Gaston County Embracing Historic Look To Bring New Residents

GASTON COUNTY, N.C. — Gaston County, or as Steve D’Avria from Gaston Business Association calls it, the final frontier.

“They’ve gone north, they’ve gone south, they’ve gone east. So now it’s time to go west,” D’Avria said of the Charlotte expansion to Gaston County.

The newest census numbers show Gaston County grew 3.8% in a 3 year span. That would be impressive growth for many counties around the country. However, when you compare it to the other 6 counties that border Mecklenburg, no one grew less.

“There’s still that challenge into crossing over to get to Mecklenburg County. There’s only four access points,” explained D’avria.

Gaston County Economic Director, Donny Hicks, said the county is in line for “pretty substantial infrastructure” projects including the widening of  I-85 to eight lanes from Belmont to Gastonia.

Plenty of places to live are popping up in Gastonia, especially around the stadium where developers are looking to hit it out of the park.

“It created a niche for people that may want to invest in those types of properties, but are closed out from somewhere like South End,” explained Hicks of new development around the ballpark.

Gastonia is taking a page from the Chronicle Mill Apartments in Belmont. Instead of knocking down a piece of history, it’s writing a new chapter.

“We have buildings here that are over 100 years old that have stayed here, that we’ve been able to refurbish, make them better, make them stronger,” said D’Avria of the downtown Gastonia renovations.

Alchemy Coworking is the newest business to move to downtown Gastonia. Keanu Trujillo’s shared work space is now bringing in young professionals where Smith’s Drug Store stood since the great depression.

Trujillo shares a similar feeling to Hicks, it’s hard to be a great county without jobs.

“We’ve had strong job growth. We’ve had a lot of new companies that have located here that have brought people with them that have chosen to live here and we had almost 10,000,000ft² of industrial space built in the last two years,” said Hicks.