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REGIONAL
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What Howard Blair wanted when he came to Brunswick County last year was a warehouse and about 30 good workers. For three years, Blair had been developing a new method for turning recycled plastic into a material that Winchester-based Trex Co. needed to make decking. He'd looked at sites in and outside of Virginia when state economic officials in Richmond suggested Brunswick. The county had what Blair needed and delivered it with enthusiasm.
"They just bent over backwards to help us," Blair says. "We looked around
some other areas, and we were just one of many," he says. "It was nothing like
what we experienced in Virginia." |
Lake Country economic development leaders were equally delighted that
Blair's company, Extraction Technologies of Virginia, had chosen to set up shop here. The
jobs pay fairly well for this region -- $7.50 to $15 an hour plus benefits. And Blair is
already planning to hire 31 more workers. |
Blair's reception in Brunswick underscores
local leaders' determination to address the shortage of good, local jobs. While
unemployment was dropping statewide, Lake Country's rate rose to 9 percent a few years
ago. Two of the main industries here have been textiles and tobacco, but textile jobs have
been going overseas and tobacco's future is uncertain at best. About a third of the
region's 38,000 workers have local jobs, but many others drive 30 miles or more to North
Carolina or the Richmond area. "We send a lot more people out to work than the people
that come in," says Len Ponder, executive director of the county's industrial
development authority. |
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Part of the challenge is spreading the word that this area is thirsty for new business. Lake Country isn't close to anything in Virginia. It's a shorter drive to Raleigh-Durham, N.C., than it is to Richmond. "Our downfall is that we're not well-known around the state," says Joyce French, director of the 2-year-old Lake Country Marketing Council. The region's fortunes, however, are improving. In recent years new companies like Tennessee-based Dollar General Corp. have come here, bringing hundreds of new jobs and helping cut unemployment to about 7 percent. The ongoing expansion of U.S. 58 promises to boost access to industrial parks scattered along its corridor. And the region just won a $1.3 million state grant to fund a new industrial park. Meanwhile, leaders here continue to put up shell buildings, talk up the work ethic and low cost of labor, and dangle tax breaks in front of prospective tenants. The main goal, says French, is creating quality jobs. "We would like our jobs to be higher skilled, so that our students who go off to college can have a job to come back to." * * * Beth Diamond rents pontoon boats all summer long at the Clarksville Marina on Buggs Island Lake. But when she and her husband, David, go out on the lake in the evening, they often have the place to themselves. "We'll go out in the middle of July after work and never see another boat," she says. And they're in no hurry to share the privacy. "We like it like this. We've got all the business we need." The lake -- also called the John H. Kerr Reservoir -- was built by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1953. To the east below the dam that forms the reservoir is the 20,000-acre Lake Gaston, which stretches 34 miles and reaches into North Carolina. But Buggs Island is the giant. At 50,000 acres, it is Virginia's largest lake. Thousands of visitors come here every year to fish, boat and swim, yet its 800-mile shoreline is largely undeveloped because the corps owns the land all the way around. Diamond hands out maps to people who rent her boats so they won't get lost, "which is really easy to do," she says. "There are not that many landmarks." Buggs Island Lake is also the backdrop for the Virginia Lake Festival, held in Clarksville the third weekend in July. It features hot-air balloons, live music and a fun run across the U.S. 58 bridge. The event ends Saturday night with fireworks. "They fire them out over the lake right off the railroad trestle," says Monique Derby, executive director of the Clarksville Lake Country Chamber of Commerce. As many as 40,000 people come to the festival's Saturday events, she says. The lake is the biggest landmark in a region of tobacco farms and small towns like Clarksville, population 1,400. But for thousands of Nascar fans, this is racing country. The South Boston Speedway in Halifax County hosts Nascar's Busch Grand National races, drawing fans throughout its March-to-September season. Another kind of racing is coming here in the fall. Tucked in the southwest corner of Halifax is the Virginia International Raceway, a 3.2-mile track for sports-car racing. In its heyday 30 years ago, the track had a national reputation, but it has been closed since 1974. It's now being renovated and reopened by a commercial real estate developer in New York City who is also a racing fan. The track is scheduled to open next spring and is expected to host six to eight races a year, each drawing 5,000 to 15,000 people, according to track organizers. It's going to be an exclusive sort of entertainment, open mostly to racing enthusiasts who buy memberships. |
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Manufacturing |
27 percent |
Retail |
18 percent |
Services |
15 percent |
Government |
14 percent |
Construction |
7 percent |
Wholesale |
4 percent |
Other |
6 percent |
Transportation, public utilities, communications |
5 percent |
Finance, insurance and real estate |
2 percent |
Largest Private Employers4
ABB Power T&D |
Average Manufacturing Wage3
$398 per week
| 1 - July 1998, Weldon Cooper Center 2 - March 1999 3 - 2Q 1998, nonagricultural employment 4 - 1Q 1998, 100 or more employees |
A few miles north of Clarksville is Chase City, where people are so proud of native son Michael Tucker, the 28-year-old right fielder for the Cincinnati Reds, that they put up a sign at the edge of town proclaiming his roots there. The town also features MacCallum More, the home of Edward Hudgins, a former chief justice of the Virginia Supreme Court. Its 5-acre gardens under a grove of trees contain a trove of oddities collected by Hudgins' son, William Hudgins, a personal aide to President Truman. There's a 17th century Samurai warrior made of bronze, a marble bust carved in Rome in the first century, and the marble obelisks that marked the original northern boundary of Norfolk.
In May, Chase City won a $250,000 federal grant for downtown renovation, one of several similar projects under way across the region. South Boston has completed its downtown improvements, while Lawrenceville is in the process.
Revitalization efforts are enhancing the region's reputation as a nice place to retire. Unlike many other rural regions in Virginia, Lake Country's population is growing -- up about 5 percent since 1990 to 85,100 people. Many of those new residents are retirees who have found a spot near the lake, Diamond says. One new Brunswick County resident, formerly from New Jersey, found out about the region during drives to see her son play football at Duke University, Diamond says. "You hear stories like that. People were just passing through and decided to stay."
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The nondescript metal shell building sat empty for seven years in Mecklenburg County at the tiny Chase City Industrial Park. It was known around the state as "the building that wouldn't sell." The reason? It sat on a paltry seven acres.
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Finally last year, Starr Pharmaceuticals bought the site and moved in, and the company now employs about 65 people there. But the building's story highlights the region's lack of large industrial sites. A recent survey of Brunswick and Mecklenburg counties showed only two available sites of 25 acres or more -- and that's the size most industrial prospects demand. |
The lack of industrial land has been just one of the region's shortcomings. U.S. 58, which stretches along Virginia's southern border from Cumberland Gap to Virginia Beach, was just two lanes through much of Mecklenburg, and that was hurting industrial recruitment.
Adding to the transportation woes were problems with air access. The closest major airport is Raleigh-Durham International, more than an hour away by road. The Mecklenburg-Brunswick Regional Airport has a 5,000-foot runway, but it was stuck with a dinky, 600-square-foot trailer as its terminal -- hardly encouraging to prospects flying in for a site visit.
First impressions can be critical to the region's efforts to replace the textile jobs that have gone south in recent years. Mecklenburg has seen several textile companies pack up and leave, such as Jonbil, which made jeans in Chase City until it closed in 1997. "When you take all of that out of a city of 2,500, you can really bring them to their knees," says French of the marketing council.
A few years ago, four or five manufacturing plants in Halifax County also closed, says William E. Confroy, executive director of the Halifax County Industrial Development Authority. "We lost about 900 jobs in about 18 months."
Related to the employment problems, many communities here lag behind much of the state in such measures as income, education and housing. Per capita income for the region between 1986 and 1996 was 68 percent of the U.S. average and one of the lowest in the state. Finding a place to live for workers who do get local jobs isn't easy. "Right now there's really a lack of any rental housing in Brunswick and Mecklenburg," says Ponder of Brunswick's industrial development authority. "The jobs are very important, but we need to produce housing as well. We just need to keep working on both ends."
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State money is beginning to flow into the region. Most of it is going to widen U.S. 58 to four lanes between Clarksville and Boydton. There soon will be a bypass around South Hill, and planners are designing an eight-mile bypass around Clarksville that would include a new bridge over Buggs Island Lake. U.S. 58 is already four lanes in Halifax County.
The state began improving the 500-mile highway in 1989. This year Virginia approved the sale of $104.3 million in bonds to continue the project, which is expected to cost $1.7 billion overall.
The region also recently won a $1.3 million state grant for construction of a new industrial park that will give the region a handful of the bigger industrial sites it needs. The Roanoke River Regional Industrial Park will occupy a 225-acre site on U.S. 58 near the border between Brunswick and Mecklenburg counties. At capacity, the park would provide nearly 1,600 jobs and more than $200,000 in annual tax revenue. And economic development leaders predict companies that choose the new park will pay wages of $8 to $10 an hour.
This summer workers will clear the site and put in an access road. Then they'll get one 40-acre site ready to go. Ponder says the two counties already have begun marketing the park to prospective tenants. "I think being so close to Interstate 85 and with the potential for large sites it will really be a successful park," he says.
Brunswick and Mecklenburg are sharing other projects as well. They've built a new 3,000-square-foot terminal, complete with a meeting room, at the Mecklenburg-Brunswick Regional Airport off U.S. 58 a mile from the new industrial park. Last fall they formed a regional water authority, and plans are under way for a new $9.9 million water treatment plant on Lake Gaston to serve the east end of Mecklenburg County and the west end of Brunswick County. Construction is expected to start early next year and conclude in 2001.
The water plant also will serve a new 175-acre industrial park that Mecklenburg County leaders are planning near Boydton, a town of about 500 people near the center of the county. "With what we've got in progress, I think we'll be in excellent shape" to attract major employers, says Randolph Jones, the county's director of development.
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Even before the U.S. 58 improvements, Lake Country was making progress in the economic development game. Three years ago Dollar General Corp. opened a 750,000-square-foot distribution center in Halifax County's main industrial park, and the company completed a 500,000-square-foot expansion this year. Now about 500 people work there.
Describing the project as "big" doesn't adequately convey its scope. It takes a few minutes just to drive around the building, and the back lot is a sea of trailers.
This spring, New Jersey-based flag manufacturer Annin & Co. announced plans to expand a Halifax manufacturing company it bought. The $2.5 million project -- which will bring another 160 jobs -- was greased by a $100,000 grant from the governor's economic development fund, which helped pay for site preparation.
Also, the region's rural character helped attract AXA, an insurance and investment-management company based in France. Two years ago, it bought Berry Hill, a 664-acre historic plantation in Halifax County. After two years of renovation and 200,000 square feet of expansion, the plantation opens this month as a training center for AXA employees.
Mecklenburg County's big catch came in 1997, when it lured the Jones Apparel Group, a Pennsylvania-based company, to a site near Interstate 85 in South Hill. The company completed its 525,000-square-foot distribution center last fall and has about 140 workers there now, says Jones, the county's development director.
Jones and Confroy say the new companies mark the region's full recovery from textile industry losses. Lake Country needed to diversify its employment base and has done so, Jones says. And Confroy notes that recent job growth is setting the stage for other commercial activity in the region.
"There are a lot of opportunities for entrepreneurs," Confroy says. "That's the kind of thing that's happening here. [We] are broadening our base, diversifying our economy, and [it's] making us look a whole lot more like other parts of Virginia."
© JULY 1999, Media General Business Publications Inc.,
publisher of Virginia Business Magazine