2005 Rural Partners Forum
Remarks by Everette Clark, Mayor of Marion
As President of the North Carolina League of Municipalities, I bring greetings to you from the executive committee, the board of directors, the membership, which consists of 539 of those cities that Billy Ray mentioned, and from the league staff and our executive director, Ellis Hankins.
The population of our state is about 8 _ million and of that 52 percent live within municipalities. The purpose of the league when it was organized was to promote excellence in municipal government, provide opportunities for officials to change ideas, to advocate for cities and towns, and to develop a cooperative approach to all municipal problems of statewide importance. I have served on the national league of cities board of directors, as chair of small cities for the national League of Cities, which defines a small city as 50,000 and under and so does the federal government. That's why we all get some community development block grant money where it's competitive. The big cities have a direct pipeline, but small cities - that's another challenge that we have -getting money from community development block grants monies. I serve on an advisory committee for the state. We are very keyed into your needs.
(Introduction of panel members, followed by PowerPoint presentation)
Marion is located in McDowell County, about 35 miles east of Asheville located just off Interstate 40. We were incorporated in 1844, and the population of Marion is about 6,300. McDowell County's population is about 43,000. We have about 40 percent of our land area in the Pisgah National Forest, so we don't have a whole lot of land for development. We are the county seat. The only other town in the county is Old Fort, which has a population of less than 1,000. I want to point out to you an article on Marion in the November issue of Our State Magazine that just came out.
Marion is similar to other small towns - we fit the pattern. Marion, being the county seat, has for years been the center of activity in the county, and we have lost manufacturing jobs, lost department stores on Main Street. Strip shopping centers have come. We have lost water and sewer revenue because of industrial loss; textile plants, furniture plants have gone. One of the positive things about what has happened to us is we increased our water plant and our waste water plant and when the industry left, it left us capacity in both, which has helped us to recruit some retail and commercial businesses ,and we have a new industry coming that's going to employ about 300 people.
I want to talk about downtown for just a minute - we hired a professional to design a logo, Where Main Street Meets the Mountains." Its fits very well. We had an old logo - something that we came up with - we said we were "progressive and friendly." Well, a lot of people had a problem with that. They had a problem with a town having a plaque suggesting you may not be so friendly and you may not be so progressive, so we thought we needed to change it and we did. We think we were right. The chamber of commerce likes using that logo now, and we think we have a very nice main street. This picture is probably from the 20's and 30's. Marion has two railroads, the Norfolk Southern runs east and west, and the CSX runs north and south - they cross in Marion. Back in the early days, when we were getting all the freight in by rail, Marion was really a thriving town.
When we started losing businesses downtown in the 70's and 80's, we knew we had to do something about our downtown so the council at that time undertook to do some revitalization. We did the brick sidewalks, the decorative street lighting and put in landscaping. Let me say something about recruiting industry. When industry comes to look at you they look at what your town looks like. If you've got a town that's not cleaned, you've got weeds growing in your parking lots and things are not kept up, its not very impressive. Many people, industrial folks who come to look at our county, make good comments about our downtown. So we are very proud of our downtown.
If you are going to do a lot of things, you've got to get your local people and the private sector involved. We have created a downtown business association with a president. The city council funds them out of our general revenues. The association consists of business owners, property owners, bankers and city officials. They coordinate downtown events. We created a partnership just this year to do economic development with primary focus on the central business district and we are doing well with that. We have a festival in October, which we just had. It was the best year we've ever had - a Christmas Parade, 4th of July Parade and many other events. We try to keep something going on downtown almost every month. Also, we have a sidewalk sale once a quarter. We have an annual town meeting every year in January and invite the public in - anything they want to bring up they can bring up. Several years ago, there was a lot of interest in new and different things that they wanted to do downtown, so we appointed a downtown advisory council and that has been just great, having those people in place because we hear something new almost every time they meet. We support tourism and the arts. We were also selected as a North Carolina Main Street Community. In 2003, we were one of four cities selected statewide. The resource team comes in and helps you. You can start those efforts of revitalization, and we've done that. The four principles of the main street approach are organization, promotion economic restructuring and design.
We spent $1.4 million to fix up the old railroad depot. The Southern rail line runs right by the building, and it's being used by the public four or five times a week. We have also a community building - which was being taxed almost to the hilt. Having the depot building has really helped. We have a police department that we renovated in 2004. We spent $1.3 million on that beautiful building - built during WPA days - it's all out of stone. That building is used almost every single day. The park - a really interesting thing happened. We raised $30,000 from the private sector to put in playground equipment - so folks the private sector will help you. The city hall, if you have not seen our city hall, I think it is one of the prettiest ones around and also the fire department on the right is fairly new. I want to show you good adaptive re-uses - the building with the covering on the front - the McDowell Arts and Crafts Association is in the process of renovating that building - the city contributes to McDowell Arts Council. Brand new building on main street, $1.3 million, probably the only one in several years that's been built by the private sector. The city has done a lot with its buildings, but this is a great building - re-use, that building was a furniture store for years. Edwards Jones Company bought the building. All their offices are on the main floor and upstairs is residential. There are 7,000 square feet on that upper level. And we had to change some zoning ordinances, to get some things changed. This is how business is moving into downtown with the effort that the city's put forth. The Crooked Door carpet shop is an old hotel building and the main level is occupied and the carpet shop is actually upstairs. Across the street is another old hotel building with a restaurant, which is very busy on our main street. We maintain an inventory of available buildings and connect interested business partners. We have a facade grant program, state and federal historic tax district credits for rehabilitation, and the N.C. Rural Center Microenterprise Loan Program that we have just started using. I want to show you the new buildings that have come in and the sales that have increased in the last two years in our community. This is phenomenal - they've increased $90 million, 23 percent, that's above the state average. We got a new Lowe's, Fast Cafe is coming, Sonics is open, auto parts. Webb's truck stop on Interstate 40 has been open less than three years, and it is unreal how many people are stopping there.
Then racing back to main street again - remember "Where Main Street Meets the Mountains." These are some of the trials and triumphs: we've lost over 2,300 manufacturing jobs in Marion since 1990. The challenge of recruiting new industry, new focus on retail improvement. We are very proud of Marion. I'm proud of my city council, we have a very aggressive city council. The mayor pro tem has been on the council for 20 years, I've been there for 34 years - I'm running for mayor again unopposed. The next two have been on the council 12 years and the next two, 10 years. So we have been together for 10 years or more. They are great people to work with - two attorneys, one with a doctorate one, with a master's degree and one retired grocery store owner.
