Two Longtime Elizabeth City Businesses Share Their Longevity Secrets
Elizabeth City is a thriving port community, thanks to its robust industries like tourism, health care, education and retail. Businesses within these sectors – many of which are considered longtime pillars of the community – have helped stabilize the local economy, grow the area’s workforce and support progress. Read ahead to see two examples, born and bred in the region, that have managed to flourish over several decades to become essential structures of the community.
Hornthal, Riley, Ellis & Maland LLP
With more than a century under its belt, this legal firm, which began as two separate practices – Thompson and Wilson in 1906 and Leroy, Wells and Shaw in 1920 – later merged in the 1980s.
Phillip Hornthal, a civil litigation trial attorney and certified mediator, is one of the partners, and his father, Tony Hornthal, was a founding member.
The firm has offices in Elizabeth City and Nags Head and services a 20-county area. Roughly 10 lawyers and 30 staff members handle cases ranging from elder law and bankruptcy to domestic litigation and medical malpractice. The firm also acts as primary counsel for multiple towns and cities and the public school system.
Phillip Hornthal says technology, especially video conferencing platforms, has been one of the bigger challenges impacting how law is practiced.
“COVID changed a lot when they shut the courthouses down,” he says. “People began to do a lot more things by Zoom – saw they could become more efficient – but I think that’s not necessarily a good thing across the board. Some cases lend themselves to personal interaction.”
When asked about the firm’s enduring success, Hornthal explains that being a full-service law firm has helped navigate shifting trends in the economy as well as the area’s “stabilizing factors,” such as Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City, three colleges and proximity to southeastern Virginia and the Outer Banks. And, of course, the people.
“The community has been good to us,” Hornthal says. “The way we’ve always gotten our name out there has been through a synergy relationship with it. We’ve encouraged our attorneys and associates to get involved and give back their time. We’re part of the fabric of the community, which has helped us not only grow but maintain in years that growth wasn’t so great.”
B&S Enterprises
B&S Enterprises came from humble beginnings as a family-owned gas station in Hertford in 1969. Brothers Sam and Bradley Jennings had the idea to add onto their father’s business and set up shop repairing equipment for local farmers.
Eventually, the brothers retired and their sons, Brian and Stuart, took over, and today, they work alongside their own children, Josh Jennings and Brianne Woodley. The company employs about 80 people and has locations in Elizabeth City, Kinston, Wilson and Sunbury.
A one-stop shop, the business sells, services and repairs equipment and caters to large farm operations as well as residential customers.
Josh Jennings grew up around the business and wears many hats as a sales manager. Though the presence of larger competitors and conglomerates is always felt, the family’s mindset about delivering the small-town feel is what’s bred loyal customers and a unique edge.
“Our biggest challenge is to grow, to expand, because you have to stay alive, but maintain that family appeal, that personal relationship,” Jennings says. “The most common complaint we hear among customers is that they’ve lost the personal relationship with the people they used to deal with or that some of those businesses really don’t care for them.”
Elizabeth City was chosen as their home base for a host of reasons, and the family continues to feel fortunate about the relationships it has built within the community.
“This area is very unique to North Carolina, especially for agriculture,” Jennings says. “The customers and people here are very easy to deal with and still maintain a lot of that integrity when it comes to my word’s good/your word’s good. You just don’t find that in a lot of places, but Elizabeth City does have that.”
Two Elizabeth City Businesses Earn Recognition
A longtime Elizabeth City business has been recognized by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). Owner Mamie Hoffer and President Jason Futrell of Hoffer Flow Controls were both named Small Business Person of the Year for North Carolina for 2025.
The company designs and manufactures turbine flowmeters, which measure liquids and gases and are used in facilities worldwide. Hoffer Flow Controls was established in New Jersey in 1969 and moved to Elizabeth City in the 1990s.
Hoffer and Futrell were among 53 recipients who were granted this distinction by the SBA. Winners were invited to attend ceremonies in Washington, D.C.
In the large business category, TCOM, which specializes in aerostat surveillance systems, won the North Carolina Governor’s Export Award. According to TCOM’s website, this is granted to “companies that have achieved significant growth in international markets, thereby boosting the state’s economic development.”
The company was founded in 1971, and its products are used for everything from border control to emergency management in countries across the globe.