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Tag: Buena Vista

MGCC workforce center to offer trades training

The Mountain Gateway Community College Real Estate Foundation will renovate a downtown Buena Vista building into the Wilson Workforce Development Center, likely starting early this year.

It’s named for Buena Vista philanthropist Joe Wilson, who purchased the 8,750-square-foot former car dealership at 2019 Forest Ave. for $370,000 and sold it to the foundation for $270,000.

The center will offer trainings in a variety of trades, says MGCC President John Rainone, initially including heating, ventilation and air conditioning; electrical and plumbing; diesel mechanic; machine tool; welding; building trades; and commercial driving classes.

“The whole area — Rockbridge and the Shenandoah Valley — has a lot of manufacturing,” Rainone says. “We want to be able to train not only the unemployed, but also the underemployed. Once they start working, this could be a customized training center where local businesses could send their employees to get upskilled.”

Renovating the building is expected to cost more than $5.3 million, and more than $4.5 million in federal, state and private dollars had been raised by early November 2022, Rainone says. The U.S. Economic Development Administration awarded the foundation a $3 million grant in September 2022.

Several local businesses wrote letters to the EDA supporting the workforce center grant, including heating and air conditioning manufacturer Modine Manufacturing Co., signmaker Everbrite LLC and truck stop Lee Hi Travel Plaza, now Lee Hi Travel Centers of America. Modine is expanding, Everbrite needs electricians, and Lee Hi “desperately” needs diesel mechanics, says Rainone.

Tom Roberts, Buena Vista’s director of community and economic development, says the center not only will provide training for existing businesses, but also for those at the Virginia Innovation Accelerator, a local business incubator. It will also help with ongoing downtown revitalization.

Mountain Gateway’s real estate foundation estimates the Wilson Workforce Development Center will help create or retain 110 jobs and generate $2 million in private investment.

Construction and renovation of the building is expected to take 10 months. Rainone says he hopes that classes can begin in spring 2024.

“We’ll start out slow and then be able to ramp up,” he says. “We’ll be able to serve, at any given time, probably 150 students. We’re hopeful that we’ll have 400 to 500 on an annual basis.”

Hot times in cooling tech

As far as problems go, this was a good one to have.

A year into his tenure as director of Virginia operations for Swedish manufacturer Munters Group AB, Brian Frost was seeing “explosive growth” in sales of data center cooling systems manufactured at the company’s facilities in Buena Vista and Natural Bridge.

Cooling equipment keeps data centers at an ideal temperature so that expensive technology doesn’t overheat. “A lot of our equipment is going to the big players,” Frost explains. “Unfortunately, contractually, I’m not allowed to use their names.”

To meet the demand, Frost needed more workers — welders, electricians, refrigeration specialists, assemblers and, most of all, general laborers. But he couldn’t find folks to hire. “It led us to bringing in outside contractors to fill the voids of head counts that we could not obtain,” he says.

Many of the contractors Munters hired, Frost noticed, hailed from the Roanoke Valley.

By mid-2020, Frost began seeking options. Should Munters expand its facility at Buena Vista? Or should the company move to an entirely new location?

If they moved, Frost didn’t want to lose their current employees, many of whom had received extensive training from the company.

“One thing that I’ve prided myself on is I’m big on professional development,” Frost says. “We can take an 18-year-old kid that has a desire to work [and] we will bring them in as a general laborer, and we will provide them with career paths … of how to get to a higher-paying job.”

Frost thought maybe the company could find a place to build that was no further than 30 miles from Buena Vista. “For us, the biggest key to success in this project was retention of our workforce,” he says.

Ultimately, Munters leadership decided to invest $36 million to relocate its Buena Vista operations to Botetourt County’s Botetourt Center at Greenfield, a business park in Daleville, approximately 45 minutes away.

The Roanoke Regional Partnership forecasts that the project will have a $93.5 million economic impact annually on the Roanoke region. “It is a blessing in every direction,” says Gary Larrowe, the Botetourt County administrator.

To woo Munters to Greenfield, Botetourt County provided a $10,000 per acre discount for purchased land and a credit of up to $150,000 for job training at a Virginia postsecondary education system.

If Munters hadn’t found the site at Greenfield, both Larrowe and John Hull, executive director of the Roanoke Regional Partnership, believe the company might have left the state.

“There were other states in consideration,” Hull says. “So it was a win for Virginia to retain the employer.”

Munters expects to move into the 365,000-square-foot build-to-suit Greenfield facility and be fully operational by the end of September.

Currently, the company has more than 250 employees in Virginia, according to Frost. He predicts about 99% of salaried employees and 80% of hourly employees will ultimately decide to follow the company to Greenfield. Frost also hopes to hire 40 to 50 additional manual laborers by the time the Greenfield facility opens. 

Munters will lease the building from Alabama-based developer Graham & Co., which purchased about 30 acres at Greenfield from Botetourt County for $900,000, according to Larrowe.

When completed, the new building will include space for manufacturing, research and development, sales and an events center.

“It’s really going to be a showcase and a really strong addition to the corporate community in the Roanoke region,” Hull says.

Companywide, Munters has made a commitment to build energy- and resource-efficient production facilities. The Greenfield building was designed with that pledge in mind.

“This facility is actually going to be 100% solar-operated on a normal Virginia day,” Frost says. “It will have a vast solar array on the roof of this facility, and what that allows us to do is essentially be carbon-neutral on an average day in a Virginia climate.”

While the facility will be the first business at the Greenfield park powered by solar energy, Larrowe doesn’t think it’ll be the only one for long. “It takes people like Brian and Munters to jump in the pool to be able to actually show others what they can end up doing.”

$90K in business grants go to Buena Vista, Blackstone

Gov. Ralph Northam announced Wednesday that $90,000 in Community Business Launch (CBL) grants, which provide business plan competition funding, will go to the town of Blackstone in Nottoway County and the city of Buena Vista.

CBL funding also offers training for entrepreneurs focused on regional economic development.

“This public health crisis has underscored the value of programs like CBL that prepare entrepreneurs for the rigors of operating in a fast-changing business environment,” Northam said in a statement. “As we respond to the economic devastation this virus has caused and look ahead toward a post-pandemic future, Virginia will continue to use every resource available to support the small businesses that are the heart of our downtown commercial districts and the bedrock of our economy.”

Half of the funding announced Wednesday will go toward the Blackstone Business Launch, an eight-week business competition for retail businesses to address vacancies created by the pandemic. The project is expected to create or expand four businesses and create at least 10 jobs.

The remaining $45,000 will go toward the Buena Vista Community Business Launch, a 10-week business competition focused on Buena Vista’s downtown district. The city would like to see hospitality, small-scale manufacturing and web-based retail in the downtown area. The project is expected to expand three businesses and create at least five jobs.

The program is administered through the state Department of Housing and Community Development, and since 2014, $1.53 million in CBL funds have been awarded to 24 Virginia communities. In total, CBL has gathered more than $2.25 million in private investment, with more than 230 full-time jobs created.

 “CBL supports communities in identifying businesses needed in their downtown districts and supporting those businesses beyond the grand opening,” Secretary of Commerce and Trade Brian Ball said in a statement. “By combining training with a business plan competition, we are creating and nurturing strong local entrepreneurial ecosystems that will support current and future small business growth.”

 

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