Tech Startups Rebuild Rural Areas

"Three trends are fueling growth in some rural areas, says Bill Gillis, director of the Center to Bridge the Digital Divide in Spokane, Wash. Mobile dot-commers with "golden Rolodexes" are launching tech-based companies. Eco-fuel growth and rising corn prices are pumping money toward entrepreneurs in traditional breadbasket industries. And government investments in broadband and high-tech "incubators" (subsidized office space geared toward high-tech businesses) are allowing local economies to branch out beyond the cotton and corn fields."

"The path to rural economic development, however, is paved with empty industrial parks and wasted public incentives."

"North Carolina faced heavy criticism last year from fiscal conservatives after it spent nearly $1 billion to bring a Google server farm employing only a few dozen people to a rural Tar Heel town."

"Taxpayer-funded economic development schemes proved to be a major boondoggle in Roanoke Rapids, N.C., where the $21.5 million taxpayer-subsidized renovation of an old theater has largely been a bust, says Mr. Adams. Also in North Carolina, Global TransPark, a huge rural industrial park equipped with a runway for global reach, still has no tenants after years of marketing by the state."

"'Too many people think that all you have to do is build an industrial park and they will come, and that's not true,' says Gerald Thompson, who has been the mayor of Fitzgerald for 40 years."