Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 6, 1995 TAG: 9503060081
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RON BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: FINCASTLE LENGTH: Long
In the past two years, Botetourt has attracted at least nine industries and $20 million in new industrial investment.
From 1990 to 1994, the number of business licenses issued in Botetourt increased by 46 percent, the biggest jump of any locality in the region.
Two things are driving the transformation of the county, once best-known for its orchards, into one increasingly identified with corporate relocations and expansions:
The lay of the land is more important than the roll of the dice.
Botetourt is not only blessed with plentiful flat land - a precious enough commodity in the Roanoke Valley - it's close to Interstate 81 and other major roads leading in and out of the Roanoke metro area. That's enough to woo some growing businesses in need of elbow room.
Lawrence, which has been in Roanoke on Plantation Road, is bursting the seams of its old facilities. It had to rent land to park about half its tractor-trailers on weekends. It also rented warehouse space to accommodate its business, which grew from $18 million gross in 1992 to a projected $25 million for 1994.
With 17 acres along U.S. 11 between Hollins and Cloverdale, Lawrence can park all of its vehicles on site. The company's warehouse, garage and office space will nearly double. And while it now takes up to 30 minutes for Lawrence's trucks to get to and from I-81, they'll be on the interstate within minutes.
No wonder company President Chip Lawrence says his decision to move from Roanoke to Botetourt came down to one issue:
``Location, location, location.''
Just as important in Botetourt's makeover may be the attitude of local government officials.
With the onslaught of subdivisions, booming student populations and the rumblings of suburbia, county officials are scrambling to find new ways to raise tax revenue to support the needs of new residents.
Since 1990, more than 1,000 houses have been built in the county. By the end of this year, homes built in the 1990s could equal the number built in all of the 1980s.
``I don't think that at any time we solicited residential growth,'' says Bob Layman, chairman of the Board of Supervisors.
Especially when County Administrator Gerald Burgess estimates that it takes $150,000 in assessed property value to cover governmental expenses incurred for a family with children. The average assessed value of a home in the county is about $70,000.
Botetourt officials have set their sights on attracting commercial and industrial development - which typically pays more in taxes and demands fewer services than residences.
Consider the county's largest industry, which paid more than $700,000 in taxes in 1994. ``I would say that Roanoke Cement pays more in taxes than any subdivision in the county,'' Burgess says.
Those figures have gone a long way toward changing the agenda of the county's government officials.
When industrial prospects came calling in the past, the county government had no real feel for where potential industrial sites were located.
That changed in the mid-1980s, when then-County Administrator John Williamson started pushing the county to purchase industrial sites and develop them. Botetourt embarked on a program of putting roads, sewer lines and water lines into its parks. It also could control the price of the land, and decide who occupied it.
Now economic development is a priority.
``I would say that I spend at least a quarter of my time on economic development,'' Burgess says. ``The payoff to the county residents is very large. One of our emphases is to shift the tax burden away from residences to industry. In order to do that, you have to recruit.''
``We've got a lot of land''
Other rural counties on the outskirts of the Roanoke Valley feel the same economic pressures.
``We are lopsided, in that most of our tax base comes from residential development,'' says Sue Gilbert, an administrative analyst for Bedford County Administrator Bill Rolfe. ``Our biggest burden is the tremendous growth in the school system.'' Enrollment in Bedford County has jumped by about 1,000 since 1990.
In response, both Bedford and Franklin counties, once the kingpins of agriculture, are developing industrial parks so they can make a pitch for manufacturing plants.
Bedford County set up the Lake Vista Corporate Center in Forest in 1993. Among the park's recent additions are Ferguson Enterprises and Innovative Machining, two businesses that moved there in 1994. Innovative Machining already is planning an expansion, which will bring its total investment to nearly $1 million. Ferguson's initial investment was $900,000.
The county hopes to woo other prospects with a 60,000-square-foot shell building.
Franklin County voters in November approved a $1 million bond referendum to develop industrial sites at Ferrum, Snow Creek, Rocky Mount and Smith Mountain Lake.
Williamson, the former Botetourt County administrator, is now an executive with Roanoke Gas Co. and president of the Roanoke Valley Economic Development Partnership, the valley's main economic development agency. He is urging the rural localities around Roanoke to take additional steps to prepare themselves to attract industrial growth.
He points out that Roanoke Gas already is looking at the corridor along U.S. 460 between Roanoke and Bedford as a potential growth area. It has held preliminary discussions with industries in Bedford to see if extending gas lines would be economically feasible.
Roanoke Gas, he says, also plans to review studies about the cost of extending gas lines along U.S. 220 between Roanoke and Rocky Mount.
Williamson says Franklin County is positioned to attract industry. Its access to U.S. 220 would allow companies to take advantage of business opportunities in Roanoke and in Greensboro, N.C. The county's potential could depend, he says, on the willingness of the Board of Supervisors to invest in water and sewer lines along the corridor.
This new emphasis on economic development in the rural counties around Roanoke isn't likely to change.
For one thing, Lawrence notes, businesses are learning that taxes are cheaper. Botetourt's real estate tax rate is 75 cents per $100 valuation, compared with $1.20 in Roanoke.
More importantly, the rural counties are where the land is.
Some Roanoke Valley business leaders bemoan a lack of industrial sites and blame the region's mountainous terrain. That's not so, Lawrence contends. It's just that the industrial sites are no longer necessarily in Roanoke, Salem and Roanoke County.
``We've got a lot of land,'' Lawrence says. ``We've got land in Botetourt, land in Bedford, land in Franklin, land in Montgomery. Everywhere we look, you've got land.''
He praises Botetourt officials in particular.
``It becomes a crossing of the lines,'' he says. ``You've got the old agricultural community that is having to give away some of its roots to commercial development. We're lucky to have a Board of Supervisors that comes from both sides of the table. They realize that we will have to make sacrifices if the county is to have the tax base to keep quality schools and other services.''
Not everyone agrees so readily, though. When Lawrence was seeking its rezoning in 1993, three Botetourt residents showed up to speak against turning farmland into industrial land.
One of them, James Crosby, said he was concerned that industrial growth would drive away newer, affluent residents who have moved to Botetourt for the country life. ``I came down here because I wanted to live here, not in the North,'' Crosby, a transplant from Pennsylvania, told the board.
But the supervisors were unimpressed.
One supervisor told Crosby the only way the county has made itself appealing to Northern transplants has been by encouraging a balance of residential and industrial development: ``We can't just tell them, `No, we've got somebody who wants to come down from Pennsylvania and enjoy our fresh air.'''
A balancing act
Botetourt County supervisors agree that industrial development should not come at any cost. Their guidelines are simple, says Ned McElwaine, assistant county administrator. They want clean industry with well-paying jobs. The company must be a good corporate citizen.
The Board of Supervisors seemed willing to sacrifice employment opportunities to maintain the aesthetics of the county. When Roanoke Cement said in 1991 it would burn hazardous waste in its production process, the supervisors said no and filed suit.
Roanoke Cement backed down. The company was sold to a management group that now plans a $36 million modernization that would use a cleaner manufacturing process.
``The board has always been pro-business, assuming it is the right type of business,'' McElwaine says. ``You can't have a conflict with residents. It has to be a good match.''
County planners have tried to segregate industry into commercial pockets to keep them from conflicting with growing residential communities.
Botetourt, which imposed its zoning ordinance in 1960, has dedicated much of the roadside corridor around U.S. 220 and U.S. 11 at Cloverdale to industrial growth. The county also was one of the first in Virginia to dedicate land around interstate exchanges for commercial-industrial purposes.
Burgess, who gained experience in development while working in high-growth areas of Tidewater Virginia and Florida, says the trick will be to expand the county's industrial tax base in a way that does not adversely affect the quality of life that made the county desirable in the first place.
''We are interested in high-quality residential and clean industry,'' Burgess says. ``We would turn down an industry that wouldn't be compatible with those objectives.''
On occasion, that has forced the supervisors to make hard choices. The board attempts to take some of the guesswork out of its decisions by asking Burgess to calculate the cost and benefit of allowing an industry to move to the county.
That ``return on investment'' philosophy is based on a relatively simple financial equation: Can the county make back in taxes in five years what it has invested in its industrial sites?
When Connex, a maker of high-pressure pipe systems for electric, oil and gas plants, decided to move from Ohio to Troutville in 1993, it inherited a building in need of major repair.
The company's willingness to make a $3.5 million investment in what was once a dilapidated building bolstered its position with the county, which reciprocated by providing a $150,000 extension of water and sewer lines to the plant.
The Connex site is now a first-rate industrial site, Burgess says. Connex also employs about 170 people, and the county receives about $20,000 each year in taxes - meaning it will take almost eight years before the county gets back its investment.
McElwaine says healthy growth promotes the right mixture of homes and industry.
``There needs to be a good balance between existing development and future development,'' McElwaine says. ``Future development needs to include industrial.''
Staff writer Richard Foster contributed to this report.
by CNB