Back in 2016, Virginia Coastal Zone Management program planners began talking about ways to protect the Lower Chickahominy River watershed.
“We’re like, ‘Well, let’s get ahead of this,’” says Jefferson Flood, an appropriately named coastal planner for the CZM, a network of individuals from Virginia agencies and local governments who work to protect coastal resources. “Let’s look at ways to promote ecotourism, promote zoning — empowering the localities to understand that they can make a lot of money off of ecotourism and that sort of thing, versus zoning for another shopping center.”
To get it done, Flood worked closely with a diverse group of stakeholders, including administrators in several counties, small business owners and leaders from the Chickahominy and the Pamunkey Indian tribes.
As he built those relationships, Flood found himself using strategies he learned in a class called Social Science Basics for Coastal Managers offered through the Coastal Training Program (CTP) of the Chesapeake Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, which is managed by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. The class tackled topics such as engaging interested parties, conducting effective interviews and leading focus groups.
“The training helped me personally, but it also helped to grow the program,” Flood says of the CZM.
Flood’s efforts paid off. During the latter half of 2021, the CZM’s stakeholders signed a memorandum of understanding agreeing to collaborate on efforts to increase sustainable ecological and economic activity in the watershed.
Such a cooperative effort was a new approach for this type of environmental effort, according to Flood. “That had not been done before that we’re aware of anywhere in this region,” he says.
Safeguarding coastal resources
The National Estuarine Research Reserve System is a network of 30 coastal areas established through the 1972 Coastal Zone Management Act. Each reserve system employs staff charged with protecting and studying estuaries — bodies of water where rivers and streams meet the ocean.
Every reserve system offers a coastal training program to support coastal decision-makers such as local government and state agency officials, nonprofit administrators, and owners and employees of businesses involved with aquaculture operations, recreation outfitters and construction.
Virginia’s program, which launched in 2001, offers training on a wide variety of topics, from habitat restoration to tribal engagement for localities. It also works to provide technical assistance, helping with tasks like collaborative research and designing surveys.
“This program has historically been known for more … in-person, kind of hands-on field experiences,” says Cirse Gonzalez, coastal training program coordinator for the Chesapeake Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. “I’ve scaled back on the courses and the training a lot just to focus on these other elements of the program, which involve a lot of community engagement.”
Last year, Gonzalez, who earned a master’s degree in marine affairs from the University of Washington, began offering office hours, allowing coastal decision-makers to schedule time to discuss everything from planning an effective coastal project to the latest science on sea-level rise.
Gonzalez’s openness to collaboration has been a professional boon for Taryn Sudol, coordinator for the Chesapeake Bay Sentinel Site Cooperative, which works to improve planning and management decisions regarding sea level rise.
“If I reach out to Cirse with a question,” Sudol says, “she’s often able to point me in the right direction or say, ‘Did you know about this research going on here or there?’”
Like a lot of offices, the Chesapeake Bay research reserve went virtual went the pandemic hit. “It’s all moved online … for better or worse,” Gonzalez says.
Even with the coastal trainings held remotely, Jessica Steelman appreciates how the courses give her an opportunity to collaborate with other folks in the field.
“You get a broad range of planners and project managers in a room talking about [topics like] equitable negotiation, and you’ve got ideas that you never would have thought of on your own,” says Steelman, a coastal planner with the Accomack-Northampton Planning District Commission.
As CTP coordinator from 2006 until her retirement in 2018, Sandra Erdle had the pre-pandemic luxury of offering trainings in the field. One of her most popular offerings was a course on wetland delineation, referring to determining the location and size of any wetlands on a property.Heads of environmental consulting firms would call Erdle to book seats in the class months in advance, she recalls.
As of March, the 2022 slate of courses — including a wetland delineation course, which hasn’t been offered since before the pandemic — was still in planning stages.
“I’m really looking forward to seeing people again and getting out in the field myself,” Gonzalez says.
Through decades of owning her own beauty salon and later a gift shop in downtown Abingdon, Cathy Lowe developed an interest in economic development.
In 2006, she decided to run for town council and won — ultimately serving for 12 years, including six as vice mayor and two as mayor.
Throughout her career, Lowe, who sold her shops around 2009 and now leads the Virginia Highlands Small Business Incubator, has kept a close watch on the goings-on in Richmond. Like many in her region, she sometimes feels that Southwest Virginia gets ignored by lawmakers in the state’s capital.
“Those of us that live here used to joke that we need to educate folks that Virginia doesn’t end at Roanoke,” Lowe says.
“Sometimes, I’ve even said the state seems to stop at Charlottesville,” agrees new House Majority Leader Terry Kilgore, R-Gate City, who has represented the state’s southernmost corner in the House of Delegates since 1994.
Case in point: Last year, a panel of retired judges selected eight citizens to join eight Democratic and Republican legislators to make up the Virginia Redistricting Commission, which was charged with the chore of drawing new state and congressional maps.
After the representative from Bristol resigned, commission members were tasked with choosing his replacement. They elected to pick between two candidates: one from Rockingham County and another from Bedford County — each hours away from far Southwest Virginia.
“I do think these two people are as close as we kind of get to Southwest, which is important,” state Sen. Stephen Newman, R-Lynchburg, said at the time, according to WVTF/Radio IQ. “Those people in Southwest deserve a kind of a vote.”
At any rate, the commission promptly combusted; its members called it quits in October 2021 after failing to agree on new boundaries. The process then went to the Virginia Supreme Court, where justices appointed two special masters to draw new legislative maps, which were approved by the court in December 2021.
The state’s November 2021 GOP sweep led to increased legislative clout for Southwest Virginia. Del. Israel O’Quinn, R-Bristol, (L) was appointed deputy majority leader by the new majority leader, Del. Terry Kilgore, R-Gate City. Photo by Caroline Martin
The maps are based on 2020 U.S. Census data that showed Southwest Virginia suffered the largest population decline in the state — a loss of more than 8%.
Due to its shrinking population, the region lost a House of Delegates seat during redistricting. Moving forward, it will be represented by four delegates instead of five.
The new maps place Del. Will Wampler, R-Abingdon, who was first elected to the General Assembly in 2019, in the same district as Del. Israel O’Quinn, R-Bristol, who has served in the General Assembly since 2011 and was recently appointed deputy majority leader. (Wampler did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)
Lowe had expected Southwest Virginia would lose a delegate in redistricting, but she’s still unhappy that scenario came to fruition.
“If you look at the map of[Southwest Virginia], it’s a large landmass,” she says. “That puts a lot of geography in the hands of only [a few] people. That’s a huge amount of work.”
Richmond heavyweight?
Even as Southwest Virginia is losing a delegate in redistricting, some pundits argue the region is poised to enjoy increased influence in the capital as a reward for being reliably red now that Republicans have regained control of state government, except for a narrow minority Democrats still hold in the state Senate.
Virginia’s Democratic base turned out in November 2021, but it couldn’t compete with the GOP turnout for Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
“They were bigger,” says Mark Rozell, dean of George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, “and a very big part of that came from the rural areas of the state, which surprised many analysts because for years people have been pointing to the shifting of political power to Northern Virginia.”
In Lee County, Youngkin took home a whopping 87.6% of the vote — an example of how well the first-time politician performed all across Southwest Virginia.
“Youngkin was at over 80% of the vote in a lot of those towns,” points out J. Miles Coleman, spokesman for the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
In the 2021 election, Russell County saw the state’s largest increase — 40.9% — in voter turnout since the 2017 election, according to the Virginia Public Access Project.
“The governor has a kind of debt of obligation to those constituencies that put him where he is,” Rozell says. “And anybody can look at the data and see the phenomenal — unprecedented, really — turnout in rural Virginia for Youngkin.”
Lowe maintains the new governor, who had never previously served in elected office, has already began paying back that political debt. “I don’t think it’s gone unnoticed,” she says.
Youngkin tapped Amanda Pillion, an Abingdon town council member and wife of state Sen. Todd Pillion, R-Washington County, as one of 12 members of his transition team. He also selected several Southwest Virginians to serve “on landing teams” to prepare Youngkin for his first days in office.
Speaking at the annual Rural Caucus Reception in February, about two weeks into his term, Youngkin acknowledged, “I’ve made two trips to Southwest Virginia [as governor]. Why? Because it’s important for rural Virginia to know that their governor is delivering on what government needs to do — to help.”
The movers and shakers of Southwest Virginia are often quick to mention Youngkin’s business acumen. He retired in 2020 as co-CEO of Washington, D.C.-based private equity firm The Carlyle Group with an estimated personal worth of about $250 million. The governor’s Democratic critics, however, have questioned Youngkin’s commitment to workforce development and aiding the poor, noting news reports that under Youngkin’s leadership, Carlyle offshored at least 1,300 American jobs and raised rent for seniors at a large mobile home park Carlyle owned in California.
“He’s somebody who understands business,” Kilgore says. “And I think that, really, he can help us a lot in Southwest Virginia, whether that’s with new jobs or data centers locating [here or] … new energy infrastructure like solar or modular nuclear opportunities in the future.”
Youngkin’s positivity toward the Southwest sets a tone for state government, says Will Payne, managing partner of Coalfield Strategies LLC, an economic development consulting firm, and director of InvestSWVA, a public-private business attraction and marketing campaign for the region. “I already feel just this change … in the way that we are perceived and a willingness to listen.”
In late February, Payne met with Caren Merrick, Virginia’s secretary of commerce and trade. He brought her two types of beer made with barley grown in Southwest Virginia and produced through Appalachian Grains, a specialty grain broker that connects local growers with breweries and distilleries across the state.
“I can hardly wait to chill it and try it,” says Merrick, who selected Southwest Virginia as the first region she’ll visit as secretary for a listening tour this spring. “We’ll be doing roundtables and listening to business leaders.”
Even one of Southwest Virginia’s prominent Democrats seems open to seeing whether Youngkin can deliver for the region. A community activist from Big Stone Gap, Taysha DeVaughan hopes to be tapped as the Democratic challenger for U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith’s seat in November.
DeVaughan says she was disappointed by Youngkin’s executive order to stop school masking mandates, noting that fewer people in her area are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. “In Southwest Virginia, we deal with people who have a lot of different illnesses, especially respiratory illnesses and black lung.”
That said, she approves of the governor’s quest to cut grocery taxes. “Especially in a time of COVID, where people aren’t employed like they used to be … just being able to pay for groceries is a big deal,” she says.
Influential lawmakers
After Republicans took back control of the Virginia House of Delegates, the Virginia GOP caucus tapped Kilgore as majority leader and he appointed O’Quinn as deputy majority leader.
“That’s not symbolic leadership,” Kilgore says. “We’re in meetings with the governor every other day or two, and we’re in the room when legislation is happening.”
Southwest legislators also won committee leadership roles. Del. Will Morefield, R-Tazewell, now serves as vice chair of the Counties, Cities and Towns Committee, while Kilgore is vice chair of the Commerce and Energy Committee, and O’Quinn is vice chair of the Privileges and Elections Committee.
In more purple areas of Virginia, delegate seats are more prone to turn over, Coleman points out, depending on the mood of the electorate. With Southwest Virginia being reliably red, lawmakers have an easier time building seniority. “They’re fairly comfortable in their districts,” Coleman says.
Mount Rogers Regional Partnership Executive Director Josh Lewis is focused on challenges such as how to attract young professionals to the region. Photo by Earl Neikirk
Economic challenges
In 1990, Virginia had 10,265 people working in the coal industry. By 2021, that number had dropped to 1,891. Naturally, coal’s decline has greatly impacted the area of Southwest Virginia known as the Coalfields, which encompasses Buchanan, Dickenson and Wise counties and portions of Lee, Russell, Scott and Tazewell counties.
Lack of employment opportunities led to the region’s dramatic population drop.
“What you see is a tremendous amount of out migration, particularly young adults,
because they don’t see job prospects in the area,” says Hamilton Lombard, a demographer for the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia.
Even before the pandemic, Southwest Virginia struggled with its labor force participation. About 31% of adults, or more than 100,000 people, in Southwest Virginia weren’t working in 2019, according to the Virginia Tech Center for Economic and Community Engagement (CECE). Approximately 10% of all adults not working in Virginia that year lived in the region.
“So, the challenge is, honestly, you have a lot of discouraged workers,” says Sarah Lyon-Hill, associate director for research development at the CECE. “You have a significant portion probably who are already kind of dependent on prescription medication, [who] probably [have even] kind of fallen into greater depressions and are even more dependent, which again prohibits them from working.”
And with many of the region’s young people fleeing to cities to find better paying jobs, she says, the region’s workforce also skews older, adding to the lower labor participation.
There does appear to be some economic recovery, marked by last year’s announcement that Blue Star NBR LLC would be investing $714 million to build a nitrile rubber and medical glove manufacturing facility in Wythe County, a project expected to create nearly 2,500 jobs over five years.
But even with that major victory, Lombard isn’t optimistic about the region’s ability to grow its population again, calling the situation “fairly grim.”
Recently, the Mount Rogers Regional Partnership (the economic development nonprofit formerly known as Virginia’s Industrial Advancement Alliance) has decided to pivot, making its chief focus talent development as a way of retaining more natives and to woo more outsiders to the area.
“How can we work with the secretary of commerce and trade office and the governor’s office and the legislators to develop programs that will allow us to grow in population?” asks Josh Lewis, the partnership’s executive director. “How do we get back to positive population growth and get more younger professionals locating here so that they can put down roots and grow and have families?”
One of the hurdles keeping some parents from working in the western part of the state is the availability and expense of child care, says Travis Staton, president and CEO of United Way of Southwest Virginia.
“We’re very close to about a 30% gap in child care availability, where other parts of the state only have about a 12% gap [in available child care vs. the need for child care],” Staton says.
Majority Speaker Kilgore and state Sen. Pillion proposed budget amendments asking that $14.2 million from federal American Rescue Plan Act resources be directed to the United Way of Southwest Virginia to support its Ready SWVA initiative, which would create five child care facilities in the region, while also strengthening the current network of providers.
The state budget plan released by the House in late February did not include the funding. The Senate’s budget plan included $3.5 million for the initiative. “We shall soon see how they reconcile,” Scott Robertson, director of marketing and communications for the United Way of Southwest Virginia, wrote in a March 8 email.
Jonathan Belcher, executive director and general counsel of the Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority, would also like to see Richmond’s lawmakers work on solving Southwest Virginia’s infrastructure problems.
In one of his last official acts, former Gov. Ralph Northam announced plans to put $207 million into completing the U.S. 460/121 Poplar Creek “Phase B” project in Buchanan County, part of the so-called Coalfields Expressway, which was proposed decades ago. (See related story.)
More money needs to be invested, Belcher says. “There’s certain parts of that region that we cover that, until there’s a much better highway connecting to the interstate, it’s always going to be a real big challenge to attract larger projects.”
EDITOR’S NOTE:This story has been corrected since its original publication. State Del. Israel O’Quinn is the deputy majority leader. He was incorrectly identified as deputy majority whip, his former position, in an earlier version of the story.
The Roanoke Valley enjoyed a constant stream of nibbles from prospective corporations considering the area in 2021, according to John Hull, executive director of the Roanoke Regional Partnership, which promotes development in four counties and three cities.
“I don’t think we’ve ever been this busy in terms of interest and activity,” Hull says. “It’s just going to take some time for some of that to come to fruition.”
Jill Loope, economic development director for Roanoke County, says her efforts in 2021 were centered around transforming commercial areas and repositioning properties for new commercial development. “Economic development is happening in different ways here than in years past,” she says. “It’s not about the big building or the big new investment every day.”
The New River Valley did land several headline-generating deals in 2021 — wins that were all largely driven by the area’s good fortune of being home to Radford University, Virginia Tech and New River Community College, according to Katie Boswell, executive director of Onward New River Valley, a regional economic development organization based in Blacksburg.
“The theme that runs through all of our announcements this year is … how highly skilled and educated the workforce is and what an important thing that is to the companies who expand or locate here,” Boswell says.
Roanoke Valley
Work has begun in Roanoke County on about $50 million in transportation improvements — paid by mostly state and federal funds — to the congested state Route 419, or Electric Road, area, which runs in front of Tanglewood Mall.
That shopping center is witnessing a flurry of development.
The new Carilion Children’s Tanglewood Center opened in October 2021. For this project, home to more than a dozen pediatric specialty offices, Carilion heavily renovated a former JCPenney store.
About 1,300 vehicle trips are made to Carilion Children’s each day, according to Loope. “So generating that level of visitation and vehicle counts to that property is helping to facilitate other commercial development,” she says.
In March 2021, Alabama-based Blackwater Resources began work on two outparcel buildings that will sit in front of Carilion Children’s. They will be occupied by a few eateries and Aspen Dental, all expected to be open this month, according to Loope.
By the end of 2022, Loope forecasts, the property surrounding Tanglewood Mall area will have seen nearly $40 million in new investment. “It’s incremental, but it’s good stuff,” she says.
For Lisa Soltis, economic development specialist for the city of Roanoke, the 240-foot tower crane brought to the campus of Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital to build the Crystal Spring Tower, a 500,000-square-foot expansion of the hospital, was a signal of Roanoke’s strong economic health. She pointed out it was the first time a crane of that size has been in Roanoke since the construction of the Dominion Tower, now known as the Wells Fargo Tower, in 1991. The Crystal Spring Tower is part of a planned $500 million expansion of the hospital and the adjacent behavioral health building.
In Botetourt County, the big news of 2021 was Munters Group AB breaking ground in May on a $36 million facility in the Botetourt Center at Greenfield. (See related story.)
Neighboring Bedford County saw its top economic development deals last year at the New London Business and Technology Park in Forest.
At the start of 2021, Damage Prevention Solutions LLC, a manufacturer of products for underground utilities, announced plans to invest more than $2 million on a 4-acre lot in the business park, creating up to 45 jobs during the next five years. The company moved into a 10,000-square-foot custom-built facility at the park at the end of last year.
“The lot we chose will allow us to expand the facility in the future as we need additional space,” says Rachel Smith, product marketing manager for the company. “We are focused on growing our production capacity, which includes investing in additional equipment and creating new roles.”
Belvac, a Lynchburg-based company that produces technology for the two-piece can industry, announced in March 2021 its plans to lease a newly built shell building in the business park, adding 40,000 square feet of manufacturing and assembly capacity. The company, which moved in last summer, plans to invest more than $3 million and add up to 50 new jobs in Bedford County over the next five years.
New River Valley
In April 2021, Oransi, a manufacturer of air purifiers, announced plans to invest $5.6 million to open its first manufacturing facility in the Plymouth Building in Radford.
Peter Mann, the company’s founder and CEO, hopes to complete improvements to the building in time for manufacturing to begin in the space this summer.
Currently, the company is based in North Carolina, which competed with Virginia for the 101 jobs Oransi plans to create.
“It just shows how great our talent pool is, that it was able to attract them from outside the region,” Boswell says.
The proprietary technology found in Radford proved to be an added bonus. Four months after revealing its New River Valley plans, Oransi announced a merger with Radford-based Aviemore Technologies Inc., which manufactures motion control products.
“We had been talking with them about making motors for our air purifiers, and we decided that it kind of made sense to essentially merge the companies so we could make the motors in-house and make the machines in-house and really streamline the manufacturing and selling process as much as possible,” Mann explains.
For the Patton Logistics Group, an integrated supply chain solutions firm comprised of three operating companies, business is going so well at its trucking, logistics and warehousing operation in the New River Valley Commerce Park in Pulaski County that the company has announced two expansions at the park in two years.
The first expansion announcement came in November 2020 when Patton Logistics said it would invest $7 million to add an additional 80,000 square feet to its Pulaski County operation. In August 2021,
the company announced plans to put $11 million into expanding the facility by an additional 150,000 square feet. The expansion, expected to be operational by early 2023, will create 63 jobs and will include a trucking operations and maintenance center to support a future investment in electric trucks.
Moog Inc., a worldwide designer, manufacturer and integrator of precision control components and systems, announced plans in February 2021 to invest $10.7 million to transfer existing jobs and equipment from a Blacksburg facility to a bigger building in Falling Branch Corporate Park in Christiansburg. The company completed that move in November 2021 and hired 75 people, according to a company spokesperson.
In perhaps the region’s most surprising development, Xaloy, which makes plastic processing components for injection and extrusion machinery, returned to Pulaski County last July.
Back in 2016, Nordson Corp. made a move to combine its existing Xaloy screw and barrel operations in Pulaski, along with two similar facilities in other states, into a single manufacturing center in Austinville, Ohio. About 150 people worked at the Pulaski plant, according to news reports.
But in February 2021, Chicago-based Altair Investments Inc. announced it had closed its acquisition of Xaloy Holdings from Nordson Corp. A few months later, the company revealed plans to reopen the former Pulaski County facility, investing $1.75 million in a 100,000-square-foot site to produce bimetallic barrels for applications in the plastics manufacturing industry. So far, the move has created 31 jobs, according to a spokesperson.
“They’ve rehired several former employees of the plant in Pulaski,” Boswell adds. “It really just shows how loyal and how skilled the workforces in the NRV are that they wanted to come back to access the talent that they originally had in the region and to grow their operation here again.”
Roanoke/New River Valley’s recent deals
Oransi LLC
Radford
101 jobs
Moog Inc.
Montgomery County
75 jobs
Patton Logistics Group
Pulaski County
63 jobs
Munters Group AB
Botetourt County
45-60 jobs*
Belvac Corp.
Bedford County
50 jobs
Damage Prevention
Solutions LLC
Bedford County
45 jobs
Xaloy Holdings LLC
Pulaski County
35 jobs
Balchem Inc.
Alleghany County
6 jobs
Source: Virginia Economic Development Partnership *job numbers provided by Munters
Movers and shakers in Southwest Virginia wanted to try a new approach to economic development.
The stakes were (and are) high.
Naturally, the decline of the coal industry had a devastating impact on Virginia’s coalfields. The Appalachian Regional Commission classifies four counties in Southwest Virginia — Buchanan, Dickenson, Lee and Wise — as economically distressed.
Every county in Southwest Virginia saw a drop in population over the past decade, according to the 2020 census, leading to the loss of a delegate seat.
Trying to turn the tide, leaders in the area created InvestSWVA, a public-private economic development and marketing initiative for Southwest Virginia.
The idea for the initiative was born, according to Will Payne, InvestSWVA’s director, out of a desire by several current and former state legislators representing the region, including the late state Sen. Ben Chafin, state Sen. Todd Pillion and Dels. Terry Kilgore and Israel O’Quinn, to see Southwest Virginia be more proactive and assertive in pursuing business leads.
One member of the group or another, according to Payne, heard a rumor that EarthLink CEO Glenn Goad, who grew up in Wise County, was considering bringing some customer service operations from overseas back to the United States.
Kilgore drove to Atlanta to visit Goad in November 2019, according to Payne. In January, a larger group consisting of Kilgore, O’Quinn, Pillion, Chafin, Payne and Duane Miller, executive director of the LENOWISCO Planning District Commission, traveled to Atlanta to talk again with the head of the high-speed internet and mobile phone service provider.
The personal approach worked.
In September, EarthLink announced plans to invest $5.4 million to build a customer support center on property that sits on a reclaimed mine site in Norton, creating 285 jobs.
Miller feels confident it was the efforts by lawmakers and leaders to make personal connections with business executives that caused Southwest Virginia to be successful with EarthLink.
“Everyone has just said, ‘OK, let’s roll our sleeves up, and let’s just get to it,’” Miller explains.
Big news in Wythe County
Experts say there are two must-haves for sealing economic development deals: the right infrastructure and the right location.
Virginia committed $8.5 million to upgrade infrastructure at Progress Park in Wythe County to secure a deal with Connecticut-based Blue Star NBR LLC to invest $714 million to build a manufacturing facility that will produce nitrile butadiene rubber and medical gloves, creating more than 2,000 jobs. (See related story.)
The state’s investment in the project includes $3 million to expand the Fort Chiswell Wastewater Plant, $1.5 million to extend public sewer infrastructure and $4 million to build a water tank serving Progress Park.
Another new tenant at Progress Park will also get to benefit from those upgrades. STS Group AG, a supplier of interior and exterior parts for commercial vehicles, announced in April it plans to invest $39 million to bring its first U.S. manufacturing operation to the Wythe County business park, creating 120 jobs.
Slot machines and sawmills
Southwest Virginia’s biggest economic development news in 2020 was, of course, Bristol voters’ overwhelming approval of a referendum allowing Hard Rock International Inc. to build a $400 million resort and casino.
In late 2021, Hard Rock International announced construction has begun on a temporary casino at the former Bristol Mall, set to open in the first half of 2022, creating an expected 600 jobs. The temporary, full-service casino will offer about 900 gaming slots and 20 tables for gaming, as well as a restaurant and lounge in a 30,000-square-foot space.
Smyth and Grayson counties celebrated a win in August 2021 when Woodgrain Inc., a manufacturer of wood molding and trim, announced plans to invest nearly $9 million to expand its Smyth County operations and put $8 million more into purchasing and expanding Independence Lumber sawmill in Grayson County.
“If this hadn’t have worked, it probably would have closed,” Mitch Smith, deputy county administrator for Grayson County, says of the sawmill, which is the county’s largest private employer.
This deal means the sawmill’s 80 workers will keep their jobs, and Woodgrain is set to add 20 jobs at the sawmill over the next three years, according to Smith. Additionally, the expansion is expected to create 80 jobs at the facility in Smyth County.
Energy opportunities
Del. Will Morefield, R-Tazewell, believes there’s a perception that Virginia’s coalfield communities are opposed to alternative energy. “In reality, we’re not,” he says. “We welcome it with open arms.”
Morefield is working closely with Kentucky-based Edelen Renewables, which is partnering with Kansas City-based solar developer Savion LLC to build a 700-acre solar farm on a former surface mine in Buchanan County. The $100 million solar farm is expected to generate about $100,000 annually in tax revenue and create about six permanent jobs and
250 construction jobs.
Although he’s a supporter of what he describes as “an-all-of-the-above approach” to energy, Morefield isn’t abandoning coal.
He was pleased when SunCoke Energy Inc., a producer of high-quality coke for blast furnace steel production, announced plans in May 2021 to invest $50 million to refurbish its manufacturing operation in Buchanan County and to perform upgrades allowing the facility to produce foundry coke, which is used for melting iron and other metals. Work on the project is expected to last several years, according to a company spokesperson.
“They’re one of the largest buyers of coal in Southwest Virginia,” Morefield says of SunCoke. “The multiplier effect that that company has on the local economy is significant.”
Growing established companies
“We’re seeing some really good growth among our existing manufacturing companies in the area,” says Jonathan Belcher, executive director of the Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority.
For one, Tempur Sealy International Inc. is expanding its Duffield facility in Scott County, investing $16.7 million and adding 25 jobs to meet growing demand for its foam mattress and pillow products.
In another win for Scott County, VFP Inc., which manufactures enclosures to protect critical infrastructure, announced plans in November 2021 to invest $7.2 million to expand its operation there, enabling the company to produce larger concrete shelters and meet future market demand.
Tazewell County also benefited from an expansion by a longtime area employer in 2021. Family-owned heavy metal fabricator Lawrence Brothers Inc. announced plans in April to invest $3.2 million to upgrade and modernize its machinery and equipment to increase capacity and double production. The expansion is expected to create 40 jobs.
Good fits for Russell County
Some economic development offices get obsessed with landing a whale, according to Ernie McFaddin, chairperson of Russell County’s industrial development authority. While he’ll certainly take a corporation bringing 2,000 jobs to the area, he’s also happy to land medium-size deals.
“I know for us that an employer with 50 to 150 jobs is really the sweet spot,” he says. The county got just that with Ceccato S.p.A. In September, the Italian vehicle-washing equipment manufacturer announced plans to invest $1.75 million to build its U.S. headquarters in Russell County, creating up to 50 jobs over the next three to five years.
Ceccato USA President and CEO Jimmy Sisk settled on the Russell Place building in Lebanon the first time he looked at it, according to McFaddin.
“I think the biggest thing he liked was that he really didn’t have to do anything to it,” McFaddin says. “Clearly they were looking for a place where they could get started quickly.”
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.”
You can hear the pride in Bill Mosher’s voice when he talks about his dad, Ken Mosher, and his career in the medical glove business.
“He was in the glove industry for almost 50 years,” Bill Mosher says incredulously.
Ken Mosher’s storied career includes being part of a team that in 1990 invented the nitrile glove, an alternative to latex gloves used in industrial and food preparation environments. He worked in the industry when the majority of medical gloves were still produced in the United States and later watched the industry move offshore.
By 2000, the elder Mosher had founded Omni International Corp., which handled U.S. and Canadian marketing, sales and distribution of medical gloves manufactured in Asia. He retired in 2015, but it didn’t take.
A few years ago, as Bill tells it, his father began discussing plans to bring medical glove production back to the United States.
“He reached out to some folks that he knew from the industry,” Bill says. “He reached out to a few kind of new folks who had some more experience with starting businesses here in the U.S. And he kind of put this plan together with this team in order to create this new company.”
That company is Blue Star NBR LLC, which is investing $714 million to build an advanced nitrile butadiene rubber (NBR) manufacturing facility and a nitrile glove production operation on 255 acres in Wythe County’s Progress Park. The project is expected to create 2,500 jobs by 2028.
Construction on the NBR manufacturing facility began in January and it’s expected to be operational by August. The first of Blue Star NBR’s six planned glove manufacturing plants is scheduled to open by March 2023, with five more plants opening between 2023 and early 2028. When it’s operating at full capacity, Blue Star NBR plans to manufacture 20 billion nitrile gloves per year — about 18% of the nation’s current supply.
“The U.S. uses about 110 billion gloves per year and that’s growing at 9% a year,” says Blue Star NBR CEO Scott Maier.
The project was initially a joint venture with Delaware-based American Glove Innovations Inc. (AGI), but that deal fell through in January, Maier says. However, he adds, that will not impact the timeline or Blue Star’s investment or hiring plans.
Plans for Blue Star were in the works before the first cases of COVID-19 hit the United States, creating a severe shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE), including masks, gowns, gloves and other items.
Experts credit several factors for the shortage. A big one, of course, was that few PPE manufacturing facilities were located in the United States. Leaders in countries that did have PPE operations began stockpiling gloves and masks for domestic use.
Blue Star ended up locating in Southwest Virginia largely because Bill Mosher, now vice president of operations for Blue Star NBR, called up Maier, a college buddy. After some conversations, Maier came on board as CEO.
An Alexandria resident, Maier brings to the job 20 years of private equity, venture capital and manufacturing experience. In 2015, he founded Bird Dog Distributors, a medical and surgical supply company based in Clintwood, a town in Dickenson County.
Maier picked Clintwood after searching for areas designated as Historically Under-
utilized Business Zones, otherwise known as the U.S. Small Business Administration’s HUBZone program. It provides businesses located in these areas with some federal contracting incentives if they meet certain conditions, such as business size and number of workers living in the area.
He’s grown to be a champion of Southwest Virginia. “I like this area,” Maier says. “I like the workforce that’s here, and I just try to bring any business opportunity I can to this area.”
For David Manley, executive director of the Joint Industrial Development Authority of Wythe County, seeing the mammoth deal come to fruition after so much state and local work elicits feelings of pride.
“We’ve heard words like ‘game changer’ and ‘generational,’” Manley says. “And I don’t disagree with any of those characterizations. Economic developers want to improve the quality of life for communities in which they work. This is a [development] that will have positive benefits for decades to come.”
Josh Lewis, executive director of the Virginia Industrial Advancement Alliance, an agency that supports economic development efforts for several communities in Southwest Virginia, began working with Blue Star last spring.
Lewis knew Lot 24 at Progress Park could handle the massive operation that Blue Star NBR had planned. “I think everybody felt pretty comfortable that the site and the location opportunity that we were presenting to the company was a strong candidate,” he says. That didn’t mean the deal was in the bag, however.
“A lot of prospects come down and you feel optimistic, and then it doesn’t work out,” Lewis says. “But this one did.”
Developers broke ground in January on the $714 million medical glove manufacturing complex planned for Wythe County’s Progress Park. Only now it may be a solo project, not a joint venture.
In October 2021, then-Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam announced that Alexandria-based Blue Star NBR LLC was building manufacturing facilities to make nitrile butadiene rubber (NBR) and billions of nitrile medical gloves in a joint venture with Delaware-based American Glove Innovations Inc. (AGI) that would create about 2,500 jobs by 2028. Northam billed the venture as “the largest job creation commitment Southwest Virginia has seen in a generation.”
But the joint venture may have fallen through, as Blue Star backed out of the partnership with AGI in January during the due diligence phase, according to Blue Star NBR CEO Scott Maier. “It’s just business,” Maier explained.
Blue Star is moving ahead with the project on its own, Maier said, and the decision to exit the joint venture will not impact the amount of the planned investment or the number of jobs previously announced. “They weren’t bringing any capital,” he said of AGI.
However, AGI spokesperson Deborah Brown, a partner with global law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP, said the situation isn’t so cut and dry. “AGI is at least a 50% equity owner in [the project] and does not agree that it has departed or split from the venture,” Brown said in a statement. “AGI is committed to seeing the project through.”
Brown also took issue with Maier’s characterization, saying, “AGI brought substantial capital to the deal and has invested funds into the venture.”
Blue Star executives decided not to move forward with the partnership after learning of litigation involving Marc Jason, who was previously named co-CEO of the Blue Star-AGI joint venture.
Jason is CEO of London Luxury LLC, which filed a Jan. 5 lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court against Walmart Inc., charging that Walmart owes the company about $41 million for boxes of nitrile gloves produced in Malaysia and Thailand. The complaint goes on to state that London Luxury could lose more than $500 million on a deal to sell tens of millions of boxes of gloves to the retail behemoth.
“Walmart has created uncertainty regarding whether it intends to accept and pay for the vast majority of gloves it committed to buy,” the lawsuit claims.
In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Walmart said the company has filed a counterclaim against London Luxury “for their repeated failure to meet product standards and delivery obligations.”
London Luxury did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
AGI touted the Walmart deal as part of the joint venture and the litigation spooked Blue Star. “They were bringing a purchase agreement from a large Fortune 500 company [to the table] and now that contract is in litigation,” Maier explained. “So, we kind of said, ‘You know what? When things settle down, maybe we can talk again.’”
However, Brown said that “AGI disagrees that an ongoing litigation serves as a legitimate basis for any change to the [Blue Star- AGI] venture.”
The fact that AGI may be out of the project doesn’t strike David Manley, executive director of the Wythe County Joint Industrial Development Authority, as particularly newsworthy.
“We’ve been working closely with … the Blue Star leadership since May,” Manley said. “We don’t anticipate any impact to the timeline or success of the project. The project is moving forward as expected.”
A spokesperson for the Virginia Economic Development Partnership said the state “is aware of Blue Star’s separation from AGI.”
“We do not anticipate any impact on the project timeline and outcome,” said Suzanne Clark, VEDP’s managing director of communications, marketing and communications.
Visitors traveling to Blue Star’s site at Progress Park this month will likely spot some heavy machinery. “We’re moving dirt,” Maier says. “It’s still on track to have that initial NBR plant open at the end of August.”
Blue Star’s nitrile butadiene rubber manufacturing facility will be followed by six planned nitrile glove manufacturing plants, the first of which is scheduled to open by March 2023, with five more glove factories opening between 2023 and early 2028. When it’s operating at full capacity, Blue Star NBR plans to manufacture 20 billion nitrile gloves per year — roughly 18% of the nation’s current supply.
On Feb. 4, the Virginia House of Delegates overwhelmingly approved legislation to fund up to $4.6 million for VEDP to provide recruitment and training of employees for Blue Star operations in Wythe County.
Averett University became the airport’s fixed-base operator in July 2021, replacing General Aviation Inc., a family-owned business which served as the FBO for more than 70 years.
The city of Danville owns the airport and its fueling facility. The city’s chosen FBO pays the city for the privilege of providing services like fuel sales, towing and airplane maintenance and charging users for those services.
Danville City Council members had been debating whether to select a new operator since 2017. In November 2019, council members approved a lease agreement allowing General Aviation to serve as the airport’s FBO until
June 30, 2021, when the university would take over.
General Aviation could not be reached for comment.
“City Council considered all input and … recommended that Averett University assume that role with a year-and-a-half transition,” says Marc Adelman, Danville’s director of transportation.
So far, the changeover to Averett has been smooth, Adelman says. In particular, he credits Averett with hiring John Earl, who has more than three decades of airline industry experience, as FBO manager. “He literally rolls out a red carpet every time a pilot comes onto the ramp,” Adelman says.
While the airport doesn’t serve large commercial airlines, it averages 52 takeoffs and landings per day for everything from trainer aircraft to business jets, Earl says.
Operating as AU Aviation Services, Averett University pays the city $1,500 a month to lease space at the airport, as well as a fuel-flow-fee of eight cents per gallon of fuel.
The university’s aeronautics program is the leading consumer of the airport’s services, says Travis Williams, Averett’s chief flight instructor.
Averett has provided flight training since 1981. Currently, 105 students are enrolled in Averett’s aeronautics program and the university hopes to grow the program to 200 students by 2026.
The aviation program “is in high demand,” says Don Aungst, Averett’s vice president and chief financial and operating officer. “And we don’t think that demand is going to diminish at all.” (The U.S. Department of Labor predicts there will be 14,500 annual openings for airline and commercial pilots through 2030.)
By becoming the airport’s FBO, Averett can now offer its aviation business students real-world experience. Three Averett aeronautics students currently work for AU Aviation Services as line technicians.
“Our aviation management students now have the opportunity to learn about the industry hands-on,” Williams says.
Leigh Ann Ellis is all aboard for Amtrak to begin stopping in the town of Bedford.
In the past, Ellis, a journalism teacher at Bedford County’s Staunton River High School, had her students board the train in Lynchburg for field trips to New York or Washington, D.C.
For students who live in Goodview, on the Roanoke side of Bedford County, that meant at least an hour’s trek. Bedford, which is equidistant from Lynchburg and Roanoke, “would be a much more central location,” Ellis says.
A study released in October by the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation (DRPT) examining the feasibility of providing an Amtrak stop in Bedford left supporters optimistic. “I feel quite confident we’ll have a station there,” says state Del. Terry Austin, R-Botetourt.
Mary Zirkle, the town’s economic development coordinator, is happy to see some forward momentum for the proposed train stop. “It’s getting closer than it was before when we were on some kind of strange horizon of never,” she says.
That said, it’s too early in the process to establish a timeline for when Amtrak might begin stopping in Bedford, says Emily Stock, DRPT’s manager of rail planning.
The DRPT study included a ridership analysis that predicted a Bedford Amtrak stop might draw more than 10,000 new riders per year. Zirkle believes a stop would be popular with folks traveling to Washington, D.C., or New York.
DRPT’s preferred site for the proposed stop is on a piece of property on Macon Street owned by Norfolk Southern Corp. It ticks all the right boxes, Stock says, including the fact that it offers an adequate amount of space for a station and parking. Also, Norfolk Southern does not believe a stop there will cause delays to the company’s freight operations.
The project, including a station, is estimated to cost $10.9 million, not including the cost of acquiring the land. Without a station, the cost would be 15% less.
Specifics about which entity will pay for what part of the project, Zirkle writes in an email, “are what needs to be worked out among the state and localities and Norfolk Southern.”
The next step, according to Stock, will be to conduct a National Environmental Policy Act study to make sure the stop will not cause adverse effects to natural or cultural resources.
British aerospace and defense components manufacturer MEP Ltd. isn’t moving into its U.S. facility for another few years, but that isn’t stopping the company from getting its operation off the ground in Danville sooner.
In August 2021, MEP (which will operate in the U.S. as Making Everything Possible LLC) moved into a space at the Rapid Launch Facility on the campus of Danville’s Institute for Advanced Learning and Research (IALR) while its permanent facility is being completed in Danville’s Cyber Park.
“We’ve actually got machinery in there and we’re making products,” says Phil Hart, executive chair of MEP Ltd. and president of Making Everything Possible LLC.
Starting the business in the temporary location allowed the company to launch its U.S business earlier than it would have otherwise, Hart says. “The facility that we have at the institute will really give us such a good foundation [for] starting and growing the business in the U.S.,” he says.
The IALR’s leadership is so confident the rapid-launch concept works to woo companies to invest in Southern Virginia that they’re preparing to open three additional rapid launch manufacturing spaces for lease when their $25.5 million Center for Manufacturing Advancement (CMA) opens on their campus this spring.
Opened in 2002 with a goal of diversifying and growing the region’s economy, the IALR began making plans in 2017 to build the CMA.
“Because we knew it would take a while, we actually built a little building on our campus using local funding,” says Mark Gignac, the institute’s executive director.
The 14,100-square-foot Rapid Launch Facility opened in February 2020 and currently houses two companies: Making Everything Possible and FasTech LLC, a Danville-based metal additive 3D printing and milling services provider for parts manufacturing.
By offering companies a way to reduce the traditional startup time, the IALR hopes to woo more businesses to Southern Virginia. “The main purpose, of course, is to create jobs and launch industry,” explains Gignac.
In addition to the rapid-launch facilities, the CMA also will offer process improvement labs for companies that need space to experiment with improving manufacturing processes without shutting down production at their facilities, as well as an inspection lab “so that tenants of the building can literally have parts they manufacture tested on site,” Gignac says. Additionally, the CMA will offer space where company executives, engineers and manufacturing students can study and showcase emerging technology.
Gignac says proudly, “This is a pretty unique concept.”
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