Should the New River Valley be trying harder to attract the creative class?

When Rob Neukirch visited Floyd from California about seven years ago, he said he felt something special about the area. He liked the fact that the town had such a lively spirit and was full of creative people. Neukirch said he asked himself the question, “What’s this thing that I feel?” He decided to open Oddfella’s Cantina, a downtown restaurant that offered live music most nights of the week.

Neukirch and wife Michele Morris owned the bustling restaurant in downtown Floyd up until this month, when they sold it to long-time employee Julie Arrington and her partner Kerry Underwood. But
Neukirch said that it’s important for the Floyd community to “realize what you have,” which, he said, is a strong population of the creative class—a term coined by author Richard Florida.

“Look at New Mountain Mercantile or the (Floyd) Country Store,” Neukirch said. “Those places have been here for decades and have, in turn, brought in more people. Now we have things such as the Winter Sun Building, which flourishes in the arts, and Harvest Moon (a natural and organic foods store).” Neukirch said that the energy of this group of artists and bohemians continues to build, but it doesn’t just happen overnight.

“It takes some work,” Neukirch said. “You can’t just turn on the lights and sweep the sidewalk and expect people to come in.”

Darcie Luster, a lifelong resident of Floyd and manager of Bell Gallery & Garden said that Floyd was fortunate in its geography. “We’re close to the (Blue Ridge) Parkway and we’re on the Crooked Road (the music heri-
tage trail),” Luster said. “We have the wineries nearby. All of that means that we have access to tourists, and that definitely helps.”

Luster said that Floyd has always had a lot of artists but not many who sold their work in the area. With the influx of tourists and even more creative people, the town became well known as an enclave of the creative class.

Other towns in the New River Valley are still trying to figure out the formula followed by Floyd. Pulaski, for instance, has seen its economy struggle since many manufacturing jobs left town. Judy Ison, Executive Director of the Fine Arts Center for the New River Valley and a former president of the Pulaski Chamber of Commerce, said that incentives need to be given to bring the creative class into downtown Pulaski.

“It would be great to see artist colonies, studios, or workshops come into some of our downtown buildings,” Ison said. “Many people don’t realize that the arts in Virginia is a billion dollar industry. So bringing in people who can make our arts community thrive is very important.”

On the West End of Radford, Kevin Lucas,
a.k.a. Karma Kevin, has recently opened an eclectic shop called Retro to Go, which specializes in period furniture, art, and lighting from the 1940s through the 1970s. Lucas said that he thinks the New River Valley is ready for more artistic shops that offer a specialty and have quality merchandise.

Lucas, who has been involved in visual merchandising and antiques for more than two decades, said that he looks at every angle, color, and shape when arranging the merchandise in his store. “My items have a story,” Lucas said. “They are American made and have been around for years and will be around for many more years. Wal-Mart doesn’t have a story about where its stuff comes from. When I walk into Wal-Mart all I see is a big freakin’ landfill.”

As opposed to having a traditional daytime business, Lucas offers evening hours at Retro to Go. In a typically bohemian style, Lucas is loose with his hours. He opens Retro to Go around “evening rush hour” and closes around 10 p.m. “I want to give the feel of the old (Greenwich) Village or old Key West.”

Lucas said that creating such evening ambiance is important for the area. “It’s important for tourism,” he said. “I have people from out of town who are looking for something to do and are stopping in after dinner.”

But not all of the creative class centers around the bohemian set. In his book The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida stresses the importance of such creative people, but also emphasizes scientists
and those involved in the high-tech industry. Some of the economies that have really boomed over the past 20 years include metropolitan areas that have a blend of these creative types, places such as San Francisco, Seattle, and Austin. Of course, the scale of those cities is much greater than the New River Valley, but smaller examples do exist, such as Raleigh-Durham in North Carolina.

VT KnowledgeWorks is a business incubator in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center. It has assisted numerous businesses in getting started in the New River Valley, particularly businesses with a high-tech specialty. Susan Higgs, Member Services Manager for VT Knowledgeworks, said that what is going on in Blacksburg and the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center is similar to what has happened at Raleigh-Durham.

“There seems to be a renewed interest in putting money into the arts,” Higgs said, “and we have a high-quality of living in this area. I think it’s very conducive to attracting and maintaining a creative class.” Higgs added that if the area wants to continue growing its creative class, it needs to continue to invest in infrastructure. “You can look at the growth in the VT Corporate Research Center and see the importance of these creative and entrepreneurial types to our local economy,” she said.

Dr. Andrew Cohill, President and CEO of Design Nine, Inc. in Blacksburg, has long been involved in the broadband Internet revolution in the area. In leading a company that offers services such as broadband master planning, broadband project management, and open access broadband, Cohill of course believes that affordable broadband is one of the keys to attracting and retaining creative talent.

Cohill offered the anecdote of a college professor friend of his who asked his class of about 30 how many would live in a community without broadband access and not one raised his or her hand.

Broadband connectivity is one of the top two or three infrastructure considerations. He offered the examples of Galax and Danville, which are each involved in bringing more fiber connections to their towns to
increase economic and community development. And buildings are certainly another infrastructure consideration. Cohill gave the example of the growth of the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center from nothing more than a farm in 1985 to 23 buildings now with plans to
expand to 27.

In addition to building new facilities, many areas in the NRV have historic downtown buildings that are vacant, many in need of renovation in order to attract new business. “Communities need to approach building rehab projects very intentionally,” Cohill said. “They need to have office spaces on their second floors or spaces for small entrepreneurial operations. And they need to consider things such as streetscaping to make the entire area attractive.”

In addition to infrastructure, The Rise of the Creative Class discusses the importance of diversity and tolerance as keys to attracting and maintaining a new creative economy. “Appealing only to traditional families and excluding or denigrating everyone else may be good propaganda for the culture wars,” Florida writes, “but as a development strategy, it’s a disaster. Any region or politician that tries it will surely turn away a lot of talented people.”

That’s not to say that communities that attract the creative class aren’t also family-friendly. As Florida points out, the top five child-friendly major regions on one such list were Portland, Ore., Seattle, Minneapolis, New York, and San Francisco. All but one of those ranked well above
average on Florida’s Gay Index and all five were in the top seven in his Bohemian Index, illustrating that many different people can co-exist in creative communities.

In Florida’s research, he concluded that “rather than being driven exclusively by companies, economic growth was occurring
in places that were tolerant, diverse, and open to creativity—because these were places where creative people of all types wanted to live.”

For communities in the NRV to survive and even thrive, Cohill said that citizens must convince their elected leaders that the world has changed and that business as usual will not be successful. “Citizens should commit with their elected officials to buy The Rise of the Creative Class and start a three-month book club in which they can discuss the ideas and concepts. Or if they are really serious they could commit to four books, buying three additional similar books that will address these issues of economic development and have the book club for a full year.”

And by the end of it all, perhaps other communities will have that “thing” that Rob Neurkirch felt in Floyd a few years ago, convincing him to become part of the creative class in the New River Valley.

Tim W. Jackson hopes that the New River Voice is part of the rise of the creative class in the New River Valley.