SOUTHERN CITY Quarter 4 2022 20 Mayor Gibbons greeting Kinston Mayor Don Hardy at NCLM’s annual conference, CityVision. Photo credit: Ben Brown. The job of a mayor, or any elected official, is never about a single issue. However, there are priorities, and the issue of economic development has dominated the agenda for most of Gibbon’s time. It is so closely tied to all of the above traits—to the deep knowledge of his hometown and its citizens, and an understanding of what Lenoir once was and what it could be again—and he is quick to note it as both his top achievement and top ongoing goal. It all starts downtown. “When I first got in, we were seeing the city change,” Gibbons said. Recalling his early days in office, Gibbons remembers downtown as hosting the courthouse, a few city offices, and not much else. There was very little retail or local business. “It had been great while growing up here, but it had gone away.” That status quo created a cascade of problems. Without the hub of an attractive downtown, civic pride had lessened, which sputtered any local momentum to make necessary changes, which meant that the downtown would remain in a state of underinvestment, which meant that the town would lack a key recruitment piece in its efforts to attract new businesses, and on and on. The goal, then, was to reverse that inertia. Gibbons began with a structural focus: new sidewalks, streetscapes, infrastructure investments, and doing all else to make the area so that businesses could—and would want to—operate downtown. Having a born-and-bred local leading the charge made a difference, Gibbons believes. “The value is, being from here makes you so proud. You want to see it grow and get better. With the background that I had, I got to see how my community was and how I want to see it again.” It worked. Momentum built. Businesses slowly started to trickling in. Gibbons then changed the approach to direct business support, and that helped sustain the energy. Soon, downtown had transformed from empty to an asset, and Gibbons and town leadership had a tool with which to keep Lenoir growing. “We had to battle,” Gibbons said. “We could have boarded up our town and said, ‘furniture is all we’ve ever done,’ and we could have quit. But we didn’t. We had to rebuild ourselves.” To supplement these efforts, Lenoir turned its focus to another asset: its people. A large portion of the community had worked in the furniture industry, but had been slow to transition to other areas of work. Unemployment was a key concern. Gibbons possessed the insight to see that this was not an intrinsic problem, but rather a situational problem. Thus, they could adjust the situation. Lenoir did so by working with the local community college to offer training to former furniture workers to prepare them for different industries. And like with the downtown developments, the benefits extended beyond just the tangible. “We were working to keep our community proud of itself,” said Gibbons. Success was almost immediately apparent, seen in the recruitment of large industry. In 2007, Google came to town with a $1.2 billion investment in a new data center. “What possessed Google to come to a small community like Lenoir?” said Gibbons. “Well, we had the resources, and we had the employees. We had people they could come in and hire.” Downtown has been a similarly successful selling point in the recruitment of other businesses, both large and small. It’s not just a nostalgic exercise. Rather, it’s the headline attraction on the tour of town, and perhaps even more important, is a source of pride for the community, which, as Gibbons believes, builds an ongoing willingness to adapt in the face of change. “Once we get companies to visit, it’s not a hard sell.” The larger picture of steady success obscures the challenges that arise along the way. Gibbons admits that it’s not always pleasant. “Sometimes I feel like I’m beating my head against the wall,” he said. But it is that larger picture that keeps him on track. “You have to step back. We’ve done so many great things. We’re walking. We’re beginning to run.” The results of Gibbons’ work are reward enough, but other formal accolades have accumulated over the years. All areas of his life seem to be reflected in the honors. Gibbons was awarded the Governor’s Order of the Long Leaf Pine in 2016, received the LA Dysart Man of the Year award from Caldwell County in 2018, and earned induction into the Caldwell County sports hall of fame in 2010. Additionally, the City of Lenoir has created the “Gibbons Award,” named after Mayor Gibbons and his wife Becky, to honor distinguished service as it relates to downtown development. But, as Gibbons said, the individual awards are only significant because they mean that the town itself has succeeded. That has always stood as the most important goal. “I call it my laughing place. The place I love to be,” Gibbons said. “My goal was to bring it back—to see my laughing place return to the way it used to be. And that’s what we’ve done.” continued from page 19 Mayor Joe Gibbons: A Labor of Love in Lenoir
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