*** This story appeared in the Bristol Herald Courier on Saturday, Dec 08, 2007.***
ABINGDON, Va. ? A $16 million artisan center will break ground on thecampus of Virginia Highlands Community College as early as this summer,project leaders say.
Heartwood: Southwest Virginia's Artisan Gateway is the facility's recentlychosen name, and organizers say it will help drive tourism for the region.
"They can see the product in the artisan center, but the ones that are veryinterested in how it's made, they have to go on the artisan trail," saidDiana Blackburn, executive director of Round the Mountain, SouthwestVirginia's artisan network. "You're going to have to venture off theinterstate to be able to see those things."
Blackburn said one of the center's goals is to give visitors a glimpse oflife in the far reaches of Southwest Virginia, and entice them to drivearound the region, spending money in the small communities along the way.
Others go so far as to say the center is symbolic of a new regionalidentity - one that capitalizes on Southwest Virginia's unique culturerather than chasing lost industrial jobs.
"The artisan center itself has come to be seen as pretty much symbolic ofthis new economic strategy for Southwest Virginia," said Todd Christensen,deputy director for the Virginia Department of Housing and CommunityDevelopment. "It's being designed to be the most unique and interestingbuilding in the entire region."
Doug Covington, project manager for the building's design, said thecenter's look was inspired by the old barns around Southwest Virginia.
"It sits on a very prominent site next to the interstate, and it'll be veryvisible," Covington said. "So the idea is for it to be an intriguing shapeand form set against the hillside for people to say, 'Hey, what is that? Ithink I'll get off the interstate here and go see what that is.'"
Rob Jones, project manager for Heartwood, said it was just awarded $6.1million from the Tobacco Indemnification and Community RevitalizationCommission.
The amount is in addition to the $3.3 million already earmarked for theproject by the Virginia General Assembly and $500,000 apiece contributed bythe town of Abingdon and Washington County, Va.
Jones said plans are still in the works for the balance of the project'sfinancing. He said once it's operating, the center will be self-sustainingbut most likely will not turn a profit.
"It's not about running a for-profit center," Jones said. "It's aboutincreasing the economies and the livelihoods of artisans in the region."
He said a recent market study estimates in three years the facility willhave 270,000 annual visitors and will generate $2.2 million in revenue eachyear from the sale of crafts, food and beverages.
The total economic impact for the region is estimated around $28 million,Jones said.
"We are no longer isolated by our geography," Jones said of SouthwestVirginia. "We are not isolated by our economic circumstances anymore. Allof that's changed and is changing."
Christensen said the artisan center represents the "widespread economicrestructuring" of the region in the form of tourism marketing and downtownrevitalization efforts across Southwest Virginia.
He said economic development and tourism officials have realized in thelast few years that to escape the boom-and-bust cycles of industry, theyneed to put their eggs in the basket of tourism -and to draw people intothe region, they need to package Southwest Virginia as a single destination.
"If I'm coming from Cleveland [Ohio] and I hear about the Crooked Road[music trail], to me, Floyd and Galax and Abingdon and Norton, they mightas well be 10 miles apart," he said. "They're not coming so much to go toGalax or to go to Floyd or so much to go to Abingdon. They're comingbecause they want to come to Southwest Virginia and experience thisculture."
He said people around the region have begun to accept, if grudgingly, thatAbingdon is the region's cultural capital ? but in that role, Abingdon alsohas a responsibility to market the rest of the region to the world.
"Southwest Virginia has some of the most distressed communities, and a lotof its economy has been greatly adversely affected by the closing of thetextile and the furniture plants, the decline of the coal industry, thedecline of tobacco," Christensen said. "[Part of my mission is] trying tohelp that region get a new identity that's based on its culture."
He said a group of 15 people from tourism-related departments met inJanuary 2003 to discuss the goal; five months later he brought together agroup representing most of Southwest Virginia's localities to talk tourism.
"With all the things that people see of the problems with development -like global warming and tainted food and tainted environments, a lot ofthings in Southwest Virginia ... are really ahead of where a lot of thecountry wishes it could go," Christensen said. "It didn't lose things thatthe rest of the country lost."
He said marketing the region's artisans is another part of the same picturethat includes the Crooked Road, the region's growing network of hiking andbiking trails and a slew of downtown revitalization projects in theregion's communities.
Other area venues also plan to draw from and work with the artisan center,including the William King Regional Arts Center not far from where theartisan center is to be built.
"We look up on the artisan center as being a cultural sort of visitors'center that's the hub of the many-spoked wheel that includes other centerslike the arts center here," said Betsy K. White, director at William King."We have other places like this all around the region, and the artisancenter will encourage people to go out and visit all of those different
places."
She said the arts center is completing plans for a $2.5 million "artisan'scourtyard" which will be set in the hillside in front of William King toshowcase artist studios, which is also scheduled to break ground in thesummer.
Blackburn said after a year and a half of planning, the Heartwood projectis starting to come together.
"When they walk in the door, they're going to have the feel of SouthwestVirginia craft and culture," Blackburn said. "It's going to be realitybefore we know it."
