Opinion: Catawba County is boring

By Gabriel Bell

At a recent meeting of the Catawba County Board of Commissioners, a member of the board remarked that Catawba County has difficulty retaining its youth.

The board has attempted to solve this issue economically, by providing new jobs for young individuals entering the workforce. The business park that the county plans to build in Chronicle is one such attempt at stemming the never-ending flow of youth emigration.

While measures like these are undoubtedly helpful, employment alone is not enough of an incentive to for many young individuals to stay. Jobs exist almost everywhere. Young people, regardless of economics, politics, gender, and virtually every other factor, need something else: fun.

I am a man in my early twenties who grew up in Catawba County. For most of my life, I believed I would flee as soon as I graduated high school. I am not alone in this belief, especially in the relatively empty eastern half of the county.

The primary issue stems from the lack of dedicated, safe, walkable public areas. Such areas create a sense of community and spur the creation of local restaurants, shops, events, neighborhood organizations, and personal relationships.

Downtown Hickory (especially Union Square) is the one area in the entirety of the county that serves this vital function.

The problem is that, for people who live in the eastern half of the county, cities like Mooresville and Huntersville may be equidistant or (as in my case) closer than Hickory.

Time and time again, throughout my childhood and now in my early adulthood, I find myself going east into Iredell and Mecklenburg counties to find something interesting to do.

My personal economic reality has prompted me to stay in Catawba County (for now), but the thought has crossed my mind many times: “Wouldn’t it be easier if I just moved closer to civilization instead?”

I believe that this line of reasoning is, more than any economic factor, the reason that Catawba County bleeds youth.

I can hear some residents of the county balking already at the obvious solution: some development is necessary. I am not suggesting that the county be turned into a massive city or even into a suburbia.

Imagine that, instead of constructing a system of soulless “commercial nodes” along the county’s divided highways (the plan currently being pursued by the Commissioners), the county were to build small, walkable public areas near the largest concentrations of bored people.

These “miniature downtowns” could contain small parks, coffee shops, boutique and general stores, salons, and more, in some ways similar to the recent improvements made to the town of Catawba, but with more planning and locations.

Until the invention of the automobile provided man the ability to travel long distances in very little time, such areas were commonplace.

A glance at a historical map shows Catawba County littered with mini towns, some familiar like Terrell and Bandys, others mostly forgotten like Corinth, Monbo, and even Chronicle.

Such a project would cost money and take time (at the speed our county moves, probably decades), but it could cure the boredom that threatens to push away our county’s future.

Give us a mini downtown or two. Give us more active recreational activities in our parks. Give us a boardwalk along the lake. Give us something to do. Then, maybe, we the youth of Catawba County will be persuaded to not go somewhere else.