After sixteen months of meetings, a change of planning director and a nearly complete turnover of membership on the Jackson County Planning Board, an updated industrial development ordinance is now in place for the county.

With the help of matching grants funds from Macon County, TekTone Sound & Signal Manufacturing Inc. will expand operations at the county industrial park with the purchase of the former SKF facility.

Take a drive around the mountain roads of Western North Carolina and it probably won’t be long before a tight curve spits you out alongside a yard decorated with a few rusty old vehicles here, some extraneous car parts there and a peppering of discarded tools for good measure.

When the state opened the doors for hydraulic fracturing — called “fracking” — in 2014, a flood of public opinion from the mountains told Raleigh that drilling would not be welcome in the western part of the state.

Hindsight is indeed 20-20, and this time Haywood County commissioners very likely saw things exactly as they should have.

The plan to sell 55 acres in Haywood County’s industrial park to a start-up recycling sorting company has been scuttled. A press release sent out by the county Monday, Nov. 10, said that the company had withdrawn its offer. With the decision made, it’s way too easy to sit comfortably at my desk with my laptop and write with confidence about why this wasn’t a good idea.

A controversial proposal to sell a 55-acre tract in a county-owned industrial park near Canton to a private recycling sorting plant is dead.

A brand new craft distillery is looking to set up shop in the former Carolina Nights dinner theater building in Maggie Valley, but the owner will first have to get special permission from town aldermen.

A recycling sorting plant proposed in Haywood County has encountered a hitch following an 11th-hour revelation that it would be exempt from paying county property taxes.

Haywood County commissioners took another volley of criticism this week as they continued to weigh the pros and cons of selling land in the county industrial park to a recycling business venture.

More than 160 people packed a heated public hearing over a proposed recycling sorting facility in Haywood County Monday night, pleading with county commissioners to turn down the project.