Rise to Star-dom

A new star will be burning brightly in Sampson County soon as the finish line seems to be coming into view with the completion of Star Communications’ state-of-the-art headquarters on the western side of Clinton.

Ground was broken for the project, at 1322 Sunset Ave. in Clinton, in November 2023, when nothing but dirt and open space existed at the site. Just over a year later, a massive two-story, 33,000-square-foot structure sits where that dirt and open space once was, a facility that Star CEO Donna Bullard said is projected to open this spring.

“Obviously, we’re hoping for the spring. Of course, just like with any construction, things happen and dates are continually being moved,” Bullard said in an interview this week. “But right now, we’re looking at construction completion by the end of April, and hoping our group can move in by May.”

The need for a fresh base of operations was brought on by hurricanes Matthew and Florence, in 2016 and 2018, respectively, that left the headquarters building at 3900 N. U.S. 421, flooded and Star staff scattered at a variety of locations across the area.

Since then, Star has been without a central headquarters space. That will all change once the doors to the new facility open, Bullard said, since the majority of the company staff are relocating to the new facility.

“We will be consolidating five other locations of employees, will be full.”

During the groundbreaking ceremony, Star officials said their hope was for a grand opening by March 2025. While the timeline has been pushed back to April or May, Bullard said construction has moved smoothly, the only major hiccup being weather.

“It’s pretty much, for the most part, been on schedule and budget,” she said. “Those 13 rain days we had last July were tough. So the weather, that’s really been the only delays, everything else has gone fairly well, thankfully.”

Even among the rising and fluctuating prices of building materials of all kinds across the world, Bullard stressed that they’ve managed to stay on track, financially.

“We signed the contract for price and we are on target with that, the budget and schedule to be honest,” she attested. Credit, she noted, goes to the work they’ve received from their architect and construction team for the project.

“We’ve got a really good architect, John Farkas (of JFK-Architect), out of Greenville, has done a great job, and then, of course, the Daniels and Daniels construction team,” she said. “We meet once a month and maybe that’s the good thing about it, we pretty much stay on task. Now that it’s getting down to the wire, things can get out of kilter. But just like today (Tuesday), I have a meeting out there, so we’re meeting more and more. Hopefully that mitigates anything getting out of whack, too, too quickly as we get closer to completion.”

Knowing that the goal line is within reach, excitement is stirring among Star staff, maybe none more than Bullard.

“I’m super excited!” she said. “It will be a great feeling to have our entire team once again under one roof for the Clinton-Sampson area. We have an Elizabethtown district office, so we have a group of folks out there, and we’ll keep our warehouse open. But to think about the progress we’ve made in broadband deployment while being displaced for the past six to eight years, if you combine both disasters. We think we’ll be much more effective and productive in our day-to-day operations once we get into the new building.

“As the leader, I’m most looking forward to that,” Bullard added. “And, of course, we hope to have a ribbon cutting, and we’ll get all that planned once we have the building turned over to us.”