BETHEL — A pair of Raleigh-based business owners are investing in projects they said will provide access to food, health care and housing to a Pitt County town that has been lacking for too long.
Jerome Brown and Carolyn Mayo, managing partners for United Providers of Health are in the process of establishing The People’s Grocery at 7393 Main St., next to Bethel Hardware, which they purchased in 2022.
The 4,500-square-foot space will bring fresh meat and produce to the town of about 2,000 people. The pair plan to open the grocery in the late summer of this year once permits are approved.
Mayor Carl Wilson, who was elected in 2022 after Gloristine Brown was elected to the N.C. House District 8 seat in the N.C. General Assembly, said that a round trip to Robersonville, Tarboro or Greenville to get groceries, including time shopping, can take an hour or more depending on if a store has everything he needs.
The town’s Piggly-Wiggly at 7459 Main St. closed in the early 2000s, and community members made efforts to reopen the franchise over the years. The space is now being turned into an event center.
Brown said that United Providers of Health started to conduct COVID-19 testing in Bethel and 18 other communities in 2020. The business continues to operate a lab at 108 Andrews St. for COVID-19, RSV, flu, sexually transmitted infections, drug and toxicology testing.
“We just fell in love with the town,” Brown said. “We said how can we be involved with making an investment?”
The health care agency’s focus is to address food and health deserts, Brown said, both terms which can be applied to the northern Pitt County town. He said the group uses a whole-person approach to health which accounts for where people live, work, play, age and eat. He said the concept is one prioritized by N.C. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kody Kinsley.
“They have a Family Dollar and a Dollar General, that’s not a healthy food place,” Brown said. “People are driving to Greenville or Tarboro to get an apple and a banana, or get meat.
“We’ve done our homework in that 20-25 mile radius. We know what’s going on based on our research and have a very strong finance plan moving forward.”
In total, Brown said the health care agency is investing millions of private dollars in Bethel. His confidence in People’s Grocery becoming a reality is high, with work already underway to install refrigeration units. Shopping carts with logos have already been purchased, too. Wilson said Pitt County has been made aware of the work to establish the People’s Grocery.
At Bethel Hardware, Brown and Mayo have spent $200,000 to modernize the store’s shelving, floors, ceilings and central air. A previous storage room was remodeled into retail space. The store also serves as a UPS receiving location that services a 25 mile area, Brown said.
Brown and Mayo also plan to convert the warehouse space behind Bethel Hardware and People’s Grocery into Bethel Plaza Alley, which will include a telehealth center, office space and a boutique. Opening days for those are projected after the grocery store, which Mayo and Brown said is their top priority right now.
“We’re going to light up like Christmas lights (in) Bethel at night time,” Brown said.
“The former mayor, Mayor Brown, she was very influential and she just really opened up her heart to us,” said Mayo, who lived in Greenville until she was 8-years-old. “This is an opportunity to provide access because we see in rural North Carolina, it’s (about) access. There are not many opportunities, having locations where people can work, play live.”
Downtown revitalization is one of Wilson’s top priorities as mayor. He returned to Bethel in 2002 after a 21-year career in the U.S. Army to find a town that was flourishing in his youth to one that was in decay.
According to Wilson, residents were initially skeptical of Brown and Mayo’s investments in the town.
“A lot of people had a little doubt about it,” Wilson said. “So many times we have had people come to Bethel and promise to do this and do that, do various things, and it never comes to pass.”
Brown has been in regular conversations with the Board of Commissioners, Wilson said. “He was really transparent about what he was trying to do for the community as far as buying the hardware store and revamping the hardware store. Once he went in and revamped the hardware store, people came in to see ... how it had been remodeled and stuff people can see that this gentleman is really serious about what he’s doing. Once he bought the pharmacy, it did the same thing. He also promised the grocery store which he is still working on that, also. It gave the community hope that, OK, there are some things coming to Bethel.”
United Providers of Health purchased Bethel Pharmacy on Main Street in December of 2023 from Dwayne Preast, who remains on staff and has operated the business since 1999. Preast said that the changes to Bethel early in his career were for the worse and included an exodus by banks, the supermarket and other businesses. He said the N.C. 11 Bypass, which went into operation in 2004, looped travelers and their money around Bethel rather than into the town.
Preast said the town needs housing as well as assets that make it “more of a destination” for consumers. He called housing, food, health care and businesses the key to injecting money into the community. He used to live in Bethel but has since moved to Greenville, about 20 minutes away.
“I think there’s some drawing cards for a community, one being a grocery store and the other being a pharmacy,” Preast said. “I think (the investment) has been a positive, especially if we get the rooftops in here.”
Those rooftops come in the form of 52 acres east of N.C. 11, near the town’s water tower, that UPOH purchased to install 125 three- and four-bedroom homes that Brown estimates will sell for $275,000-$400,000. He said the acreage has already been annexed and zoned as residential property and that right now work is being done with contractors to install infrastructure at a creek that bisects the land before homes are built.
U.S. Census data from 2020 showed Bethel had 1,090 total homes. Scott Elliott, Bethel’s interim town manager and former Pitt County manager, said that for a small community Bethel has opportunity but that success selling homes will boil down to consumers.
“For a town its size, even though it doesn’t appear vibrant, there is a degree of activity here,” Elliott said. “People have made a community out of it, though it does tend to struggle with growth and attracting new businesses, some of the residential boom that is going on in the core county.
“It would be great if it comes to fruition. It depends on how you’re trying to sell it. If you’re trying to sell Bethel as a lower priced community in terms of cost of living and such, it just depends who’s going to be attracted to come here. Are people from Greenville? Maybe they will ... want to come up here to look for lower residential housing costs than you would (find) in the county seat.”
Brown and Mayo also purchased a two story building at 123 W. Railroad St. in 2023 that is under renovations to become a coffee shop expected to open in the summer. A parking area behind the store will contain an electric vehicle charging station, the town’s first.
“I’ve lived in Bethel for 20 plus years and, quite honestly, I think it is fantastic that we have some business coming,” said Margie Agnew, owner of the pottery store Margie’s Mudd Creations at 121 W. Railroad St., next door to the proposed coffee shop. “We had a supermarket, we had a jewelry store which closed down and then became a restaurant. The supermarket closed down and they brought in the two dollar stores that we have in town. That has helped, I’m sure.
“I feel really sorry for those that are confined in town. Seniors, people that have been handicapped in some way. Where do they go when they have no money, no means of transport?”
Census data from an American Community Survey five-year estimate placed Bethel’s median age at 43, a decade higher than Pitt County’s median age. The same data said 22.7 percent of residents are 65 or older, compared to 14.8 percent in the county as a whole.
Mayo said she is excited at the opportunity to invest in her home county.
“It’s very rewarding,” Mayo said. “I would say that just being able to let the whole world see what I saw as a child, how great it was living in Greenville and eastern North Carolina.
“It’s a beautiful place to be and I want other people to see and witness it. It feels really good.”
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