Mills River wooing $27 million industry with new 172 jobs

By offering #34,000 in economic development incentives, Mills River hopes to entice an unnamed industry, currently code-named Project Granite, to move to town, spend $27 million and bring 172 more jobs to the area, according to a report on hendersonvillelightning.com. The article notes that:

The prospect of 175 new jobs would add to Mills River’s success in attracting new business. Sierra Nevada and Empire Distributors opened last year and an international partnership of American, Italian and Israeli companies called Tri-Hishtil announced a plant-grafting operation that will bring 125 jobs to a 42-acre site on N.C. 191.

In addition to Mills River’s offer, the Henderson County Board of Commissioners will consider whether to offer an additional package of incentives worth $783 thousand. Read the full story here.

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About Jeff Fobes
As a long-time proponent of media for social change, my early activities included coordinating the creation of a small community FM radio station to serve a poor section of St. Louis, Mo. In the 1980s I served as the editor of the "futurist" newsletter of the U.S. Association for the Club of Rome, a professional/academic group with a global focus and a mandate to act locally. During that time, I was impressed by a journalism experiment in Mississippi, in which a newspaper reporter spent a year in a small town covering how global activities impacted local events (e.g., literacy programs in Asia drove up the price of pulpwood; soybean demand in China impacted local soybean prices). Taking a cue from the Mississippi journalism experiment, I offered to help the local Green Party in western North Carolina start its own newspaper, which published under the name Green Line. Eventually the local party turned Green Line over to me, giving Asheville-area readers an independent, locally focused news source that was driven by global concerns. Over the years the monthly grew, until it morphed into the weekly Mountain Xpress in 1994. I've been its publisher since the beginning. Mountain Xpress' mission is to promote grassroots democracy (of any political persuasion) by serving the area's most active, thoughtful readers. Consider Xpress as an experiment to see if such a media operation can promote a healthy, democratic and wise community. In addition to print, today's rapidly evolving Web technosphere offers a grand opportunity to see how an interactive global information network impacts a local community when the network includes a locally focused media outlet whose aim is promote thoughtful citizen activism. Follow me @fobes

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