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Economic Development

Italian gun-maker makes play for Ruger

One of Rockingham County’s largest employers, firearms maker Ruger, is the target of an apparent takeover bid by a competitor that’s recently acquired nearly 10% of its stock. Beretta Holding on Thursday announced that it’s going to nominate a four-person slate for the Ruger board at the company’s annual shareholders...

By Ray Gronberg

February 27, 2026

Durham runs afoul of legislators’ downzoning ban

Durham officials canceled a hearing on a top-to-bottom zoning-law rewrite this week after the owners of a convenience-store chain complained they were about to break the state’s ban on downzoning. The rewritten “land development code” had been scheduled for a planning-board review Tuesday afternoon and evening. But in the face...

By Ray Gronberg

February 25, 2026

Duke seeking seeking excessive return, advocacy group says

An environmental group is making the case that Duke Energy’s latest rate request is asking too much of the utility’s customers and too little of its stockholders. Duke’s filing seeks a 10.95% return on equity, which the Environmental Defense Fund says is the third-highest that any U.S. power company has...

By Ray Gronberg

February 24, 2026

Budd backs streamlining FAA new-plane certifications

U.S. Sen. Ted Budd has joined eight of his colleagues in sponsoring a bill they hope will streamline the process for certifying new kinds of battery-powered aircraft. The group is bipartisan and includes three Democrats, among them lead sponsor U.S. Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont. Welch’s state is home to...

By Ray Gronberg

February 23, 2026

Feds planning $34M grant for Belews Creek upgrades

Federal officials want to send $34 million Duke Energy’s way to help pay for upgrades to the gas-and-coal-fired Belews Creek Steam Station in Stokes County — a facility Duke intends to retire at the end of 2039. The prospective taxpayer subsidy would cover about a third of the project cost,...

By Ray Gronberg

February 20, 2026

The G20 comes to Asheville

Asheville will host some of the preparatory meetings for the annual G20 summit in August and early September, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says. The sessions will begin on Aug. 29 and 30 with meetings between the top deputies of each participating country’s finance ministry and central bank. The actual...

By Ray Gronberg

February 20, 2026

Scout says it’s on track; German publication dubious

Volkswagen-backed Scout Motors says its all-electric pickup and SUV assembled in South Carolina will be on sale next year, firing back at a published report that the multibillion dollar project will be delayed. The report in the German publication Der Spiegel cited unspecified “technical issues” for causing a delay to...

By Ray Gronberg

February 19, 2026

Court of Appeals: Duke fuel rider wrongly approved

A bipartisan state Court of Appeals panel says the Utilities Commission erred when it allowed Duke Energy to recover $17 million in excess fuel costs it paid out in 2022 via a surcharge on its 2024 rates. But Judge John Arrowood and his colleagues declined to order Duke to refund...

By Ray Gronberg

February 19, 2026

Labor Department signs safety partnership for tower project

North Carolina’s Labor Department has active safety “partnership” deals in place with the contractors spearheading work on four of the state’s highest-profile construction projects. It recently touted the signing of an agreement with Barnhill Building Group covering the company’s work on The Creamery, a 37-floor mixed use tower that’s going...

By Ray Gronberg

February 18, 2026

Energy task force submits its first report

Data centers account for about 80% of the additional demand Duke Energy is expecting to come its way because of economic-development drives in the Carolinas That’s the word from Gov. Josh Stein’s Energy Policy Task Force, and part of the reason it’s advocating that policymakers make sure data centers pay...

By Ray Gronberg

February 17, 2026

Judge dismisses climate-change suit against Duke

Saying the issue’s too much a political matter, a Business Court judge has dismissed Carrboro’s climate-change lawsuit against Duke Energy. Judge Mark Davis — a former state Supreme Court justice returned to the bench in 2021 by former Gov. Roy Cooper — said a jury could only resort to “utter...

By Ray Gronberg

February 16, 2026

Stein picks engineer for Utilities Commission

Former Duke Energy and Strata Clean Energy engineer John Gajda is joining the N.C. Utilities Commission. Gov. Josh Stein announced on Friday that’d he’d picked Gajda for the slot on the commission that opened up when lawyer and former chair Karen Kemeraitstepped down. Given recent legislatively dictated changes to his...

By Ray Gronberg

February 16, 2026

Lumbee I-95 land deal spurs questions

In December, the Lumbee Tribe’s for-profit arm paid a combined $6.8 million for two tracts of land alongside Interstate 95, where a Native American-owned casino may someday emerge. That was $3.6 million more than the combined properties’ sale price a few days earlier. Deeds recorded with Robeson County show that...

By Ray Gronberg

February 16, 2026

Jackson presses on in rent-fixing lawsuit

State Attorney General Jeff Jackson says North Carolina’s apartment-rent price-fixing lawsuit against RealPage continues, even though the federal government is moving to settle its end of the case. “If I can’t get a fair deal from them, I’ll just take it to trial and let a jury decide,” Jackson said...

By Ray Gronberg

February 15, 2026

NC Chamber supporting push to lower H-2A wage rates

The NC Chamber is backing a Trump administration move to lower the minimum wage rate for migrant farm workers hired under the H-2A visa program. Lawyers representing the Chamber in late January filed a friend-of-the-courtbrief in a California federal-court case, opposing an attempt by the United Farm Workers to get...

By Ray Gronberg

February 11, 2026