Mercer County is transforming, from coal to healthcare and from railroads to education. Here’s how residents said lawmakers can help.

PRINCETON — Tim Gibson remembers Mercer Street in downtown Princeton bustled with shoppers and theatergoers when he was a kid.

Gibson, 68, got one of his first jobs catching shoplifters at the old Hills department store. He went on to work construction, then started his own contracting firm.

Gibson said he remembered the town went downhill when work on the railroad started drying up and stores on the four-lane diverted shoppers away.

“It used to be dead, I hate to say it,” he said. Today he’s a clerk at the Blue Ridge Bee Company, a honey and beekeeper supply store that opened in 2016. He works behind a slab countertop in front of a shelf lined with glass jars with cork lids, at one of a growing number of new small businesses that are changing the face of the town.

Next door, Lori McKinney is opening a new coffee shop, her latest effort to breathe new life into her hometown. In 2004, she founded the RiffRaff Arts Collective, a hub for visual, musical and performance artists. McKinney said the community worked hard bringing Mercer Street back to a spot for festivals and boutique shopping.

And it’s not just in Princeton. Nearby Bluefield has undergone its own revival over the last 10 years. The old Montgomery Ward building is coming down to make way for either a park or a business incubator — plans are still up in the air. Restaurants are popping up. The Historic Granada Theater, which saw the likes of Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra on its stage, has been restored and is hosting performances.

Tim Smith, manager of the theater, said the restoration took about $4 million. While community support is key for these kinds of efforts, Smith said money is key to keeping it going.

“I think that having grants and endowments and people generously giving helps a lot of things,” Smith said. “But you know, this theater does have to become sustainable, too. It has to stand on its own two feet.”

And it’s not just arts and crafts — big industry is also taking notice. Jim Spencer, with the Bluefield Economic Development Authority, credits laws passed by the Legislature to reduce taxes as contributing to a better business climate.

“We wanted to create a win-win situation, a win for the community — the jobs are created, you enhance your tax base,” Spencer said. “But it has to be a win for the company to be able to do business.”

Intuit, the software company behind Turbotax and Quickbooks, has a call center that would look more at home in Silicon Valley than the West Virginia coalfields. Off Interstate 77, a factory for prefabricated houses is slated to open in the fall.

WVU Medicine and Concord University dominate Mercer County economy

Mercer County, home to both Bluefield and Princeton, has always been a hub for southern West Virginia, relying on hauling coal on the railroads. Today, the largest employers in the area aren’t mining companies or rail shops. Like in most West Virginia counties, it’s the local hospital and educational institutions.

A few miles between the interstate and Bluestone Lake sits Concord University, a picturesque 123-acre campus dotted with brick buildings. At the center of campus is Marsh Hall, which sports a clock and a bell tower at its crown.

Inside, Kendra Boggess is in the corner office. She’s been a faculty member of the university for over 40 years, and its president for the last 10. As the head of one of three institutions of higher education in Mercer County, Boggess said her school serves about a nine county area, drawing from southern West Virginia and nearby Virginia.

The university employs more than 300 people, but only a third are professors. The rest are IT specialists, tradesmen, security, cooks, accountants and more. Boggess noted Concord is competing with industries from around the region to find the people they need to keep the school going.

“We have plumbers, heating and air guys, we have landscapers — this is called the ‘Campus Beautiful’ and we want that to continue,” Boggess said. “So you have to have people who have some knowledge about trees and what grows where and what the deer will eat.”

And like Concord, WVU Medicine Princeton Community Hospital, the biggest employer in the county, is more than just doctors and nurses. To keep the lights on, President Karen Bowling said they need technicians, maintenance people and administrative assistants. Much like Concord, the hospital serves more than just the county of around 60,000. Bowling said it’s a regional hospital.

“We have about a 10-county reach here, with people coming in for cardiac services, surgical services, orthopedic. We’re definitely far-reaching in a lot of our service areas,” she said.

For both these employers, the Public Employees Insurance Agency is a big concern. The insurance plan, open for public employees like state troopers, teachers and road workers, has been through turmoil over the last decade, becoming one of the driving forces behind the teacher strike of 2018.

Last year, the state Legislature passed a bill that unfroze premium rates for people on PEIA. While lawmakers passed pay raises for public employees to offset those premium raises, Boggess said that doesn’t include her faculty members.

“So when state employees are given raises, that’s to include funds for higher ed employees to be offset,” she said. “But, because of limited funds, many colleges can’t give a 5% raise. It has to be 2 or 3% because they don’t give enough to give raises to all our employees.”

On the other hand, medical providers like WVU Medicine saw a positive effect from that same legislation.

“We have support from a large population of people we take care of who have PEIA,” Bowling said. “Year before last, there was legislation to make sure we got paid at a normal rate for those patients.”

Bluefield: A ‘mixed bag’ lacking accessible grocery, healthcare options

Back in Bluefield, rain has been spitting on and off all day. In the morning, mist hovered on the mountaintops. In the afternoon, clouds have formed and blocked the sun.

Across the street from the former Montgomery Ward building the local economic development authority is tearing down is the tallest building in all of Southern West Virginia ,  once called “The West Virginian Hotel,” built in 1923.

Today, it’s called the West Virginia Manor and it’s housing for low-income senior citizens.

Outside, on the street, people sit and chat. One or two push buggies filled with their belongings. Others are waiting for the bus, or their case worker to come. Some are homeless, others are on the edge of it. It’s a problem the state says is getting worse .

One young man, who had been homeless but is now in temporary housing, tries to explain his research into Biblical miracles and how those jive with the theories of Nikola Tesla. He smokes a gas station cigar.

Around the corner, volunteers with Open Heart Ministries sell dinners in a cafe to raise money to get people off the streets and into temporary accommodations. Just a couple storefronts down is the Vault Downtown, a fine dining establishment that serves $51 filet mignon steaks.

It’s here on this block where Martha Jones lives. She spent most of her life in Pocahontas, a former company town just over the line in Virginia.

For Jones, it’s a mixed bag — she said overall, Bluefield is a “a good, safe place to sleep” and “everybody keeps to themselves.”

But what downtown lacks, she said, is a store nearby to buy groceries. She points to the chain link fence surrounding rubble just a few feet away, suggesting they could put one in right there. If it weren’t for her case worker taking her to a supermarket half a mile away, she said it would be hard to load a full basket of groceries onto the local bus.

And it’s not just food. Jones relies on that case worker to get to doctor’s appointments up in Princeton, too.

Building community wealth through cooperative ownership

Back on Mercer Street, McKinney sits on a stage inside the coffee shop under renovation. McKinney, who has Lebanese roots, notes the building was once a pool hall owned by a family from Lebanon. It has been a church, a music school her sister ran and a few iterations of a cafe.

While Mercer Street is on the rise, McKinney said she’s concerned outside investment will cause buildings to remain empty — out of state buyers will purchase the buildings and keep them in a portfolio.

To combat this, McKinney said she and nine others in the community are experimenting with a cooperative approach.

Take the building for the new coffee shop. It’s going to be cooperatively-owned. McKinney said a charitable member of the community agreed to put the money up to buy it whole and the members of the co-op will pay them back over time. Once the loan is paid off, the property will be transferred to the co-op and become a community resource.

“Cooperative ownership is a really great way to build community wealth and build our assets,” she said.

But development like this hasn’t entirely been done with “local hands,” McKinnney noted. They’ve gotten help from nonprofit organizations and agencies from the local, state and federal levels, such as help with mentorship, planning and technical assistance like designing wayfinding signs for visitors. She said most of the support is specific, for say, a website. But getting help spreading the word is the challenge. She hasn’t come across grants that help businesses advertise.

But broadly speaking, McKinney thinks lawmakers aren’t spending enough time familiarizing themselves with the efforts that are happening on the ground.

“Some of the things that we see being debated in the Legislature that so much time is spent on, like grandstanding for the cultural wars, that should be spent talking about how to actually get resources and support to people who have a vision that could make a change.”

Mercer County is transforming, from coal to healthcare and from railroads to education. Here’s how residents said lawmakers can help. appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight , West Virginia's civic newsroom.