This may be the most important article about Beaufort County we have ever posted | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

Because the information it contains is so important

    We recently commended our County Manager and Board of Commissioners for an improved planning process as seen in the board's recent retreat. But at the same time we suggested that the session was missing some very critical planning elements. One of those elements is the demographic trends impacting the county.
The staff of the Beaufort County Commissioners (left to tight): Manager - Randell, Randell Woodruff, CFO - Jim Chrisman, Counsel - Billy Mayo: Above     photo by Stan Deatherage

    Coincidentally, the U. S. Census has recently released an invaluable resource that could be used for this purpose. You can access it by clicking here. The interactive graphics have a wealth of information and it sheds an extremely important light on the demographic trends in Beaufort County.

    But before we address the county, we would encourage you to take a look at the state as a whole. Click here to download a static pdf of the state. You will note that the color shading on the map runs from darker blue to darker brown to shows the 2000 to 2010 population changes with dark blue reflecting the highest growth areas and darker brown the declining population areas. Lighter blue are more modest growth areas and lighter browns are more modest population losses.

    Notice the pattern in the state. There are four major regions of growth. Around Charlotte, Raleigh, Wilmington and in the northeast corner of the state, or the spillover from the Norfolk area. But in the three urban areas notice that the growth in not so much in the core city areas as it is in the suburbs, even the surrounding counties.

    Beyond the three large metropolitan areas you see some dark blue around Asheville but if you drill down to the census tracts there you find relatively higher percentages but lower total numbers. Jackson County, for example grew by 22% but only to 3,373 people. Same pattern in the northeast corner. But interestingly, Greenville is a major growth area in the state.

    We would suggest that this fact (Greenville's growth) is one of the most significant trends impacting Beaufort.

    Taking a look at Beaufort, the trends are extremely interesting. Click here to download a pdf of Beaufort County. What you see is a stark pattern. While Beaufort County grew over the last decade by 6.7%, most of that growth was in the NC 33 and US 264 corridors toward Pitt County. Although we would suggest that the other high growth area--the southside of the river from Cypress Landing east to Blounts Creek--actually is a part of that "Greenville corridor."

    Most important is the fact that looking at Beaufort County's overall growth misses the point. The point is that the county is growing west of Broad and Blounts creeks but losing population in the eastern part of the county. What is also obvious is that the inner core of the City of Washington along with the eastern parts of the county, both north and south of the river are suffering the most severe population losses. Interestingly the River Road area from Washington Park to Broad creek is declining in population.

    So what does this mean?

    Many things. For example, it should inform the county's input into the state's Transportation Improvement Plan. The numbers, it could be argued, say that Beaufort County should be more focused on improving NC 33 into Greenville than it is on US 17.

    The trends should also inform the planning for sewer in the western section of the county and southern river shore of the county from Cypress Landing to Blounts Creek.

    And not to belabor what we have been saying for seven years, the School Board blundered badly in were it spent the $33 million bond package. Building PS Jones and John Small as close to Pitt County as practical would have made much more sense than putting them were they are. And the school system needs to convert to the K-5 feeder system in the Washington Attendance Area.

    Greenville is growing outward from the inner city. We already have a good road from Greenville to Washington. If the county had sewer in the area west of Washington that would allow residential development, the map shows very clearly that the area along US 264 west is prime development area. Put bright new shiny schools in that area and offer better instructional programs than Pitt County, with its constant racial balancing of their student assignment plan, and it is likely residential growth fed by people who work in the Medical District would explode in Beaufort. Essentially the idea is that the Beaufort schools would be magnet schools.

    We should probably be trying to get a four-lane connector from U.S. 264/Greenville Blvd/By-pass down Mumford Rd., around the airport and to Arlington Blvd rather than spending time, energy and money on U. S. 17. And certainly the upgrading of NC 33 into Greenville from Blounts Creek would be to Beaufort's advantage. Sewer would be more difficult in the NC 33 corridor than in the US 264 corridor but longer term that is what the Commissioners should have been talking about last week.

    When you synthesize all that these maps show, the inevitable conclusion we think they support is that Beaufort has an extremely bright future. But that future is not in manufacturing and industrial parks. It is in being a bedroom community to Greenville, and particularly the Medical complex in Pitt County. But achieving that potential will take vision and planning. It will involve a different approach to economic development and a major revision of the educational system, specifically the student assignment plan in the Washington attendance area and the inadequate facilities in Chocowinity. And it will take some strong planning for utility (sewer) infrastructure. We could even turn the lemon that is the 200 million dollar U. S. 17 By-pass into lemonade with that bridge facilitating another Cypress Landing or two in the Gilead/Blounts Creek area, using the river as a draw. Just imagine an adjoining retirement community with a continuum of care facilities and state of the art medical transport straight up 264 to Pitt Memorial (sorry, Vidant Medical Center).

    And our commissioners are talking about building a jail.
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