Jay Garner, the new CEO of the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce, brings an impressive resume and a history of successful economic development activities to the growing Asheville region
Significant developments in health-care reform are maintaining Asheville's status as a medical center for Western NC. Residents from surrounding counties utilize Asheville's hospitals, rehabilitation and psychiatric centers, and bevy of specialists.
Asheville's considerable tourism industry is fueled by the Biltmore Estate a revitalized downtown, and proximity to the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Women legislators in the North Carolina General Assembly are increasingly playing more prominent roles. This is most evident in the committees that are chaired by women, including the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee
Seeking to enhance the state's international trade activity, the N.C. State Ports Authority, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, spent $2 million to build the Perishables Handling and Chill Facility at the Wilmington Terminal.
Buncombe County, which includes popular Asheville, is expanding its economic base from a heavy reliance on tourist dollars to a balance of manufacturing, trade, transportation, utilities, and services.
North Carolina furniture makers are increasingly marketing their products to overseas markets. State furniture exports are rising as the industry targets markets in such regions as Asia and the Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East.
Alex Bernhardt, president of Bernhardt Furniture headquartered in Lenoir, is guiding his family's 106 year-old furniture company into the mostly untapped but fertile international marketplace.
In 1994, Food Lion, a Salisbury-based grocery store chain, overcame a harmful expose by ABC's \"Prime Time Live\" in 1992 to post its first successful year-to-year report since the program's airing