Money directed to business relief

Business communities in western North Carolina affected by the 2004 hurricane season received welcomed news Friday that money soon would come their way.

The N.C. General Assembly appropriated $247.5 million for hurricane recovery in the region earlier this year. Friday, the N.C. Rural Economic Development Center announced that more than $4 million is earmarked specifically for business recovery. The center will distribute the grants.

"We do work with small business, and that is a growing area with the rural center," said Elaine Matthews, vice president of communications and development for the center. "That is why the General Assembly saw fit to give us this part."

The funding has been divided among the affected areas with respect to the amount of damage that each area sustained.

Of the 12 grants given to counties and communities, those areas most affected by the storms - Asheville, Canton, Clyde and Newland - received the maximum allotment of $700,000.

Eight other areas - Avery County, Chimney Rock Village, Crossnore, Haywood County, Hot Springs, Marshall, Spruce Pine and Swain County - received grants of between $30,000 and $400,000.

Though this is not the first aid to come to hurricane-damaged areas, it is the first of its kind to focus on the business sector, said Bill McNeil, who directs the business recovery project for the center.

"Several programs can only do so much," he said. "There are big gaps, and one of the gaps we found (was) - the business areas suffered damage. The individual business owners might not be coming back."

Before unveiling the grants, the center doled out $238,000, enabling communities to assess structural and economic damage.

Local governments will hammer out the details of projects that are unique to each community.

Linda Giltz, regional planner at the Land-of-Sky Regional Council, said one of the biggest pushes in the town of Marshall will be revitalizing the downtown historic district and renovating buildings.

"Up in Marshall the flooding didn't really cause a lot of long-term damage," she said. "Most people were able to pump out the water - and keep running their business."

But some businesses were not able to come back and left portions of the city looking more like a ghost town than a business district.

"It's got beautiful old buildings but a lot of them have been abandoned for a while," Giltz said.

The major advantage of having a registered historic district are the accompanying federal tax benefits.

If placed on the National Register of Historic Places, towns would receive more money to rebuild and continue historic preservation efforts. A portion of the grant money given to Marshall will pay costs associated with making a bid to be put on the register, Giltz said.

"There is a lot of enthusiasm which has come out of this process which I think will help a lot towards these redevelopments," she said. "We're very optimistic, but we don't know how long it is going to take."

Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.