Improving Business in the Wilmington Region

WBD Celebrates 70th Anniversary: Looking Forward, Looking Back

In 1956, Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” spent eight weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard charts. Soviet tanks squashed the Hungarian Revolution. Notre Dame quarterback Paul Hornung won the Heisman Trophy. Actor Tom Hanks was born. It was also the year Wilmington civic and business leaders converged to create The Committee of 100. Today, that organization is proudly known as Wilmington Business Development (WBD).

Founders agreed that the organization’s mission would center on aggressively recruiting business and industry to the Wilmington region. Though it seems obvious today, it was a cutting-edge idea at the time. Leaders believed a business-driven organization, working in concert with local government, was best-suited to sharpen the region’s economic competitiveness. But their efforts also were born of necessity: The Atlantic Coastline Railroad, then Wilmington’s largest employer, was relocating its headquarters to Jacksonville, Fla., taking with them more than 300 Wilmington families.

The idea worked. Over the following decades, leading business titans from Corning and General Electric to Verizon and Amazon were proactively recruited to Greater Wilmington by this organization with new jobs, investment capital and energy.
“Economic forces and political winds have always shifted in unpredictable ways, but the one constant in this market has and always will be the work of this organization,” says Tim Milam, WBD’s chairman. “It’s amazing to be a part of what WBD has accomplished over its rich, 70-year history,” Milam says. “And there is so much more on the way.”
As important to its recruitment mission, WBD works daily to support the success and expansion of companies already here. Many of those began as North Carolina businesses – Mojotone or Live Oak Bank, for example, while others like Polyhose, an India-based automotive supplier now through its second expansion at Pender Commerce Park, started half a world away. “WBD considers itself a partner of local employers and shares a stake in their future,” Milam says.

WBD also works to ensure the region’s economic infrastructure is aligned with the downstream needs of industry. While multi-modal transportation improvements – primarily the completion of I-40 and I-140, as well has a 42-foot channel depth at the Port of Wilmington – occurred through state and federal support, WBD worked to identify new business properties and equip them with water, sewer, natural gas, electrical service and industrial access.

“WBD is always anticipating the assets and amenities that tomorrow’s businesses will need,” says Scott Satterfield, President and CEO of WBD. Across Satterfield’s 30+ years with the organization, WBD has collaborated with municipal, county and state partners to ensure industry-ready sites and parks have world-class assets. “Our private development partners are also critical to our efforts to maintain an outstanding inventory of ready-to-go buildings and properties that most regions can’t compete with,” Satterfield says.

Given the uniqueness of its founding mission, WBD remains focused on the strategic objective of economic diversification, and the region’s broad industrial base – from aerospace manufacturing and nuclear energy development to fintech and logistics – has much to show for that commitment. Through it all have been WBD’s reliable line-up of allies, partners, investors and members. “Economic development is a team sport, and we would be dead last in our league without key players joining us in the game,” Satterfield says. “We’re grateful to all our local teammates who have driven our success – and know they’ll stand with us as an even more exciting future unfolds.”

Join the organization’s leaders in saluting WBD’s 70th anniversary at its Annual Meeting on Wednesday, November 18th at UNC Wilmington.