CHARLOTTE — Jenn Bosser saw the spike in interest in Iredell County sites for warehouse development coming around 18 months ago. It started with one project — Troutman Industrial Park, a 1 million-square-foot industrial shell building on Murdock Road.
The building was, at the time it was announced by longtime area developer Kathy Godley, among the largest speculative projects in a part of the region without much history of that kind of activity.
In late 2020, Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT) bought the building for $69 million for a distribution center that would create 500-plus jobs.
After that deal, brokers began calling for workforce data and potential sites available in the area, said Bosser, president and CEO of the Iredell County Economic Development Corp. Several developers based outside of North Carolina are now making big bets in Statesville and Troutman.
“I think it definitely put us on the map nationally,” Bosser said. “Folks who didn’t know where Troutman was, or where Iredell County was, said about Walmart, ‘What do they know that we don’t know?’”
As Charlotte’s industrial market has grown over the past several years, more out-of-town developers have entered the market. That is one driver of the explosion of activity into areas that had seen little commercial development of any kind.
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