Relocation Guide

-newsobserver.com

A billionaire broke out the bubbly.

Cary software employer SAS, which has been a fixture for years on Fortune magazine’s annual list of the “100 Best Companies to Work for,” was never No. 1.

Until now.

Fortune’s latest ranking, out Thursday, puts SAS at the top, citing its “laundry list of benefits,” including unlimited sick days, onsite medical care, free fitness center, library and more.

To piggyback on that news, SAS announced that it generated $2.31 billion in revenue in 2009, up 2.2 percent from the year before. That marks the 34th straight year revenue has increased, despite the recession and increasing competition.

SAS executives warned in October that the streak might not last but then saw a late-year surge in sales as banks, retailers and other customers worldwide bought more of its analytics software.

To celebrate, SAS workers and bosses, including co-founder and CEO Jim Goodnight - who is also the state’s richest person - gathered Thursday afternoon in Cary for a champagne and spark ling cider toast.

Goodnight drank champagne.

The revenue increase in a down year was notable. But Fortune also noted that SAS kept and added benefits when many other companies are cutting jobs, pay and perks.

The magazine also lauds Goodnight as “the unlikely architect of this rare corporate culture.” Fortune gushes about Goodnight’s leadership helping foster loyalty, and “shockingly low turnover of 2percent,” by avoiding layoffs in 2009 despite the economic slump.

SAS, which last year was No. 20 on the Fortune list, strives to add perquisites every year. Besides bragging rights, getting noticed by Fortune can help companies recruit new talent and providing rich perks can help retain existing employees.

“My chief assets drive out the gate every day,” Goodnight told Fortune, using a favorite line he uses to justify the business strategy. “My job is to make sure they come back.”

SAS displays past Fortune covers in frames outside one of the many break rooms at its massive Cary campus.

“There’s a lot of pride having been on the ranking since it began,” SAS spokeswoman Allison Lane said.

SAS officials didn’t get official word from Fortune on taking the top spot until around dawn Thursday. But they had some hints: The magazine sent a reporter, photographer and videographer to Cary.

The No. 1 ranking and another glowing profile of the company and Goodnight in a major publication could boost business. The Fortune piece follows recent profiles in The New York Times and Business Week - all read by business bean counters who make decisions on what kind of software they should buy.

SAS sells software that helps corporations and government agencies analyze and mine vast amounts of data to predict customer preferences and other trends.

The private company, which Goodnight helped start while a professor at N.C. State University, doesn’t release financial information besides its annual sales. Goodnight warned in October that SAS’s streak of annual revenue growth wasn’t a sure thing for 2009 because of the economic downturn. The company cut expenses, including travel, last year to offset weaker sales growth.

But the last three months of the year brought a surge of interest and orders among a wide range of customers, including banks and retailers, said chief marketing officer Jim Davis.

“Momentum is good for us right now,” Davis said. “Given that we did 2.2 percent [revenue growth] in the toughest economy we’ve ever seen, I’m very optimistic.”

Davis knows competition is intensifying as other technology companies try to grab customers. “Everyone is migrating to our space, and there’s going to be a lot of confusion in the marketplace,” he said. “We’re the hottest space in software today, but we feel like we’re a step ahead.”

SAS’s focus on analytics, its drive to develop better and faster software, and strong base of more than 45,000 customers worldwide will help it stand out, he added.

SAS, which employs about 11,000 people worldwide and 4,200 in Cary, increased its headcount about 1 percent in 2009. That’s down from the 5percent to 6 percent rate during previous years. Davis said he expects SAS will add workers at a moderate rate again this year.

SAS, which fell as low as No. 48 on Fortune’s list in 2007 (the company peaked at No. 2 in 2001), learned from the magazine’s editors that it wasn’t enough to tell about great perks; they wanted proof.

“We had employees give testimonials and showed examples of the company being thoughtful and generous and caring for its people,” Lane said.

The company has added new green programs, including an Earth Day fair, in which SAS invites vendors such as solar panel companies to its campus. And a program coordinates volunteers who collect recyclables from break rooms.

Last year’s Fortune No. 1, NetApp, fell to No. 7 this year. The California-based tech company is expanding its operations in Research Triangle Park.

Other employers with Triangle operations on the latest list include Cisco at No. 16, Novo Nordisk at No. 25 and Kimley-Horn at No. 62.

-www.wral.com

Research Triangle Park, N.C. — Satellite navigation device maker Garmin International will open a research and development facility in the Triangle for wireless devices, the company announced Tuesday.

Initial plans are to hire up to 40 engineers and to open the facility as soon as possible, company spokesman Ted Gartner said.

“The wireless industry is moving very quickly and it behooves us to get a work force in place and running as soon as possible,” Gartner told Local Tech Wire and WRAL.com. “We are highly motivated to get up and running as fast as possible.”

In order to expedite the hiring process, Gartner will host a job fair on Thursday.

However, Gartner said Garmin is still finalizing where the R&D facility will be located.

“At this point we haven’t announced anything,” Gartner said of an office location. “We are down to a final handful of facilities.”

The lab will focus on wireless and mobile products. Garmin offers a wide variety of navigation devices and last fall launched its own navigation-equipped smart phone called the Nuvifone.

Garmin is not receiving any tax incentives or grants from state or local governments, according to Gartner.

“We have not sought any nor have we received any,” Gartner said about incentives. “We came to the Raleigh-Durham area because of the quality and quantity of the engineers in the area.

“That comes from not only the higher education institutions as well as companies in the area but we also are aware of cutbacks and layoffs in that area,” he added.

Research In Motion, the Canada-based manufacturer of the BlackBerry mobile device, also is going to open a Triangle-area facility. The two announcements help offset somewhat the recent loss of Sony Ericsson’s North American headquarters and several hundred jobs.

Garmin wants to hire engineers who “are experienced wireless development, wireless software, and handset certification engineers.”

“We are excited to expand our resources through the opening of a wireless technology center in the Raleigh-Durham area,” said Cliff Pemble, Garmin’s chief operating officer, in the announcement. “In light of the growth opportunities for wireless products, we believe that this expansion is a critical step in expanding our ability to launch new wireless devices to markets around the world.”

Garmin noted the Triangle “area offers a large pool of highly-skilled engineering talent, thanks to the area’s many excellent universities and high-tech companies.”

It is planning a career forum on Jan. 14 from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Hilton Raleigh-Durham Airport.

Many history buffs familiar with the Civil War in our area can list several well-known stories about the battles fought at Fort Fisher.

There was the ship Federals filled with powder and exploded near the massive earthworks. It did little more than wake a few soldiers from their slumber.

The story about Galusha Pennypacker, a Union officer who led a charge against the fort and personally planted his unit’s flag on the parapet gets a lot of attention. Pennypacker, who was wounded in that event, won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery.

Diligent students can even tell you about the extensive use of U.S. Colored Troops in and around Wilmington, including Fort Fisher. But few can give you details about these troops.

To fill in the gaps of knowledge many of us have, the 145th anniversary of the second battle at Fort Fisher will feature several opportunities to learn about U.S. Colored Troops.

At 6 p.m. Friday in the Azalea Coast Room at the Fisher Student Center at University of North Carolina Wilmington, 601 S. College Road, scholars will lead a free discussion titled “Black Men Bearing Freedom: U.S. Colored Troops and Their Impact on North Carolina.”

Topics in this category will include everything from recruitment of black soldiers by the Union army to their role in the service and post-war arguments for their citizenship.
other discussion will be held 3 p.m. Saturday at the Fort Fisher State Historic Site, 1610 Fort Fisher Blvd. South, Kure Beach. Dr. Richard Reid, author of “Freedom for Themselves: North Carolina’s Black Soldiers in the Civil War Era,” will talk about the U.S. Colored Troops that were in our area.

This year, several nighttime events are scheduled.

Thirty-minute tours by lantern-light will be held beginning at 5:30 p.m. Saturday. The last tour will leave at 7:30 p.m.

At 7:30 p.m. Saturday, living history re-enactors will fire the fort’s 32-pound rifled and banded cannon, an impressive display of firepower set against the night sky.

Of course, Fort Fisher will be open with re-enactors,

encampments and demonstrations from 10 a.m. - 7:30 p.m. Saturday, and from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Sunday.

For more information call 458-5538 or go to www.NCHistoricSites.org/fisher/fisher.htm.

– Amy Hotz
www.starnewsonline.com

-By Wayne Faulkner
www.StarNewsOnline.com

Wilmington-area home sales continued to show improvement in December, according to statistics released Tuesday by the Wilmington Regional Association of Realtors.

The number of homes sold through the WRAR’s multiple listing service totaled 351 in December, compared with 299 in December 2008.

It was the fourth straight month that sales exceeded year-earlier levels, according to the WRAR data.

A string of year-over-year improvements is necessary to show any kind of sustained rebound from the housing bust. April McDavid, then president of the WRAR, said in the fall that it would be 2010 before a truer picture emerged on the housing market’s strength.

Sales reflect actual closings of deals. That means that contracts may have been signed 30 to 90 days before.

The average price of a home sold in December was $223,312, compared with $240,147 in December 2008. The median price - the point where half the homes sold for less and half for more - was $175,000 in December, compared with $185,500 a year earlier.

The average time it took to sell a home was 135 days in December, almost even with a year earlier.

BY DAVID BRACKEN - Staff Writer
www.newsobserver.com

In late 2007, as the local residential real estate market was beginning to nose-dive, Mark Ward and Larry Lippincott decided this was an opportunity not to be missed.

Instead of running away from the coming train wreck, they and partners Judith Adams and Edythe Poyner created a new company called Imagine Holdings to buy and develop distressed land.

“We actually formed the company with the idea in mind that with the downturn a lot of people would be in trouble and it was a good chance for a new company with no baggage to take advantage of the market,” Ward said.

Over the last two years Imagine and its home building arm, ForeverHome, have scooped up hundreds of discounted lots in Cary, Morrisville and Durham and built new single-family homes and townhouses, most priced between $170,000 and $250,000.

The company’s success — it sold 58 homes in 2009 — speaks to how much the economics of building and selling homes has changed in recent years.

Ed Dunnavant, who tracks Triangle housing trends for the research firm Metrostudy, said when the housing market was humming builders would often let the cost of a lot dictate what type of home they built.

Because the lot typically accounts for about 20 percent of the cost of a home, an $80,000 lot would often result in a $400,000 home.

But with the market for homes priced at $400,000 and above extremely soft in the Triangle, builders can no longer expect homes priced in that range to sell.

Now, Dunnavant said, builders are looking at what type of homes are selling — $300,000 and under — and working their way back to figure out how much they can pay for the dirt underneath.

“We’re going back to what I call the fundamentals of building 101,” he said.

The average lot price for a single-family home in the Triangle was $46,247 in the third quarter of 2009, down 27 percent from the same period in 2008, according to Market Opportunity Research Enterprises, a Rocky Mount group that tracks Triangle housing trends. The year-over-year declines in average lot prices in the Triangle during the first three quarters of 2009 were the three biggest percentage drops in the past 20 years.

Imagine and other active residential land buyers are now taking advantage of people who paid a premium for dirt during the boom and find themselves with a project that no longer makes economic sense. Some sellers simply want to cut their losses; others are being squeezed by lenders.

Imagine competes for land with national builders such as Pulte Homes and KB Homes, and many of the company’s dozen employees have experience working for those behemoths. Lippincott, for example, worked as both the Raleigh division president for Pulte and North Carolina division president for KB Homes.

Ward said the company has private investors who help with its land purchases and a collection of eight different banks that finance construction.

Imagine targets residential areas close to Research Triangle Park. It has passed on a number of buying opportunities in nice subdivisions that it deemed too far from job centers.

Imagine’s recent deals include paying about $2 million, or $20,000 a lot, for 101 lots in the Weston Place subdivision in Cary, and paying $1.49 million for a 22-acre residential plot off Sherron Road in Durham.

The Durham property is across from the Brightleaf at the Park subdivision. Imagine paid 15 percent less than the seller paid in 2007. And the seller had already gotten site plan approval for 110 units, which means ForeverHome can begin developing the property immediately.

Imagine’s purchase price on the Sherron Road property works out to less than $15,000 a lot, a deal that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

“These days, with the market being what it is, you truly do have to decide what the market will bear in terms of price and back in to the land price from there,” Ward said. “We just try to be really, really careful and make the best land decisions.”

-newsobserver.com

RALEIGH — On the list of the nation’s most cultured and scholarly cities, Raleigh lands at the respectable No. 19 spot - not quite as erudite as Nashville, Tenn., but walloping Charlotte, Baltimore and Philadelphia with a fat, hard-cover dictionary.

For the seventh year, a national survey out of Central Connecticut State University has ranked “America’s Most Literate Cities,” collectingdata from places with at least 250,000 residents.

Raleigh failed to make the Top 10 again this year and actually slipped five positions behind such book-loving capitals as Seattle (No.1) and Minneapolis (No. 3). But it does keep its spot near the top of a roll call where New York doesn’t even appear.

“Whether we’ve really improved or whether the country’s ‘dumbing down,’” I don’t know,” said Nancy Olson, owner of Raleigh’s Quail Ridge Books.

The study weighs population against a string of education-related data: college degrees, newspaper circulation, bookstores per capita, library volumes.

If you look only at education, Raleigh dusts nearly every city in in the U.S., taking No. 3. In that category, only Seattle and Plano, Texas, rank higher for percentage of adults with high school diplomas and those with a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Everywhere else, Raleigh tumbles into double digits: tied for 20th for booksellers, sole occupant of the 44th spot for libraries, tied for 22nd in newspaper circulation.

Against list-topping Seattle, Raleigh can’t compare. The study shows nearly twice as many bookstores in the rainy Northwest and almost two times the number of published journals. Seattle also has double the number of Raleigh’s library branches per 10,000 people: 0.46 compared to 0.24 in the City of Oaks.

Study author and Central Connecticut State President Jack Miller said the data are meant to show how a city uses its literacy, not just its collective IQ. Historically, Olson said, the Southeast as an agrarian culture has lagged behind the rest of the country in literacy studies. Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker said the city’s habits may lie deeper than statistics can measure.

“It’s correct there aren’t that many bookstores, and the libraries of course are a county function,” he said. “But it does seem like people read a lot.”

The only other North Carolina cities on the literacy list are Charlotte (No. 27) and Greensboro (No. 36).

And there’s one more set of bragging rights on the overall rankings: South Carolina is nowhere to be seen.

-Asheville Citizen Times

Some Asheville retailers report sales picking up as Christmas nears, improving December’s bottom line over last year and perhaps indicating the end of one of the nation’s deepest business downturns is now in sight.

Consumers were cautious in October and November, but “now they are back in form and having some fun,” said Carmen Cabrera, general manager of Mast General Store in downtown Asheville. Sales for the month are up about 3 percent from last year, and for the year, the store’s sales will be on par with 2008. “I’m happy with flat. I’m very pleased.”

Sales should continue into mid-January as consumers come back for exchanges and to use gift cards.

Crowds are coming again to the Toy Box on Merrimon Avenue, said owner Gary Green, where Christmas sales make up a third of his business.

“Last year was certainly a down year, and this year will probably be fairly level with last year, which is not unexpected,” Green said. “At least toys aren’t considered in the same category as $80,000 SUVs and million-dollar homes. People will still buy toys for their children. There might not be as many boxes, but there is going to be something under the tree. Santa does come.”

While spending may be up in the short term, Green isn’t ready to say that an economic recovery is under way. “I don’t think we’re going to see huge growth next year or even the year after. The country has got to get jobs for people. People who aren’t working can’t buy as much, so building an economy on personal spending is probably not a good long-term philosophy.”

-cnnmoney.com

Pinehurst, N.C.
Golfers rejoice in Pinehurst
• Tee up your retirement video
Population: 12,000
% over 50: 57%
Typical 3-bedroom home: $300,000
Housing prices down: 27%
State income tax: 7.75%*

Most Americans know this town as the home of Pinehurst Resort, which contains one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious golf courses. Yet it’s also a friendly year-round community with a bustling downtown, first-rate regional hospital, and mild weather.

Granted, at $300,000, the typical home in Pinehurst isn’t rock-bottom cheap. But all residents are eligible for membership in the resort, which boasts eight golf courses, 24 tennis courts, three pools, and a 200-acre lake with a beach. If you buy a home from someone who already has a membership, you can pay $12,000 to join vs. $40,000 normally.

While the ability to hit the links all year is a big attraction, social life need not center on the sport. “We don’t even golf,” says Richard Fumea, 65, a retired human resources executive who moved here four years ago with his wife, Susan, 56. “Yet we made more friends in the first three months of living here than we’d made during our 20 years in the Chicago area.” –S.M.

-cnn.com

HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. (Fortune Small Business) — I take my first bite of a truffle in Franklin Garland’s sunlit kitchen, which overlooks a greenhouse and an orchard of budding hazelnut trees.

In 1992, Garland became the first person to harvest and sell French black truffles on American soil. Today he stands at a table chopping lemon-size fungi. He hands me a shaving the size of a wood chip. When I chew it, a musky, acrid flavor explodes in my mouth and I — quite visibly — swoon.

“It’s intoxicating, isn’t it?” says Garland.

He and his wife, Betty, have entertained truffle lovers, foodies and would-be growers hailing from as far away as New Zealand. Visitors flock to their four-bedroom ranch-style house in this small North Carolina town to learn how to farm and hunt for the rare fungi. Although black truffles are harvested only from November through March, tourists visit throughout the year. A presentation, lunch and a trip to a truffle-bearing orchard cost $300.
The world’s priciest foods

The truffle is one of the world’s most desirable culinary treasures, a rare delicacy that has graced the tables of European royalty for centuries. Among the dozens of truffle species, the most valuable are the Italian white and the French black Prigord. Gallic farmers have cultivated black truffles for at least 200 years. But as the local crop dwindles — explanations range from arid French summers to the decline of the tradition — new suppliers are emerging in countries such as Spain, where many black truffles are now farmed, and China.

Although truffles may look like something you’d pick up in a plastic bag while walking your dog, their piquant shavings adorn the priciest dishes at top restaurants around the world. And when I held one of Garland’s black truffles in my palm, the tiny, jewel-like facets that cover its surface almost glowed, making it look like a black diamond.

That might explain the price: A pound of white truffles costs as much as $4,000, while a pound of the more common black Prigords goes for $800.

As Garland shows me around the 57-acre property, we’re joined by Charles Bradley, a soft-spoken neighbor who has become a reliable grower under my host’s tutelage. Entering the greenhouse, where the air feels tropical, we find tens of thousands of twiglike baby hazelnut and oak trees sitting in small boxes lined up in neat rows. When they grow to about four inches tall, Garland “inoculates” them: He applies truffle spores to the roots, where they will take hold and mature. He says he invented his proprietary method in 2001, although he won’t reveal anything about it other than its acronym: RFM.

“It means ‘really fun method,’” jokes Bradley, who admits that he doesn’t know Garland’s secret either. (”Only Betty and I do,” says Garland.) Whatever it is, it seems to be working. According to Garland, 14 of the 15 American farms that have successfully harvested black truffles use trees inoculated by the “Garland method.”

Jane Morgan Smith, president of the North American Truffle Growers’ Association and owner of Keep Your Fork Farm in King, N.C., purchased 125 trees from Garland in 2000 and reaped her first small harvest in 2006. “We had faith in him,” says Smith, who unearthed five pounds of truffles last year.

Garland harvests only a few pounds each season from his property, though he expects that to change when his new orchard matures in 2014 (it takes seven to 10 years after planting for a crop to emerge). He makes a living by selling about 30,000 inoculated trees annually to farmers around the world. At $22 a pop, that provides him with revenues in excess of $500,000, which he augments with tours, how-to books and commissions from selling other people’s truffles for them. He and Betty plan to grow the agritourism side of the business by constructing several luxurious cabins on the property and renting them to truffle enthusiasts. And they aim to expand the greenhouse to 100,000 trees next year. “The market isn’t close to saturated,” he says.
A truffle empire takes root

Garland first planted trees carrying black truffle spores in 1980. At the time he was working as an electronics engineer, having recently graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where he studied math and psychology. He had read about truffle cultivation in the Wall Street Journal and was intrigued by the idea, so he paid a California grower $8,000 for 750 hazelnut trees, which he planted on his property in North Carolina. For the next decade, he kept his day job and waited for the trees to mature.

Then, in 1992, Garland noticed the shallow, porous surface of a truffle jutting out of the dirt near the trunk of a hazelnut tree in his orchard. Within a few years of that discovery, he and Betty were supplying celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse with black truffles; in 2007 they appeared on The Martha Stewart Show.

“The quality of product they’ve developed is amazing,” says Todd Gray, a James Beard-nominated chef who has cooked for Barack and Michelle Obama at his Washington restaurant, Equinox.

U.S. truffles are desirable to stateside chefs because they’re fresher and tariff-free. “European truffles lose some of their flavor by the time they cross the ocean and get to the U.S.,” Garland says. And although white and black truffles grow abundantly in Oregon, some foodies complain that they’re subpar and point to the price as evidence: Oregon truffles go for as little as $100 a pound.

Jim Wells, the owner of Oregon Wild Edibles, a Eugene-based truffle distributor, responds that most local growers are amateurs who harvest their truffles too early. “There are many valid reasons why the reputation of Oregon truffles is poor,” he says. “It’s not the fault of the truffles.”
Truffle hunt

After driving 25 minutes to Bradley’s house in Mebane, we near the wide, open meadow that surrounds his home. I can see the truffle orchard — a tidy two-acre grid of hazelnut trees that look like brown umbrella skeletons stuck upside-down into the ground. I was expecting something similar to an apple orchard, with luscious foliage, but the grass here is sparse, especially around the trees’ slender trunks.

“Those areas are the brûles,” explains Garland, scuffing the dirt with the toe of his boot. Like crop circles, these dirt rings signify something mysterious — in this case subterrestrials, not extraterrestrials. When truffles sprout underground, they suck up the nutrients from below, causing the surface vegetation to die.

We walk slowly through the orchard with Bradley’s golden retriever, Molly, and his beagle, Peedee, both experienced truffle hunters. Whereas humans can find truffles only by digging at random, dogs can smell them — they typically grow about three inches below the surface — from hundreds of yards away. Peedee quickly takes the lead by walking through the trees with his nose to the earth as we eagerly stalk behind. “Find truffle! Find truffle, Peedee!” Garland hisses.

As we snake through the dense rows of trees, I feel massive webs of exposed roots crisscrossing beneath my feet. Root density, Garland tells us, is an important factor in growing truffles. Another is pH: The soil must be at an alkaline level sufficient to support tree and fungus alike. Garland frequently travels to the Bradleys’ orchard and those of his other clients to ensure that the plants are properly maintained. “The only way I’ll make money is if they make truffles,” Garland says. “It shows that I believe in my product.”

As I venture off on my own, occasionally bending over to graze the dirt with my hand, I hear calls that Peedee is scratching at the dirt.

We rush to the excited beagle’s side and hunch in a circle around him. Sensing that he has an audience, Peedee stops digging and rolls onto his back, awaiting a belly rub and a treat. Garland feeds him, then picks up a spade and gently prods the dirt around the area. He uses his hands to scrape it away.

As he dislodges more soil, a circular outline appears in the ground. Digging around it with his fingers, Garland extricates a baseball-size black truffle and passes it to me. It feels cold and heavy in my hand, but when I hold it to my nose — whoosh! — I am swept up in that pungent, earthy smell. All it takes is a sniff to realize the lump I’m holding is worth more than $100.

Earlier in the afternoon, I had asked Bradley why he was investing so much in a crop that’s so difficult to grow. Was it the thrill of discovery? The sense of belonging to something special? Yes, he said. It was both of those things.

Now, as we leave his orchard, I look back at the field of seedlings, a soiled, deeply scented truffle in hand, and wonder what it’s like to pour your dreams into dirt — and pray that they turn into diamonds.