Yancey County is suing to recoup the land it handed over last year to a mysteriously dormant solar energy company. Florida-based Paradigm Energy and Storage promised to build a headquarters and manufacturing facility in Burnsville, but so far no work has been done on the 84.5-acre industrial site deeded to it by the county in 2025.
According to the lawsuit that the county filed on Oct. 14, Paradigm hasn’t followed through on any of its contractual obligations. Those included commitments to invest $175 million into the project and to create 150 jobs by 2027.
Not only has Paradigm not made any meaningful progress toward its venture in Burnsville, but it seems to have abandoned North Carolina entirely.
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Last month, the Secretary of State’s office revoked Paradigm’s certificate of authority for failing to file the annual paperwork required to keep the company active in North Carolina. The company also owes $33,441 in overdue property taxes dating back to last year, according to Yancey’s tax department.
In May, the county notified Paradigm of its intention to terminate the economic development agreement and demanded that it return the 84.5 acres. The company never did so, leading Yancey to seek relief through the court.
County Manager Lynn Austin told Carolina Public Press in an email that she couldn’t speak about the ongoing litigation, but said the county is "looking forward to picking up where we left off” when it comes to finding a suitor for the Burnsville industrial site.
Red flags in Paradigm business documents
CPP reported in May that there were several red flags in Paradigm’s business creation filing, which included listing a Florida attorney’s cellphone number as the company’s principal office number and naming a since-deceased Linville Falls woman as its registered agent.
Both the attorney and the family of the Linville Falls woman told CPP that they did not associate with Paradigm and shouldn’t have been listed on the creation filing.
Paradigm also lacked legitimate contact information or a true office in North Carolina. Instead, it listed a private mailbox at a UPS store in Burnsville as its in-state address.
The man behind Paradigm, Florida-native Chris McKendree, has remained out of the public eye since first introducing himself and his company to Yancey residents in February of 2025.
Some residents who were present at that public announcement told CPP they were suspicious of the lack of details about Paradigm’s business operations and the bold claims McKendree made, including that the company was primed to be a “global corporation … building energy systems all over the world.”
No construction has taken place on the Burnsville industrial site more than a year after that announcement.
CPP attempted to contact McKendree earlier this year via his cellphone, but the number had been deactivated.
Paradigm website debuts with no mention of NC
Despite Paradigm’s lack of activity in North Carolina, the business remains active in Florida.
The company filed an annual report in January with the Florida Department of State, and in May it changed its official mailing address to a suite at a business office in Gainesville. Previously the address had been about 100 miles to the northeast at a private residence in Fernandina Beach.
Paradigm now has a public website as well, which did not exist at the time of CPP’s most recent story on the company. North Carolina isn’t mentioned anywhere on the website.
Like McKendree’s previous announcement of his plans in Burnsville, Paradigm’s website espouses a grand vision with few details, such as how and where the business intends to operate.
One part of the website claims that Paradigm will start “large-scale battery manufacturing” in the first quarter of 2027, but it doesn’t say where that manufacturing will take place. Paradigm’s development plan for its Burnsville facility, which was submitted to the Yancey County commissioners and attached as an exhibit to the lawsuit, listed battery storage systems as one of the business’ “core offerings.”
CPP used an OpenAI verification tool to confirm that all of the photos on Paradigm’s website which purported to show those battery systems were generated using artificial intelligence.
One AI-generated photo shows workers loading large batteries onto an aircraft. Another shows a semi-trailer truck transporting these batteries along an otherwise empty highway.
“WE DON'T JUST DISTRIBUTE ENERGY. WE MADE IT MOBILE,” reads one section of the website.
CPP attempted to contact Paradigm through an email address listed on the website’s contact page, but the email bounced and returned an error message.
Co-defendants quiet in response to lawsuit
Adding another layer of complexity to the legal situation is Paradigm’s sale of just under half an acre of the industrial site to a Yancey County resident last year.
That person, identified as Nicholas Styles in the lawsuit, is listed as a co-defendant alongside Paradigm. According to the county register of deeds, Paradigm sold Styles the land for $10 in September 2025. The reason for the deal is unclear and went unaddressed in the complaint.
Styles did not respond to CPP’s several attempts to reach him via phone and email.
Public records indicate that as of the publication of this story, neither Styles nor Paradigm have been served with the lawsuit or responded to the county’s assertion that the land must be returned.
Summoning Paradigm to court in North Carolina could prove difficult given that McKendree and his company appear to have retreated back to Florida.
CPP reached out to the attorney retained by the county, John Noor of Asheville-based law firm Roberts & Stevens, to ask about possible recourse if Paradigm doesn’t respond to the lawsuit, but he didn’t respond before the publication of this story.
In an email to CPP, Austin seemed confident that the lawsuit would result in the industrial site being returned to the county.
"It was an opportunity worth exploring and with great legal (counsel’s) protection we moved forward,” she wrote about the Paradigm deal.
“Unfortunately, the company did not meet the requirements of our legal agreement (which includes a timeline, financial investment and jobs) and we are in the process of getting the land back into the county's name.”
Searching for a new partner
Assuming the land does return to the county, Yancey will go back to searching for a business partner to take over the industrial site.
With a location on the Tennessee state line near the highest mountains in the eastern US, Yancey is one of the more remote counties in the entire state. Industrial investment in Yancey is somewhat of a rare occurrence. In 2006, Altec Industries built a facility in Burnsville that manufactures aluminum and steel truck bodies. Altec is now the largest employer in the county, according to the NC Rural Center, despite employing less than 1,000 people at the facility.
Yancey purchased the 84.5-acre parcel in 2022 using federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act with the intention of turning it into a state-certified industrial site. Paradigm was “not anywhere in the plans” when the county purchased the land, Austin said.
The county paused development of the industrial site due to the impact of Tropical Storm Helene in 2024 and Paradigm’s interest in purchasing the property.
Although Paradigm technically still owns that land, the county has since returned to taking steps to develop it. Earlier this year, the county commissioners committed $13,000 to providing water and wastewater services to the property. That amount was matched by $98,000 in state funds from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.
Landon Beaver, a Yancey County resident and Democratic candidate for county commissioner, told CPP that he hopes the county will reach out to local industries such as Altec who might be interested in expanding on the land.
“I'd like to see it bring real economic benefit to our community through good-paying jobs and responsible industrial development,” he said.
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.