Regional Investments in Industrial Sites Pay Off
Published – Virginia Business
In the 2000s, economic development leaders in Southern Virginia strategized a path for building back a regional economy decimated by lost textiles jobs.
These visionaries, according to Linda Green, executive director for the Southern Virginia Regional Alliance, decided to invest in industrial parks and other locations readied for manufacturing operations.
“We have been very blessed by local legislators … who believed in development of sites,” she says. “They were looking for economic transformation.”
Southern Virginia borders North Carolina, spanning from Henry County in the west to Greensville in the east and north to Charlotte and Lunenburg counties — all of which are localities with a diverse set of assets and strengths, Green says.
The SVRA and its local partners have attracted more than $1.6 billion in economic development investments, creating 5,000 jobs in recent years, according to Green.
The regional economic development organization champions Danville and the counties of Halifax, Patrick and Pittsylvania, which are home to more than a dozen industrial parks, says Green.
The granddaddy of them all, of course, is the Southern Virginia Megasite at Berry Hill, which boasts a whopping 3,528 acres — making it the largest industrial site in Virginia and one of the largest mega-sites (defined as industrial sites with 1,000 or more acres) available on the East Coast.
Jointly owned by Pittsylvania County and the City of Danville through the Regional Industrial Facility Authority, Berry Hill sits in the county. It’s a certified Tier 5 pad site, the highest level in the Virginia Economic Development Partnership’s Virginia Business Ready Sites Program tier system, which indicates a property’s readiness for industrial development.
While Berry Hill has flirted with suitors, the megasite hasn’t yet received an invitation to the ball. In January 2023, Gov. Glenn Youngkin made headlines for taking Berry Hill out of the running for a $3.5 billion Ford Motor Co. electric vehicle battery factory over concerns about a project partner’s ties to the Chinese government. Michigan won that project — which Ford later scaled back from 2,500 employees to 1,700 employees, citing less-than-expected demand for electric vehicles.
Before that, Hyundai had considered Berry Hill for a $5.5 billion electric vehicle manufacturing plant that ultimately went to Georgia. Additionally, Albemarle Corp., a chemical manufacturer with headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina, considered the Virginia megasite for a $1.3 billion lithium hydroxide processing facility and 300 jobs, but the company selected South Carolina instead.
Berry Hill does have a promising lead on a beau, however. In November 2023, the CEO of Microporous, a Tennessee supplier of lead acid battery separators, confirmed to Virginia Business that the megasite was the top contender for its planned lithium-ion battery manufacturing plant, which could top $1 billion in investments and create 1,500 jobs. In July, a Microporous spokesperson confirmed Berry Hill is still in the running to win the project.
What’s more, in July, the Danville-Pittsylvania Regional Industrial Facility Authority approved leasing 85 acres at Berry Hill for a lithium-ion energy storage facility to be developed in 2026 by a subsidiary of North Carolina solar energy company Strata Solar. The company has not released details on the number of jobs or the amount to be invested in the project.
Making it rain
While Southern Virginia’s largest megasite waits for the perfect match, Cane Creek Centre, another industrial park in Pittsylvania that’s also jointly owned with Danville, has filled its dance card with names in recent years.
In summer 2019, Ikea closed its manufacturing facility at Cane Creek Centre, resulting in hundreds of lost jobs. The site’s fortunes quickly turned, however, when Morgan Olson, a maker of walk-in step van delivery vehicles, announced plans in October 2019 to invest $57.8 million into bringing its own operations to the 925,000-square-foot former Ikea facility, a project expected to create more than 700 jobs.
Last fall, Morgan Olson filed a notice with the state’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act announcing plans to lay off 435 employees at the Cane Creek facility. The company’s layoffs in Virginia, Tennessee and Michigan, according to news reports, were caused by other companies delaying vehicle purchase orders.
A spokesperson for Morgan Olson declined to comment on how many workers remain at the facility. Green notes, however, that she still sees trucks and activity in the company’s parking lot. The layoffs were a major loss, she says, adding, however, “I do think they’ll build it back.”
Also at Cane Creek Centre, AeroFarms, a New Jersey-based indoor agriculture company, announced in 2019 it would invest $42 million and create 92 jobs to build an indoor vertical farm, later upping the investment to $53 million and 150 jobs. In June 2023, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, but stressed in a news release that “the critical Danville … farm continues to scale according to plan.” (By September 2023, AeroFarms announced it had emerged from bankruptcy with a new acting CEO and executive chair.)
In 2021, Walraven, a manufacturer of installation systems for plumbing and mechanical applications, said it would invest $7.15 million to move its U.S. headquarters and manufacturing operations from Cadillac, Michigan, to a building at Cane Creek, a move expected to create 46 jobs.
And in November 2023, Tyson Foods officially opened its $300 million, 325,000-square-foot food production facility at Cane Creek Centre. The Arkansas company known for brands like Tyson, Jimmy Dean and Sara Lee, described the operation as one of its most highly automated plants to date, featuring high-speed automated case packing lines and other advancements. The facility created nearly 400 new jobs.
Shovel-ready
Having a plentiful supply of shovel-ready sites has helped Southern Virginia economic development officials attract companies.
One notable example is IperionX. In 2022, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based titanium manufacturing company committed to investing $82 million in Halifax County over three years, a project expected to create 108 jobs. It was a relationship that began because of Southern Virginia Technology Park’s 50,000-square-foot shell building.
“It was actually kind of a fast and furious project,” says Kristy Johnson, executive director of the Halifax County Industrial Development Authority. The shell building that IperionX selected was the first built in that park, Johnson says. “It really is what brought IperionX to the community. Without it, we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to even speak to them.”
Virginia competed with North Carolina, South Carolina and West Virginia for the project. IperionX will begin operations at its Halifax campus in the fourth quarter of this year, according to Dominic Allen, that company’s chief commercial officer. He noted the region’s skilled workforce drew the company to Halifax.
In 2023, IperionX executives learned of a second 15,000- square-foot building available in the park and leased it for an expansion.
To build on its success, the Halifax IDA is developing a new project, the Wilkin site, consisting of roughly 250 acres on two to three parcels along Highway 360. Johnson expects to have pad-ready sites available in five to 10 years.
Henry County also continues to increase its stockpile of shovel-ready sites. In April, its board of supervisors awarded a $24 million contract to Chatham’s Haymes Brothers Construction to make about 150 acres at Commonwealth Crossing Business Centre pad-ready for construction.
“The state says it will be the only site [in Virginia] of at least 100 pad-ready acres with all utilities and rail to the site,” notes Mark Heath, president and CEO of the Martinsville Henry County Economic Development Corp.
In addition to a 7-acre, pad-ready site currently available at Commonwealth Crossing, the park also has a 100-acre site that can be developed when needed.
Henry’s Patriot Centre Industrial Park has more than 300 acres in different stages of development available. Current tenants include Howmet Aerospace, a Pennsylvania provider of advanced engineered solutions for the aerospace and transportation industries; Eastman Chemical, a specialty materials company headquartered in Tennessee; Keeco, a California home textiles supplier; and ICF International, a Reston professional services firm.
In December, the Henry Board of Supervisors and the county Industrial Development Authority approved an agreement with a South Carolina real estate developer, Marlboro Development Team, to construct a 105,000-square-foot shell building on Lot 2 at Patriot Centre. Construction is expected to cost about $3.2 million, with completion slated for 2025.
Henry also has another 1,200 contiguous acres across from Patriot Centre available for future growth.
On top of a healthy supply of shovel-ready sites, economic development officials in Southern Virginia like to point to the region’s location as a selling point.
When Green attends conferences to market the region’s industrial parks, she uses a map to hit home how Virginia is smack in the middle of the East Coast. “And we are right in the middle of those population corridors,” Green adds. “It makes a huge difference.”
When Press Glass, a Polish flat-glass fabricator for the commercial construction industry, announced plans to invest $43.55 million to establish a 280,000-square-foot manufacturing operation at Commonwealth Crossing Business Centre in 2018, an executive touted the industrial park’s proximity to the company’s production facility in Stoneville, North Carolina, as well as the easy access to highways and interstates.
Clearly, Henry was a good fit for Press Glass. In summer 2023, the company announced it would invest $155.2 million to expand the facility, the single largest business investment in county history. “It’s under construction now,” Heath says of the expansion, adding that Press Glass currently employs about 300 workers in the county.
Changing the story
David Denny, executive director of regional economic development organization Virginia’s Growth Alliance stays busy marketing the eastern side of Southern Virginia.
VGA represents the City of Emporia as well as Brunswick, Charlotte, Greensville, Lunenburg and Mecklenburg counties. While this portion of Southern Virginia has the region’s largest geographic footprint, Denny says, it also has the region’s smallest population, a fact that can make it tough to convince companies the area can deliver workers.
After crunching some numbers, however, Denny realized his area’s story didn’t stop at town limits or even at the Virginia state line. Denny decided to tell a new story – drawing a drive-time circle around Greensville-Emporia and around Clarksville.
Within those two circles lies a workforce that could reach the region within an hour, stretching from Richmond to Durham, North Carolina, and all the way to Lynchburg.
Demonstrating that companies can find workers in the region, along with working to improve the shovel-ready status of his region’s industrial sites, is Denny’s primary strategy for the region.
Greensville is home to the Mid-Atlantic Advanced Manufacturing Center, a 1,600-acre megasite located on Interstate 95 with rail access. Like Berry Hill, it’s within a day’s drive of two-thirds of the nation’s population and is easily accessible to the East Coast’s major metropolitan areas.
The Greensville Industrial Park is jointly owned by the county and Emporia. Mostly full, one available parcel remains available in the park, as well as one shell building.
About 80 miles northwest from Greensville in Charlotte County, the Heartland Industrial Park has 265 available acres and is already home to forestry equipment dealership Forest Pro and Eastern Engineered Wood Products, a designer and distributor of flooring and roofing systems for professional contractors. “Wood products are spread across [the region],” Denny says. “We’re known as the wood basket of Virginia.”
Denny is also enthusiastic about the Stonewall Industrial Site under development in Brunswick County. Currently, the 82-acre park on U.S. Route 58 offers 28 acres of developable land. In June, the project received $500,000 in federal funding for an entranceway to the park and other road work.
Future growth is the name of the game. Economic developers must always think about what will come next.
It requires courage for economic developers to make the type of investments to develop shovel-ready sites, according to Heath. Sometimes lots or shell buildings sit vacant and wait for years before a company moves in.
“It’s pretty much common sense,” says Heath, “that if you want to be competitive in economic development, you have to have existing product.”
Southern Virginia at a glance
Running along a large stretch of the Virginia-North Carolina border, Southern Virginia includes Brunswick, Charlotte, Greensville, Halifax, Henry, Lunenburg, Mecklenburg, Patrick and Pittsylvania counties, plus the cities of Danville, Emporia and Martinsville. Once rooted in tobacco processing and textile manufacturing, the area has pivoted toward becoming an advanced manufacturing hub known for its innovative workforce training. The Institute for Advanced Learning and Research is a regional catalyst for manufacturing advancement, economic and workforce development. Area higher education institutions include Averett University, Danville Community College, New College Institute, Patrick & Henry Community College and Southside Virginia Community College.
Population
Pittsylvania County: 59,171
Henry County: 48,568
Danville: 42,248
Halifax County: 33,056
Mecklenburg County: 30,232
Patrick County: 16,971
Brunswick County: 15,057
Martinsville: 13,221
Lunenburg County: 12,060
Charlotte County: 11,448
Greensville County: 10,868
Emporia: 5,601
Top Employers
• Buitoni • Caesars Entertainment
• Eastman Performance Films
• Goodyear Tire & Rubber • Keeco
• Monogram Foods • Morgan Olson
• Sentara Health • Sovah Health • Telvista
Professional Sports
Martinsville Speedway is a short track — half a mile — and hosts multiple NASCAR race weekends each year in the spring and fall. With a 3.27-mile road course, Virginia International Raceway also hosts multiple race weekends each year, including the International Motor Sport Association (IMSA) Weathertech Championship in August.
Major Attractions
While racing is the top draw in Martinsville, other attractions include the Virginia Museum of Natural History, with dinosaur and prehistoric whale fossils; the Gravely-Lester Art Garden, featuring public art and the museum’s historic Little Post Office. Eastward, Danville has the Caesars Virginia casino, as well as the Danville Science Center and the Danville Museum of Fine Arts & History. Danville’s downtown River District features bars, restaurants, shopping and boutique hotel The Bee. For those who like to get outdoors, hike the scenic Riverwalk Trail or go paddling and tubing on the Dan River.