The North Carolina Rural Infrastructure Authority will grant land worth nearly $6.6 billion to add jobs across North Carolina, according to a press release from the North Carolina Department of Commerce.
Housed within the Commerce Dept., the RIA approved 27 land grants that promise to create 278 new jobs in addition.
Former Gov. Pat McCrory announced in December that the RIA approved $8.7 billion in grants creating 1,183 jobs. He and Gov. Roy Cooper have announced more than 200 new job promises since then.
Despite these grant approvals, North Carolina’s unemployment rate has been rising since August 2016. In December, it grew one percentage point to 5.1 percent of the state’s labor force, those working or actively seeking work. That’s 251,600 people.
“These grants will help counties and towns meet the needs of business by upgrading water and sewer systems, buildings, and industrial access points all across the state,” said Commerce Secretary Anthony Copeland in the press release.
The RIA approved four types of grants.
Infrastructure grants from the Development Fund-Utility Account program were awarded to two counties, Polk and Randolph (awarded to the City of Trinity), ranked among North Carolina’s 80 most economically challenged. The grants totaling $552,500 will increase access to water and sewer lines for companies intending to hire for a total of 27 new jobs there. The grant is focused on supporting counties with high expectations that companies will move or remain there.
Similar grants from the Economic Infrastructure program were awarded to four other counties with the intention of creating jobs by taking on infrastructure projects, typically concerning public utility expansion.
Randolph County received another grant of $400,000 alone from the federal Community Development Block Grant, along with five other counties. Together, the counties received $3.6 million. From the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the grant is awarded to counties that intend to create jobs and are “economically distressed.”
The fourth type of grant awarded, North Carolina’s Building Reuse grant, went to 15 applicants. The grant provides for the expansion, renovation or construction of vacant or in-use buildings, as well as of healthcare facilities.
Similar to the other grants, the building reuse grant is for the purpose of creating jobs, but this grant is more geographically lenient, interested in the state’s more wealthy counties, albeit particularly interested in those counties’ rural towns.
Job promises don’t always materialize into as many jobs as expected. WRAL created an app, last updated in 2015, to see whether companies’ promises were turning into jobs. It also produced a four-part investigative series on the topic.
