In this episode of The Best of Johnston County Podcast, join me as I sit down with Ed Aldridge. We discuss his journey from Edgecombe County to Johnston County, his impactful work with RiverWILD, and his role as chairman of the Johnston County Economic Development Board. Ed shares insights into local development projects, economic growth, and what makes Johnston County a great place to live and work. 

Tune in for a deep dive into the future of our community and the efforts shaping it.

Ed Aldridge: So Reid always talks about impacting and developing people. I will say, the one thing that Reid and Jaclyn have always focused on is not the numbers. A lot of people, business is driven by numbers and the number is everything. Quotas is that and other and Reid just has a firm belief in doing things the right way.

And if we do things the right way, the numbers will follow. And we talk about our Wild is what on all of our license plates, all over the town. Wild are basically our core beliefs, will to win, intentional adaptability. Each letter has its own meaning. We go into our people and tell everybody we are faith and family based business.

We're a local business and we're very pointed about all of our beliefs.

Jonathan Breeden: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Best of Johnston County podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Breeden. And on today's episode, we're going to have Ed Aldridge and in this episode, we're going to do two with Ed. But in this episode, we're going to talk about, where he's from? How he got to Johnston County? His work with RiverWILD and that development company with Reid Smith. And we're also going to talk about his work on the Johnston County Economic Development Committee.

If this is your first time listening, following or seeing The Best of Johnston County podcast, would you do us a favor of liking, following or subscribing to this podcast, wherever you're seeing it. Whether it be Apple, Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook or any of our social media campaigns that we have out there.

So that you'll be aware of future episodes of The Best of Johnston County podcast. The Best of Johnston County podcast comes out on every Monday. So check back every week for new episodes that come out every Monday. And go back and listen to some of our previous episodes. And also, if you'd be so kind as to leave us a five star review down at the bottom, they will help for our visibility. So other people will be able to find The Best of Johnston County podcast. Welcome to the podcast, Ed.

Ed Aldridge: Thank you.

Jonathan Breeden: All right. So start with, what's your name and where are you from? What do you do?

The two founders, very young founders. They were looking to add some age to the building. When they hired me, I looked like everyone's grandpa, there's a lot of young people in the building. It was great opportunity for me and my family to work 10 minutes away from home and again, get back to my community and to also take better care of my family also. That's the.

think he's done a great job as a Count Commissioner and I think that the neighborhoods that he's done and the job done are excellent. And they've got businesses in them, they have sidewalks and walking trails and curbs and gutterings and they're kept up and all of that stuff. So talk a little bit about RiverWILD specifically, what it's doing, how it might be different from the Fred Smith Companies. Cause I think some people get them mixed up?

But the horse is out of the barn. People know Johnston County is growing and as it grows, we like to think that at least we add some local flavor to that growth. And we also employ a lot of local people and different companies, subcontractors, vendors and stuff like that. Reid and Jaclyn prioritize doing business local with good local partners, not necessarily the cheapest but best partners are very high priority of our company.

what are you doing there?

Ed Aldridge: Yeah, we're fortunate. We have a partner out of Florida that we landed a public site work contract worth with. It is also gonna have some out parcel buildings. We're busy currently putting into utilities and all the site work right over here at 42 and 50. And the partner is also looking at doing multiple other Publix in and around the whole Johnston County and Halo Counties of Wake County area. We're very fortunate, like I said, our site work division is doing a lot of third party work at this point. And Publix is one of our larger shining nice up on the hill projects right now.

Ed Aldridge: Yeah, and I think a lot of the places are trying to get out in front of the eventual widening of Highway 42 from 50 all the way through to 70.

And I went to and I think you were there at a public hearing, they did on that maybe 2 years ago at the Clayton Center. I think you and I were there, they had all the maps up and we were going around looking at that because you and I were on the Economic Development Board together at the time.

to try to make a little more, I think that's maybe the stoplight at Cook Out goes away under the drawing, if I remember correctly. And you'd have to go to Cook Out a different way. But anyway, so I think that's going to happen and I think it'll be nice.

Ed Aldridge: There's several pinch points, I think, between 50 and Clayton. I think like you're saying, the bridge is one. I think Cornwallis road is another pinch point, Amelia Church. What they end up doing with the new Interstate 42 and the renaming of highway 42 to highway 36, been involved in some conversations about that. All of that's getting ready to change as well right now. We're trying to get businesses updated with all of their address changes.

Jonathan Breeden: Right, so let's talk a little bit about, what are some of the neighborhoods that RiverWILD is doing currently that are under construction?

Jonathan Breeden: So, does RiverWILD, I mean, as we talk about Riverwood. That was done by Fred Smith, Reid's father when Reid was a child. Are y'all managing that or is the golf course now part of RiverWILD or is it it still it's all separate entity and y'all don't really get into all that?

Ed Aldridge: No, they're two separate businesses, Fred's got his stuff and he does his thing and Reid does his, totally separate. we're On opposite ends of the spectrum, Okay. totally separate business entities.

Ed Aldridge: Fred does Simangus, is what Fred specializes in and Reid does Wagyu. Reid is one of the larger producers of Wagyu in North America and our Wagyu cows are actually located in Turkey, North Carolina, right off of a Exit 364 off of a 40. But you can purchase our Wilders Wagyu at our office at 114 West Main or we do a ton of online sales currently at Wilders.com.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay, are y'all going to open a storefront to sell Wagyu? I thought I heard that.

Ed Aldridge: We haven't made any type of announcement yet. Working with Reid, I've learned one thing is for certain, that nothing is for certain. The best idea Reid's ever heard was the last one he just heard. Okay. He is constantly formulating and adjusting and fine tuning his ideas and his thinking.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay. I didn't know until you just said it Wagyu was Reid and I thought it was all one. I didn't know they had two different types of Cattle and all of that stuff. So, that's like fighting words, you're gonna get it mixed up. My Angus is better than your Angus and all that stuff. We just had few episodes ago, if you listen to the podcast, we had Lee's Fresh Market on. And I know their slaughterhouse does some of the work for Fred and maybe even for Reid too, down at the slaughterhouse there and Benson.

And they've got great products at Lee's Fresh Market down there in Benson had not been there, definitely go there. Great food, great sausage biscuits on Saturday morning, all that good stuff. So, what's y'all's mission statement?

Jonathan Breeden: What's the purpose? What is Reid trying to do?

And if we do things the right way, the numbers will follow. And we talk about our wild is what on all of our license plates, all over the town. Wild are basically our core beliefs, will to win, intentional adaptability. Each letter has its own meaning. We go into our people and tell everybody we are faith and family based business.

Jonathan Breeden: All right, That's, sounds great to me. That's exactly what I've tried to do here at the Breeden Law Office. And we just try to do things the right way and the rest of it seems to take care of itself.

Have family law questions? Need guidance to navigate legal challenges? The compassionate team at Breeden Law Office is here to help. Visit us at www. breedenfirm. com for practical advice, resources, or to book a consultation. Remember, when life gets messy, you don't have to face it alone.

Jonathan Breeden: So let's transition a little bit, you are now the chairman of the Economic Development Board of the County.

Ed Aldridge: So, Chris Johnson leads our group and Chris is actively out pursuing whatever it takes to bring industry and business to Johnston County. And Chris is really adept at the numbers, as far as each morning, as we get more and more residents in Johnston County. We want to attract more business here because we really and truly would like to have people like myself, who not only want to live in Johnston County but it would be great to have the jobs and opportunity here where they can also work in Johnston County.

And as Chris has been out recruiting these businesses, he goes out and talks to people all the time. And we talk about, Johnston County has such a low unemployment rate. Where am I going to find my employees? Considering where your office is currently, if you look out on 40 every morning between about 6:30 and about 7:30, you can see where the employees are because they're on 40 heading for Wake County.

Jonathan Breeden: And so, the board is a volunteer board of local citizens from all over the County. They are appointed by the County Commissioners. And can you just tell us a little bit of, how, I know how it's structured. I was on the board, but I'm asking the questions of you. how is the board structured?

So, we are very focused on the entire County, whether it's the larger municipality of Clayton or a smaller municipality of Micro. We want them to know that we are focused on bringing business to the County, not to specific towns in the County. Sometimes, businesses may land there but overall, our goal is to do what is good for the greater good of the entire County.

Jonathan Breeden: And the board's real main job is to vet the projects that Chris Johnson brings that are looking at Johnston County and decide what incentives the board could recommend to the County Commissioners to give to the business to relocate or locate or build in Johnston County. That's one of the main things, it's more than that. But that's one of the main goals of your board, right?

Chris is pretty blessed that he's got pretty good things here at his disposal beyond just the incentive package. And he does a really good job about packaging up all the different, wonderful assets of Johnston County. And putting those together and then maybe at a certain point, we do have to figure out in order to compete with the Joneses, shall we say, you always have to throw in and say, there's a certain type of incentive that were required.

But we also have got into incentives lately also about existing businesses. Adding to existing businesses and we're trying to find that right balance now of, yes, we want to recruit more into this area but we also want to make sure we're rewarding and continuing to build up our businesses that have been here in the County for years also.

Jonathan Breeden: We've been on an unbelievable role here, the last few years of new development with the Novo expansion really was the kickoff of it. At the time, that was announced at 2 billion dollars. That was the expansion of Novo, was the largest single private investment in the history of North Carolina.

But that's going to be more jobs. And a lot of that is based on the Workforce Development Center that the County has there in the middle of the plants that are paid for by the biopharmaceutical plants and by Johnston Community College and the ability to be able to train the workforce.

Jonathan Breeden: Yeah

Jonathan Breeden: The Workforce Development Center, the one in Clayton is based on biopharmaceuticals but the one in Four Oaks has a different focus.

Ed Aldridge: Yeah right now, what's its focus? I will say that its focus, most of them have been able to adjust on the fly, shall we say, as Four Oaks Industrial Park is beginning to really get some traction, Becton Dickinson has been down there for years. And now Chris has really been out working really hard to grow that Four Oaks Business Park.

We are looking as we grow that business park to figure out exactly, how we can mold and get that specific Workforce Development Center in Four Oaks aligned with new industries that are coming here. We want it to be almost customization.

I know we're getting a lot of houses but there are still large tracts of land that are available. We've got some pre-site development and we could go for hours about the things. I just remember the projects we worked on when I was on there. The Amazon distribution center is now open. You and I worked on getting the building there for adventure development across from the food hall and which became B.GOOD Foods, least that building. I know they haven't moved into it but I think at least somebody else. And now they're going to build another 100,000 square foot building I think next to it.

Ed Aldridge: Yeah, trying to figure that balance out is difficult. There are residents who've been here for 50 or 70 years and they want to see it continue rural. And again, like we said, that day, that ship has probably sailed this County in an outline area right outside of a metropolitan area like Raleigh.

You're going to grow like wildfire and we've got to figure out that right balance. We've got to continue working on our infrastructure system. I think our County Commissioners have done a good job and are working, moving in the right direction on figuring out kind of regionalization of some water and sewer issues for our area.

Jonathan Breeden: So, if the listeners would like to reach out to you about your work with the Economic Development Commission or what you're doing with RiverWILD, how could they do that?

Ed Aldridge: Yeah, just feel free to reach out to me. You can always email me, it's pretty simple. Ed@StayWild.Com it's pretty simple email. Always glad to talk with people. Always glad to have sit down and have civil discourse with people. There are points where you just agree to disagree with people but love to have good conversations with folks to figure out what's the best for our entire County.

Jonathan Breeden: And I guess the last question for this episode is, what do you love most about Johnston County?

Or down to Pine Level to a restaurant and go sit down and eat. And still feel like you're in that small town feel where folks know your name and it just, I still like the whole feel of Johnston County. Chris always talks out from farm to pharma, how we still have it all. And in Johnston County, we still do have the farm and ag aspect all the way to pharmaceuticals. So I still think we cover a huge spectrum here in this County.

Jonathan Breeden: I don't disagree, I think you're right. So anyway, we'd like to thank Ed Aldridge for coming on to this episode of The Best of Johnston County podcast.

As we mentioned earlier, please feel free to like, subscribe or follow this podcast wherever you're seeing it. So you'll be made aware of future episodes of The Best Johnston County podcast. Till next time, I'm your host, Jonathan Breeden.

If the legal aspects highlighted raised some questions, help is just around the corner at www.BreedenFirm. com.