Surry Business

When people in North Carolina hear about an economic-development incentive, it’s usually in connection with attracting a new business.

However, existing industries may qualify for incentives, too. Ron Leitch, an economic development representative for the N.C. Department of Commerce says a qualifying company may earn $12,500 for each job and 7 percent of all investment involved in job creation.

Leitch said the state also can tap into two grant funds to keep companies from going to another state.

The key to qualifying for the grants and other incentive programs is job retention, Leitch emphasizes.

For more information, contact the Surry County Economic Development Partnership in Dobson or the N.C. Department of Commerce.

Surry County-based Mobys Coffee has opened its third Winston-Salem store. The new Christian coffee house is at 102 W. Third St. off Liberty Walk.

The company in October opened stores in the former Wendy’s restaurant at 619 Deacon Boulevard and at 193 Summit Square Boulevard off Hanes Mill Road. Both feature live Christian bands on Friday and Saturday nights.

Mobys Coffee has one Mount Airy store in the Forrest Oaks shopping mall at 2123 Rockford Road.

The company’s corporate headquarters is at 1326 N. Main, Mount Airy.

UPS (formerly known as United Parcel Service) will increase rates for U.S. ground, air-express and international shipments by an average 4.9 percent, effective Dec. 31.

FedEx Corp. will raise its air-shipping rates effective Jan. 7, 2008, by an average of 4.9 percent. The increase will apply to air shipping within the United States and to items exported abroad.

FedEx has confirmed its intention to raise its rates for U.S. ground shipments, but has not announced by how much.

Four of the Piedmont Triad region’s 20 largest wineries produce their wines in Surry County, according to an annual industry survey produced by The Business Journal of the Greater Triad.

The biggest winery in the 12-county northwest North Carolina region is Shelton Vineyards at 286 Cabernet Lane in Dobson, which between September 2006 and September 2007 produced 421 tons of grapes and 30,000 cases of syrah, cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay and other award-winning wines, according to The Business Journal. The winery is owned by brothers Charlie and Ed Shelton. Murphy Moore is the winemaker.

Old North State Winery, 208 N. Main in Mount Airy, ties for fifth largest with production of 5,000 cases. The winery is owned by Tom Webb and his partners. Ben Webb is the winemaker.

Ranked 13th is Round Peak Vineyards at 765 Round Peak Church Road in Mount Airy. The winery produced 2,100 cases of chardonnay, Niagara and special blends such as Fiddler’s Red. Janet and Lee Martin and Susan and George Little own the vineyard and winery. Sean McRitchie is the winemaker, according to The Business Journal.

Black Wolf Vineyards, 283 Vineyard Lane in Dobson, is the 15th largest operation on the list published Nov. 16. Dana Theis is the owner; Anne Holcombe the winermaker.

All four wineries offer tours and tastings (check their web sites for hours and prices). Three have restaurants on the premises: Harvest Grill at Shelton Vineyards, Scuppernongs at Old North State and Black Wolf Restaurant at Black Wolf Vineyards.

Bank of America has opened its new “Bank the Way You Live” online banking microsite, http://bankofamerica.com/anywhere, “where in one place, customers with on-the- go lifestyles can learn how to break free of conventional banking and find the freedom and control to manage their personal finances online or via mobile or smart phone.”

The site features information on the tools that give Bank of America customers “the freedom to bank without boundaries, the control to manage their own finances at the touch of a computer key or phone pad and the security to know that their finances are protected.”

In addition to being a tutorial for current and prospective customers, the site is also a portal to Bank of America’s award-winning suite of online and mobile banking products.

Bank of America is one of the world’s largest financial institutions. The company serves 57 million consumer and small business relationships with more than 5,700 retail banking offices, including one in Surry County at 704 Independence Boulevard, Mount Airy.

Bank of America is the No. 1 overall Small Business Administration (SBA) lender in the United States and the No. 1 SBA lender to minority-owned small businesses.

This week’s edition of Yes! Weekly in Greensboro reports the inside story of a media battle between two daily newspapers based in Mount Airy.

“Two rival newspapers duke it out in Surry County” by staff writer Amy Kingsley uses court documents to describe the “dastardly plot” conceived by publishers Mike Milligan, then with The Mount Airy News, and Rebel Good, then with the Elkin Tribune, to cripple the two publications before starting a new, competing five-day daily called the Surry Messenger.

Heartland Publications LLC in Connecticut bought the Mount Airy and Elkin newspapers in May along with about 14 other publications owned by Mid-South Management Co. Inc.

After Milligan and Good quit their jobs, founded Surry Publishing Group and launched the Surry Messenger, Heartland Publications sued the two and Milligan’s son Kevin, a third former Mid-South publisher, seeking compensation for damages to Heartland’s operations and an injunction that would prevent Surry Publishing Group from using documents and other information allegedly taken from The News and the Tribune.

In their response to the lawsuit, the defendants have denied Heartland Publications’ allegations and instead suggested that the lawsuit is intended to impede their new business.

Yes! Weekly’s story describes the run-up to the three publishers’ decisions to quit their jobs with Heartland Publications and recounts Heartland’s version of the actions Milligan and Good took to encourage former staff members to quit work and join the new publishing group financed by Mount Airy contractor and commercial-business developer C. Richard Vaughn.

The lawsuit filed in Surry County Superior Court may not be resolved before midsummer, Surry Publishing Group’s attorney told Yes! Weekly.

In the lawsuit’s latest development, reported Nov. 6 by Sherry Youngquist in the Winston-Salem Journal, Milligan and Good agreed not to use any documents they created or acquired while with The News and the Elkin Tribune.

In a recent front-page note to its readers, the Surry Messenger said it also agreed not to comment about the lawsuit.

A 125-acre site east of Elkin and north of the Yadkin River in Surry County is one of the locations Fibrowatt USA might choose for its next bio-fueled power-generating station.

Company officials met the public at a “community open house” Tuesday in the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service’s office in Dobson where they outlined plans for the project and answered questions.

Fibrowatt’s generating system was developed in Great Britain and used in its first U.S. operation at Benson, Minn. The system heats chicken litter to produce gasses that fuel the power plant’s boilers, turning water into steam that turns its generators. The depleted chicken litter later can be used for fertilizer. Pointing to emissions data from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, Fibrowatt officials said their Benson plant releases less carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and hydrogen chloride per megawatt than coal plants in North Carolina. A group from Surry and Wilkes counties visited the Benson plant this year and said they detected no odor problems.

Fibrowatt estimates its first plant in North Carolina will cost $140-$150 million, employ 75-100 people, generate 40 to 55 megawatts of electricity, and annually consume up to 500,000 tons of chicken litter the company will buy for estimated $15 million.

Surry and neighboring Wilkes County both are among North Carolina’s broiler-chicken producers. Fibrowatt officials noted that, regardless of which county is chosen, the plant will buy chicken litter from producers within a 100-mile radius.

Today’s editions of the Winston-Salem Journal, Surry Messenger, The Mount Airy News and Elkin Tribune all have reports on the open house, including residents’ reactions.

The Winston-Salem Journal’s map showing the Surry County location off N.C. 268 near Gentry Road is here.

Fibrowatt co-founder and CEO Rupert Fraser said it will take about three years to build the plant after his company negotiates a contract to sell the power to Duke Energy. He said Fibrowatt hopes to announce its choice of a site by the end of this year.

Even if no one put another house up for sale in the Piedmont Triad between now and Easter 2008, the present inventory of homes on the market might not be cleared before the Fourth of July.

Real-estate agents and brokers in the 12-county Piedmont Triad region, which includes Surry County, sold 2,636 existing single-family homes in the third quarter of 2007, 8.3 percent less than in the July-September period a year ago. The total also was down 6 percent from the second quarter 2007.

Meanwhile, the inventory of homes for sale keeps growing. On Sept. 30 there were 9.2 percent more than a year earlier, nearly 9,000 in all, and that’s 3.1 times the number sold in the preceding three months.

“At the current sales pace, it will take 9.3 months to exhaust the existing inventory,” according to the Triad Business Index monthly analysis from the Bryan School of Business & Economics in the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Despite the surplus, prices did not seem to be softening. The average home sold in the third quarter brought 0.7 percent more than in the previous quarter. The average quality-adjusted price of an existing home in the Triad was $184,385.

Across the Piedmont Triad over the past year, average home prices have risen 2.0 percent in Greensboro, 2.5 percent in Forsyth County, and 0.3 percent in High Point, according to the Triad Multiple Listing Service. The number of homes sold has dropped 8.9 percent in Greensboro, 9.9 percent in Forsyth County, and 12.6 percent in High Point.

Triad MLS statistics for October, normally available by Nov. 10, have not been posted at this time. SurryBusiness.com will report the numbers as soon as they’re available.

Economic activity in northwest North Carolina warmed up slightly in September, despite job losses as plants closed in Mount Airy, according to the Piedmont Triad Business Index created by Dr. Donald Jud of the Bryan School of Business & Economics at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro.

The Piedmont Triad Index was up 0.3 percent in September, matching the increase in the national Index of Leading Indicators.

In the Piedmont Triad the greatest growth has been in the service-producing sector, where the number of jobs increased another 0.1 percent in September. Over the past 12 months, the number of jobs in the Piedmont Triad’s service-producing sector has grown 2.5 percent.

“Over the past year, service-producing employment has grown most rapidly in business services and leisure services, where employment has increased 5.0 and 4.3 percent respectively,” according to the report posted Nov. 2 on the UNCG web site.

The North Carolina General Assembly made a number of changes in the state’s tax laws which may affect your company’s finances in 2008.

The N.C. Department of Revenue describes what’s new in the “2007 Tax Law Changes” on its web site.

Listed below are links to each section of the document.

• Title Page
• Introduction
• Table of Contents
• Section 1 – Personal Taxes
• Section 2 – Corporate, Excise and Insurance Tax
• Section 3 – Sales and Use Tax
• Section 4 – Property Tax
• Section 5 – Motor Fuels Tax
• Section 6 – General Administration