OPPORTUNITIES: Jobs, Investments, Volunteering
Edenton and Chowan County are the exception: The downtown is alive, jobs are available; and housing and living cost are below state and national averages.
Developers are looking to bring a Senior Living Community to town, as well as an additional grocery store and there is demand for new or renovated single-family housing.
Local businesses are expanding: Regulator Marine has significantly added production area, as has Jimbo’s Jumbos (peanut processing) and Colony Tire has a new large facility under construction. Daedalus Boats, a high tech manufacturer of an 80′ catamaran is developing cutting edge eco-friendly technologies for cruising the globe in a factory they occupied recently in the Partnership’s Industrial Park near the 7,000′ runway airport.
To meet the growing needs of Edenton and Chowan County, the Partnership is helping recruit employees, investors in commercial or residential properties and volunteers interested in supporting schools, hospital and the numerous historical sites that make Edenton a special place to live with a lifestyle not found in other places.
Opportunity Zone
A recent UNC posting reports the new “… Opportunity Zone (OZ) program was created as a part of the federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. An overview of the program previously posted on the CED blog can be found here. On May 18, 2018 the US Secretary of Treasury certified 252 census tracts in North Carolina as OZs. The designation of OZs allows investors to gain tax benefits through investment in business activities – including real estate – in the certified zones.
Qualified Opportunity Zone Tracts
To be eligible for OZ designation, a census tract must be a low-income tract under the New Markets Tax Credit criteria or through the Contiguous Tract rule created by the OZ program. The Contiguous Tract rule allows for non-low-income census tracts to be designated as an OZ as long as the tract’s median family income “does not exceed 125 percent of the low-income community with which the tract is contiguous”
Many census tracts outside of the downtown area in Chowan County qualify. The Partnership’s Executive Director can provide additional information, but here is a rough map of the area included: