Beyond The Blueprint | Brad Howard joined by Former Mayor Chris Carney

Ask somebody in Charlotte what Morrisville is.

go ahead and ask them.

You'll probably get one word, suburb.

A bedroom community, a nice place on the lake where you sleep at night and then you drive to Charlotte to go to work.

I want to push back on that today.

My family's been here for generations, and I grew up here when Morrisville was a small mill town.

I've watched it change my entire life.

Suburb does not describe it anymore, not even close.

Morrisville's an employment center.

People don't just drive out of it to go to work, they drive into it, and that's exactly why it matters so much to the entire Charlotte economy.

Now, on this show, we don't just say things, we put numbers to it.

This is Beyond the Blueprint, and I'm Brad Howard, and let's go.

So let's start with the jobs.

Take the seven zip codes on the north side of Lake Norman, both sides of the county line.

On the Idle side, that's Mooresville and Mount Morne.

On the Mecklenburg side, it's Davidson, Cornelius, and Huntersville.

The latest census business counts puts around 96,000 payroll jobs in those seven zip codes.

About 45,000 of them are the three Mooresville zip codes.

Nearly half the jobs on the whole north end of the lake.

Now here's the number that surprised me.

Those Mooresville jobs carry about $3.4 billion a year in payroll.

That's more than the four North Mecklenburg zip codes put together.

The average Mooresville job pays around $75,000 a year.

On the North Mecklenburg side, it's about $58,000.

And over the west side of Mooresville, the 28117 zip code, the average wage is around $83,000 a year, the highest of all seven zip codes.

Ask somebody in Charlotte what Morrisville is.

go ahead and ask them.

You'll probably get one word, suburb.

A bedroom community, a nice place on the lake where you sleep at night and then you drive to Charlotte to go to work.

I want to push back on that today.

My family's been here for generations, and I grew up here when Morrisville was a small mill town.

I've watched it change my entire life.

Suburb does not describe it anymore, not even close.

Morrisville's an employment center.

People don't just drive out of it to go to work, they drive into it, and that's exactly why it matters so much to the entire Charlotte economy.

Now, on this show, we don't just say things, we put numbers to it.

This is Beyond the Blueprint, and I'm Brad Howard, and let's go.

So let's start with the jobs.

Take the seven zip codes on the north side of Lake Norman, both sides of the county line.

On the Idle side, that's Mooresville and Mount Morne.

On the Mecklenburg side, it's Davidson, Cornelius, and Huntersville.

The latest census business counts puts around 96,000 payroll jobs in those seven zip codes.

About 45,000 of them are the three Mooresville zip codes.

Nearly half the jobs on the whole north end of the lake.

Now here's the number that surprised me.

Those Mooresville jobs carry about $3.4 billion a year in payroll.

That's more than the four North Mecklenburg zip codes put together.

The average Mooresville job pays around $75,000 a year.

On the North Mecklenburg side, it's about $58,000.

And over the west side of Mooresville, the 28117 zip code, the average wage is around $83,000 a year, the highest of all seven zip codes.