewer capacity in Cabarrus, we just felt that development has to continue to go somewhere and the next logical location is further down I-85 into Rowan County. With the immediate access to I-85 and the labor story, that’s why we felt that this would be a home-run site.”
Macy’s and the developers of the project were complimentary of Rowan County and China Grove’s local leadership for their persistence and business-friendly approach.
Greg Edds, chairman of the Rowan County Board of Commissioners, said there has been a shift in thinking by the county in recent years. Before, Edds said the county thought “that regionalism was a bad word.” Now, identifying with the Charlotte Region is benefiting Rowan County. In turn, the region as a whole benefits as development momentum moves outward.
“Five years ago, we were begging for stuff,” Edds said. “Of course, we’re blessed that we’ve got land and water and interstate. We’ve got all of the stuff we’ve always had, but we had not been following the recipe. So it is just an exciting time now.”
