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- In conversations, both informally and formally you get the sense that we are going to begin accelerating toward the return to a new norm.

I'm Chris William and welcome again to the most widely watched source of Carolina business policy and public affairs scene each and every week for the last 30 years across the Carolinas.

Thank you for watching.

So what does a new normal mean?

And if the vaccines prove to be successful and we're back in school and back in business, what will the post pandemic life be?

In a moment, we start with a Carolinas town hall, business and policy leaders from across the Carolinas.

And we start in a moment.

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- On this edition of Carolina Business Review, the Carolina's town hall featuring Gary Salamido, of the NC chamber, Ted Pitts of the Wilson Kibler commercial real estate, John McDonough, Greenville City Manager and Patrick Woodie from the NC Rural Center.

(bright upbeat music) - Welcome again to our dialogue, gentlemen.

Welcome to you all.

Thank you for joining us.

John, we'll start with you, it's first time on our program and hope it's not the last time, but as a city manager, as someone who has some leverage, not just the Upstate or across South Carolina, but in general John, do you think the next two or three or six months we're going to see a rapid acceleration towards some kind of new norm and in business and just in life?

- A great question.

Great question, Chris.

I would say probably more towards the end of that time period.

I think the next two or three months are gonna be critical from the standpoint of vaccinations, increasing competence and people to come back out.

That's been a major focus of ours over the past year, particularly around retail the impact that we've seen on our downtown retailers and you'll see that across cities in the Carolinas.

And one of the things we did is we came up with the idea of the Greenville pledge and that's where our restaurants, our business owners all bought into a common theme of things that they would commit to do to protect their customers.

So that's something that is ongoing.

It will be important that we continue to do that.

We continue to take, masking up seriously over the next several months because that will help reduce the spread and increase confidence.

So yes, I would say even towards the end of that period, at summer as we get into the fall, we are looking very much forward to that and a return to more of a normal day to day life, particularly around people coming back to work and people coming downtown, eating out and visiting our retail establishment.

- Gary, Patrick, Ted, what do you think?

- Lean in a little bit too.

I think it's gonna be difficult to know for a little bit longer.

I think we're gonna probably go a little longer than we expect.

And a lot will depend as John said, on vaccine distribution.

The whole piece is tied to vaccine distribution.

So for here in North Carolina, when three and four come those stages that really get us toward that herd immunity.

We're working now with folks to make sure that three and four when we gotta have the masses vaccinated to get that herd immunity is in a good place.

And we're planning for that now.

And that'll determine how quickly we recover.

I'm not sure normal is gonna be the same ever again.

Things are different and systems are different.

People are different.

Folks are home, I have retired their debt but they're holding onto their cash just like businesses are.

So the question will remain is when people have confidence again, to be investing and spending the kind of money that we were accustomed to, in the areas they were accustomed to.

I think there's gonna be a reserved approach 'cause we really don't know how long this will last.

The variants are gonna have an impact.

I wanna be hopeful that we start getting in a better cadence towards the end of the year, third and fourth quarter of this year.

And then 2022, at least develop a cadence where we know what's expected and there's more transparency about what's coming.

- Gary, Patrick, or (indistinct) Patrick.

What, so what is a new norm?

What does it look like?

As Gary just described it, it's not gonna be what we think maybe a little trauma will make us or a lot of trauma will make us think a little differently about what it means to be back in the office, interact et cetera, et cetera.

- Yeah.

- Yes, sir so I think - Well I think, go ahead.

- I think when we look at what real estate usage which is the business I'm in now, it's gonna change.

We've seen an increased demand for distribution industry warehousing space, like in the office sector you're already starting to see some shifts.

We may see some space coming up the market for sublease.

What people need in an office but maybe not everybody needs a large office every day.

So things are changing.

And I think if you talk about how we come out of this, we've all gone into this differently.

North Carolina has treated things differently than South Carolina.

I live in Lexington.

They treat things differently in Lexton than they do in Columbia.

School district my kids go to, treated it differently than the school district right next door to them.

So when you look at what the new normal looks like and what coming out of this looks like, it's gonna look different from community to community slightly.

But I do think, I agree with both John and Gary, that as vaccinations become more available and they are, we've seen movement in the last couple of weeks.

I think we're gonna quickly, everybody that wants to get a vaccine is gonna be able to get a vaccine hopefully in the summer.

And then hopefully as we move into next school year kids are back in school five days away which is key.

Businesses and employers know how much it's hindered their ability to have normal operations.

And I do worry about what we're doing to our kids, keeping them out of an in class environment.

We'll look and see what that looks like.

So a lot of things to look at, and I think it depends on where you are as to how as you come out of it and what you're dealing with currently.

- But Patrick does rural mean it's a completely different set of expectations than we've heard described?

- No, I don't think it is completely different.

I do think the new normal it will be very different from the old normal, but we see some evidence.

We work really hard to try to stay in close touch with our rural leadership all across the state.

And we are hearing anecdotally and starting to save some data to back it up, that there may be some changes that foot that will have perhaps a silver lining for some rural places.

For example, I'm hearing from some of our economic developers in Eastern North Carolina where there's a lot of boating and Marine manufacturing that goes down.

They're really thinking and having to rethink their supply chains, which which might create some economic development opportunities a lot closer to home.

I think rethinking those supply chains is something we may well see in manufacturing all across the state.

And we've got a lot of small manufacturers that are located in rural North Carolina.

The second thing we're seeing, we've been in this period in our history where we're not just North Carolina but the entire country and in fact the globe this trend toward urbanization.

And I think, I don't think we will see a reversal of that but I do think we may see a slowing of that.

And for some rural community, because I do think families because of the pandemic are gonna rethink how they live their life and where they live their life and what their priorities are?

And that will mean for some people that they may choose to leave to, yeah, to move out and away from the dense inner cities into a smaller community Alaskans place.

That being said, they're gonna look for certain things.

They're gonna look for broadband, number one.

They're gonna look for a strong healthcare delivery system and those rural communities that are well prepared and that can offer the things that a younger family may be looking for as they contemplate changing the quality of their life could be very well-positioned on the back end of this hand payment.

We also, - Just go ahead.

I'm sorry Patrick, keep going.

I'm sure some of the other guests have been noticing this as well.

I don't know what to make of it it's still too early to say.

But the interesting thing to me is the increase in the number of business startups that we are seeing in the numbers.

I don't know what that means or how it plays out, but on the face of it it's almost a reverse of what you would expect but indicates something is going on that's leading to the new business formation, and that comes at a time when we've been in a period of declining business formation.

- John, do you see permits showing up in Greenville for that?

As Patrick just described and Gary weigh in on that as well after John.

- What we do, I think as a region, as the Carolinas region I think North Carolina, South Carolina are particularly well positioned given the amenities that we have, given the size of our city's not as (indistinct) some of the the huge medical offices around the country to capitalize on the outflow of talent.

So that's been a big focus of ours.

We had a conversation yesterday with our leading manufacturers and we have 800 events manufacturing companies here in the Carolinas.

And we think that's really a great opportunity to build on bringing talent to support those existing industries.

- Gary.

- I think what I, yeah, what I'd add Chris is we have incredible entrepreneurial spirit in the Carolinas among our small businesses that some of those businesses are never coming back.

If you're in the restaurant industry, hospitality industry it's what they're saying 25 to 30% of those businesses that were affected in the pandemic that had to shut down or closed down significantly, won't be back.

Well, those are very entrepreneurial people very resilient people.

And in both North and South Carolina they're looking for ways to make a living to take care of their families, to send kids to school, to make their communities healthy.

So they're very entrepreneurial.

So what they were doing before they may not be doing again but how they think about it, how they want to create jobs and create a life for themselves and their families and their communities isn't changing and Carolinians are very resilient folks.

And they'll find ways to serve again.

And whether it's an urban area or a rural area the attitudes to saying, okay, I can't do this but I sure think I could do that, but why not me?

And we're doing a lot of I'm gonna try it.

And in the manufacturing sector to John's point, has lost some considerable jobs now but they're retooling.

They're getting ready, Personal protective equipment.

North Carolina is as well positioned anywhere in the nation if not the world, to be a leader in producing Personal protective equipment.

Our manufacturers in the Carolinas turned on a dime when this happened from whatever they were doing to making masks and making robes and all kinds of stuff.

Well, that innovative spirit that agility, the access to the supply chains that the Carolinas have kind of in the middle.

The Eastern seaboard is really something that we'll see people take advantage of.

- You said you alluded to something, you mentioned something about schools and schooling.

There was a lot of consternation about this loss educational attainment over the last year or so.

We don't hear that as much anymore.

And it's more about this feeling and it's just a feeling but a sense as well, that we seem to be much closer now to a abroad full deployment of in-person learning.

First question, do you feel like that's the case?

And second, of course the loss educational attainment can never be regained, but is it as bad as maybe we thought it was or not?

- Yeah I mean, I think it's as bad as people are saying it is.

My house is a Petri dish right of this example.

I have a kid in elementary school, a kid in middle school and a kid in high school and personalities are different.

And they have two parents in their household who both are college educated.

Both of us are more working with them to make sure that, they're not in school, if they aren't in school four days a week, nobody's in school five days a week, one's in school two days a week two are in school four days a week but they're getting what they need.

So where I think I'm most concerned is already in those disadvantaged communities where maybe they don't have that two parent household, maybe they don't have a parent that's there to help with them.

So I do think we're gonna have some ramifications coming out of the pandemic from an education perspective that we're gonna have to address.

And we wanna make sure that folks that haven't gotten what they need, their districts here in the Midlands.

And I was working out of our Greenville office, I'm in the Upstate and the Upstate there five days a week.

And there's a district here in the Midlands that still, isn't doing in-person instruction in a public school district.

So you tell me who has an advantage.

So there's some things that we're gonna have to fix.

And I've taught with our superintendent here in South Carolina, Molly Spearman, and she is focused like a laser on that and is looking at the things that we can do to help bring back kids to school and then also help pick up what they've maybe lost out on.

So it is something we're gonna have to watch and it's one of, there are some things as Patrick said, that this accelerates like rural broadband, that makes it necessary but there are also some things we're gonna have to deal with in the coming years.

- Patrick.

- Yeah, well, I totally agree with everything that's being said.

I do think our rural students find themselves in a unique situation.

I don't think any of us believe after all this time that remote learning is equivalent to in the classroom instruction.

And I know all of us including a lot of parents wanna see those kids back in that in classroom experience all the time as quickly as possible.

Some of our rural students just due to either the luck or the misfortune of the geography that they happen to be in either, have had real, there are places in rural North Carolina with great connectivity from a broadband standpoint, they're just few and far between, and there's a lot of places to our kids, students and their families are at a real disadvantage.

And so this accelerating rural broadband it's time that we had some big, bold, aggressive steps in that way.

We've made some really good progress in the North Carolina over the last two to three years, but it is too slow quite frankly.

We have got to pick up the pace of getting less mile broadband to all of our community.

- Well, Patrick not to interrupt you, but don't you think that this public health care crisis is the last nail in the coffin for that funding.

In other words, that it will happen now because it needs to happen?

- I absolutely believe it is gonna happen.

Based on everything that I'm hearing and also know the Bipartisan Consensus that exists around this issue.

And it's hard to find bipartisan agreement on anything that exceeds what exists for rural broadband.

I think everybody does in fact understand it, used it as a disparity that must be addressed at the federal and the state level.

- Talking about things that will happen now because of public healthcare crisis.

Gary, I want to harken back to you had a pretty distinguished career in big pharma.

And of course, you've been with the Chamber in North Carolina now for a while.

But when you think of Medicaid Expansion especially and both Carolinas have done the Heisman to Medicaid Expansion funding from the federal government in many ways, do you get the sense that there's going to be capitulation now by the general assemblies?

- Up in crisis, we're gonna look at healthcare coverage differently across all of the different segments that deliver health care and look at how do we do it to benefit folks that are in different circumstances.

For example, there's a percentage of the population of no fault of their own then Medicaid provides a great resource for their small businesses that we have to look at that wanna provide healthcare for their employees but are priced out of it right now.

So how can we aggregate those lives?

So in North Carolina, we're looking at association health plans that can aggregate small business lives together to give them leverage into the marketplace.

And then the larger companies are already doing it.

So I think it's gonna be a mix, right?

It's gonna be, what are the different ways that we can go and meet people where they are, where they want to do, where they want to provide coverage for their employees, whether they have three employees or whether they have 300.

And how do we do that in the private market?

And then how does the Medicaid take care of the rest?

So I think we have to have a broader discussion about no matter where you're getting your healthcare here's what we expect from it.

We expect it to be outcome based with better outcomes at a lower and more predictable price.

Wherever that's delivered is what we have to focus on.

And we should develop our system out.

Our system and our healthcare workers have done great work during this pandemic, but it's also revealed some gaps.

And now we can take this as an opportunity to identify those gaps, create the system we want and then folks can decide how they're gonna access it including our elected officials on how they appropriate resources.

I do think the federal government under the Biden administration is probably gonna make it really gonna incentivize States to do more in that area, like forgiving a certain percentage of state participation in Medicaid for an extended period of time, which from pandemic recovery perspective will be something our electeds will have to really look at.

But what we don't wanna do is we don't wanna just put money into a system that has holes in it, where we're not getting the best outcomes we want at the price that we want.

And I think - John, go ahead.

I'm sorry, good.

Please finish your thought here.

- No, you good, you good.

- John, when you look down the road from Greenville to the state house in Columbia and same thing same question.

Do you get a feeling that there will be an adoption for Medicaid Expansion dollars or something that looks like that in South Carolina?

- Well, it's certainly a big issue with the disparities that we see in healthcare.

Something I know they've got a lot on their plate this year with trying to get a budget passed and a lot of other issues, but it's definitely something that should be on the minds of our legislators.

There's not a one size fit all out there.

And we've had great luck with experimenting with different things here from the standpoint of, having a nurse available to our thousand plus employee workforce, which has helped significantly reduce our exposures.

So I think those types of models and the willingness of communities and organizations to experiment with that type of frontline access, whether it be through our community centers and we've got five or six right here in the Upstate to be able to do that.

So, yeah, it definitely needs to be on everybody's mind.

We do need to have options.

- Not long ago a couple of weeks ago we hosted the CEO of Premier Healthcare named Susan DeVore.

And Susan was very pointed about one of the big surprises that she saw as an aggregator of healthcare services and products was she said that, "they were surprising how people businesses "organizations came together to offer a way not "to just deploy the vaccine, but a way to come together "around deploying the vaccine and public health.

So that made and she used the term Public-private partnerships.

Ted, Public-private partnerships are not a new concept in economic development or any any leader in fact.

Do you feel that there is, is there in fact a renewed interest in Public-private partnerships and the efficacy and the way they're being used now in light of this again, this new norm?

- Yes, so I mean, if you look at kind of what the pandemic's done is, we've been at a state of emergency and all sides have had to pull together and here in South Carolina specifically, governments as well as the private sector have pulled together and worked on solutions related mostly to the pandemic but also just in general.

So I do think there is a sense on the local level, the local and the state level, that we're all on the same team.

I'm not sure in DC that they always take it to that approach, but at least on the local level and the state level, that we're all on the same team.

And if we're not working together the people that are hurting or the citizens, the constituents.

So I see a lot of interest from the legislature, the governor here in South Carolina, along with the private sector to figure out what the solution is and it doesn't matter how we get it done let's pull together and get it done.

So I do think you'll see that model hopefully exists house pandemic and we have collaboration that exists which really needs, we need to have happen for the betterment of the citizens of a state or a locate municipality.

- Anyone else about that Public-private partnerships you see a renewed interest?

- I do and just from a rural perspective I think it's really critical that we have Public-private partnerships and then we make it easier to create them and incentivize them to the extent that we can, for example in the area of broadband, some of our less dense rural communities, the only way they may ultimately get that private investment that they need is through Public-private partnerships for some of those areas.

And so we should make it easy for that to happen and for local governments to participate in that.

And in North Carolina on the public health side, we have a really decentralized system of public health in North Carolina, more so than a lot of States.

And it creates really unique challenges, communication being foremost among those.

So the necessity of Public-private partnerships just around some of the public health challenges we face I think is really important.

- And Chris I'll add that our health care system is broken.

And I get everybody knows that, right?

And the pandemic has pushed that to the forefront.

Rural South Carolina like I'm sure rural North Carolina we have hospitals that close and there's not treatment or a level of care.

So we've gotta figure the system out.

And when we look at what that takes is, it does take input from the business community who employs folks and we've gotta work together to fix our healthcare system.

And it's not gonna happen overnight but it is one of those issues that when we talk about the two South Carolina's, it's on a lot of front and just the rural broadband piece but it's also the healthcare and the healthcare access piece.

That's something really that we need for policy makers to focus on.

- And Gary, we have about a minute left but in the same vein we had North Carolina's health and human services secretary Dr. Manny Cohen recently and many times talking about and she never said it this way, but the untenable burden now on that serve on that sector not just opioids, but public health and COVID, and all of these things, does the business community reach further than just halfway to help in this way?

- And then a lot of businesses already are but we were looking at what are the mental health issues that are gonna come up?

The biggest challenge we have now in the pandemic and coming out of the pandemic across all socioeconomic status is-- - And we have about 30 seconds, Gary, I'm sorry - We have the mental health impact.

So to answer your question, Chris, yes.

At least equal but there's things that the business community can do even better or we just have to allow it to happen.

- Gentlemen, thank you.

Cause I know we always, we press you to put 10 pounds of information in a five pound bag and you always do a good job.

So thank you for joining us.

John, we hope we didn't scare you off and hope you'll come back as well.

- No, great conversation we could have gone on for another hour or so.

- Thank you.

Well, Ted, John, Patrick, Gary good to see you all.

Please stay safe.

- See you.

- Thank you for watching our program.

If you have any questions or comments carolinabusinessreview.org.

Until next week I'm Chris Williams, good night.

- [Narrator] Major funding for Carolina Business Review provided by High Point University, Martin Marietta, Colonial Life, The Duke Endowment, Barings, Grant Thornton, Sonoco, BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina.

And by viewers like you, thank you.

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