Three Towns in Southwest Virginia Pursue Redevelopment of Blighted Buildings

By Lorelei Goff

The mayor of Tazewell, Virginia, Michael Hoops, recalls when local transportation and coal trains ran through town five or six times a day during the 1980s. The town bustled with residents and visitors.

Now, a coal train may pass through every couple of days, the population continues to decline – 3.31% since 2020 – and deteriorating, unused buildings cast a pall of blight on the north end of the town.

“If you’ve ever watched ‘The Walking Dead,’ you can probably imagine a post-apocalyptic area where the buildings are just run down,” Hoops says. “That’s our North Tazewell area.”

To change this, Tazewell – along with the Southwest Virginia towns of Pocahontas and Pound – is accessing state grants that will fund brownfield redevelopment projects.

Brownfields are properties deemed to be contaminated or hazardous and that don’t contribute to the local economy, such as historic textile mills in Hickory, North Carolina, that had contaminated materials inside them. Another example is the former RG Steel Plant in Beech Bottom, West Virginia, which was found to have asbestos in the buildings and multiple hazardous chemicals and heavy metal contaminants in the soil and water.

Brownfields grants can help towns inventory brownfield properties, assess which properties pose the biggest hazards or can potentially have the biggest impact in revitalization efforts, and assist in creating redevelopment plans.

The Hollar Hosiery Mills, Knit-Sox Knitting Mills and Moretz Mills in Hickory now house an organic, farm-to-table restaurant and an events venue, a frozen yogurt store, and a brewery, with plans for additional businesses to move in. In Beech Bottom, the remediated former steel plant site is now home to a number of industrial tenants.

Some grants are federally funded each year through the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s national Brownfields Program. The program provides various funding and grant opportunities for communities, states, tribes and others to assess, safely clean up and sustainably reuse contaminated properties. Those opportunities can change from year to year, and may vary in length from one year to multiple years.

Virginia also has a brownfield grant opportunity called the Virginia Brownfields Restoration and Economic Redevelopment Fund managed by the Virginia Economic Development Partnership in collaboration with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. Tazewell, Pocahontas, and Pound may all benefit from both state and federal brownfield funding.

Hoops hopes that reclaiming brownfield properties will revitalize the North Tazewell community, building on the area’s existing assets like its proximity to the Clinch River, walkability and renovated train station and visitor center, and helping to bolster the town’s fledgling tourist industry.

Amanda Killen, New Economy program coordinator with Appalachian Voices, the organization that publishes The Appalachian Voice, assisted the town in applying for a community development block grant for the block where a former bowling alley stands. She also introduced the Tazewell Industrial Economic Development Association to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.

Karen Weber, brownfields coordinator for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, then provided the town with information related to the Virginia Brownfields Restoration and Economic Redevelopment Assistance Fund program. The Industrial Economic Development Authority subsequently applied for and was awarded an assessment and planning grant. Those funds are being used to evaluate structural conditions and the abatement of asbestos-containing materials to support redevelopment decision making.

“[Amanda] really did all the heavy lifting with all this,” Hoops says, adding, “She was instrumental in getting all the players together to start moving this forward in the right direction.”

Killen believes that brownfields redevelopment causes a ripple effect by removing barriers to make the community more attractive to developers and investors.

“Brownfields projects can be a catalyst for community development by addressing blight,” Killen says. “In each brownfield case I am working with, this has been true. Often the brownfields projects are ‘the first on the dance floor’ in revitalization efforts.”

In the case of the former Cardinal Lanes bowling alley, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality is assisting the town to determine redevelopment options for the site, using an Environmental Protection Agency 104(k) Assessment Grant awarded to and administered by VDEQ. The grant is covering the cost of phase I and phase II environmental site assessments and planning efforts.

According to Cara Spivey with the Tazewell Industrial Economic Development Authority, Weber’s assistance has been crucial to moving forward on the project. Spivey notes that partnering with agencies and nonprofits to access grants is the secret success “so that we’re not reinventing the wheel.”
“(Weber) came and spoke to our Industrial Economic Development Authority about resources we could utilize to gather more information about this site, and how it would be free of charge to the town,” Spivey explains.

She adds, “My understanding is someone was interested in the site back in 2018 or 2019, but then they were unable to move forward with a project because of the asbestos. And so we hope that by doing this work, we’re at least mitigating some of the risk for a potential investor.”
Redevelopment also has a positive impact on residents.

“I think there’s a certain amount of discouragement that comes from just constantly seeing things fall apart or deteriorate, and not seeing revitalization and growth,” says Alicia Bales, a lifelong resident of North Tazewell. “And I think that our community — because of the wonderful community leaders and the grassroots efforts that’s happened here in our community — has turned that around.”

POCAHONTAS

Like Tazewell, the town of Pocahontas flourished when the coal industry was strong and has declined with it.

“Pocahontas is a shell of what it used to be,” says Ginger McCoy Cates, president of Historic Pocahontas Incorporated, a nonprofit organization that works to preserve the history and historical landmarks in the town. McCoy notes that the population has dwindled.

Cates and her family opened a vacation cabin rental business in the town.

“When we opened that business in 2015, we were told that we were the first new business to come into Pocahontas since the ‘50s,” Cates says.

Historic Pocahontas Incorporated has been working to preserve historic buildings for the past five years in the hope they will be stepping stones to revitalization.

“The biggest benefit to this project from my standpoint is doing the economic impact and feasibility study,” she adds.

The projects include the Pocahontas Fuel building, the adjoining coal company store property and a doctor’s office. While the fuel building has the potential for the most economic impact due to its size, Cates hopes the doctor’s office will be resurrected as a functioning medical office, something the town lacks.

Such an ambitious vision requires a lot of money to bring to fruition – money the town of under 300 residents doesn’t have.

Fortunately, Killen and Weber know where to find it.

An EPA 104(k) Assessment and Planning Grant awarded to and administered by VDEQ is covering the cost of phase I and phase II environmental site assessments, an asbestos and lead-based paint survey and a market and feasibility study.

According to Weber, VDEQ will encourage the use of the Virginia Brownfields Restoration Economic Redevelopment Assistance Fund for asbestos and lead-based paint abatement, though there is not currently a grant in place. A later-stage effort involves concept design work that will be finalized by the Community Design Assistance Center of Virginia Tech.

POUND

Emma Kelly, New Economy field coordinator with Appalachian Voices, has been working with the town of Pound, Virginia, for about a year, providing technical assistance with grant writing, community outreach and project management. Kelly explains that the redevelopment initiative is providing much-needed technical support and guidance for addressing blight in the town and could help establish the town as a leader in redevelopment in the state.

Another partner in Pound’s redevelopment effort is West Virginia University BAD (Brownfields, Abandoned, Dilapidated) Buildings. WVU BAD, based out of the university’s Morgantown campus, provides technical assistance to communities in West Virginia to address abandoned and dilapidated buildings. Through a partnership with VDEQ, they created a new initiative to pilot the same kind of services in Virginia.

“Our model is dependent on a sort of core philosophy that communities and the priorities and direction of those communities should be built by the people who live there,” says Carrie Staton, director of WVU BAD.

On Dec. 15, 2023, Weber of VDEQ, Pound Vice-mayor Leabern Kennedy and other town representatives, Staton and staff from the WVU BAD program, and Kelly held a community volunteer day in Pound. The workshop included training for town officials and local volunteers to inventory buildings for potential redevelopment using a process called a “windshield tour” and then assisting participants in collecting inventory data.

A windshield tour is a way to evaluate a building based on what you can see from a car or sidewalk without going onto the property. The event provided valuable information about the condition of various buildings that will help determine which properties are good candidates for redevelopment grants.

Conversations in the subsequent months will look at the community’s priorities, see where the priority properties are and discuss what some strategies might be, with VDEQ and WVU BAD providing recommendations for redevelopment strategies once the process is complete.

Kennedy has worked for two years to bring a Mountain Comprehensive Health Care Corporation medical office into the town, which is scheduled to open in April. She is hopeful that an old hospital property can be redeveloped to entice a new hospital to come to town.

But her vision is broad and she sees the projects as catalysts for further revitalization.

“I think the opportunity is there to change the climate, so to speak, of our area,” Kennedy says.

Staton agrees.

“So what we’ve seen in a lot of communities is that nobody really knows where to start,” Staton says. “But once [a property] gets started, other people start to see either what’s possible with their property, or what’s possible with another property and how they may be able to tackle a problem that seemed insurmountable months before.

“You also, frankly, sometimes get some peer pressure, where maybe my house wasn’t the worst on the block, because there was another one that was really bad, but now that one is cleaned up and I’m the worst on the block.”

Tazewell Mayor Michael Hoops hopes successful redevelopment in his town will stem the tide of Tazewell’s youth leaving town to find better employment opportunities.

“I understand going off to college,” he says. “But I’d like for them to come back and maybe bring some good ideas to open their own businesses.”