As the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Helene approaches on Sept. 27, Democratic Gov. Josh Stein and the Governor’s Recovery Office for Western North Carolina (GROW NC) have released details on a plan that promises to help rebuild and grow western North Carolina’s economy.
According to a press release issued on Wednesday, the Western North Carolina Economic Recovery Plan was built with input from 28 counties, the Qualla Boundary, five regional councils of government, chambers of commerce, and economic development organizations.
The plan focuses on nine areas: infrastructure; natural resources; economic development and entrepreneurship; housing; education and workforce development; healthcare; arts, culture, and tourism; and agriculture. It also sets five-year and 10-year targets for each area.
Sharon Decker, GROW NC’s Senior Advisor for Long-Term Recovery, has been named as the plan’s lead.
The release says the plan doesn’t create a new appropriation or supersede the plans communities have already put together. It integrates the region’s five federally recognized economic development strategies into a single shared framework, enabling communities to combine resources around their own priorities.
“Western North Carolina has never lacked plans or ideas,” Decker said in the release. “What we’ve lacked is one place where the region’s own priorities line up with the money to back them and the people who can act on them. That’s what this plan gives western North Carolinians, and it’s why we didn’t write it in Raleigh. Counties, chambers, community colleges, business owners, and councils of government built it, and the work now belongs to them.”
It was shaped by two different approaches: campaign planning and the Marshall Plan.
Campaign planning, which the plan also calls military planning, offers a framework for connecting a desired future to the actions and resources that produce it.
It names Hurricane Sandy, also known as Superstorm Sandy, as an example of how the National Disaster Recovery Framework’s Recovery Support Functions operated: as parallel, federally coordinated workstreams (housing, infrastructure, economic, health, community planning, and natural and cultural resources) aligned with a common recovery end state.
The 117-page plan cites the Marshall Plan, officially known as the European Recovery Program, an effort to rebuild Europe after World War II by channeling about $13.3 billion (roughly $143 billion in today’s dollars) to 16 countries from 1948 to 1951. The US required recipient nations to come together through the Organization for European Economic Cooperation and jointly plan how aid would be used.
“While the headlines about Helene have faded over the last two years, the work remains. Western North Carolinians know best how to keep moving forward,” the governor said in the release. “That is why this plan takes the priorities the region set for itself and puts the state’s weight behind them. Together, we can build an economy that’s stronger and more diversified than the one the storm hit – because that is what a full recovery requires.”
The plan is building on previous actions. Those efforts include strengthening advanced manufacturing through a $29.2 million US Economic Development Administration award for the Western North Carolina Futures Factory in Buncombe County; supporting the creative economy, a sector that generated more than $3 billion in sales and supported nearly 35,000 jobs in 2025; expanding connectivity through the $1.8 billion Interstate 26 Connector, which broke ground in April; and building a strong workforce through Good Jobs WNC, an 11-college, 23-county initiative pursuing roughly 1,200 jobs.
Those actions are especially important because the region faced numerous challenges before the storm. North Carolina lost more than 40% of its manufacturing jobs over the last three decades, and the 28 counties in the plan also experienced significant losses in their industrial labor force. From April 2023 through April 2026, the region’s labor force shrank by more than 16,000 people while the state’s overall population grew, according to the North Carolina Department of Commerce.
On housing, the press release states that more than 1,250 homes have been repaired or rebuilt through Renew NC and the state’s partnership with volunteer organizations. Of those homes, 135 have been completed by Renew NC according to its dashboard.
Nearly 16.5 million cubic yards of debris have been cleared, 99% of drinking water systems have been restored, and 99% of impacted state roads have reopened. Some of the most complex repairs remain, especially on private roads, bridges, and local systems that federal programs do not fully cover.
In August, FEMA approved an additional $137 million for recovery and mitigation projects in North Carolina, pushing federal support for Hurricane Helene above $7.5 billion.
They also recently announced that they are awarding nearly $48 million to the state through the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program to acquire approximately 135 flood-prone properties damaged by Helene in several hard-hit communities. The properties will be converted into permanent open space to prevent, eliminate, or reduce future disaster damage. In total, FEMA has provided funding for the state to acquire more than 500 properties.
North Carolina has also continued putting state money toward the recovery.
The state budget approved by lawmakers this summer and signed by Gov. Josh Stein includes more than $700 million in nonrecurring funding for Helene recovery during the 2026-27 fiscal year.
The funding covers the state and local share required for federal disaster recovery programs, as well as local government capital needs, volunteer fire departments, housing recovery, private road and bridge repairs, temporary relocation assistance, and other rebuilding efforts in western North Carolina.
The latest FEMA funding comes as North Carolina continues to seek additional federal support for long-term recovery.
Stein asked Congress in June for more than $10 billion in additional Helene recovery funding for housing, infrastructure, water systems, and other unmet needs, but Congress has not set a timeline for acting on the request.
The plan will be presented to the Governor’s Advisory Committee on Western North Carolina Recovery, co-chaired by state Sen. Kevin Corbin and Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer, on Friday, Sept. 25, at Mars Hill University.