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Terry Garner, president of Grayson Wireless, wanted to stay in the Region 2000 area when he started the company. photo by Mark Rhodes

"We liked it here, our families liked it here. We felt that there was a growing base of technology here," Garner says. "I think we're going to be here for a long time." For the past decade, seven contiguous counties and cities surrounding Lynchburg have worked together as Region 2000. The name comes from the number of square miles that this area represents -- not from some fixation on the next millennium. But the economic development group's focus is clearly on the future.

Bob Staples has been profiling jobs under the auspices of Region 2000 since 1996 to determine the basic skills required for success in different positions. Companies can then move to the assessment phase, where workers' skills are reviewed to look for gaps or weaknesses. With that information, Staples explains, employee training can be focused on deficient skills. Scott Wilkerson, manager of nuclear manufacturing at Framatome Cogema Fuels in Lynchburg, is gaining a better understanding of what employees actually do. He too is trying to discover what skills they need to succeed.

"Most of the skills [needed] are higher than what I imagined," he says.

Staples is convinced that his efforts will lead to lower turnover and increased productivity. "This is not new stuff," he says. "It's not rocket science, but it is a very logical extension of what [Central Virginia Community College] and Work Keys and places like it can do."

Businesses also are getting more involved in the schools and colleges to get a jump on training the next generation of workers. Wegmann USA Inc. is one of many area companies hiring college and high school interns. "We believe that there's not enough emphasis on education in this country on ... vocational trades," says President Chuck Warren.

Wegmann recently moved into a new $1.3 million building in the Lynchburg Center for Industry. It had been manufacturing defense goods, such as ammunition racks and vehicle-mounted smoke discharges, in the same 27,000-square-foot facility for more than a decade. Warren says he didn't look elsewhere for a new facility because the city offered incentives and because he is confident that he will be able to find skilled workers in the coming years. Although the company only employs 27 people, having a larger pool of potential workers benefits everyone, he says.

BGF Industries Inc. in Altavista is also reaching back into the schools, says plant manager Herman Rogers. But instead of bringing students into the plant, it brings teachers. Each year, the company chooses an educator from Campbell County schools to teach in its in-house computer learning center. The company then pays for the teacher's replacement in the school system. After a year at BGF, the teacher rotates back into the school system. The exchange program, Rogers says, gives educators a better idea of what skills the work force needs.

The 700-employee company, which produces woven fiberglass, spends between 2.5 percent and 3 percent of its payroll on training. "The real big problem is finding qualified people," Rogers says. "You have to grow them yourself."

Catherine McFaden wants to grow small businesses that will employ tomorrow's work force. Right now, she has 15 of them planted at the Business Development Centre and Business Incubator where she is executive director.

The city of Lynchburg started the center in 1989 as one way to put people back to work during the height of the recession. The plan worked: By helping turn innovative ideas into business ventures, the center has fostered 521 new jobs.

Of the 52 companies that have been through the center, 81 percent are still in business -- all in Region 2000. Typically, only about one-third of fledgling businesses survive past one year, McFaden says. "Some of them would have made it anyway," she says. "Then there are others that probably would have never done it if they hadn't come here."

All but two spaces in the 42,000-square-foot warehouse are filled with start-ups: A shoe broker, machinists and a wholesale paper supplier are among them. The center provides such services as receptionists and business counselors, and businesses have access to phone lines, fax machines and copiers. These shared services eliminate a lot of initial overhead, McFaden says, giving dreamers a better chance at success. And Region 2000's small business efforts seem to be working. In 1994, 72 percent of the area's workers were employed by companies with 10 or fewer employees.

Dewey and Betty Stinnett risked their modest life savings when they started Quality Tool Grinding Inc. at the center a little over two years ago. "You didn't have a lot of riffraff to go through," she says. "We never had to go to the bank to borrow a dollar."

Learning the ropes of accounting, billing and sales wasn't nearly as easy, Dewey Stinnett says. "Even though we have been in this type of work for 12, 13 years, we didn't know how to do the business stuff -- we knew how to do the work."

A few years after establishing Datacut Precision Machining Inc., Terry Thompson still couldn't afford the overhead of a building, office help or additional employees. So he moved to the center. The company, which has been there for nearly four years, now has four full-time employees and a couple of part-timers. And Thompson hopes the company will be strong enough to move out of the center by the end of the year. There were times, he says, when it seemed like the business wasn't going anywhere and his work was in vain. But the center's staff gave him the encouragement and consulting that he needed. "Without them," he says, "I may have called it quits."

Rodger Fauber worked on Main Street in the heart of Lynchburg's historic downtown for more than 30 years until his retirement last year.

While he was president of Central Fidelity Bank's western division, much of what Lynchburg had to offer was downtown. Each day, Fauber rode past the antique shops and family owned furniture stores and ate in family owned restaurants that fill the decades-old buildings downtown. Now, as president of Region 2000, he also travels across town visiting industrial parks, the area's new retail center near the mall and a series of chain restaurants.

Together those areas are making Lynchburg an even better place to live, Fauber says. "When I was real little, and before I was born, the city of Lynchburg was dependent on a few industries. What's happened over a period of time is a real diversification of its industry," he says. "We don't have the real highs of an economic boom, or the real lows, either."

Like many of his friends, Fauber grew up in Lynchburg and returned a few years after college. Now his children have also made their way back and are part of the educated, rooted work force that the region is counting on to help it grow, he says.

"Lynchburg still is a small town," he says, maneuvering through downtown traffic. "A lot of people who left are coming back and saying, 'That's the kind of community I want to raise my kids in.'"