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REGIONAL
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THE NORTHERN PIEDMONT: Virginia's Breathtaking Back Yard By Maura Singleton |
Peter
Rice started his mail-order business in a spare
outbuilding on his Madison County farm. He and
his wife, Peggy, saw it as something to do on the
side, an adventure, a diversion. Also, Rice says,
"We wanted to have a business where we love
living." Country life provides the Rices with opportunities for both business and pleasure. Plow & Hearth, their country-living catalog, was first mailed to customers in 1981. In the years since, its inventory of flannel bedding, gardening tools and other items synonymous with a rural lifestyle has spawned numerous copycat catalogs. |
| We're exactly the kind of employer a rural
county loves to have," says Rice, who built
a 180,000-square-foot headquarters for Plow &
Hearth on Route 230 in 1994. "We're putting
nothing into the air and water, and we don't
require public sewer." |
| The company employs
more than 600 people during the peak holiday
season. And in addition to its warehouse and
order-taking center, the company operates a store
in Madison County and another one in
Charlottesville. This year Plow & Hearth's
sales should hit $60 million. Several other high-growth companies have their headquarters in the Northern Piedmont, which stretches from Fauquier County to the north to Nelson County to the south. The roster includes Nimbus CD International, a maker of compact disks in Greene County; Value America, an on-line shopping network in Albemarle County; and SNL Securities, a financial research and publishing firm in Charlottesville. |
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| The Northern
Piedmont also enjoys fertile, rolling terrain
along the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Horse farms, wineries and antebellum estates dot
the landscape. It's an at-mosphere that has
attracted many rich and famous residents and lots
of affluent visitors. The Inn at Little
Washing-ton, for example, is arguably the best
bed and breakfast on the East Coast. The
five-star inn and its five-star dining room
attract visitors to Rappahannock County from
around the world. Most of the region's residents have embraced upscale tourism, but other forms of economic development have been more controversial. Efforts to expand the industrial base, for example, are often viewed as a threat to the area's unique quality of life. "It's like people finding an oasis and not wanting anything to spoil it," says Robert DiMauri, executive director of the Thomas Jefferson Partnership for Economic Development. "To a large extent, that's a good thing, because the beauty of the area is a selling point." In Greene, Fluvanna and Louisa counties -- where residential development has outpaced commercial growth -- the debate is urgent. The unbalanced tax base and the strain on services have compelled local officials to pursue business growth with new vigor. Economic expansion is expected to follow Interstate 64 from Charlottesville to Richmond and U.S. 29 from Charlottesville to Culpeper. * * * Charlottesville is a perennial power in national polls about quality of life, so no one was surprised this year when Money magazine hailed it as the best small city in the South. The area consistently makes the short-lists of healthiest places to live in America and best places to raise children. Other Virginia localities would be quick to cash in on those kinds of kudos, but until recently economic development has not been a priority for Charlottesville. The city primarily relied on the University of Virginia, the region's largest employer. Its staff of 10,000 comprises more than 10 percent of the area's work force. In recent years, however, local economic development officials have begun to tap U.Va.'s potential as a catalyst for private-sector growth. The most visible evidence of this new mind-set is the university's Research Park at North Fork, a 532-acre spread in Albemarle County that can handle up to 3 million square feet of mixed-use development during the next 20 to 25 years. North Fork is no garden-variety industrial park: Its developers envision an elegant corporate village with pe-destrian plazas, cafes, hotels and conference facilities surrounded by a belt of pristine land bordering the North Fork of the Rivanna River. The park opened in 1995 and now has three tenants, all of them relocating there to capitalize on collaborations with university faculty or to exploit U.Va.'s extensive research facilities. Sponsored research funding topped $159 million in 1997, according to the university. And with 18,000 students and 2,400 faculty members, the university is consistently ranked by U.S. News & World Report as the nation's top public university. |
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| Government | 26 percent |
| Services | 24 percent |
| Retail | 18 percent |
| Manufacturing | 12 percent |
| Construction | 7 percent |
| Finance, insurance, real estate | 5 percent |
| Transportation, public utilities, communications | 3 percent |
| Wholesale | 3 percent |
| Other | 2 percent |
Largest Private Employers4
| American Press American Woodmark Centel Comdial Communications Corp. of America Conagra Crutchfield FIC Staff Services G.E. Fanuc Klockner Pentaplast Liberty Fabrics Manpower Merillat Nimbus CD International Reed Elsevier Rental Uniform Services Sperry Marine State Farm Thomasville Furniture Trinity Packaging Virginia Power Wal-Mart Wintergreen Wrangler |
Average Manufacturing Wage
$436 per week
| 1 -
1995 figure 2 - September 1998 3 - 1997 nonagricultural employment 4 - 250 or more employees |
| For MicroAire Surgical Instruments, a
producer of power equipment for bone surgery, the
symbiotic relationship with U.Va. has been
fruitful, company officials say. The company
relocated to North Fork from California three
years ago. Now it is working with faculty in the
Department of Orthopedic Surgery on a project to
accelerate the healing process for ruptured
tendons, which could lead to the development of a
new medical device. * * * The region's low unemployment rate scares away some prospective businesses, and competition for full-time workers is fierce. Plow and Hearth recently raised its starting wage from $6.18 to $7 an hour, and it added a bonus of 50 cents per hour -- retroactive -- for workers who remain through Dec. 23. Employees also receive discounts on merchandise and bonuses for recruiting friends. The company even hired a masseuse to help employees relax. |
| The region's
unemployment rate is low enough to indicate a
labor shortage, but officials at the Virginia
Employment Commission say that unemployment
numbers for college towns are skewed downward by
the current method of measuring college students'
impact on the labor market. Students inflate work
force numbers, but they rarely file unemployment
claims. The result is a lower unemployment
figure. Local officials also point out that many people in the area are underemployed. Surveys have identified a significant population of people who are working part-time or temporary jobs or who are employed full-time but looking for better prospects. "Companies that want to hire educated and skilled people can find them," says Stouffer at the U.Va. Foundation. |
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Von Holtzbrinck Publishing Services apparently agrees. Last year, the company invested $30 million to build a distribution center in an Orange County cornfield. Their relocation from Salt Lake City was spurred by the prevalence of technically educated people in the region, officials say, especially the steady stream of U.Va. graduates.
For counties that are closer to Northern Virginia, however, there is serious brain drain. More than half of Fauquier County's work force commutes to jobs outside the county, many to high-tech jobs in Fairfax County.
* * *
Things happened backwards in Fauquier County. A ready-made research-and-development complex in the secluded countryside fell into the county's lap. Now the county's challenge is to breathe new life into it.
Built in 1942, Vint Hill Farms Station is where the U.S. Army developed highly sensitive electronics and surveillance systems. At the height of its operation, more than 3,500 civilian personnel worked there. In addition to more than 500,000 square feet of office and warehouse space, this 701-acre military base has hundreds of residences and all the amenities you might expect in a self-sufficient community -- commissary, movie theater and recreational facilities.
Department of Defense cutbacks forced Vint Hill's closure in September 1997, and the base will officially become the property of the Vint Hill Economic Development Authority next spring.
Already the authority is trying to market Vint Hill as a technology campus. The idea is to "grow" companies at Vint Hill until they fill up the existing buildings plus 2 million square feet of new development. Three hundred new homes and an 18-hole golf course are also part of the scheme.
"Our arrows are pointed at the metropolitan Washington area," says Patricia M. White, Vint Hill's director of economic development. High-technology companies are the target because many of Vint Hill's buildings are suited for that type of industry. They have laboratory and production areas, and they are wired with fiber-optic cable. An even bigger advantage is Fauquier County's work force. A survey completed last year indicates that more than 2,100 residents commute to high-tech jobs outside the county in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. Most of these workers said they would quit their long and stressful daily commutes -- 76 miles round-trip, on average -- to work within Fauquier County if comparable jobs existed there.
So far, Vint Hill has seven tenants, none of them high-tech. The largest renter is Gaithersburg Cabinetry & Millwork, which employs only 30 people there, but the tenant mix could improve soon, White says. The Federal Aviation Administration is considering Vint Hill as the site for a new $95 million air-traffic control terminal. The Fauquier County site is competing with three other locations, all of them in Loudoun County. The FAA says it will announce its decision in January.
* * *
William Flanders says he used to respond to industry inquiries about Fluvanna County by saying, "We don't have water" -- not your standard pro-business response. But now he says that rural counties have to dust off the welcome mat if they want to survive.
Fluvanna is the third fastest-growing county in Virginia, primarily due to Lake Monticello, a vast planned community that is adding about 200 new homes per year. The community's rural surroundings and Fluvanna's low taxes have attracted young families to the area, many with school-age children.
"The rapid expansion in the residential sector with no balanced expansion in the commercial sector is putting pressure on county taxes to the point where we may not be able to recover," says Flanders. His sentiment is shared by many other county officials in the bedroom communities that ring Charlottesville and Albemarle.
Forestry and farming are the backbones of these rural counties. They have a smattering of mom-and-pop businesses along major thoroughfares, but economic development rarely rises above the occasional grand opening of a Food Lion.
Fluvanna officials have higher hopes for Zion Crossroads, an aptly named nexus of Interstate 64 and U.S. Routes 15 and 250 between Charlottesville and Richmond. The crossroads themselves are in Louisa County, but both localities are anxious to encourage commercial and industrial development on either side of the county line. Rezoning could free up about 15,000 acres for new business, but water-and-sewer access is a problem, and several engineering studies have offered no simple solutions.
County officials want to build a 35-mile pipeline from the James River, but residents continue to shoot down the project because they believe it would suck up too many tax dollars. Engineers estimate that the pipeline would cost $20 million to $24 million -- "peanuts compared to what we could attract," Flanders maintains.
Greene County, which also faces a severe tax-base imbalance, is having better luck with its waterworks. A long overdue public sewer system is under construction in Ruckersville, a country crossroads that supports a burgeoning hodgepodge of commercial growth.
County officials also hope to divert some of the tourism dollars spent in Charlottesville and Albemarle County. "Greene County is working on being the gateway to the Blue Ridge," says Brett Sheffield, a business analyst for the Central Virginia Small Business Development Center. "They want to become a day-trip destination for parkway people." Entrepreneurs in Greene County are enthusiastic about the idea, and they're already opening antique stores and bed-and-breakfast inns.
* * *
The politics of economic development in the Northern Piedmont are complicated. Pro-growth groups contend that the region must expand its business base to provide better jobs and lower taxes. Environmental groups counter that suburban sprawl is al-ready eroding the area's beauty, charm and natural resources.
Both sides are right.
In the greater Charlottesville area, however, the environmentalists and the economic developers are at least talking and listening to each other. The Thomas Jefferson Sustainability Council -- composed of farmers, environmentalists, developers, business people and local officials -- is trying to find ways to balance population growth and economic development with an imperative to preserve the Northern Piedmont's natural resources.
"Most counties recognize that 'no growth' is not a realistic position," says DiMauri, who promotes cooperative economic development efforts in the region. "Some form of managed growth is now the way to go. The question is, how do you allow it to happen in a way that is positive for the community?"
© DECEMBER 1998, VIRGINIA BUSINESS MAGAZINE