Coalition aims to boost economy, transportation in Southwest and Southside

A new coalition of business and education leaders is forming to highlight the economic strengths of a swath of Southwest and Southside Virginia and to advocate for infrastructure improvements within it.

The group, called the Blue Ridge Innovation Corridor , will promote a region that generally encompasses the Blacksburg, Roanoke, Danville and Martinsville metropolitan areas, although its backers say the borders aren’t set in stone. Virginia Tech and its research institutions are considered to be a major anchor of the BRIC concept, as is the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research in Danville.

The group plans to put forth the message that the BRIC area is a growing economic powerhouse in the commonwealth on par with the Northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads regions. But to aid that growth, BRIC’s backers say transportation improvements must be made, such as upgrading U.S. 220 into North Carolina — an aging, curvy, narrow stretch of road that they argue hinders the flow of goods and people between Virginia and its neighboring state to the south.

“I think we have a credible case for becoming a major economic region for the state. … This is the time to address some of the shortfalls, a lot of which revolve around access and transportation,” said Virginia Tech President Tim Sands. “I really do believe that in the next 10, 20 years, if we can get some of these problems solved, that we will see an influx of talent and opportunity for the region.”

Focus on transportation

While BRIC has a goal of advocating for regional transportation improvements generally, a specific focus of concern is U.S. 220 between Southside Virginia and the Greensboro, North Carolina, metro area .

The Virginia Department of Transportation is currently studying improving an approximately 7-mile stretch between U.S. 58 and the state line and held a public meeting about it on May 21. The study comes after years of discussion about what to do there; at one point, building an entirely new road adjacent to U.S. 220 was on the table, but more recent efforts have focused on improving the existing road instead.

BRIC’s supporters say that improving U.S. 220 would help better connect educational and research efforts in the region with those at North Carolina institutions such as Wake Forest University, which has a partnership with Virginia Tech through the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences.

Virginia Tech has its Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC in Roanoke; founded in 2010, the institute researches addiction recovery, exercise and illnesses such as heart disease and cancer, among other things. In Blacksburg, the university’s Fralin Life Sciences Institute, originally built in 1995, is an interdisciplinary research center focusing on environmental and life science research and education.

The two institutes have grown significantly in recent years, and that growth has led to a need for better connectivity with their peers, said Heywood Fralin, chairman of Roanoke-based Retirement Unlimited, which operates senior living communities. The two research institutes bear the Fralin family name.

“This quality is generating a ton of activity, including startup companies coming out of the research, and a lot of recognition worldwide. It’s probably better known worldwide than it is in Roanoke,” Fralin said.

Another key component of BRIC is the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research in Danville, which supports applied research, advanced manufacturing and economic development. Among its programs is a training school for industrial 3D printing to help the U.S. Navy rapidly replace mission-critical parts rather than rely on potentially delayed supply chains.

Ben Davenport, chairman of First Piedmont Corp. and Davenport Energy, said that businesses and community leaders have been working to reinvent the Southside Virginia economy since textiles and other major industries began moving overseas in the 1990s, but transportation has been a consistent hurdle.

“Transportation has continued to be a stranglehold on what we’re trying to make happen because companies measure in minutes how long it takes to get from point A to point B and how difficult it is to go over whatever route there may be,” Davenport said.

William Fralin, an attorney and CEO of Retirement Unlimited who served as a Republican member of the House of Delegates from 2004 to 2010, said that when he was on the Commonwealth Transportation Board, there was a lot of talk about “corridors of statewide significance” — vital thoroughfares such as U.S. 220.

The highway “220 is the lifeblood of commerce, in terms of physically transporting commerce,” Fralin said.

Mimi Coles is vice president of marketing and business for Bristol-based Permatile Concrete Products Co. She serves on the board of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership and is a past president of the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce.

The family business of building roads and bridges has taken Coles all over Virginia, from major interstate highways to small rural roads, giving her a wide perspective on the commonwealth’s transportation infrastructure.

“Having traveled up and down 220 into North Carolina for years, that is so vitally important to the ties that this region has with North Carolina and parts further south,” Coles said.

Davenport said better roads also are needed to help pull a workforce from North Carolina into Virginia.

“The better that we’re able to attract workers to come to Virginia, the better we’re able to fill these jobs,” he said.

Another of BRIC’s goals is improving the Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport. Sands said he would like to see more flights and more connections tied to the airport, because one of the biggest challenges the university faces is easily bringing people to and from the school’s main campus in Blacksburg.

“We hear that all the time from the people we’re trying to recruit, that once we get them to Roanoke, they comment on how difficult it is to get out,” he said.

Coles said the airport is doing well for its size, but being able to increase air service for business travel would be “phenomenal.”

“I think it’s definitely needed,” she said.

Mike Stewart, executive director of the Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport, said he is “fully supportive” of any efforts to improve the economy and transportation in Virginia.

The airport currently has about 40 flights daily, offering nonstop service to eight cities. A group such as BRIC could help promote the region to entice airlines to add more flights, Stewart said.

“I salute and applaud groups like this because that’s what airlines pay attention to: they pay attention to the business community,” he said.

But ultimately, an airline’s decision will come down to customer demand and whether enough people want to fly to generate the revenue needed for any expanded service, Stewart said.

“The airlines now are very data-driven. They are looking at the traffic,” he said.

A growing region

With improved transportation, BRIC hopes to position the area as a fourth economic powerhouse for the commonwealth, alongside the regions of Northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads.

The BRIC area has more than 710,000 people, a history of recent major economic announcements involving companies such as Wells Fargo and Press Glass , and a large number of development-ready industrial sites — including Virginia’s largest, the Southern Virginia Megasite at Berry Hill — able to accommodate more growth.

BRIC points to statistics that say the region’s overall wages and employment are improving, and in a number of localities, more people are moving out than moving in. Martinsville, for example, had an unemployment rate above 10% for five years during and after the Great Recession, with another spike during the COVID-19 pandemic; today the rate is around 4%.

But BRIC backers say that problematic perceptions persist about this part of Virginia — that the region is hampered by an outdated image that growth is only happening elsewhere, for example, or that people must move east or north in Virginia to find good jobs.

“I think for a long time, because of the economic history of the region, it has been viewed as kind of a backwater, not in the center of activity, not a fast-growing area,” Sands said.

Developments in areas such as advanced manufacturing, health science and education are proving otherwise, he said.

Coles echoed Sands’ view.

“I think if folks stepped back to see how much growth has happened in the past five, 10 years, they would be really surprised at just how vibrant this region is,” she said.

Next steps for BRIC

For now, the Blue Ridge Innovation Corridor is still in its early stages. The group is legally incorporated, is forming a board of directors and is seeking nonprofit status. It appears to have an ally in the form of a bipartisan group of 14 state legislators who wrote a letter last month to the Commonwealth Transportation Board in support of improvements to U.S. 220.

Heywood and William Fralin are joining the BRIC board, as is Davenport. Jay Dickens, CEO of the Martinsville-based building supply firm The Lester Group, is serving as chair. Sands said he expects Virginia Tech to have around half a dozen people involved in the group in some capacity, providing topical expertise and other assistance. Coles said she looks forward to advocating for the group “however I can.”

“I think that this group can really bring a sense of awareness to some of the exciting things that are happening in this region, not just in what they consider the Blue Ridge Innovation Corridor but in western Virginia as a whole,” Coles said.

Other individuals, local chambers of commerce and economic development groups have advocated for some of these same goals, but BRIC’s backers say their strength is that BRIC is larger than just one locality or metro area.

“Linking them all together is the key, because any one of those sub-regions or individual cities or towns doesn’t have enough heft to pull this off. But when we come together across that whole region, I think we’ll have critical mass,” Sands said.

Davenport said the group’s “single-minded focus” will be its strength.

“It’s hard to overstate the value of what can happen in this identified region if in fact we can put all the pieces together,” Davenport said.

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