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- Labor, employment, education are just some of the things we're going to unpack on this edition of Carolina Business Review.

I'm Chris William.

And welcome again to the most widely watched and longest running program on Carolina business policy and public affairs.

We start in a moment.

The President of Bennett College will join us as well.

Stay with us.

(dramatic music) - [Announcer] Gratefully acknowledging support by Martin Marietta, a leading provider of natural resource-based building materials, providing the foundation upon which our community improve and grow.

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The Duke Endowment, a private foundation, enriching communities and the Carolinas through higher education, healthcare, rural churches and children's services.

(dramatic music) On this edition of Carolina Business Review, Holly Childs from Wilmington Downtown Inc. John McDonough, City Manager of Greenville, South Carolina.

And special guest Suzanne Walsh, President of Bennett College.

(dramatic music) - Well, we're glad to have Holly from Wilmington, John from Upstate South Carolina in Greenville.

Welcome to you both.

You know, here it is.

Holly, I'll start with you.

Almost two years to the day that we really started shutting down life, businesses, kind of the way of life that we had and now we're back.

I almost say post COVID in many cases.

What is different now about urban core about center city from your point of view?

- Yeah, you know, I think Chris, so many things were changed and so many things were changed all at once.

And for us, for Wilmington being such a tourist town, being such a beach dependent and tourist dependent town, it really, you know, changed the way we did business.

It changed the way our businesses had to function and their hours.

I mean, certainly their staffing.

The hospitality businesses were tremendously impacted, all of the restaurants, retailers, hotels.

So we looked at other business models and, you know, other ways of trying to support the business communities, including, you know, offering to help them with some of the costs associated with cleaning and trying to get staffed up and those kinds of things.

It's been a challenge.

I mean, I think we're back.

I think you're right.

But we like to think it's a post pandemic world.

We're still having to watch out for it and be mindful.

But it's certainly better now.

- John, the same question.

What's the permanent indelible changes now that are part of a Greenville and what an urban core is?

- Yeah, I think to Holly's point, if you had a well prepared urban core, if you had a successful urban core, I think people have a great line to get back to some level of normalcy.

We've seen that in Greenville.

We had our, you know, pretty very significant fall for Greenville event last fall, several hundred thousand people back in Greenville.

Restaurants are open, they're thriving.

Obviously, we've had the challenges that everyone else has had from a standpoint of access to a workforce.

So what we've seen is a change in hours, perhaps businesses who are open seven days a week are now open five days a week.

They're no not open as many hours as they used to be but we've rebounded very quickly.

I think the addition of 5G downtown for us, it's been significant from a business support standpoint.

I think we're doing well from a commercial occupancy standpoint here and our tourism numbers are coming back up.

On an average year, we have about 5,000 visitors a year and I think we're gonna expect something on that order in 2022.

- You know, this is not gonna be a surprise to anybody.

But both Wilmington and Upstate South Carolina, Greenville, South Carolina are our tourist destinations.

I mean, very cool downtown for Greenville, certainly center city in Wilmington's fun for a whole lot of reasons.

Hospitality, restaurants were hit hard, hit fast.

Are those now back to where, not they were from, you know, the number of people employed and total revenue.

But again, Holly, is our restaurants, have they found their new reality?

And is this how it's going to be?

- They have, you know, and I think just as John said, you know, they were hit but they adapted quickly.

They were able to pivot quickly which was key to their success.

We did not lose a single restaurant to COVID in downtown Wilmington.

And I think that speaks to, you know, the local support that the restaurants got, certainly.

And also their ability to just kind of change it up, to do, you know, more outdoor dining or social distancing or kind of just change the business model.

And yes, they had shifts and hours and those kinds of things.

But we are at 98.4% last I checked on downtown occupancy with our retailers now.

And so it's hard to find a restaurant or a retail spot.

You know, it's not like a lot of cities that got really wiped out and have a lot of vacant storefronts.

We just have not experienced that.

And it's back.

And, you know, people were, I think there was spent up demand.

It's stronger than ever.

We had a fantastic, you know, summer and fall.

We opened up a downtown music venue, big live nation venue opened up in July so now, you know, we've got that adding to the vibrancy of downtown and it's been great.

People wanna get out.

- John by the numbers, how about Greenville?

What about the percentage of restaurants that went away and back?

- That's a good question, Chris.

We weren't perfect but to Holly's point, I think given our strength as a destination, tourism destination, and strong local support here, we lost a handful of restaurants.

And, you know, that industry has basically been very challenged across the country as far as access to workforce.

And I think what we saw is a lot of people took the pandemic as an opportunity to find alternative work and, you know, we're seeing more and more people working remotely.

And I think places, you know, in the Carolina's Greenville, Wilmington, others have been the beneficiaries of that change.

- Are you, either one of you seeing now a permanent emerging new hybrid work model?

And what does it look like?

- Yeah, absolutely, I think that is the new normal, this hybrid work model.

We have a lot of, you know, corporate presence downtown.

We saw that a lot of them went remote.

But what we're seeing is they like to get their teams together, maybe on a weekly basis, they have a team building exercise, quarterly corporate meetings here in downtown.

So I think they have definitely adjusted.

And it's interesting, one of the things that we hear repeatedly when we talk with our local scaling companies, high growth companies here is when they are pursuing candidates for positions.

The first question they get is not, you know, what's my salary and compensation going to be?

It is can I work remote?

Which is very interesting.

So companies have had to adapt and I think here in the Carolinas are, you know, communities have been very good at, you know, being successful in that space.

- Holly, what do you think?

- Yeah, I think the same thing has been true here in Wilmington.

You know, one of the things that we've seen, the corporate, particularly the big corporate presence here, you know, one of our big companies, PPD downtown that was recently acquired by Thermo Fisher had one time, you know, pre-pandemic, there were 1500 people working in that building.

Now on a daily basis, 50 to 60 people are in that building which has created some interesting real estate changes as well.

You know, what do we need to do to kind of accommodate for the people that are wanting to come to work but also, you know, open up more office space because we've also got a growing tech office industry here.

We've announced just since July, 140 new tech jobs downtown.

And those have been from smaller companies that are kind of getting into the Wilmington market and they're looking for that quality of life.

And, you know, whenever they're coming in, we're gonna need more square footage, more real estate for office.

We're 96% office absorption as well.

So we don't have a lot in terms of space.

And I think there needs to be now, that things are settling down a bit, some reshuffling on utilizing our space downtown more wisely.

- You know, go ahead, John, please.

- I was gonna say, we're seeing a very similar situation here.

We're virtually out of class A office space working with a lot of our larger local developers.

We have a number of candidate companies in the pipeline that wanna be in downtown Greenville so I think you're gonna see the construction of at least one if not two class A office building in the next 12 to 24 months.

And another area we've capitalized on from a marketing standpoint is we've got a whole new campaign called From here, you can change the world.

And that all came out of the pandemic.

And, you know, Greenville has been in the news.

The Carolinas have been in the news as a place, I think south Carolina's number four in the country, as far as relocation from the north and from the West Coast.

So we see that as an opportunity and we certainly intend to capitalize on that.

- John, let me ask you a one off.

You're City Manager.

Greenville is not a small town, as you just said, vibrant and growing.

This idea of managing an organization and having this new model for workers, do you find some of your contemporaries on for profit or not for profit side are now rethinking a compensation to say, well, okay, if you're hybrid, if you're not traveling then we're gonna offer X in annual comp and it's not gonna be Y anymore.

Is that a debate that's having more than just a kind of a passing dialogue?

- Yeah.

Those conversations are being had.

We're having them in our own organization as we look at, you know, our city hall building is about a hundred thousand square feet and we're looking at opportunities, you know, based on new technology, based on what we've done for the past year, we've been very efficient.

We haven't lost a beat.

I think customer service has actually improved in the past two years.

So I'm confident that we can, and we're seeing a lot of businesses take the same approach.

You know, where you might have had to had a hundred thousand square feet in the past, you might only need 45 or 50,000 square feet which translates into a lot of savings but it also gives you an opportunity to improve the quality of the space that you have.

- We've got about a minute before we bring our guest on.

Holly, I wanna unpack this thing literally in a minute.

So Wilmington, great destination, certainly a port city and close to the beaches.

And we are weeks away from spring break, from summer vacations, et cetera, et cetera.

What do you get this?

Do you get the sense it's going to be as explosive in growth as it was last year or will there be some moderation?

- No, I think it's gonna be as explosive if not more explosive.

Like I said, we have, where we just opened a new music venue downtown, we have fully booked, much more, you know, live music.

People are gearing up and people are in a better position to plan this year for all of that so there are, you know, just even now the weekends lead up to all of that.

So much going on, so many festivals and things that were rescheduled and put on a back burner.

And so we're excited.

We think this is gonna be the best spring summer in a very long time for Wilmington and we're ready.

- The Carolinas are the highest concentration of HBCUs in the country, a little less than 20, but not much less than 20 very important schools.

And I might even have that number wrong.

But we welcome now the president of one of those HBCUs, Bennett College in Guilford County, North Carolina.

She joins us now, President Suzanne Walsh.

President Walsh, welcome to the program.

Did I get that number right?

How many HBCUs are in the Carolinas?

- Oh my goodness, I know that in North Carolina, we have 10.

So I have to look up the South Carolina number.

But I think you're right.

I think it's pretty close.

- Yeah but welcome.

Sorry I didn't mean-- - Thank you (laughs) already.

Oh my goodness.

- Right, $1000 answer here.

President Walsh, welcome to the program again and thank you for taking time.

- Let's start with the idea of HBCUs were culturally important.

But what is an HBCU now?

Why is there so much talk and push for the African-American university to have African-American students?

Where does this go?

- Well, I think there's so much talk really nationally.

You hear about diversity, equity and inclusion, belonging.

You'd hear about it in the workplace.

You hear about it at colleges and universities.

And the way that I like to think about it is HBCUs are built for purpose.

We always have been supportive of a place where students of African decent feel comfortable, where they feel a sense of belonging and more importantly, where they get an outstanding education.

And so quite frankly, I feel like sort of the national dialogue is sort of catching up with where we've been in terms of saying, this is really an important group of people to focus on.

If we're going to be successful in the economy, we have to make sure that all members of the economy have an opportunity to participate.

And I think HBCUs historically and continue to really make an impact in terms of preparing students for the future.

- Holly?

- Yeah, that's great.

I think, you know, the interesting thing to us is kind of how all the-- - Do you have a question for the president?

- I do.

- Okay, sorry, sorry, go ahead.

- Sorry about that, yes (laughs).

How are you really pivoting in terms of the pandemic?

What are some unique challenges you think HBCUs face during the pandemic and how are you addressing this?

- Well, I think one of the things that we've really seen is that students rely on a sense of community on campus.

I think earlier you may have talked a little bit about what's it like to, even for employers, to not have employees in their buildings all of the time.

And, you know, we've had those conversations.

What is that dynamic when folks are not in person?

And so I think during the pandemic, I think that HBCUs have actually done two, almost dichotomous things at once.

And that's also a sign of innovation.

So on the one hand being a place where students know they can come back to, where they can come back in person, be safe, put all of the different protocols in place.

That's on the one hand.

On the other hand, a place like Bennett, for example, we've also said, and we know some families or some students aren't comfortable coming back right now and so we're actually hybrid.

So we're allowing students to be virtual this semester or they could be in person.

But that flexibility, recognizing that we understand their family context, their home context, being able to do that, I think has been a really important part of the, I think our journey during this COVID period.

- John?

- Yeah, Suzanne access to talent is extremely important to companies, particularly in a post pandemic environment.

There's a huge competition and you all play a key role and being able to fill that void and that need.

What specific steps have you guys taken to connect your talented students with workforce opportunities that are out there now?

- I love this question because we're so small that we have our own sort of very, very different approach and what I mean by that is we've been having great conversations where companies will say, we wanna come, we wanna set up a table at career day, you know, and hope to get one or two people.

That's not really how it's phrased, but that's sort of the reality of it.

And what we've said is because we're small, we can actually match a student to you.

And so once we have a conversation with you and understand, this is what you're looking for.

This is the type of student you're looking for.

We can match.

I wanna give a really quick example of actually a local firm, BRC, they asked us about an intern.

They said, we'd love to have an intern from Bennett, could you help us?

And we think we want somebody from accounting.

You know, because of course, that makes sense.

Their accountants, of course.

And our Vice President of Academic Affairs had a conversation with them.

And she said, you know, based on what you've said, I'd love to match you with this computer science student who's really strong in mathematics.

I think she'd learned a lot and be exposed to an area that would not have been on her or radar otherwise but she really... What I'm getting at there is we have an opportunity to have some intimate conversations with business to say, tell us about the skillset you're looking for and we may or may not respond just with, oh yes, you set accountants, so we're going to give you accounting students.

We really wanna say what's that skillset that could be an adjacent match but a great match.

And a student would have an experience that never would've been on their radar if we had, had the more traditional kind of relationship with a company.

So I think this is an era to really hone in on competencies and really find those right matches with companies.

- Have you made any changes for your curriculum as a result of the past two years based on those lessons learned?

A lot of what we hear from from the business community now is the ability to communicate, problem solving and, you know, more and more with people on their PDAs all the time is becoming more and more difficult.

Do you guys have any intentional approaches to dealing with those challenges?

- Well, as a liberal arts institution, we sort of start with problem solving as one of those areas but we are making adjustments.

And part of those adjustments are exactly what you're saying.

We're listening to what our corporate partners are saying.

We're listening to our nonprofit partners.

We have a lot of students who are very interested in community service, civic engagement and so forth.

And so we're listening and we're in a process right now of reviewing our curriculum.

But quite frankly, some of those things also come from outside of the curriculum.

So in the HBCU world, we talk about there's a second curriculum in the HBCU experience and that really is about kind of the culture of the campus.

And, again, that sense of belonging and that sense of confidence.

So looking both at the curriculum but also what are we offering co-curricularly, I think is critical for helping students to be successful in those kinds of environments.

- President Walsh, you've made a couple comments about being small.

Also Bennett is one of two female only HBCUs in the country.

So when you talk about having this nimbleness in your student to professor ratio is 7:1, that's pretty small.

Can you remain competitive?

How do you scale when you're small?

And would there be any type of tie up or consolidation of Bennett with another school in the future?

- Oh my goodness.

I don't know the answer to the last question.

But what I will say is that what we're doing is we're really focusing intentionally on being small.

And we wanted to do that because we know the students that we have.

We wanna be able to really wrap ourselves around them and to be able to support them.

Some of our students, I think we've talked about this before but we have 75% of our students are parallel recipients.

And so that's higher than the national average.

And yet our students are outpacing their peers in terms of their success in the workplace and out in the community.

And so we think there's something there in terms of our model and we can really wrap ourselves around you, help match you with the right employer opportunities or graduate school opportunities.

And in terms of focusing on scale, right now, we're focusing on, let's get the model right.

Let's make sure that we know how to perfectly serve those, you know, small number of students and then let's talk about scale, so that's one thing.

But in terms of a business model, what happens is when you say to yourself, we're going to be intentionally small at a tuition driven institution then you have to say, well, what are those other opportunities for income, for revenue?

And this is really allowing us, I think, to open ourselves up to a set of conversations that we hadn't been able to have before.

How do we think about that?

What does that look like in terms of it could be corporate training 'cause we have amazing faculty.

You know, so hey, some of the things you're looking for in corporations, we actually have the expertise on campus.

With our faculty, they could provide some of that training.

Can we look at, you know, there's obviously like renting space and so forth.

But really looking at ways that we can be part of our community in East Greensboro, help that local economy and at the same time looking at something other than revenue from tuition.

I think that's really important.

We may be the first to talk about that out loud but almost all of higher ed will have to have this conversation at some point in time.

The demographics don't support growth and scale infinitely.

- Yeah agreed.

Holly?

- I think too, you know, President Walsh speaking about the money and it always comes down to the money whenever you have to pay for college, as a parent myself putting three through just now, you know, I think, you know, what are some of the things that you're doing to address this, and I think it's a national problem, student debt?

You mentioned the programs and the programs recipients.

Are there anything that you are looking at that's kind of innovative for how you get students through your curriculum, through your program to a degree without overwhelming student debt?

- We're in the process of working on that?

I think just like everyone else, we're trying to figure it.

We are one of the top, I think it's top 10, most affordable institutions in North Carolina.

So our tuition's not out of control but we also wanna be realistic about what's affordable for folks.

And so we're evaluating that.

I think that the other critical piece in that is that what we've seen across the country is we've seen that this is where the cares act money right now has been super, super important for a number of institutions in terms of helping to either clear up, you know, debt for students who are in North Carolina.

For example, we've had some North Carolina cares act money to help support the students that we have from North Carolina.

And so I think that's made all of us really...

It doesn't make us comfortable 'cause we know that money won't come forever.

But it's made us more alert to some of those opportunities.

And so for me, I think it's a question of, can we increase our scholarship, you know, pool very quickly and that's one thing.

And then I think the other thing is really just, again, exploring where we are as a business model and where are we.

Where are we in terms of price and cost and so forth.

- John?

- Suzanne, you know, everybody's in a race for talent right now and it's in limited supply whether it's business, government, nonprofits, you name it.

What can we be doing as an organization to best compete for the talent at HBCUs?

What can we do to be welcoming?

Do you have any suggestions on how we can and compete for that talent?

- I love that question.

And I have an example but I can't name the organization.

So I'm gonna give like a slightly cryptic but it'll be a direct answer.

So we just had a situation where actually my board chair just said to me, hey, I was at this meeting and they said that they had reached out to HBCUs.

And I said, I'm the chair of the board of an HBCU and I don't see any of our students here.

And so the person said, well, we emailed all the HBCUs and we only heard, so there hundred of us roughly across the country, we only heard from 32.

And so I went into my email 'cause we were on Zoom of course.

And I said, oh yeah, I found that email.

And so my board said, oh, well, oh, she emailed.

Yes she did.

It's a generic email.

So it's both from a generic account to generic dear presidents and chancellors for like a vague activity (giggles).

And so I say that because we get a lot of those but I can tell that these are companies that are willing and organizations that are saying, we know we want talent and we're going to email.

But an email blast that's quite impersonal without making the case for why you are the place where we should trust that our students are going to do well isn't going to work.

So I think one of the things is developing those relationships.

We have to take time to really get to know each other so that we can do the kind of thing that we did with BRC where we can say, hey, we can actually find you a great match.

You're not gonna do that at scale.

I get that.

But you can still have great relationships with faculty, with the leaders of colleges and universities so that they can really get to know you.

I think it would also be great to have almost like internships for faculty.

So that faculty could come to companies, you know, maybe it's in the summer and spend some time with a company and say, oh, this is what it's like there now.

You know, maybe I last worked there 10 years ago or even five years ago.

It's not the same place.

But looking for those offer that give a realistic preview so that then that recruiting is both one that feels more personal.

It feels like, oh, we get each other and also they have experience.

- I'm sorry to cut you off President Walsh.

I think Bennett's lucky to have you.

I mean, good energy, certainly are ready to take it on and have taken it on.

Please come back 'cause we didn't unpack enough of it.

But welcome and good to have you.

- Thank you, thank you so much.

- Holly, thank you.

John, thank you.

Until next week, I'm Chris William, goodnight.

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