Farmer must make way for TransPark tenant

KINSTON -- The way he sees it, Alonza Gray is an anomaly.

"I'm the only person, probably, in Lenoir County that this thing affects negatively," said Gray, who for six years has farmed 500 acres leased from the Global TransPark, the long-criticized state-owned industrial park.

The thing he's talking about is Spirit AeroSystems.

In May, Gov. Mike Easley announced Spirit would build at GTP and bring 1,031 jobs, becoming the biggest tenant in TransPark's 17-year history and an economic engine in the east.

To make room, Gray had to abandon 200 acres of cotton and wheat. After the corn harvest, he has to give up an additional 100 acres.

But Gray isn't upset.

"We need some jobs back in the county," he said, something he knows about first-hand.

Gray began farming full-time in 2002 after taking early retirement from Dupont. He worked at the company's Kinston plant for 30 years, choosing to leave when it became clear his job as a technical assistant would end.

In many ways, he represents the fits and starts of Eastern North Carolina's economic transition. Now he is at the intersection of what the region was and what it aspires to become.

Kinston, originally named "Kingston" to honor King George III, was established at the site of a tobacco warehouse used to grade and tax tobacco. That was more than two centuries ago.

Miles of farmland still define the roads heading into the city.

Gray's father was a farmer. So was his grandfather.

Gray, 56, says he learned to drive a tractor before he started school. As a boy, he spent his summers in his father's tobacco fields or cornfields.

He lives on the patch of land where he grew up. His parents' white farmhouse is in the backyard. A fig bush obscures an outbuilding where farmworkers used to live.

He raised his first crop of corn 1977, the year his father died. And he still wishes his dad could have seen it.

"He was a little sad because he didn't have a farmer in the family," says Gray, who, dressed in shorts, a T-shirt and Ray-Ban sunglasses, stood on the land his father used to till.

For three decades, farming was a part-time venture. During the day, he worked at Dupont, running tests and doing just about anything else that needed to be done. He even went to India twice to help with operations there.

"I would work 40 to 50 hours a week and then farm night and weekends," he said. He started with about 65 acres and added plots, either through purchases or leases, over time.

TransPark land

When his job ended in 2002, he began leasing 500 acres of TransPark land.

The TransPark is less than a mile from his house. Military planes circle his property as they practice touch-and-go landings on the complex's extended runway.

Architects of the business park, which the legislature created in 1991, had a much grander idea for what it would become. They envisioned a hub 90 miles southeast of Raleigh for logistics and aviation companies that would employ 55,000 by 1998.

The region needed to diversify. As older farmers died, the next generation didn't pick up the mantle. Textile and other factories that had offered different opportunities closed amid rising international competition.

The population of Lenoir County shrank from 57,274 in 1990 to an estimated 56,761 last year as younger residents moved away.

The TransPark attracted a handful of tenants, but it never lived up to politicians' ambitions. Since its inception it has received more than $87 million in government funding just to stay in business. Even the $65 an acre Gray paid as part of his lease agreement served "as a revenue stream until the land was needed for a tenant," said Darlene Waddell, executive director of the Global TransPark Authority.

Gray watched as prospect after prospect came and went. Losing his lease was always a possibility.

But he never expected to.

Then one evening in May, he got the call.

"They told me they needed the land worse than I did," Gray said.

The next day Easley went to the TransPark to announce Spirit's plans to expand.

The lawyers, consultants and politicians who crafted the deal were mindful of Gray. In the inch-thick stack of contracts about Spirit's operations, government incentives and other matters is a short mention of the need to compensate him for any losses.

He received $1,836 from the state, according to a check stub provided by the TransPark, and an undisclosed amount from Spirit's construction company.

Gray, who still farms 1,100 acres, said the settlement was fair and that losing TransPark land shouldn't adversely affect him. He's already sold part of his cotton, and as long as the rest of his crop does well he should be able to meet his obligation. If not, he'll have to pay out of pocket.

"I regret I can't tend it, but I understand. They didn't acquire all this land for it to be farmed," he said. "There's a lot of people who will benefit."