Business North Carolina

Time is running out to attend the N.C. Rural Economic Summit in Greenville on Oct. 1 and 2. The N.C. Rural Economic Summit aims to build powerful networks of passionate, engaged, innovative business leaders in rural North Carolina willing to share ideas and resources and take action to strengthen their small communities across the state. You can find the agenda, registration costs and speakers in info here.

Buying half of a strip shopping center near the Fayetteville State University campus that the school didn’t already own may be a relatively small real estate transaction. But the $2.2 million transaction signals the institution’s bigger ambitions.

Today's 'Chatter with BNC" podcast features Julian"Bubba" Rawl, cofounder of Cary-based Preston Development Company, which has developed more than 16,000 home lots since 1991. He and partner Tim Smith are now focused on the 8,100-acre Chatham Park NC, which is on pace to become North Carolina's largest multiuse planned development. The Greenville native discusses his initial foray building ice rinks around North Carolina, Preston's dramatic growth in Cary and Disney's plans to create a large residential community within Chatham Park. https://lnkd.in/gh77nBMA

When Larry and Randall Miller’s children moved out of their Cary home, the couple decided they wanted to live in a more urban environment. So they moved into a 1,600-square-foot condominium in the Glenwood South neighborhood of downtown Raleigh. Now, they can walk to a Publix grocery story and their favorite restaurants. Greater Raleigh Chamber Downtown Raleigh Alliance

Dan Barkin’s email on our state’s growing military business sector and its impact on the N.C. economy is a must-read. The military provides roughly 11 percent of N.C.’s employment. That’s 653,000 jobs in North Carolina, over $49 billion in state personal income, and nearly $80 billion in gross state product. These are some of the reasons why Business North Carolina created the “NC Military Report,” a weekly newsletter covering military-related business news around the state, providing news and analysis that impacts all of us. Subscribe today. https://buff.ly/4gbADXb

The start of the school year always makes me consider the commitment to providing opportunities to society’s key assets, our kids and youth. Partisan efforts try to dumb down the issues, but it’s not simple stuff.

Ramin Karimpour, the CEO of agriculture-tech startup TARGAN Inc., had been funding the company with a variety of government grants and even his winning $1 million dollar lottery ticket in 2015. But he was about to close shop on the business, which he operated out of a 480-square-foot apartment.

The affiliated Hendrick Automotive Group dealership company again tops our annual list of the state’s largest private companies, which is based on revenue. Twenty-five companies turned over at least $1 billion last year, based on data shared by the organizations or research by BNC staffers. The list includes North Carolina-based companies, which are mostly closely held or family-owned enterprises. A growing number are owned by private equity groups.

Sign up for our Daily Digest Extra for breaking business news every Tuesday and Thursday afternoons...and you get a free subscription to Business North Carolina magazine! All for only $25 a year. https://buff.ly/3XqFnAW

As an Oscar-winning 2022 movie noted about another kind of ubiquity, artificial intelligence is now “everything, everywhere all at once,” and that includes North Carolina’s multi-billion dollar clinical research outsourcing industry. Velocity Clinical Research, Inc.