Fast forward to 2013 and Kinston’s downtown now shows some burgeoning signs of life –lunch spots are packed by noon, folks head in and out of the shops on Herritage Street, and public art in the form of benches and bicycle racks dot the wide sidewalks. Those looking for some semblance of a night life had better head out of town. The tobacco and manufacturing heyday had come and gone and the once lively downtown storefronts were mostly vacant. At one time a thriving community with a prosperous economy based on tobacco and textile manufacturing, Kinston’s downtown had seen better days as it entered the twenty-first century. The case of Mother Earth Brewing in Kinston, a small town (population 21,667) in rural eastern North Carolina, exemplifies this pattern.

Its leaders tend to break the traditional entrepreneurial mold, measuring their success not only according to profit margins but by the improvements in quality of life and neighborhood vitality that tend to follow in their wake. Part industrial facility, part retail space, part bar/restaurant, and part real estate pioneer, craft breweries are emerging as innovative harbingers of neighborhood revitalization. (also known to North Carolinians as Asheville), craft breweries are opening up in and around distressed downtowns throughout the state. Far outside the city limits of Beer City U.S.A. Something is brewing in small towns throughout North Carolina.

Community and Economic Development – Blog by UNC School of Governmentīreweries and economic development: A case of home brew By Marcia Perritt Published April 5, 2013

Mother earth brewing vista