New Businesses Helping Cabarrus County Residents Stay Close To Home

CABARRUS COUNTY, N.C. — If you’re not growing, you’re dying. Very few cities in the country are growing quite like Concord.

“My view of life has been you either grow or you fade away,” said Concord’s mayor, Bill Dusch.

Mayor Dusch can look right outside of his office to see the growth with multiple apartment complexes being built, the mayor expects more than a 1,000 people to live downtown in the near future.

“We’ve been trying not to overgrow, but trying to keep it moving in the right direction,” explained Dusch.

A study last year from the financial company, SmartAsset, showed a five year growth of 19.4% for Concord.

That’s around the time Andrew Angell moved to Concord from Ohio after getting a job in the city. 7 years later, he’s now a part of the downtown. His new business, Cellar Door Wine Shop, sits at the start of the downtown reconstruction project.

“One day we were just kind of walking through town and we said, you know what? This town needs a wine shop,” continues Angell, “I think that the entrepreneurship in town is just bubbling over right now.”

Entrepreneurship and big business in Cabarrus County is what long-time county Commissioner Steve Morris is hoping for.

“The biggest challenge that we have had is trying to work to make sure that Cabarrus County doesn’t just become a bedroom community of Charlotte-Mecklenburg,” explains Morris.

Beyond Concord, Harrisburg and Kannapolis are helping in the county’s population boom. The latest census numbers show a 6% growth from 2020 to 2023.

Morris says many move to Cabarrus County for the schools and cheaper homes, while still working in Charlotte.

“Most everyone realizes that residential growth does not produce enough tax revenue to cover all the services that are required, particularly in the area of, of schools,” said Morris.

The new addition of pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly to Concord on Highway 29 is exactly what the city and county was looking for. 600 high paying jobs with the hopes of it going to those who live in the county.

“Rowan-Cabarrus Community College and  some of the other schools will do training programs so we can hire from this area for it,” said Busch of future Eli Lilly Employees.