In February of 2025, just months after Tropical Storm Helene devastated the North Carolina mountains and destroyed entire livelihoods, Chris McKendree stood in front of a congregation at the Burnsville Town Center and made a promise to “put jobs in the community” and “money in the banks,” with his latest business venture, Paradigm Energy and Storage.
Wearing khaki shorts and a University of Florida football hoodie, McKendree presented himself as a down-to-Earth businessman from Fernandina Beach, Fla. — a son of a shrimper and an entrepreneur interested in clean energy that would “change the world.” In 2024, prior to Helene, he came to the Yancey County Board of Commissioners with a proposition to build a headquarters and manufacturing facility in Burnsville for Florida-based Paradigm.
McKendree said the project would involve a $175 million investment and create 150 good-paying jobs by the end of 2027 in one of North Carolina’s most remote mountain counties. County commissioners were convinced by the proposal, and in turn they agreed to give McKendree a 84.5-acre parcel of land to build on, valued at $2.6 million, for free.
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A bevy of regional media reports and press releases celebrated the deal as a major economic victory for the rural county.
More than a year later, no construction has been done and no jobs have been created. Paradigm Energy and Storage appears to exist only on paper, and it isn’t clear that McKendree ever had the resources, or even the intention, to follow through on the project.
Paradigm doesn’t have any online presence or legitimate contact information. Its listed addresses are a private residence in Fernandina Beach and a private mailbox at a UPS Store in Burnsville.
Not only has the company defaulted on its agreement with Yancey County, but it also owes more than $16,800 in unpaid property taxes and is more than a month late on filing the annual report required to keep the company active in North Carolina. McKendree even appears to have changed his personal phone number through which Carolina Public Press attempted to contact him for this story.
Adding a further complication to the matter, Paradigm sold a small portion of the land deeded to it by the county in September to a third party, seemingly without the legal authority to do so.
While residents are left to wonder what happened, multiple stakeholders involved in bringing Paradigm to Burnsville have said very little, if anything, publicly about where the project stands now.
Yancey County officials did not respond to CPP’s multiple phone calls and email inquiries asking whether the county was still in active communication with Paradigm or McKendree, or whether it intended to pursue legal action to recoup the land and unpaid property taxes.
The Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, a public-private nonprofit which recruits new businesses to the state, and which played a role in connecting Paradigm to Yancey County, also declined to answer a CPP inquiry for an update on the project.
“We don’t have any comment for this one,” EDPNC spokesperson Evan Hoopfer said.
‘A lot of promises’ for Paradigm
On Feb. 5 of last year, Yancey announced its agreement with Paradigm to a sizable audience at an event center in Burnsville.
It wasn’t just a local crowd. Staffers from the offices of U.S. Senator Thom Tillis and Congressman Chuck Edwards were among the attendees. Yancey County Manager Lynn Austin also thanked representatives from EDPNC, the Town of Burnsville and Mayland Community College for their roles in bringing the project together.
Austin had previously hinted that a major economic development announcement was in the works at a Dec. 30 special meeting of the county commissioners, but she said she couldn’t divulge the identity of the interested company because of a nondisclosure agreement. So instead, the county referred to it as “Project Gator.”
Project Gator, which was later revealed to be Paradigm Energy and Storage, wanted to build on a parcel of land that the county purchased in 2022 using federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, better known as ARPA.
Yancey County bought that land with the intention of turning it into an industrial park, and, with the help of the state, had it certified as a shovel-ready industrial site. The county jumped on the opportunity when McKendree approached them about developing it, and they were relieved, Austin said, when he doubled down on his interest after Helene.
With an agreement between the two parties reached, McKendree had the opportunity at that February meeting to introduce himself and sell the community on his vision for Paradigm. However, the introductory speech he gave, captured in a YouTube video, lacked specifics and concerned several Yancey residents who spoke with CPP.
McKendree emphasized his Christian faith and humble upbringing, as well as his desire to bring prosperity to Yancey County in the aftermath of Helene. However, he said little about what Paradigm would actually do at the planned $175 million facility, instead painting an ambitious picture that bordered on hyperbole.
“Paradigm is going to become a global corporation,” McKendree said.
“We’re going to be building energy systems all over the world. We’re going to teach our children the robotics that move the energy. We’re going to teach our children how to manufacture solar modules. We’re going to teach them how to build everything and anything that’s energy that makes sense and there’s a market for.”
When asked by Commission Chairman Jeff Whitson to explain to the audience the products that Paradigm would manufacture, McKendree described nonflammable, transportable batteries which could provide power to facilities like schools and hospitals during power outages.
Landon Beaver, a community activist and chair of the Democratic Party in heavily Republican Yancey County, attended that meeting and said he was skeptical of the project almost immediately.
“It was a lot of promises,” Beaver said. “In a lot of ways it felt more like church for a few minutes there, with a prayer and everything, and (McKendree) was not very professional looking either.”
Yancey resident and small business owner Tal Galton was equally suspicious of Paradigm after Google searches turned up very little information about the company or its operations.
“From the get-go I was like, this can’t be real,” Galton said, “and it’s baffling to me that our county government had the wool pulled over their eyes somehow.”
Paradigm documents littered with red flags
CPP discovered multiple false and misleading information on Paradigm’s North Carolina business registration, which was filed 10 days after the announcement in Burnsville.
First, McKendree listed a Florida attorney’s cellphone number as Paradigm’s principal office number.
When contacted by CPP, that attorney said he had done legal work for McKendree in the past but was not associated with Paradigm. The same attorney provided CPP with what he believed to be McKendree’s personal cell number, which turned out to have been deactivated.
Further, the registered agent listed on Paradigm’s business registration is a Burke County woman who died in December. The address listed as her office is a Linville Falls restaurant, owned and operated by that woman’s relatives, who denied any association with Paradigm and called the information in the document “fraudulent.”
Paradigm’s 11-page development plan, which was attached to its contract with the county, also had multiple instances of contradicting statements and vague descriptions of the company’s operations.
In the first paragraph, it described Paradigm as an “upcoming unlaunched business” but also claimed to have 75 employees. CPP found no credible sources to suggest that Paradigm had any employees other than McKendree.
That same document claimed Paradigm’s “core offerings” were smart-grid technology, battery storage systems, demand response programs and peak-load management strategies, but did not explain what those were or how it fit into the company’s operations.
During his speech, McKendree also said Paradigm would manufacture solar panels, even announcing a partnership with Mayland Community College that would train students for that task, but Paradigm’s development plan didn’t mention solar manufacturing or the training program at all.
John Boyd, who leads Mayland Community College’s business partnerships, was present at the February 2025 announcement but did not speak about the proposed training program. Boyd did not respond to CPP’s requests for comment about the current status of that program.
An uncertain future for industrial site
It wasn’t until more than a year after the initial announcement that Yancey County gave a public update about the Paradigm project.
At the end of a March 9 county commissioners meeting, Whitson addressed the project after a group of citizens voiced their concerns about the legitimacy of the operation and the lack of work being done at the industrial site.
Whitson said Paradigm had been declared in default of its agreement with the county in December, and that the 84.5 acres deeded to them would return to the county as a result.
Whitson and Lynn further discussed the future of the industrial site in a Facebook video posted on March 13. In that video, Whitson referred to the situation as a “touchy subject” and said he wanted to put the topic “to rest,” emphasizing again that the county maintains control of the land given to Paradigm.
Public land records from the register of deeds and county GIS data do not, as of the publication of this story, corroborate that claim. Both indicate that Paradigm still owns that parcel of land, except for a 0.44-acre section that the company sold for $10 to the owner of a local trucking company in September.
The man who bought that portion of the industrial site declined to speak with CPP for this story.
County officials did not respond to CPP’s request for them to clarify the status of the default agreement with Paradigm, nor did they respond to questions about what might happen with the land the company sold.
Despite everything, Whitson’s video statement alluded to the possibility that Paradigm still might proceed with the project, although he added that the county is interested in recruiting other businesses to the site.
“The business that is looking at it right now, Paradigm … is still able to come,” he said. “It’s up to them on how we move forward.”
Beaver said there’s still hope that the county can find a different suitor for the industrial site and bring a needed boost to its economy, but he was dismayed at the time lost by dealing with Paradigm.
“We do need good paying jobs, and that’s kind of what was promised with this project,” he said.
“Beyond jobs, they were going to partner with Mayland Community College to provide education with it, so there’s a lot of let down with what was promised with this project versus what we got.”
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