Greenville moving from tobacco to technology.

It all started with a river. That's how people and products got places in the mid-1700s. The Tar River was a conduit for North Carolina tobacco, cotton, peanuts, potatoes and livestock. And the place where people gathered in Eastern North Carolina to use the river was Greenville, which became one of the state's leading tobacco markets and warehouse centers.

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Today a new current flows through Greenville, bringing jobs, building the population and changing the face of the region's economy. Technology has jump-started Greenville from a sleepy tobacco town into a thriving city with a major university--East Carolina--a medical school, a renowned hospital system and an array of companies manufacturing products that include boats and chemicals.

Biotechnology and life-science companies play leading roles in Greenville's new economy. ECU research has led to several spinoff biotech companies in Greenville, and economic developers are hoping to continue to capitalize on the university's assets.

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John Chaffee is executive director of the Pitt County Development Commission. He has seen a lot of changes during his 21 years there. For one, Greenville's population has doubled to nearly 70,000. But by far the biggest shift, he says, is the transformation of the local economy.

"Advanced manufacturing by international firms and technology-related businesses is where we've seen most of our investment and growth. Technology-based businesses used to be nonexistent here, but now there are hordes of them," Chaffee says. "We've had a migration from being significantly still tied to an agrarian economy to becoming a city with a major manufacturing base and a major university. The economy has taken on a much different life."

Chaffee points to Metrics Inc. as an example of the new companies that have taken root in Greenville and spurred economic change. "Metrics is the type of company we hope to see and encourage," Chaffee says. In 1994, Phil Hodges, a chemist with drug maker Burroughs Wellcome, started Metrics in an old veterinary office as a contract laboratory for drug companies.

Metrics has grown from an analytical lab with four employees into a full-range drug-development and testing company. Companies come to Metrics with a chemical compound to formulate or test. Metrics chemists work with pharmaceutical-company researchers to transform the compounds into working drugs for patients. That process involves determining dosage amounts that are safe for patients, as well as developing low-cost ways to mass-produce the drugs.

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The company employs about 160 people. In 2001, it moved into a 44,000-square-foot custom-designed building--about four times the size of its original space. It has outgrown that space as well and completed a 4,200-square-foot laboratory expansion in December. Even that won't meet all of the company's expansion needs. Hodges says the company is developing plans for its next phase of growth.

Metrics has helped test and develop drugs used in the treatment of cancer, AIDS and diabetes, among others, and it plans to expand into developing and marketing its own products in the coming years. Hodges, an East Carolina graduate who worked for Burroughs Wellcome 12 years before branching out on his own, is particularly proud that Metrics is part of a local boom in biotech education and development. He's a native of nearby Beargrass and knows that the success of his company and others reflects well on Eastern North Carolina in general. "This is a good place for a business like ours. All the pharmaceutical know-how we need is here. We've hired a lot of good, qualified people out of the ECU chemistry department."

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In fact, the city has had a drug-industry base for more than 30 years. In the early 1970s, Burroughs Wellcome set up a factory there. Burroughs Wellcome was acquired by London-based Glaxo, which sold the plant to Mountainview, Calif.-based Catalytica, which used it to make AZT, one of the drugs to treat AIDS. Today, the plant is the home of DSM Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of Dutch conglomerate DSM. It also is one of Greenville's major industrial employer. DSM Pharmaceuticals is a contract manufacturer for the drug and biotechnology industries.

The company employs more than 1,000 at its 600-acre site--one of the largest contract-manufacturing plants in the world. The factory can make sterile, solid, semisolid and liquid products. The pills, creams and ointments it produces are shipped to drug companies such as GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer.

The plant features automated processing lines to wash, sterilize, freeze-dry and fill vials. In June 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a sterile production line at the plant. The company announced in August that it had been awarded a multiyear supply agreement by Louisville, Ky.-based US WorldMeds to make a sterilized pharmaceutical product.

A month before, DSM added a new business unit, DSM Dyneema, to its Greenville operations, investing $100 million in a new factory and adding 70 jobs. Dyneema, a fiber 15 times stronger than steel, is used in bulletproof armor and in protective clothing for law-enforcement agencies and the military. It also is used in ropes, cables and nets for the fishing and shipping industries, safety gloves for the metalworking industry and fine threads for sports and medical applications.

New biotechs that could one day become as successful as Metrics and DSM Pharmaceuticals are emerging from research and entrepreneurial activity at East Carolina. The university is the third-largest in the state, with 20,000 students, and is home to the Brody School of Medicine. Along with its teaching hospital, Pitt County Memorial--the flagship for the University Health Systems of Eastern Carolina--the medical school has won acclaim for its research in telemedicine and robotic heart surgery.

The medical school's achievements in cardiovascular research prompted state approval in 2004 for construction of a $60 million heart hospital and center for cardiovascular education, which will be called the North Carolina Cardiovascular Diseases Institute. It will become a focal point for clinical research on devices and techniques used in cardiovascular medicine and surgery. The aim is to improve medical management of the disease, which would lead to shorter hospitalization, faster recovery times and less pain for patients. According to ECU, the institute will create more than 500 jobs.

Helping transfer technology from the university and medical school to private enterprise is the Technology Enterprise Center of Eastern Carolina. This small-business incubator, opened in 1997, is a partnership between the Pitt County Development Commission and ECU's Center for Applied Technology. It offers 59,000 square feet of office, lab and light-manufacturing space to technology-related startup companies. Companies may operate out of the center for up to five years. "We like to make sure they're on solid footing before they migrate out," Chaffee says.

Tenants have included companies such as Encelle, which has developed technology to repair or regenerate diseased or damaged tissue. Chaffee highlights three tenants, all operating in the life-sciences sector, that should be significant contributors to Greenville's biotech industry. They are Microbe Management, Carolina Chemicals and CTMG. CTMG manages clinical trials for other pharmaceutical companies--and it's this company, started by former Brody School of Medicine professor Anton Usala, that is growing the quickest. Started in April 2004, CTMG has a dozen employees and, if growth continues as expected, should employ 85 within four years.

In addition to life-sciences companies, Greenville has a growing base of multinational manufacturers. In particular, it has attracted divisions of three Japanese companies. ASMO Greenville of North Carolina started its operations in 1994. ASMO makes electric motors and systems for the automotive market and employs more than 500 here. North Carolina Asahi, which also manufactures automotive parts, came to Greenville a year after ASMO. In 1999, Fuji Silysia Chemical USA began making its silica gel at a plant in Greenville. The gel is used in transportation equipment and precision and musical instruments. The three companies invested $15 million in their local factories in 2004 to automate production lines and improve productivity and efficiency.

Among other major manufacturers in Greenville are NACCO Materials Handling Group and Grady-White Boats. With 1,200 employees, the subsidiary of Mayfield Heights, Ohio-based NACCO Industries is one of Pitt County's largest employers. The Greenville plant designs, builds and sells fork-lifts and replacement parts marketed under the Hyster and Yale brand names. NACCO, which has had a presence in Pitt County since 1974, announced an expansion in 2004 that created 90 jobs.

Grady-White CEO Eddie Smith bought the Greenville-based boat manufacturer from founders Glenn Grady and Don White in 1968, 10 years after they started it. Today it employs 450 in Greenville and makes about 2,000 sport-fishing boats a year at its 300,000-square-foot plant. The factory was designed to manufacture fiberglass boats.

While Greenville is developing a firm footing in the biotech sector and in advanced manufacturing, traditional manufacturing continues to be nurtured in Pitt County as well, Chaffee says. "We see technology-related development as simply developing another leg to improve the steady economic stool we already have." For example, DIMON International, the world's second-largest dealer of leaf tobacco, consolidated its U.S. production facilities and operations into its Farmville plant in 2004. The move, which added 150 jobs there, was a major victory for Pitt County.

Throughout the 1990s, reported industrial investments in the county averaged nearly $50 million a year. Since 2000, the county has averaged $79 million a year. In November, Chaffee reported that 520 jobs had been created in 2004. The Pitt County Development Commission and North Carolina's Eastern Region continue to recruit companies, encourage expansions by companies with existing operations in Greenville and help foster the creation of promising spinoffs.

There's plenty to brag about when the development commission is making its case for Greenville to site-selection teams. "We have a well-educated labor force," Chaffee says. "It stems from the presence of the university and the community college. Greenville has a high number of people with advanced degrees, as well as a higher than average number of people with college and community-college degrees. That labor force is an important commodity."

Pitt Community College offers 44 associate degree programs, numerous certificate programs, 22 diploma programs and 18 college-transfer programs. PCC also can provide company-tailored employee training. East Carolina offers more than 100 bachelor's degree programs, 80 master's degree programs and 13 doctoral programs.

Pitt-Greenville Airport offers daily commuter service to Charlotte. Passenger boardings at the airport were up nearly 35% in 2004 to 49,723. As for quality of life, Greenville has much to offer. The city has plenty of shopping--retail sales approach $2 billion a year--along with parks, museums, galleries, theater events and other cultural activities.

Once recognized mainly for its agricultural base, Greenville today is a bustling city. Active research is helping to develop high-technology enterprises and is defining Greenville as a corridor of biotech activity. There is still a river, of course, but it flows through a much different city.