Finding an identity for Central Virginia

Lynchburg News and Advance

Saturday, March 1, 2003

Who Are We? a provocative special section produced by The News & Advance last Sunday, raised the important question of just what exactly is Lynchburg and the surrounding counties. What are the region’s strengths and weaknesses and how can local officials and General Assembly representatives use the strengths to better advantage?

Collectively, the region has been referred to as Central Virginia for decades. But how does that separate the region from Charlottesville and its environs, which also refer to themselves as Central Virginia.

Over the years, the reference has become imprecise. It doesn’t really define who we are. While that definition is still a work in progress, a number of stories in the special section pointed out that the city and counties share much together in terms of historical attractions, recreational opportunities and institutions of higher learning that could be promoted to better define the area as a far more special region of the state.

Still on the cusp of the 21st century, the region must come to grips with what it is and what role it can play in the state as it embraces the future. It is becoming clearer that the region’s niche lies in its historical and recreational treasures. And that should make it a destination for tourists not just from other parts of Virginia, but from throughout the mid-Atlantic states.

In recent years, it has become clearer what Lynchburg and the counties known as Central Virginia are not. The region is not Northern Virginia or Tidewater or the urban crescent that lies in between. Many folks living in Bedford, one of the fastest growing counties west of Richmond, are leery of additional growth. The growth that has arrived is costing them in terms of schools, roads, public water supply and the other infrastructure needed to support a growing suburban county.

Dale Hull, who manages Owens Market on U.S. 460 in Bedford County, told Ron Brown of The News &Advance that the county “has always been a good place to live. It’s not real densely populated. You don’t have people right on top of each other.” And he would just as soon keep it that way.

There’s a similar sentiment in the northern and western parts of Amherst County where the trees and scenic vistas far outnumber the people living there. They, too, are ready to fend off encroachment of any major proportion.

And yet both counties have put up millions of dollars for industrial development parks to help attract business and industry to broaden the tax base to pay for the rising cost of government services.

Why? Because that’s the way the state has prescribed covering the bulk of the cost of local government — through real estate and other taxes on business and industry. That must change before Central Virginia can claim its real identity as the historical and recreational capital of Virginia.

Virginia is not and should not be made up of cookie-cutter localities where each one exists to benefit the state treasury through income and sales taxes generated largely through economic development. There are other ways that localities can develop and pay their own way — if the state would allow them to do so.

It will take a major overhaul of the state’s tax structure to allow that to happen. Local voters should demand that and hold our elected representatives to the General Assembly accountable for making it happen.

Appomattox County and the town of Appomattox are good examples. With the Civil War surrender grounds there, Appomattox has a built-in attraction for tourism on a much greater scale than it has now. It’s the only place in America where the Civil War ended.

Tina LeValley, the executive director of tourism for the Appomattox Chamber of Commerce, said economic growth should reflect the basic character of the community. Reflecting on the significant chapter of American history that played out right there, she said, “We need to get more businesses geared to accommodating tourists.”

The reality is that Appomattox has done little over the years to encourage a a tourism infrastructure that would make the Surrender Grounds a destination for tourists. That would include motels and restaurants to accommodate travelers.

So what has the board been doing with an eye to the future? Several years ago it opted to buy a county-owned industrial park for industrial development. The supervisors are still looking for the first industry to move into the park.

The last thing that Appomattox needs is an industrial development park. What it does need, and the same could be said for Lynchburg, is the authority to charge an additional penny in the state sales tax with the proceeds going back into promoting tourism in the county. That’s where Appomattox’ strength lies — not in industry.

Let Northern Virginia and the urban crescent have the industry. Let those folks put up with the population growth and the clogged freeways that take folks back and forth from their subdivisions to their factories and office complexes.

But until the state changes an outdated tax structure that forces localities to look to business and industry for a substantial amount of the revenues they need to provide local services, that is not going to happen. The local revenue chase explains why every locality in the state is developing industrial parks for economic development. But there is only so much business and industry to go around. And in this slow economy, there’s very little of it to go around, as the state well knows.

Bedford County is another good example of a locality that is poised for a huge boom in the tourism trade. But it, too, has recently spent millions of dollars on an industrial development park that stands empty. The National D-Day Memorial, meanwhile, is attracting thousands of visitors with the potential to attract thousands more on a monthly basis.

Those visitors, like the visitors to Appomattox, spend money at restaurants; they buy gasoline and — if the entrepreneurs will give them reason to — they will spend the night, contributing more money to the local economy. The dollars generated by tourism provide for jobs just as surely as manufacturers do.

Who are we? Central Virginia should be known and developed for its historical and recreational attractions. The localities that make up this region of the state could flourish at that — if the state would let them. Until the state amends its tax structure to let the localities pursue their own destinies, however, the folks in Appomattox, Amherst and Bedford will keep on looking for tenants for their industrial parks.