Issue link: http://businessnc.epubxp.com/i/611454
24 North Carolina Economic Development Guide Granville Community College's main campus and workforce development assets are a few hundred yards away. Warren County's property comprises more than 1,000 shovel-ready acres. Granville's park features 3 miles of interstate frontage is a 40-minute drive to Research Triangle Park. In launching Triangle North, leaders from its member counties enjoyed strategic, technical and marketing support from numerous organizations, including Golden LEAF, economic- development booster Research Triangle Regional Partnership and UNC Chapel Hill's Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise. Kerr Tar Regional Council of Governments provides administrative oversight, though Triangle-North has its own board. "It's advantageous to have a group like a COG involved — certainly one oriented toward economic development like Kerr Tar is," Pearson says. While not required by law, such an arrangement enables park leaders to move quickly when opportunities arise. "It's preferable not to have the counties co-own it, because every decision has to go to all governments for approval. It's just cumbersome." A board of directors governs International Logistics Park of North Carolina, a 1,100-acre industrial park that Brunswick and Columbus counties developed. Ef ciency is this park's game. It sits alongside U.S. 74, 15 miles from Port of Wilmington's shipping-container complex and within 700 miles of 70% of the U.S. industrial base. "ILPNC was developed with globally oriented distribution operations in mind," says Steve Yost, president of North Carolina's Southeast, a public-private regional economic-development partnership that counts 15 counties and about 40 companies as members. It brought local landowners and public stakeholders together to prepare the property for industrial tenants. In piecing together their vision, Yost and his partners examined the bustling distribution operations surrounding