| Danville ponders
its post-tobacco future
Related
story:
— The party's over
by
John Peters
The
heart of Danville’s tobacco industry beats in several
city blocks of stylish red-brick buildings. Once, there
were 17 of them, back when Danville represented the
acclaimed Virginia leaf of the flue-cured sort —
the one that brought the highest prices. The intricate
turn-of-the-century architectural details, such as precisely
detailed towers, show just how much tobacco was revered.
These
days, however, owners of the same buildings are desperately
seeking other occupants, such as high technology companies.
This turn of events depresses Nancy Motley, owner of
Motley’s Auction Warehouse in Danville, the last
one remaining in the city. She believes she’ll
be out of business once Congress decides the future
of the 64-year-old federal price supports. “If
they do away with the quota system, tobacco will all
be contracted directly with the companies,” she
says.
Since
1964 when the Surgeon General declared that tobacco
causes cancer and lung disease, the bell has been tolling
for the leaf. Now, tobacco’s demise is gaining
momentum. That’s a bitter pill for Motley who remembers
that three decades ago auction houses — with their
richly pungent aromas — dotted the landscape across
Southside Virginia.
These
days, only a half-dozen are left in the state, and some
of those have to depend on business from across the
border to survive. “We have right much tobacco
coming in from North Carolina,” Motley says. That’s
nowhere near enough to support what Danville’s
markets once did. Each of the city’s 17 auctions
employed about 30 people, plus many more in supporting
jobs such as shippers, graders and truck drivers. “They’re
all pretty much passé,” Motley says.
Many
of Virginia’s tobacco belt towns have abandoned
tobacco for other crops or businesses. Danville has
high hopes for high technology. One example is the “eDan”
project, a program to attract high tech by tapping high-speed
data capacity from fiber optics lines being planned
along U.S. 58 along the southern breadth of Virginia.
The project could become a major hub wheeling great
gobs of data from research centers at Virginia Tech
in Blacksburg and North Carolina State University in
Raleigh, N.C. It is being funded by the Tobacco Indemnification
and Community Revitalization Commission, a public body
created to use some of the state’s $4 billion legal
settlement with four cigarette makers to help wean Southside
from its economic dependence on tobacco.
Other
projects include the Institute for Advanced Learning
and Research, a new research facility in Danville run
by Virginia Tech, Averett University, Danville Community
College and some private interests. One possible institute
application: helping local adhesive-maker Intertape
Polymer develop new plastics. Carthan F. Currin III,
executive director of the commission, hopes the institute
will attract scientists. Essel Propack, an Indian company
that makes laminated tubes such as those used for toothpaste,
is another beneficiary of tobacco fund money. It will
eventually employ 80 to 100 people. But whatever the
commission does, the benefits are years away.
Return
to Virginia Business - November 2002
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