Economic Development in Johnston County with Chris Johnson

Jonathan Breeden: [00:00:00] What is economic development?

Chris Johnson: Well, I jokingly say I’m the glorified cheerleader for the county. And when I meet with industry representatives basically I’m there to promote and sell.

And the first and foremost is really to create jobs for our citizens. Obviously there’s two things, there’s investment, which we’ve been very blessed with and fortunate with. And if you look at our tax rate over the past three or four years, we’ve been able to traditionally reduce our tax rate, and that’s because of the growth of our industrial sector. So creating an industrial base that pays for itself, and then also, you know, is able to provide services for our citizens.

And then the second thing is, job creation. Unfortunately, right now, Jonathan, as you know, our labor shed in Johnston County is about 120,000 employees here in the county, yet about 70% of them, almost 70%, leave every day to work somewhere else.

Narrator: Welcome to another episode of Best of Johnston County, brought to you by Breeden [00:01:00] Law Office. Our host, Jonathan Breeden, an experienced family lawyer with a deep connection to the community, is ready to take you on a journey through the area that he has called home for over 20 years. Whether it’s a deep dive into the love locals have for the county or unraveling the complexities of family law, Best of Johnston County presents an authentic slice of this unique community.

Jonathan Breeden: welcome to another edition of The Best of Johnston County podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Breeden. And today we have as our guest, Chris Johnson, the Johnston County Economic Development Director, and also owner of Jewel’s Formal Wear in downtown Smithfield. And that’s the story he’s on for a long time. So we’ll talk a little bit about Economic Development in the County and what he does. We’ll talk a little bit about his formal wear store. And of course, we’re going to talk about why he loves Johnston County as much as I do. Welcome Chris.

Chris Johnson: Thank you very much, John. I appreciate it.

Jonathan Breeden: No problem. Tell us a little bit about your background, where are you from, where you grew up?

Chris Johnson: Sure thing. Grew up in the Northeastern part of the [00:02:00] State, a very rural area of North Carolina. I met my wife at East Carolina. The joke is I took her back home to meet my folks.

She says, sweetheart, I love you, but if we’re getting married, we’re not gonna live in Johnston. So uh, she was, she’s third or fourth generation, John Stonian from Smithfield and so it was just kind of a natural thing, but I’ve got my mother’s family’s from the Fuquay Varina area, so I’m familiar with the triangle region in Raleigh.

So, right out of college, I worked for the state for about five or six years. So lived in Smithfield. It was just a natural thing, so this is where I am. So that was all in 1990, I’ve lived here longer than I’ve lived anywhere in my life. I’ve never lived any further than five miles West of I-95.

So Eastern North Carolina is pretty much in my DNA.

Jonathan Breeden: That’s awesome. I was, We were joking right before we started recording. I know you’re a huge East Carolina supporter, you’ve been on the board of visitors there for a long time leading the NC State fan. So we always joke with each other about NC State and East Carolina.

What’s your wife’s maiden name?

Chris Johnson: She was a Gower. And [00:03:00] so, having kind of the Gower farm is all around the Wilson Mills area. So that’s the general area of where she, not where she grew up, she grew up in Smithfield, but as far as the family, her grandfather and such.

Jonathan Breeden: All right. So what? Why did you and her decide to get into the formal wear business for a long time? I think it was Jewel’s bridal wear.

Chris Johnson: Exactly. Well, it’s one of those things that we were fortunate to buy an existing building. She had a relative that owned a formal wear shop or a women’s shop.

And her mother and myself and my father in law, we all got together and bought the business. And over time was fortunate enough to buy a piece of property in downtown and expand our facility there and as well as buy a piece of property next to it. And so right now we’ve got you know, our store is about 7,000 square feet of retail space, and we’ve been very blessed.

Our trade area is within a hundred miles of our store. So we go all the way up into the Virginia area, down to Florence, South Carolina, [00:04:00] past Durham and everything East. So, we feel very fortunate that we’ve built up a good business.

Jonathan Breeden: So what all do y’all sell there? I know it’s not bridal anymore, you just told me that.

Chris Johnson: We started out in the wedding industry and did mother of the brides and bridesmaids and wedding gowns. Uh, Just changed a lot, David’s bridal, a lot of stuff came into the market that and then we lost a sales associate that was really focused on that.

And so when she left and retired we just transitioned into more of the prom and the special events and the things that what’d I say? there’s a sequent, we’ll sell it type thing. But about 10 or 12 years ago, we were very fortunate that a girl from Garner here Arlie Honeycutt came in and bought a dress off the rack in one Miss North Carolina. And so from that point, it just was like catching lightning in a bottle.

And so it expanded our reach into the pageant area. Now we don’t do the honey boo type dresses, but you know, the Miss North Carolina, the [00:05:00] teens, particularly the teens, because that’s more of our niche market.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh, that’s cool. And the Cleveland community just had Hanley house when Miss Teen America, which is exciting.

That’s awesome for Johnston County and the Cleveland community. And she’s student at Cleveland high school.

Chris Johnson: Talented young lady and her family goes to our church at First Baptist Church. And so, yeah, very excited about that.

Jonathan Breeden: So you do the proms and some of the pageant stuff any other core customer for y’all?

Chris Johnson: We do tuxedo rentals and that’s where my niche is at particularly during, I know, cause we’re in the busiest time of the season from January through about May. So all the tuxedo rentals and stuff, I’m usually there measuring the guys, making sure they fit homecoming. We do some sec’s, what they call second weddings or destination weddings, but not the full blown, which you would traditionally see as a wedding gown.

So it’s more than formal second weddings or destination stuff. So people going to Aruba or Jamaica getting married like that.

Jonathan Breeden: Have you gotten into the Online sale? Can people [00:06:00] go to your website, order address and ship it to them?

Chris Johnson: Yes. My daughter has kind of, she’s graduated from East Carolina and she now is response. She’s obviously a Sales Associate and responsible for our social media. So she handles all of our TikTok, all of those things that the younger generations involved, and I’m not that tech savvy other than, you know, Facebook and LinkedIn and things, but TikTok and Snapchat and whatever other else is out there.

Yeah. Instagram. I know. So she’s constantly posting videos and stuff like that in our sales. We’ve seen an increase in sales.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, that’s awesome. Well, good. And we’ll talk about your full time job or the full time job that you’re technically have. I know that when you’re in retail and you own a retail store that’s its own full time job.

Chris Johnson: It is. I jokingly say that you know, for the longest time when you come home after my job, after leaving my work. And meeting my wife at the house. The first thing you say is not necessarily, hey, sweetheart, I love you. How was your day? It’s like, well, how [00:07:00] do we do at the store?

Jonathan Breeden: How do we do at the store?, right? No, that’s it.

Chris Johnson: Cause it’s like, if you don’t make a dollar a day, then you don’t need to be in business. So it’s like, how do we do it?

Jonathan Breeden: No, look, I’m a small business owner as well. And I asked my staff that every day I’m always looking at the the credit card processing website. Like, you know how much money came in because it takes a lot of money to stay in business.

So anyway, I guess when I first meet you, you’re the Johnston County Economic Development Director, but my first meetings with you where we started working together, you were the Downtown Development Director for Smithfield. How did you get that job?

Chris Johnson: Well, it was kind of a journeyman’s path, meaning that I’d worked, you know, I was involved in politics. I was the County Chairman for the Republican Party during the mid-90’s back when I say politics was fine. And we had the Republican wave occur and such, and I was involved in that. I worked for a U. S. Congressman at the time, unfortunately was not re-elected as one of those things that was a job that I absolutely loved.

I did the more constituent service [00:08:00] side, so I wasn’t on the political, even though I was political, I wasn’t on the political side. So helping constituents and kind of representing the congressman there. And that was David Funderburk. And so when he did not get re-elected I was kind of fell back on the path of the store, you know?

So I was kind of, and during that same time our executive director for the downtown development corporation took another position in Charlotte. And the board at that time asked me, say, well, Chris, can you do this as an interim till we figure out what we want to do or who want to hire? I said, sure thing.

And it was almost like two weeks or excuse me, two months before the Hammingham festival. So I got us through that and I really kind of fell in love with it and I stayed there for 15 years. And so, I’ve got small business in my DNA and into, I felt like, you know, the businesses, other businesses respected me because I was one of them I watched their tax dollars just like, so I was very stingy with the dollar because I realized that I’m spending my tax [00:09:00] dollars just as much as I’m spending anybody else’s.

And I never really promoted our store in the sense that I knew that if the Howell Theater, if any of the other businesses or restaurants were doing well, then I was going to be doing well at my store and vice versa. So, I did that for 15 years, I was fortunate to be appointed to the County Economic Development Advisory Board, which you had served on before, and so I got a taste of that, and then that exposed me to the regional aspect with RTRP, and a little over 10 years ago Rick Hester approached me, their director had retired, had an interim director there that was part time, the county was growing, things needed to be addressed, and Rick approached me about the possibility of applying for the position and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

And so, there was a learning curve, but it really wasn’t a learning curve because I knew the County, I’d lived here, everybody. And I kind of knew all the players and the communities. And plus, you know, representing Smithfield I [00:10:00] kind of knew what the communities were looking for. And so I’ve tried to do that and bring that to the table.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. I just remember. You jumped into the Neuse River when it did not rain on the Hammingham Festival.

Chris Johnson: There’s always a running joke that it always rains during the Hammingham Festival. And I guess that’s the promotional side of me, just trying to bring attention to the organization and also the event is that, you know, one year I built this huge rain gauge, which was like this big metal wash tub that I had sticking up in the air about 15 feet high. And I had it was, you know, it was always kind of a, you know, embrace the struggle, so to speak.

And so everybody says there’s always rains and so it was one of those things that I said, okay, here’s what I’m going to do, I’m going to jump in the river if it doesn’t rain. Well, people actually thought I was going to actually jump off the bridge into the river. I said, no, I’ll just jump into the water. So, I had the Smithfield Fire and Rescue Department take me out in the middle of the river.

And there was a couple of [00:11:00] thousand people sitting on the bike watching me do a cannonball in and so there’s video evidence of photography evidence of me doing that. Oh, if you can’t laugh at yourself and have fun with what you do, then you don’t need to be here.

Jonathan Breeden: No, And for those listeners that don’t know the Hammingham Festival is the first weekend in May, every year they still have it. It is a huge event, it’s two days over 100 vendors and they usually have a pretty good band on Saturday night. Now they built a brand new amphitheater stage down there. And so, that’ll be coming up here the first weekend in May. And if you’ve not had a chance to go to the Hammingham festival, I would encourage all of y’all to go.

Is fun, it is family friendly. There’s tons of stuff for the kids, there’s great vendors, there’s tremendous food. And they do a tremendous job there in Smithfield with the Hammingham Festival. And I’ve really enjoyed it.

Chris Johnson: Yeah. We’ve had some tremendous artists come through. I mean, when you think about Molly Hatchet we had Night Ranger, we had Eddie Money, one year.

So when I was there I just wanted to hear the music that I grew up [00:12:00] with and and so was a fortunate to that we had great sponsorships to do that. Again, when you think about whether it’s the harvest festival or the Clayton used to have the strawberry festival or the Hammington festival or mule days.

It’s really an opportunity for, you know, we, it couldn’t happen without the small business support and I challenge anybody that whenever they go to these events to really seek out who has been a Trump sponsor year in and year out, because it typically is not the national chains that are sponsoring this.

It’s the breeding law firms, the jewels, or it’s the small mom and pop stores that really kind of put it together. And that’s who the ones that traditionally get back time and time again.

Jonathan Breeden: Yeah, that’s absolutely right. And I’ve enjoyed it. There’s railroad days in October in Selma.

Mule days the third weekend in September in Benson, the Clayton Harvest Festival. I think now it’s moved to the first weekend in November. In downtown Clayton. You still have the Hammingham Festival the first weekend in May. [00:13:00] And I don’t know when the Forks Acorn Festival is off the top of my head.

But there are tons of festivals, unfortunately, the Cleveland Strawberry Festival sort of went by the wayside when the Cleveland Chamber was merged into the Triangle East Chamber. So we don’t have that anymore, but the festivals I really enjoy. And that’s one of the things I love about Johnston County.

So now after we’ve talked about all this, we’ll talk about actually economic development, which is your actual job for the county.

What is economic development?

Chris Johnson: Well, I jokingly say I’m the glorified cheerleader for the county. And when I meet with industry representatives basically I’m there to promote and sell.

And the first and foremost is really to create jobs for our citizens. Obviously there’s two things, there’s a local, there’s investment, which we’ve been very blessed with and fortunate with. And if you look at our tax rate over the past three or four years, we’ve been able to traditionally reduce our tax rate, and that’s because of the growth of our industrial sector. So creating an industrial base that pays for [00:14:00] itself, and then also, you know, is able to provide services for our citizens.

And then the second thing is job creation. Unfortunately, right now, Jonathan, as you know, our labor shed in Johnston County is about 120,000 employees here in the county, yet about 70% of them, almost 70%, leave every day to work somewhere else.

So my role, and I say this jokingly but being serious, is to turn those cars around. And because it goes back to the main street concept of live, work, play. The same thing can apply for my office and that’s where I’ve brought my philosophy is really on the small business thing.

And when I meet with clients and talk about the ability to provide services to, you know, we have a green tape, not red tape philosophy, is that, you know, whether you’re a small business with half a million dollars in sales or a large corporation with a half a billion dollars in annual sales, it’s all about you know, cutting on the lights, making sure that your employees get paid, [00:15:00] making sure that you’re turning a profit making sure, you know, receipts, invoices, shipping, receiving, you know, it’s all the thing.

Obviously the economy of scale is a whole lot bigger, but it’s the same day. I mean, we all still have 24 hours a day and it’s really kind of applying that small business principle and then explaining that to prospective clients and then showing say, hey, we’re here to help. And it’s a shared risk shared reward philosophy that we’ve got.

So, I think we check all the boxes for our any project that’s looking at North Carolina, I’m able to see and receive inquiries. Now, whether or not we can submit for those is another thing and that’s kind of where you know, having a great advisory board of making sure that we have good sites around the community, good buildings that we can promote and talk about.

But at the end of the day, a lot of times we just don’t have what that client needs, whether it’s three million gallons of water and sewer capacity, which is obviously a press report for Johnston County, or if they [00:16:00] need 100 megawatts of power or they need 1000 acres of land and there’s some things that just naturally we don’t check those boxes, but because of our close proximity to Raleigh, the Research Triangle Park, the RDU Airport, the three major universities, all those selling things, we are within that ring that they’re looking for, whether they’re an international company or what, so we get to see all those, but a lot of times we don’t necessarily meet the criteria that they’re looking for.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. But you’ve had a tremendous success over the last 10 years. I mean, we’ve had more industry come here in the last 10 years than maybe in the previous 100 years in Johnston County. And that’s not by accident and I think you deserve a lot of credit for that, I think the commissioners and the county manager would say that.

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Jonathan Breeden: What is the number one thing when you’re out there pitching Johnston County with these corporations and we’re competing?

And I was on the Economic Advisory Board with you for two years. So I kind of already know the answer to this, but I’m going to answer it. What is the number one thing you lead with when you’re competing with South Carolina, Kentucky? We seem to always be competing with Hickory and stuff like that.

And what is the thing you go to first when you want to talk about Johnston County?

Chris Johnson: Well, first of all, listening to them to what their needs are. I’m not trying to say I’ve got all your answers, listen to me. It’s really sitting down, hearing what the typical industrial need is, and everything’s different, but the number one factor that a lot of people are looking for is talent.

I mean, it’s labor and when you’re at three and a half percent unemployment, which we’ve been very fortunate with over the [00:18:00] past several years to be at that level, the first question they come out to ask is where am I going to get my labor? And I go back to what we talked about earlier about our labor shed.

I said, they’re here, they’re just leaving every day to go somewhere else. I said the key thing is that our county average is around $45,000 you know, from a salary standpoint. I said if you’re at that level or above, you can attract good labor and because they would much rather live in Benson and work in Four Oaks or live in Smithfield and work in Clayton or wherever that is as opposed to getting into their car and driving over to, you know, Raleigh or Durham or wherever those jobs may be.

And so again, that’s when you talk about quality of life, which we have and just labor. So that’s what I lead out with. And then speed to market is the other thing, how quickly can they make the decision and be open and operational? And so we’re very [00:19:00] aware of making sure.

So what, and you’ve been involved in this as far as the certification of sites and things of that nature of making sure that we go ahead and address all the potential questions that they may have about a site is worth the wetlands, you know, what’s the sole conditions? Has it been already re-zoned?

What’s the price of the land? And so my office through the advisory board goes through and we identify sites, we work with the property owner, we get agreed upon sale price, we go through the process of having it rezoned, we do all the due diligence. So then that way, they come in and say, we have already done the homework for you, and here’s a great location for you to choose from and settle.

And here’s how you can position your building and here’s what you can do. And here, Oh, by the way, here’s the price. Cause the last thing a company wants to do is say, well, this is a great area and then spend nine months trying to figure [00:20:00] all that out to then come to find out that, Oh, there’s a blue line stream that runs through the middle of a piece of property and we can’t make it work.

So they’ve wasted months and months of their due diligence. So we try to address all those things and add value to our property owners because we’ve got a great group of citizens across Johnston County that have property that are working with us. And fortunately for us, we don’t have to put up any money other than the cost of doing the due diligence.

So we’ve got agreements to sell and it’s kind of a win. And so I try to lead into like, I try to treat our citizens as I would want to be treated as a property owner and be respectful for them because that’s just been our philosophy from, and it comes down from the County to the top.

There’s a lot of counties across the state as you’re well aware of that have their own industrial parks that are building buildings. But from a philosophical standpoint that I believe in is, but the county commissioners really believe in it is that government should not compete against the private sector, but how [00:21:00] can we partner with that?

And so it’s not competing, but partnering with to get us to the next level because obviously we’ve missed out on a tremendous amount of opportunity because we may not have something.

Jonathan Breeden: Right? Well, one of the things that we worked on during the two years I was on the board with you, from 2020 to 2022 was helping get private industry to build spec buildings that we could then recruit to.

And the county would agree to say, if you don’t have a tenant, when it is finished, the county would pay the lease rate for two or three years while the county still tried to recruit a business to the building. And the first one that we did was the building at, is it Eastgate in Selma?

Chris Johnson: Eastfield, yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: Eastfield, right across from the new North State Food Hall, I-95 and exit 97. And we [00:22:00] agreed with the developers of Eastfield that if they did not have a tenant, if they would build this hundreds thousand square foot building, that the county would pay the lease rate until a tenant got there.

And we all hoped that we wouldn’t have to do that and we all almost knew certainly that the county was not actually going to have to pay that lease. And before the building was finished, Be Good Foods had agreed to lease it. The county didn’t have to spend any money, but if the county had not said we will pay that lease payment for a couple of years.

If you don’t have a tenant, I don’t know that the financing of that deal doesn’t come through. That building doesn’t get built and we don’t have the tenant that we have.

Chris Johnson: Right. Well, and again, they may Google maybe going somewhere else that there is already an existing shell. And to your point, what we do, we pay, it’s actually a it’s $3 per foot up to a hundred thousand square feet.

And it’s for two years, which is well below a traditional lease rate for a Class A [00:23:00] industrial space. Class A industrial space is anywhere between seven and nine dollars a foot. We’re paying $3 a foot, which is below, but it gives the developer a level of comfort to know that, hey, at least I know that I’m not going to get blistered because everything can change on a dime.

And the thing is that we’re getting an asset, the County is getting an asset. So as soon as that lease, and the key thing is that it does not start until the building’s finished. So it kind of puts the pressure on the office and on the County to get out there and really market these things and kind of make sure that we get a tenant in there.

So that we can never do that, so then we can move to the next one. So it’s really modeled after a program that I saw in main street. And we’ve just applied it to the industrial standpoint, it’s been done in Lee County. And we’re had tremendous success with it. Oh yeah. He really had. And so, it’s one of those things and that it’s a, again, that public private partnership, as opposed to the County, because you’re [00:24:00] talking to now.

100,000 square foot spec building is going to cost anywhere between 12 and $15 million with a debt service on that is tremendous. And the county doesn’t need, particularly with the other needs that we’ve addressed and talked about of what’s around the county. We don’t need to be in the building business, but we can lease something.

With the hopes that we got it. And then there’s always an, I’ll say an end. There’s an end after two years, but the tax base is always going to be there to replenish those funds eventually.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. And unfortunately I’m not on that board anymore, but are there any more buildings like that going up in the County where the County has agreed to help with the lease payment if we can’t find a tenant while it’s being built?

Chris Johnson: One is and it’s getting ready to be completed is over in Smithfield. There’s a 260,000 square foot building they overbuilt only. We’re only on the hook so to speak for the first 100,000 square feet as far as the price, because that was our threshold, but they went ahead and solve value in the program and build a 265,000 square foot [00:25:00] building that came in around $25,000,000.

So the $25,000,000 tax base and we’re, I mean, and the $3 a foot to put for the citizens listening in, the $3 a foot for 100,000, that’s the equivalent of about $25,000 a month. The tax base on it alone is probably well over 250,000-$300,000 a year anyway, so it’s kind of a wash. And we’re, but the thing is that we’ve just missed out on so many projects of like, I’m sorry.

We’ve got developers willing to build you something, but we don’t have a building. And again, speed to market is so critical this day and age.

Jonathan Breeden: Right? Well, I tell you what, I could talk to Chris Johnson as I almost all these guests all night, but I do want you to explain because I gave you complete grief about those economic incentives to recruit. And I think that’s why the commissioners put me on that committee on your board, because they got tired of me complaining about it because I didn’t understand it. And when I got in there and I had to [00:26:00] look at the proposals and I knew we were competing with these other States and these other counties for some projects, including the Amazon project that is now done there in Spitfield highway 70.

I now understand it, I still like it, but I understand the game. So can you explain the economic development grants or sort of these give backs that the commissioners do for these buildings?

Chris Johnson: Yeah. And I’m glad you brought this up because obviously I’ve enjoyed our banter. Off the record and I mean off camera and everything. First of all, I want to make sure that the public understands that any incentives that the county gives, there are several things.

First of all, there’s a protection on behalf of the county. The other thing is that the grant that is given to the company is actually their money being given back to them. So the point is that a tax abatement is illegal. So recruiting an industry saying, well, our tax rate is at 67 cent or 69 cent, I can’t remember, I [00:27:00] apologize. You know, instead of 69 cents, I think instead of saying, well, you know, we’ll cut your tax rate for the first five years down to 40 cent and you just pay 40 cent as opposed to, that’s illegal. So, but what, the way that we can address that is that you pay your taxes and then we’ll give you a percentage back after you meet all the criteria.

So basically for every dollar that you give me in new tax dollars, I’ll give you a percentage back over a predetermined amount of time, but you’ve got to make sure that the investment is there, that the jobs created or that you’ve said that you’re going to do.

So the point is that before we give back any grant, they have to do what they’ve said they’ve done. They have to pay their taxes, they have to have made the investment and they have to create the jobs. So there’s protection on behalf of the citizens and then, two is not taking money out of grandma’s pocket to give to some large corporation.

Now in the perfect world I think everybody agrees that incentives are something that it’s one [00:28:00] of those things that it’s the way the rules are played and the game is played today.

And if you want to be competitive you have to talk about stuff like that, but, when you think about some of our larger industries, our pharmaceuticals that we’ve talked about, and I remember when Novo announced, and they were at that time, it was like a 1.2, 1.5 billion dollar project back in ’95, excuse me, 2015, 16.

I said the money that after we give back to the client, the money that the county receives is the equivalent of a $600 million project with 500 jobs. So what would a community to do to receive a company at $600 million at with 500 jobs? And that’s no incentives at all.

And so that’s what you’ve gotta and that’s what we work to prove. Not to prove, but just to explain to the general public, is that the monies that the county gets to keep is astronomical in itself.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, and the part that I [00:29:00] didn’t get and it was when I went to the first meeting and I was sort of grousing about them and I didn’t understand it.

Somebody there looked at me and it may have been the chairman and he said, but Jonathan, we get the building for 100 years and we’re only giving the taxes back for five. And I thought, Oh yeah, we do get, the building doesn’t go away. It’s a hundred year building.

Chris Johnson: Yeah. They’re not going to pick up a $1.5 billion facility and move it over the facilities there. But again it’s one of those things that every time we have a project announcement you know, I try to explain to the public. And it’s one of those things that you’ve got to constantly remind and let people know that it’s not your tax dollars. It’s just, you’re there just getting back their own money for a pre-determined amount of time.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. Well, last question here, because literally we could go all night. What do you love most about Johnston County and what has you excited about the future for Johnston County?

Chris Johnson: Well, obviously what excites me about Johnston County but it also is [00:30:00] concerning is our growth.

Right now we’re probably pushing 250,000 in population. We’re adding about 12 to 15,000 residents a day, which is exciting. And also meeting the needs of our existing industries or being a part of a bigger regional, a larger region in the triangle region and so that’s exciting and providing and having all the things that people want and expect in a large area.

But the other thing is that we need to make sure that, and our County Commissioners understand that of trying to direct that growth, trying to maintain that sense of community, that rural character that has made Johnston County so attractive.

And it’s a delicate balance of government of telling private citizens what they can and can’t do. Obviously we don’t mind it if it’s benefits us, but you know, don’t tell, have government tell me what to do, but I want to make sure that the property owner next to me doesn’t do such and such.

And unfortunately, it’s just a doubt delicate balance, but I think Johnston County [00:31:00] is we’ve got a lot of things that we should be very thankful for. Good leadership, great schools, a great area to grow up and raise a family. And so it’s just a part of the, we are a part of Raleigh. I mean, in the triangle region, and that’s the great thing about it.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, that’s awesome. Well, We’d like to thank if anybody wants to get up with your office, I know you’re at the airport. How would they get up with you?

Chris Johnson: Well, the best way to do this is go to our website at GrowWithJoCo.Com and there’s links there that you can connect with me, to email me or call the office.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. And what to be, what’s

Chris Johnson: Trying to be very responsive. And then also you can follow me on LinkedIn and the social media, the Twitter and Facebook and stuff.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. And what’s the website for the Jewel’s Formals?

Chris Johnson: You know, it’s funny, I’m ashamed to say it’s probably just JewelsFormals.com. But you can Google that. All right. Cool. Again, I am a novice when it comes to all these other stuff, because every time I finally figure out something everybody’s moved on to something else.

Jonathan Breeden: I got you. Well, anyway, we’d like to thank Chris Johnson for coming in [00:32:00] today. If this is your first time listening to The Best of Johnston County podcast, we ask you to like follow or subscribe to this podcast seeing it or listening to it, whether it be YouTube, Apple, podcast, spotify or anywhere else, Facebook where we have this podcast all over the place so that you don’t miss another episode of The Best of Johnston County podcast podcast are posted every Monday.

And if you would also do us the favor of leaving us a five star review down at the bottom, wherever you see this podcast, it helps with our visibility to be shown to other people in the community so that they will learn more about what is so great about Johnston County and hear more of The Best of the Johnston County podcast and all of the great guests we have.

Until next time. I’m your host, Jonathan Breeden.

That’s the end of today’s episode of Best of Johnston County, a show brought to you by the trusted team at Breeden Law Office. We thank you for joining us today and we look forward to sharing more interesting facets of this community next week. Every [00:33:00] story, every viewpoint adds another thread to the rich tapestry of Johnston County.

If the legal aspects highlighted raised some questions, help is just around the corner at www. breedenfirm. com.