Economic diversification Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

State Leaders Promote W.Va. On ‘ChooseWV’ Tours

The ChooseWV program tells West Virginia’s story directly to those who can make a major job and industry impact.

A group of state legislative and education leaders will soon embark on another national economic development tour. The ChooseWV program tells West Virginia’s story directly to those who can make a major job and industry impact.

Last summer, West Virginia University President Gordon Gee, Marshall University President Brad Smith, Speaker of the House of Delegates Roger Hanshaw joined university and legislative staff for the first of three ChooseWV economic development tours. Hanshaw said the very first stop, in California’s Silicon Valley, proved that face-to-face promotion can be fruitful.

“On our very first visit we pitched West Virginia and the benefits of locating an office facility in West Virginia, to a little over $1 trillion worth of market capitalization that day,” Hanshaw said. “That’s a trillion with a “T”; a little over a trillion dollars’ worth of companies were in the room that day and some of those are already beginning to bear fruit now. We’re receiving calls from companies that were in the room that day talking about whether West Virginia is a convenient and suitable place for them to, for example, place back-office operations on the East Coast.”

Other stops on previous tours included New York City and Washington, D.C. The 2023 spring and summer ChooseWV ventures include meeting with CEOs, investment bankers, trade ambassadors and alumni. Stops range from Boston to Seattle and Los Angeles. Gee said he’s along to show West Virginia has a committed educational system.

“We want to hear from employers and those who may locate here about what we can do to make it very easy for them,” Gee said. “Tell us what you need to have. If you need to have 40 engineers, then we’ll train those engineers. If you need to have 25 physicians, we will train those physicians. If you need to have 40 school teachers, that’s what we’ll do.”

Hanshaw said the ChooseWV visits stemmed, in part, from a crash course in economic development when the Fortune 200 steelmaker Nucor, selected Mason County for a multi-billion dollar plant. He also said recruiting lessons learned during the pandemic showed the new wave of remote workers don’t need to be tied to a big city desk.

“I don’t know about you, but I’ve been to New York and Chicago and Houston and Los Angeles and Miami and I like it right here in West Virginia a lot better,” he said. “As it turns out, so do a lot of the remote workers. The ASCEND program that President Smith funded, and that we’re orchestrating in collaboration with WVU and Marshall now has been oversubscribed in every round so far. In fact, it’s oversubscribed again this year, as I understand it. We have people who are wanting to come here to be remote workers. Now we need remote jobs here for them to do. That’s part of what the program is about. It’s about making sure that people who may not be thinking about West Virginia are doing so.”

Gee said the state’s educational system is primed to enhance recruitment for companies geared toward renewable energy as a driver or product

“We’ve been in the energy business a long time, we have all these very highly skilled machinists and others in the southern part of the state,” Gee said. “People who immediately can turn around and start doing work on a re-trained basis for any industry who wants to come here. It requires an educated population, to be able to create the functioning activities that surround energy, whether it be in the coal, oil, gas area, or in the renewable area. These all require a lot of educated and skilled people, and that’s what our job is, it’s not just simply the university. When we talk about education, we talk about pre-k through life, our skilled trade folks, the people out of the technical programs at the technical schools, community colleges, we’re all into this.”

Hanshaw said West Virginia’s now all-encompassing energy profile is trending toward the power of the future.

“Our economy is going to reach a point in my lifetime, and I hope it’s sooner than later, in which our fossil resources become too valuable to burn,” Hanshaw said. “A time when we need to use them as downstream manufacturing feedstocks and the raw materials for other higher end processes and that’s some of what we’re seeing. We’re seeing people in the chemical industry, the petrochemical industry, take a second look at West Virginia in the way that they used to take a first look at West Virginia when the petrochemical industry was being born right here in the Kanawha Valley. It’s circling back around to those days again.”

ChooseWV’s 2023 spring and summer tours happen in mid-May and late June. Hanshaw said he hopes to exceed that $1 trillion worth of market capitalization.

'There Are Jobs Out There' – Generation West Virginia Holds Event in Shepherdstown

Generation West Virginia’s local Eastern Panhandle chapter hosted a panel discussion at Shepherd University Thursday night with four young locals who decided to stay in West Virginia to build their careers.

Those four local business owners shared why they made the decision to remain in West Virginia. The biggest driver for all of them was the sense of community. But also, because they found opportunity here in their chosen career path.

One of the speakers, Aneesh Sompalli, graduated from Martinsburg High School in 2006 and went on to study at both West Virginia University and Shepherd. He now manages an urgent care in Jefferson County.

“You have to have some kind of training or apprenticeship, whether that’s the traditional route of school or a vocational school, but there are jobs out there for people,” he said.

Sompali argues the state needs to put more focus on education to further diversify the economy and to keep young people here.

In the statehouse, a bill to make community and technical colleges free or more affordable after meeting certain qualifications has been moving rapidly through the legislative process.

According to the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission, three in-demand career paths in West Virginia that may only require a degree from a CTC are in healthcare, IT, and manufacturing fields.

Pa. Trail Initiative Could Provide Roadmap for Some Struggling W.Va. Towns

There’s a national storyline that’s told about parts of West Virginia and Pennsylvania. It goes something like this: As the steel and coal industries fade, small towns are dying out. Young people move away because there’s a lack of jobs.

But for the past 20 years, some entrepreneurs have quietly been working on a different narrative — one that harnesses the region’s natural beauty to build the economy. Their slow climb is starting to bear real fruit.

About 10 years ago, after a long career in computer sales, Rod Darby was downsized, and out of work.

“And I got angry about that, so I thought, ‘I’m never going to work for someone else again, so I’m going to start my own business.”

As he researched what that business would be, he started noticing a lot of activity around the Great Allegheny Passage — a 150-mile bike trail along an old rail line, connecting Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland. Construction was still in progress then, but it’s since been completed. Darby wrote up a business plan to open a bar and restaurant along the trail, in West Newton, about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh. He shopped the idea around.

“I went to a large bank, they said, ‘Nope, that’s not what we do. I went to a medium sized bank, ‘Hey, great plan, that’s not what we do.’ Went to a small bank, ‘Great plan, we’re not sure about this trail.’

Then he went to a community development program called the Progress Fund.

“They said, ‘This is exactly what we do.’ And they’ve been a fantastic partner for me, since we started.”

Progress Fund co-founder David Kahley, saw a need to support tourism in the region 20 years ago.

“So, we started basically a non-profit bank, and making loans to small businesses,” he said.

They initially invested in nearby Ohiopyle, financing a whitewater rafting facility, a bed and breakfast and other tourism projects. Today, it’s bustling with cyclists, hikers and rafters spending money to eat, shop and stay overnight.

Kahley wanted to try something similar in West Newton, which is only a 34-mile bike ride from Pittsburgh. Then Rod Darby walked in the door.

“Rod became one of the first people outside of Ohiopyle to start investing in the other little towns. So, when he approached and said, ‘I want to do something here,’ we were jumping for joy.”

The Trailside Restaurant and Bar in West Newton, Pa.

Today, Darby’s Trailside Restaurant serves pub food, boasts a full bar and a takeout beer shop. Twenty-eight people work here, 16 of them full time. And Darby said business is hopping.

“And people ask me, ‘Does the trail help you out?’, and I’m like, ‘The trail is the reason I’m here.’ ”

The Progress Fund’s David Kahley walks just a few feet from the restaurant, on to that bike trail that runs along the river.

Kahley said the Progress Fund invested in pizza and fast food restaurants near the trail, a canoe and kayak livery, and the renovation of a bed and breakfast — nearly $2.5 million in total.

“We have nine loans that we’ve done in West Newton, and it’s really, that kind of level of investment is changing West Newton’s future around tourism,” he said. “Why nine loans here? Well that Great Allegheny Passage is a huge economic opportunity.”

Based on studies and surveys over 17 years, the Progress Fund estimates nearly a million people use the GAP trail annually — creating an economic benefit of $50 million along the route, with 65 trail-related businesses opening in the past decade.

As the steel and coal industries have declined, Kahley said, West Newton and other towns in the region have faced years of disinvestment. But he said the Progress Fund is trying to help them see what they do have to offer.

“The resource here is the landscape and all the recreational opportunities,” he said. “So it is a fully invested economic development program, but it’s one that relies on the environmental qualities of the community, rather than being the extractive industry.”

West Virginia Trails

Kent Spellman is encouraged by the Progress Fund’s results. He’s a consultant with the Rails to Trails Conservancy, out of Washington, D.C. Spellman is pushing for this kind of development along West Virginia’s abandoned train tracks.

He has spent most of his life in West Virginia and said some communities are suffering from something like post-traumatic stress disorder because of the loss of industry in recent decades.

“Their future too often in southern West Virginia, but also in many northern West Virginia communities, has been determined by that big extractive industry, or that big steel mill, or that big chemical company,” Spellman said. “Those things are going away, and it’s a time for us I think in rural Appalachia for understanding that we have to take responsibility for our future ourselves.”

Spellman is currently focused on completing a 230-mile rail trail from Parkersburg to Morgantown, hooking up with the Great Allegheny Passage into Pittsburgh.

He sees rail trails as the new main street. The place where people walk their dogs and talk with neighbors — and a piece of the region’s future economy. Christine Risch isn’t quite convinced.

“Well, it may never replace what was lost by the coal industry.”

Risch is director of Resource and Energy Economics at Marshall University’s Center for Business Economics, in Huntington, West Virginia.

“Because those jobs were extremely good paying jobs, and tourism industry is lower wage, closer to minimum wage,” she said.

But Risch also sees reason for hope in the tourism industry. She points to the Hatfield McCoy trail system in southwestern West Virginia — an area she said has lost more coal jobs than most of the state. While rails to trails are for bicycles, the Hatfield-McCoy trails are for motorized all-terrain vehicles. Her center surveyed visitors there in 2014.

“We estimated based on surveys that about 22-million dollars was staying in the area, for what people were spending to buy permits to ride the trails, for lodging and food and fuel that they needed while they were in the area,” Risch said.

According to the Marshall study, the Hatfield McCoy trail system was supporting nearly 240 jobs in 2014. Risch said the number of permits sold has continued to grow since then, as has the need for lodging and other amenities to support those visitors.

“It’s not replacing the coal industry, yet, but it certainly has potential to grow, quite a lot.”

Kent Spellman said trail tourism could bring a longer-term economic boost to the region — because it can showcase the beauty and livability of West Virginia.

“And if we get just a small percentage of the people who come through our communities to be thinking down the road about maybe that would be a good place to rear a family. Maybe that would be a good place to bring my small business. That is the goal of tourism. We should think of it as a recruitment tool not as an end unto itself.”

Mary Popovich, agrees. She’s the mayor of West Newton. She said thanks to the trail, and the economic development around it, there’s excitement in their old coal town. Even the elementary school that almost closed, is now seeing increased enrollment.

“There’s a lot of houses that are getting sold to young families. This is how you help your community grow in numbers, and then you’re going to get more businesses.”

The Progress Fund has invested a lot in West Newton, hoping other former coal towns will look here, and start re-imagining their futures as trail towns.

Julie Grant is a reporter and producer at The Allegheny Front, which is based in Pittsburgh.

This story is part of the Appalachian Innovators series, which is made possible with support from The Benedum Foundation and The Appalachian Regional Commission.

Hobet Mine Site 'Poised' for Transformation into Rock Creek Development Park

About a year after Gov. Tomblin announced he would spend his last year in office focused on an economic development project on a former mountaintop removal mine site, the project itself has its first investor and a new name.

Tomblin announced in a press conference at the Capitol Thursday that the former Hobet mine site would become the Rock Creek Development Park.

The “seed project” for the site, as he called it, is a three-part investment of the West Virginia National Guard.

The Guard will use a portion of the 12,000 acre site in Boone County to expand its training operations for members from across the state. The group will also utilizes some of the land for an agriculture project that will include apple orchards and greenhouses.

The third portion of the Guard investment is an expansion of their national maintenance support facility, something West Virginia Adjutant Gen. James Hoyer said will make the West Virginia Guard “exceptionally competitive” in the Department of Defense for future projects.

The National Guard programs will initially bring 8 new jobs to the site with more in the future.

Tomblin said Thursday the Rock Creek Development Park could become a hub for industrial, commercial, and residential development in southern West Virginia.

Food & Farm Coalition Identifying Food Policy Priorities for 2016 Session

Members of the West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition hosted their second annual food policy forum in Summersville Tuesday. The grassroots group is working to expand access to locally grown foods in the state while also improving the business climate for small farmers. While the discussions were preliminary, the group is beginning to identify its Legislative agenda for the 2016 session.

“We never know from day one to the sixtieth day what it’s going to be,” Senator Ron Miller warned the group as they began identifying their issues. He urged them to be flexible as they work with lawmakers through the legislative process.

A Democrat from GreenbrierCounty, the senator served for years as the chair of the Senate’s Agriculture Committee, but now that the chamber is under Republican control, Miller no holds the position. Still, he said agricultural policies aren’t as politically divisive as many of the other issues in the statehouse.

“Where it becomes political is if we emphasize agricultural issues,” he said. “A lot of time people in leadership don’t believe it’s important in West Virginia and it’s extremely important.”

Important, Miller said, because it can provide the economic diversification some regions of the state are desperate for.

“As a lot of our more historic industries have started declining, we can see food and farm businesses start as a small niche of economic development, West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition Program Director Megan Smith said.

So, Smith and the coalition are working on a grassroots level to aid those niche industries and zero in on policy changes that will help them thrive in West Virginia communities. The coalition’s gathering in Summerville was the first step in their annual process of choosing policy initiatives to back and turning them into actual pieces of legislation they can present at the statehouse.

Tuesday’s day long session included a workshop led by Ona Balkus with the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic. The clinic works with state-level groups across the country to increase access to healthy foods, prevent diet-related diseases and create new market opportunities for small farmers. They both research and write policy while promoting effective ways to share those messages with lawmakers, like community organizing.

“Because especially I think on the state and local level, if you have an organized coalition pushing for something, you can get a lot done,” Balkus said after the workshop. “Legislators are listening. They’re not deaf to those kinds of efforts.”

The Food and Farm Coalition has seen recent success, getting lawmakers’ approval during the 2015 session for a bill that set up a better business structure for agricultural and recycling co-ops.

Still, Miller said the politics—and the money—will play a part in the agricultural issues the coalition tries to push during the 2016 session. For the sake of the coalfields, he said, he hopes agriculture doesn’t get overshadowed.

“We sometimes look for the power or the money in the state. Right now it’s gas, it was coal. Those still are two powerful areas,” Miller said, but agriculture is part of our state seal. It’s part of our history, but it’s also a part of our future and that’s what you have to do, you have to continue to emphasize the part that it can play in revitalizing southern West Virginia.”

The coalition plans to identify its top legislative priorities by the end of the summer, turn them into legislation and start shopping those bills to lawmakers for their support by interim meetings in September.

So far, possible initiatives include funding for mobile markets to increase access to fresh foods and legislation that would allow the sale of cottage foods, or foods like jams and baked goods produced in people’s homes.