Cleveland County loses Apple Inc., but it wasn't without a fight

Jul 02, 2009 (The Shelby Star - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- AAPL | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- North Carolina officials recently pushed through incentive legislation to lure Apple Inc. and the governor's office quickly announced the company known for iPods, Macs and iTunes planned to set up shop in North Carolina. Yet, the announcement didn't specify a county or town and officials remained quiet on where. At the same time, Cleveland County officials conceded Catawba County likely had landed the facility.

At this point, at least, it appears Apple Inc. won't be calling Cleveland County home.

But local officials didn't go down with a fight to land the prize ---a potential $1 billion investment in the form a computer server farm.

Up until Wednesday, Cleveland County officials were still working hard on the project, said Cleveland County Commissioner Eddie Holbrook. They never gave up.

"We felt like from the very beginning we were a long shot," Holbrook said. "Two major things we tried to overcome ---they wanted to build their on buildings. We had an $8 to $10 million structure already on the tract they were interested in in Cleveland County."

Holbrook is referring to the Chris-Craft site near Kings Mountain.

The second thing is Catawba County had a much larger site under the control of the county.

"We had an 80-acre site and our brokerage company had to try to get options on additional acres and we were able to, but it skewed the property values in relation to Catawba County, even with every incentive under the sun we tried to conceive and offer."

As a result, Holbrook said, "we're basically assuming with some degree of confidence and knowledge that we're basically a backup plan for them."

"David Dear, myself and county commissioners went to the ultimate extent to put together an ultimate incentive package," Holbrook said. "They even told us a lot of the things we proposed to them were unique, creative and visionary."

If Cleveland County had not done these things, it wouldn't have been the backup, officials said.

"Early on we knew we were in second place, but we tried to propel our effort forward. But unless a miracle drops from the sky ..."

It's not lost on Cleveland County officials that they were able to keep the interest of a national and international player and those effort might pay dividends down the road. "This effort by us has propelled us into other situations for other data centers that have heard what we've done," Holbrook said. "Three or four have taken an interest. Hopefully all the effort doesn't result in a total loss."

Holbrook said this project hasn't been lost by a lack of effort on the part of Cleveland County officials.

"I want to convey that the board of commissioners, county manager, Kristin Fletcher (executive vice president of Cleveland County Economic Development) spent hours and hours and hours on this project," Holbrook said. "This effort has not been lost by a lack of effort by our people. It was lost by a couple disadvantages we couldn't overcome."

Regardless of how all this turns out, Cleveland County's efforts didn't go unnoticed by state officials.

"I commend Cleveland County and Shelby officials for their tenacity to try to bring this to Cleveland County," said Sen. David Hoyle, who was instrumental in pushing the incentives legislation through the General Assembly.

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