Live, Work, Play: Officials in Bladen County are waiting for confirmation of funding before starting multimillion-dollar development plan

By Faith Hatton, posted Jul 18, 2023 on BizFayetteville.com

A full concept map of the Live, Work, Play project. Plans include a daycare facility, hotel, healthcare offices and providers and
housing.

Elizabethtown, North Carolina is ready to begin more than $160 million of developments planned for the Elizabethtown Industrial Park.

Currently known as the Live, Work, Play project, which may be renamed later, this multi-acreage concept includes plans for an enhanced lakefront with an amphitheater and event lawn, the expansion of Cape Fear Winery, a hotel, daycare center multiple medical facilities and offices and most importantly, housing.
The Live, Work, Play project addresses several parts of Bladen County’s 10-year Strategic Plan which will be used to tackle area development by highlighting the needs and strategic priorities of the County.

“Within that plan, the number one issue basically was housing, and the reason why is we’re trending to be losing population just like the other rural counties here,” shared Chuck Heustess, executive director of Bladen County Economic Development. “We’re talking about potentially several hundred units of residential in a mixed development.”

According to Heustess, the Live, Work, Play project copies layouts seen in more urban areas combining Elizabethtown’s green space with a work component, affordable housing for the future workforce and commercial businesses that have outgrown what downtown Elizabethtown can offer.

Elizabethtown Town Manager Dane Rideout shared that one goal of the project is to provide strong and steady economic development and growth while being able to maintain the small-town feel and still provide residents access to larger cities such as Fayetteville and Wilmington. While housing remains a weak point in the area, additional housing developments are in the works to help meet the need. The Live, Work, Play project includes a special effort to target Veterans who are looking to leave more populated areas.

“What’s really unique to the Live, Work, Play concept we’ve got out there is a portion of it is going to be for wounded warriors. So, those that have mobility issues are who we’re really targeting,” said Rideout. “We’re very close to Camp Lejeune, New River, Cherry Point, Robins, Fort Liberty, we think this is a very military-friendly area. We’ve got the jobs, a place for them to live, we want to make sure we’ve got the amenities that support those members that served our country that have disabilities. So that’s a neat concept to that piece.”

Bringing the military community into the area is “a very intentional part of our growth wants” according to Heustess. With the addition of Sovereign Aerospace, which recently partnered with and assumed duties as the fixed base operator of the Curtis L. Brown Jr. Airport in April, additional interest from the aerospace industry in the area has increased, along with interest in bringing manufacturing and other industries into the area within the Live, Work, Play project space.

“One cool project that we’re already starting out there is, the hospital is doing a new primary care, urgent care, medical specialist office. Cape Fear Valley Health is [also] doing a new medical school and they’re going to be doing a lot of their rural residency through this facility, so there’s going to be a really cool medical facility there,” said Heustess. “Since you have all your infrastructure and jobs and everything there, we think that it’s going to create thousands of jobs over the next decade or two.”

While city and county officials have their shovels to the dirt ready to begin construction, one of the major hold ups on the project is funding. Leaders have gone to the federal and state officials to request funding for the more than $160 million investment; however, they are still waiting on the final budget from the state of North Carolina before they can get started.

“I think they had hoped to have the budget passed by now, but it sounds like to me that they’re probably going to have at least another month. When you’re in a rural, distressed county like Bladen, Columbus, Robeson, you can plan all you want to but a lot of it’s dependent on what kind of grant assistance you can get to help be the impetus to getting the bigger projects going,” said Heustess.

Both Rideout and Heustess confirmed that in the event funding doesn’t come through as hoped, there are plans in place for the project to move forward, being financed and completed in phases.

“We literally are within 60 days of the green light going on two and a half years of work that’s about to happen. The Master Plan is within weeks of being finished, so it’s not just a concept we literally have the master plan down to we know what the roads look like,” said Rideout. “We all know what the desired end state looks like. We’ve also communicated that same vision to our state and federal elected officials and they understand the concept of what our needs are. It’s not an unattainable vision. It’s a very calculated, laid out process in how we’re going to get there and what we’re going to create at the end.”

The Town hopes to be approved for an EDA grant worth $1.2 million needed to begin the first section of road, water and sewer infrastructure by late summer or early fall. That infrastructure will allow construction on the first few businesses outlined in the plan to start. The full project is expected to be worked on in phases and be in development over the next 10 years.

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