Home Care In Danville, IN

Almost 20 industrial sites in Danville and Pittsylvania County are being upgraded to shovel-ready status, and these localities now have the highest number of developed industrial sites in the state, according to Virginia Economic Development Partnership qualifications.

The locality with the next-highest number of shovel-ready sites is Chesterfield County, with three sites, according to the list of certified sites on VEDP’s website.

The VEDP’s Virginia Business Ready Sites Program designates industrial sites in tiers, ranked one through five, to signify the level of development. Tier 4 and Tier 5 sites are considered shovel-ready.

Four sites are being upgraded to a Tier 5 designation and 15 more will now hold the Tier 4 designation in Danville and Pittsylvania County. And in two other Southside localities, more Tier 4 and 5 upgrades mean that almost 30 sites are now considered shovel-ready in the region.

In Patrick County, two sites are being upgraded to Tier 5. And in Halifax, three sites will become Tier 5, and five more will become Tier 4.

This makes eight new Tier 5 sites and 21 new Tier 4 sites in Southside, according to a release from the Southern Virginia Regional Alliance. All these sites were previously Tier 2.

“Southern Virginia leads the commonwealth in the number of prepared sites, one of the reasons for the success they are achieving in business attraction,” according to the SVRA release.

This area of Virginia sees about a quarter of the state’s leads on economic development projects, said Linda Green, executive director of SVRA.

“We do a quarterly report from the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, and they always tell us where the leads went, and what you see is an exceptional number, usually about 25%, of the leads coming to our area,” she said.

This is because higher ranked sites are more attractive to developers, Green said.

Tier 4 sites are those that are considered shovel-ready. Tier 5 sites are shovel-ready with graded pad sites.

In contrast, a Tier 1 designation means that a site has simply been identified, a Tier 2 designation means that there’s been some research on the site, and a Tier 3 designation signifies that some grading and zoning has begun, she said.

SVRA is a liaison between the state and its southern localities, specifically on economic development projects.

This area of the state is also home to the Southern Virginia Mega Site at Berry Hill, a 3,529-acre site in Pittsylvania County. This site already had a Tier 4 designation, with a Tier 5 graded pad.

But it would be a mistake to solely focus on the mega site’s development, and ignore smaller industrial sites, Green said.

“This is not an either or situation,” she said. “These complement each other when you do them together.”

Large developers that are considering the mega site usually also look at an expanded 45- to 60-mile radius of sites across the region, the release said.

“This has enabled the region to focus on small- and medium-sized companies as well as the large industry partners who present the strongest opportunities for long term success,” it said. “Collectively these small to medium sized projects have resulted in mega jobs and investments to the region that has never sacrificed the steady job flow and importance of individual diversification while also looking for large regional wins.”

For example, several high-profile developers have located medium-sized operations at the Cane Creek Centre industrial park, which is jointly owned by Danville and Pittsylvania County.

Walraven, Morgan Olson, Tyson and AeroFarms are all located in the Cane Creek park.

“Morgan Olson could be considered a mega project in and of itself,” Green said of the walk-in van assembly operation, announced in 2019, that created over 700 jobs.

And in the Southern Virginia Technology Park in Halifax County, IperionX, the first completely recycled titanium manufacturer in the U.S., will bring 108 jobs to the area and open by the end of 2023.

The results speak for themselves, Green said.

“It’s really clear that the economic developers aren’t just sitting back waiting,” she said. “There’s been an incredible amount of activity in the small to medium and even large sites.”

These localities can expect an increase in interest from developers with the upgraded tier designations, said Lee Vogler, city councilman and chairman of the Danville-Pittsylvania County Regional Industrial Facility Authority, which owns many of the city and county industrial sites including Berry Hill.

“If you’ve got Tier 4 or Tier 5 sites, you’re telling an industry that they can move in pretty much right away, which is hugely beneficial,” Vogler said.

The interest in the Berry Hill sites “went from occasional to non-stop” when it was upgraded to Tier 4, he said, adding that companies seem to want to get things underway at a faster pace these days.

“When I started on council a decade ago, a company would kind of put feelers out, and it would be a year or two years of slow preliminary work in site selection,” Vogler said. “Now, they might finalize a decision in under a year and want to be hitting the ground running a few months after that. So if you don’t have sites that they can go right into, you’re typically out of the game.”

SVRA received a grant of about $1.5 million from GO Virginia Region 3, and another of about $545,000 from the Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission to further site preparation.

Prep was targeted for “areas identified with specific assets for transportation such as rail and highway access, utilities inclusive of significant supply of natural gas, electricity and water supply along with a demonstrated available labor shed and workforce pipeline,” said the release.

Green said the region will continue its work to attract economic development projects of all sizes.

“This is not a region that is fishing for the whale of a megasite project while relinquishing small and medium sized industrial wins,” the release said.

By: Fiona Morgan

A local business owner, Nina Kirkland with Coldwell Banker VIP Realty, has filed a civil lawsuit alleging that the Downtown Streetscape Project caused flooding in her building.

The lawsuit is against the City of Danville; Louisville Paving Company; LPX, Inc.; Pace Contracting; and Gresham Smith, which is the project’s design firm. These parties are involved with the Streetscape Project, which was aimed at widening the sidewalks in downtown Danville.

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The project started in the summer of 2022, with a goal of creating safer sidewalks with more space for pedestrians to walk and sit outside.

Kirkland owns the property at 317 W. Main St. in Danville, where she runs the real estate company VIP Realty. According to the suit, she’s owned the building for 43 years and has never had major flooding, aside from a small amount of water seepage in the basement after severe rainfall.

Around November 2022, when sidewalk construction began in front of Kirkland’s building, “the property has experienced severe flooding in its basement,” the suit says. “The flooding occurs after any rainfall event, regardless of its severity.”

According to the suit, the flooding has caused water and mold damage to the building, and damage to personal property and business records stored in the basement. Exhibit A in the suit shows photos of boxes and drawers of files sitting wet in several inches of water.

Kirkland’s lawyer Ephraim Helton said that just last week, the building had two to three inches of water in the basement again. While they don’t have a verified source or cause of the flooding yet, since construction and the flooding started around the same time, that timing can be used as evidence. He explained a legal term called “res ipsa loquitur,” which is Latin for “the thing speaks for itself.”

“So if you previously never had a problem, and the only reason you have a problem now is due to something new occuring, that new occurrence has created that problem,” Helton said.

Helton explained that there was an old well located a bit west of Kirkland’s building, which is shown on an old City of Danville map. Helton believes that the well was collecting water runoff from an underground spring.

“Under all of these properties that start right about where Kirkland’s property is, there’s an underground spring that runs from that area, a little bit east of Fourth Street, and it runs all the way down to Centre College,” Helton said. “Right about at St. Mildred’s Court, you’ll see a dip there, that’s where that spring empties out.”

Helton said they have witnesses who say that construction workers filled in or dammed up the well, and allegedly knew the risk of doing so.

“We have people that will testify that they talked to construction workers, and they filled in this well, and we believe the well was taking excess runoff from all of the buildings,” Helton said.

He continued, “The construction worker, and I don’t have a sworn affidavit at this point, the construction worker actually said ‘we believe this may flood a lot of properties around here,’ and they filled it in.”

The Advocate-Messenger did not hear back from attempts to get comment from Louisville Paving Company, LPX, Inc., Pace Contracting, and Gresham Smith.

Danville City Manager Earl Coffey said that the city does not comment on active litigation.

The lawsuit is in the initial stages of collecting and verifying statements. Witnesses are currently putting together statements. They haven’t had any discovery yet, which is when parties exchange information and evidence. They will be starting to file interrogatories and requests for documents.

While they don’t know for a fact where the water is coming in from, Helton said evidence suggests that water is coming up from the ground.

Kirkland technically owns two buildings, which from the front, appear as one building with two sides. They took up flooring in the basement of her adjacent building at 313 W. Main St., which is a different elevation than the building at 317 W. Main. The flooring in the adjacent building was still dry.

“I’m not an engineer, but based upon what I saw today, it further supports that I think this water is underground water; it’s coming up from under the foundations,” Helton said.

He said they learned that several other buildings right next to Kirkland’s have also experienced recent major and minor flooding.

Helton owns the building at 432 W. Main St., which was built in 1887. The underground spring also runs under his building, except his building has a sump pump, whereas some of the others on Main Street didn’t need one up until now.

“The buildings that were kind of down the slope of Main Street, you knew you were going to have water here,” he said.

Helton said they tried to get compensation for the flooding damage before filing the lawsuit, but were turned down.

“We tried to resolve this very amicably with the city … and we couldn’t get any movement,” Helton said. “So the city suggested we discuss this with the contractors. We sent all of our damages to the contractor, the remediation costs, the damage to personal property, and the contractor said ‘not our fault, it’s the architects.’ At that point we were left with no choice but to sue the city, the contractor, and the architect, and they’re going to have to figure out which of them caused this problem.”

Exhibit B in the suit shows an estimate of $32,263 for fixing structural damage and waterproofing of Kirkland’s property. An estimate for mold damage remediation is $6,424.

“Kirkland is not trying to obtain any large settlement or amount of money from the city, the contractor, or the architect,” Helton said. “What she is trying to do is simply be compensated for the destruction of all of her personal property, … to stop the rainwater that’s coming into the basement, … and to remediate black mold.”

Helton said they are working with the city to install a sump pump for a short term solution. However, they have to figure out how to discharge the water from the sump pump with concrete all around the building. He said the city is working with them in good faith to install a sump pump.

Further allegations

Another goal of the Streetscape Project was to slow down traffic on Main Street. Crews have or are installing new street and sidewalk lights, new traffic light poles, new trees, curb bump-outs, and overhead utility relocation. The overall goal is to create more pedestrian safety, and for more people to shop downtown.

However, the suit alleges that, “Despite the above-quoted lofty goals the City of Danville claimed to have for the project, in reality, the project has decimated downtown-based small businesses by making foot traffic on sidewalks hazardous or impossible, blocking or complicating access to those buildings, causing traffic congestion, and complicating, or for periods completely eliminating, convenient downtown parking for these businesses.”

“The above-described disruptions caused by the City of Danville’s Project has resulted in the loss of thousands of dollars in income to the same small business owners the project purportedly was meant to assist, including plaintiffs,” the suit alleges.

Earlier this year, Danville sent grants of up to $10,000 to eligible downtown businesses that lost revenue due to sidewalk construction. However, since construction continued through the summer, businesses have likely lost even more revenue.

“I think it’s very sad that the city spends all this money on this project, and they have in essence devalued, and caused a great deal of economic hardship, on one of our major Main Street properties,” Helton said. “That doesn’t even take into account the economic impact that all these merchants and business people have endured as a result of the disruption of the sidewalks.”

Under count 1 of negligence, the suit says that defendants had a duty to exercise reasonable care or competence in the planning, design, engineering, and construction of the project. It also says the City of Danville had a duty to hire contractors who could do construction in a workmanlike manner, free from defects, with an appropriate design, and using suitable materials.

Under count 2 of nuisance, the suit alleges that Danville was negligent in hiring contractors that failed to do construction that was free from defects, with an appropriate design, etc. Count 3 alleges that defendants failed to comply with the Kentucky building code. Count 4 regards emotional distress caused by damage to Kirkland’s property and her business.

According to a Danville City Commission meeting on May 26, 2022, the city received one construction bid for the project, and the commission approved that bid. In that meeting, which happened on a Thursday, City Engineer Josh Morgan said that the city had opened bids only earlier that week.

The one bid was for $6.12 million from Pace Contracting, which Morgan said was higher than the original estimate. He said an engineer estimate for the project was between $4.5 and 4.7 million, but that the higher bid didn’t surprise him due to rising material costs.

City Manager Earl Coffey said in the May 26, 2022 meeting that they had met with other contractors who were willing to bid, but they couldn’t meet the schedule for the project.

The city had hoped to get construction going by early June 2022. After about 20 minutes of discussion in the special-called meeting, mostly about budgeting for the project, electrical work and tree care, commissioners agreed to accept the bid, citing a limited timeline with not many other options, and an immediate need for safer sidewalks.

Helton hopes to get a mediation scheduled quickly where all parties could sit down and possibly come up with a solution. Going through full litigation could take 18 to 24 months. He said he’s worried about Kentucky getting more rain as the winter months come, which could further deteriorate the building.

More News

Danville and Pittsylvania County are expecting dramatic growth in coming years, bringing significant changes to the area. According to its residents, the region is ready for some of these anticipated changes, like increased tourism, and unprepared for others, like rising demands for broadband, child care and housing.

At four events between December and April, residents could participate in The Big Sort, an exercise that asked them to weigh in on trends that the region can expect to see in the next 20 years.

The workshops — two each in Danville and Pittsylvania — were organized by the Partnership for Regional Prosperity, an organization focused on how to prepare for the growth in the region.

On Wednesday, the community learned the results of the workshops. These results identified the region’s level of preparedness for each trend, according to the opinion of the participants.

“This is good information that can feed into something like an updated economic strategic plan or an action in public policy,” Beth Doughty, manager for the Partnership for Regional Prosperity, said at Wednesday’s event.

With this information, the partnership will help the community focus on three weak areas: child care, infrastructure and housing. The organization plans to initiate collaborative conversations and identify resources for the city and county.

“The Big Sort exercise helped leaders and residents get their heads around what might be coming in the future,” Doughty said. “The Danville and Pittsylvania County region is experiencing unprecedented success in economic development and is seeing growth, and change has to come with that to accommodate that growth.”

About 150 people participated in the sorting process, organized into 37 teams.

At each workshop, residents were put into teams of between three and five people. Each team got a deck of 47 cards describing trends that are expected to shape the future of the region, including society, technology, economy, environment and politics. For each trend, teams answered two questions:

“How certain are we that this trend will occur by 2042 in Danville and Pittsylvania?” and “How much impact will this trend have on the future of Danville and Pittsylvania by 2042?”

Then, teams placed each card into a quadrant of their game board based on its degree of certainty and level of impact.

The exercise encouraged teams to think like futurists, not like historians, Doughty said.

Teams also ranked the region’s readiness for each trend on a scale of 0 — least ready — to 10, most ready.

The results were compiled, analyzed and then shared with the community Wednesday at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research.

The Big Sort results can tell the region which issues to focus on and prepare for, Doughty said. Twelve trends were ranked “high certainty/high impact” by at least half of the teams.

Of those 12, residents think the region is better prepared for the following five, which ranked above the median in terms of regional readiness:

“These high-readiness trends are really evidence of the work that’s been done in the region to improve the economy, make progress and be on the precipice of unprecedented growth and prosperity,” Doughty said. “But the lowest readiness is the flipside.”

The other seven trends ranked below the median in terms of regional readiness:

These problems aren’t unique to Danville or Pittsylvania County, Doughty said.

More than half of the teams considered these 12 trends “high certainty/high impact” and ranked the region’s readiness for each trend on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being least ready and 10 being most ready. Here are the average rankings for each trend. Data courtesy of the Partnership for Regional Prosperity.Infogram

“Many, many large and small communities in the region are looking at exactly the same issues,” she said. “The problem is no one has really come up with a solution.”

Leaders should pay attention to these trends now, Doughty said.

“The growth and prosperity that this region can see on the horizon, it makes it all the more important that these issues receive attention so that you can achieve what is right in front of you,” she said.

The region has already started to feel the effects of some of these trends, like a soaring demand for housing in both the city and the county, and a need for extended broadband, especially in the county.

The Big Sort analysis also compared perspectives between city and county stakeholders.

“Both groups agree that the top forces include trends in broadband, manufacturing, housing, water and sewer infrastructure, and cyber security,” said the Big Sort analysis report.

But there are slightly different perspectives when it comes to the region’s readiness for certain trends.

At the two workshops held in Danville, more than half of the teams thought that the region is more ready for the impact of trends in manufacturing, housing, tourism economy, public education investments, entrepreneurship and airport infrastructure.

Danville residents also think that the region is less ready for trends in educational attainment.

But at the workshops in Pittsylvania, more than half of the teams thought that the region is better prepared for the impact of trends in minimum wage, telehealth and e-commerce, and less prepared for child care demands.

“Both perspectives agree that the region is relatively well-prepared for the impact of increased sales tax to fund school capital projects,” the report said. And both perspectives also “agree that the region is relatively unprepared for the impact of trends in broadband, water and sewer infrastructure, cyber security, and especially housing demand.”

Doughty said there were fewer differences in opinion between the city and county workshops than she anticipated.

“I actually thought there were going to be more [discrepancies], but there weren’t in the hot-button issues,” she said in an interview after Wednesday’s event. “I was surprised that there really was largely a lot of agreement.”

Additionally, county residents could attend the workshops held in the city, and vice versa, she added.

“Participants could’ve lived in one place and worked in another, so that part of it is not scientific,” Doughty said. “And while public policy is individual, you should always look at a region as a region. You live in one place, you work in another, you shop in another.”

Regional leaders should use the workshop results to inform their next steps, the Big Sort report said, because it’s crucial for communities to be forward-thinking if they want to prepare for the future.

“Regions work better when they’re operating with foresight and empowering stakeholders to pull in the same direction,” it said. “The insights from these community exercises can inform the development of the next strategic plan for the region, which can serve as a guidance system and help align stakeholders for era-defining efforts.”

To aid initiatives in child care, infrastructure and housing, the partnership will “focus on the doable,” Doughty said at Wednesday’s event. It will research, share information, convene community conversations, promote collaboration and align resources within Danville and Pittsylvania, she said.

“The partnership is a convener, it’s a facilitator, it’s an engagement specialist,” Doughty said. “And these issues, child care, infrastructure, housing, don’t exist in silos. They’re complicated, often with people on different sides of the issue.”

The Big Sort is the first step in research toward solving these problems, she said. And the partnership needs the help and participation of the community to move forward.

“The results of this research point in a direction,” she said. “They’re not an answer.”

City and county leaders said in a news release Wednesday that the results of the Big Sort are useful in discerning a direction for future efforts in the region. The workshops provided “valuable information on how this community sees itself,” said Danville City Manager Ken Larking.

The results also call for collaboration between various organizations, including the Partnership for Regional Prosperity, as well as between the city and county.

“This not only gives direction to the partnership, but to local governments and community agencies who will work together to help create the future our region desires and deserves,” said Stuart Turille, Pittsylvania County administrator.

Editor’s Note: This article previously appeared in a different format as part of The Atlantic’s Notes section, retired in 2021.

This summer, Deb Fallows and I visited the southern-Virginia town of Danville, and the surrounding rural areas of Pittsylvania County, Virginia, and the adjoining Caswell County, North Carolina. In its heyday, Danville was a thriving textile and tobacco community. The famed Dan River Mills operated along (you guessed it) the Dan River, which flows through the center of town and from which the town draws its name.

After the textile mills closed and much of the tobacco business collapsed, Danville went through a long decline—like many other communities in this part of the Piedmont region.

Over the past few years, a fascinating recovery has been under way: in the downtown, through reuse of abandoned mill and warehouse structures as new residential and office spaces; in areas that had lost mill jobs, through agricultural, chemical, and advanced-manufacturing start-ups; through creative use of money provided through the “tobacco settlement”; through advanced broadband capacities; and in other ways. You can read the set of articles that Deb and I did on Danville and its region here.

Today The Roanoke Times has an editorial called “Lessons From Danville,” which mentions our reporting and extends some of the implications to other small towns and cities in the region and beyond.

Because so much of the reason for Deb’s and my ongoing reporting is the hope that ideas and solutions that have been tried out in one place—like Muncie or Fort Wayne, Indiana; or Brownsville, Texas; or Eastport, Maine—might apply elsewhere, we’re gratified by efforts, like The Roanoke Times’, to consider the experiences of other communities.

Samples from its editorial:

Danville still has plenty of troubles, of course—the Ikea plant there recently announced its closing. But economic development everywhere has always been several steps forward and several backwards at the same time. The big picture is that Danville is undergoing a remarkable transformation, from a Southern mill town without any active mills to a poster child for how to build a new economy out of the ruins.

And:

Whatever Danville has done, it’s mostly done on its own, which ought to be a pretty powerful message but also perhaps a scary one to some communities. National politicians can be glib about assigning blame—be it foreign competition or rapacious corporations—but local leaders need to ignore all that and get to work fixing their own communities.

The lesson for voters: If your local elected officials aren’t doing that, replace them with ones who will. Danville provides a pretty good “up-by-the-bootstraps” example of what can be done.

Worth reading and considering, beyond Virginia and North Carolina. Thanks to the editor of The Roanoke Times.

The ‘St. Thomas More New Year’s Challenge’ wrestling tournament attracted 23 high school teams to the David S. Palmer Arena in Danville on Thursday and Friday. Tournament Director Ben Montez says it was a dual team tournament where winners advanced to the next round…

Audio Player

{Audio: ‘’Really the whole idea is to get these teams here and just wrestle. Get as much wrestling as you can. There are teams that are going to go for first, second, and third place but a lot of teams just want to give their wrestlers experience on the mat. And we do everything we can here to do that. That’s our real goal.’’}

Montez says the teams came from a wide area….

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{AUDIO: ‘’We’ve got teams from Wisconsin, Indiana, (and) Illinois. We’ve had teams come from Michigan and Missouri in the past. And in the past it’s been a larger tournament, and then it got small – you know, partially because of COVID. And now it’s getting bigger again.’’}

Montez is the head wrestling coach at St. Thomas More High School. He notes the six mats of continuous competition makes Danville’s Palmer Area the perfect place to host it….

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{AUDIO: ‘’Let’s say if we had another five or six teams – we have space for two more mats. So we couldn’t ask for more than that. And you know, the staff here has just been outstanding! They are just the nicest group of people and helpful. Every time I run into one of them they ask ‘Is there anything you need? What can we do for you?’ – You know, how does it get better than that?’’}

Although the focus is on wrestling, Montez hopes the high school competitors get something else out of it…

Audio Player

{AUDIO: ‘’What I want kids to come out of it – I hope they come out of it is, they realize once they get through this they can do anything else. That they have it within them to succeed if they just don’t give up and keep on going.’’}

More than 400 wrestlers participated in the two-day event. And when you add their fans and coaches, Montez estimates the tournament brought about one-thousand visitors to Danville. And he adds he is already looking forward to next year’s event.