Call it the 41st North Carolina Jazz Festival, not the 41st “annual” festival. After a long unbroken streak, the three-day event featuring performances by renowned jazz artists held yearly in Downtown Wilmington is skipping a beat – deliberately. Initially scheduled for Feb. 4-6, 2021 in Wilmington at the Hotel Ballast, the next N.C. Jazz Festival h ...

Visitor spending during the summer peak months of July and August rose slightly above last year's monthly figures, despite the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on travel. Spending, however, is still lagging in the city. In New Hanover County overall, the August room occupancy tax figure was at $2.07 million, a rise of nearly 4% from the close to $2 milli ...

While the coronavirus pandemic has posed a rocky 2020 for the regional economy, the road to recovery has started, and the outlook is a bit more optimistic for 2021, said Adam Jones, a regional economist with UNCW. Jones and other speakers took part in the annual Economic Outlook Conference on Thursday, which was hosted virtually this year by the University of North Caro ...

As some movie theaters across the state prepare to reopen following six months of closure, at least one area cinema is holding off for now. Stone Theatres Management LLC will likely wait to open its doors to moviegoers until possibly mid-November, said company vice president Dale Coleman on Friday. Others, however, are looking to open soon, such as Thalian Hall in do ...

Hiring trends across the region are picking up, but at a slow pace, said Adam Jones, a regional economist with the University of North Carolina Wilmington.   There are still constraints for businesses, however, that are impacting the overall recovery.   “I expect we’ll con­tinue to see employment growth across the board but stronger in areas t ...

Wilmington International Airport leaders say a seasonal nonstop flight to Boston, previously planned for this year prior to COVID-19, could land in the summer of 2021. Air traffic at the Wilmington International Airport has been picking up slightly, after a significant slowdown starting in April, due to the pandemic and its impacts on air travel worldwide. Julie Wils ...

After shutting their doors for about six months, museums and attractions recently began seeing visitors again. The leaders of two of the area’s largest attractions joined us for BizTalk at noon Wednesday to talk about the reopening. Anne Brennan, executive director of the Cameron Art Museum, and Hap Fatzinger, director of the N.C. Aquarium at Fort Fisher, also dis ...

A new avenue of state funding could boost some small businesses across the Cape Fear region suffering because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Small businesses are the foundation of the local economy providing about 45% of the regional workforce, said Heather McWhorter, regional director of the Small Business and Technology Development Center (SBTDC) office at the University o ...

This year’s WilmingtonBiz Conference & Expo is bringing back memories.   Under vastly different circum­stances, Greater Wilmington Busi­ness Journal launched our region’s annual business expo in January 2011 soon after the Wilmington Convention Center opened.   Our goal was simple – help our often disconnected business commu­ ...

A partnership has formed on a survey aimed at gauging the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on minority-owned and women-owned businesses in the Cape Fear region. The initiative is being undertaken by Genesis Block and Cape Fear Collective, which teamed up with ResilNC to distribute in early September the ResilNC Small Business Needs Assessment Survey in the South ...