After securing and putting up the first wall, Brian Land, the manager of Richmond County, gave the County Commissioners a report on the $2 million shell building.
The project began in May of last year, and work on the building is still going on, even though tropical rains and other wet weather have caused some delays.
“[Richmond County Economic Development Director Martie Butler] and I have a meeting about construction today,” Land said. “The building should be done around Christmas.” “…the building pad is level all the way through.” The road gets stone and the stone is roughed in.
A quarter of the concrete that will be the building’s floor has not been poured properly. The interior skeleton of the front wall is actually rising out of the ground. It was put up last week.
We’re very excited about this because the whole metal building is already here, so we have everything we need to put the last few pieces of the puzzle together.
The $2 million, 40,000-square-foot addition to the Richmond County Highway 74 Industrial Park was made possible by a government program that Pee Dee Electric helped run. As part of the program, the county would pay for the project over 10 years with no interest. For up to 24 months, the payments could be spread out.
“For Richmond County, it’s a great deal.” It’s clear that this is the sixth one we’ve done. Getting along with them has been easy in the past. The North Carolina shell building program is one of the best in the state. “What we’ve been able to do makes Martie and me very happy,” Land said.
In the summer of 2016, Butler said that the shell building at the industrial park would help Richmond County’s economic growth by luring makers from other places to move there or set up shop there.
Because there is already a building there, businesses may put Richmond County higher on their list of possible locations because they don’t have to spend time and money to fix up an old one or build a new one.
“Having goods on hand is important for economic growth.” If you don’t have a product, you probably won’t get any new customers or grow.
Existing businesses have grown into our outer buildings, and new businesses have also moved in. We have a bunch of different things… We’ve been doing this for a while. She said, “It’s been a pretty good little program for us.”
Land said that all five of the houses before this one are now businesses.
“These people are doing a great job, and every year they create 225 jobs, which adds up to 401 jobs, $27 million in wages, and $165 million in total economic output.
That’s about $23 in economic output for every $1 that Richmond County put into these shell buildings.” “Now you understand why Martie and I are always such big fans of our shell building program,” Land said.