BreakDown: The Lynchburg Trip

We’ve already given you commentary and photos on Danville City Council & the Industrial Development Authority’s  trip to Lynchburg on Thursday, so let’s do a BreakDown and look at it much closer.

We’ll go from the start of the trip to the finish line. Let’s bring out a BreakDown Big Board.

• If you’re wondering “Why go to Lynchburg?”, one answer is that’s where Danville’s economic development director Telly Tucker got his start. He knows the people and the city.
• Another answer is “They Get It”, as Lynchburg continues to grow (especially in their downtown area).
• For anybody complaining about how much this chartered bus trip cost, it was only $600. That’s money well spent out of the economic development department’s budget.
• Kim Custer from that department deserves high praise for getting all the logistics of the trip handled perfectly.
• Wow. You saw from the photos that the D&M Bus Lines bus was luxurious. That was the first chartered bus I had been on in over 10 years. Times have changed… who knew a bus had wi-fi?
• I’m satisfied by the 7 out of 9 city council member attendance rate. I’m ashamed of the 1 out of 7 Industrial Development Authority’s members attendance rate. C.G. Hairston, Richard Turner, Landon Wyatt, Shirley Primiano, Max Glass and Russell Reynolds were the IDA members not on the trip.
• I’d have thought that Linwood Wright would have been on this trip.
• Who knew Larry Campbell would be hitchhiking in front of the WKBY studios building on Route 29? Heh.
• Route 29 is a fast and relatively unblocked route once you get past Tightsqueeze. Bypasses around Gretna and Altavista make it non-stop. That comes to a dead stop once you get to the Wards Rd. section of Lynchburg. That’s a traffic problem that’s going to have be fixed soon.
• I’ve gone on record saying that I like Danville’s economic director Telly Tucker, and I’ll stick with that. He’s got that “Ken Bowman” attitude, with a smile always on his face and a terrific personality. That’s a big part of being an effective economic developer.
• Lynchburg’s downtown area is at the northern end of their city so it’s not centrally located. The hills and the changes in elevation make it adventuresome for foot traffic. Just like Danville, everything is uphill from the river.
• Lynchburg puts $1,000,000 a year into their downtown efforts. If all the Job Busts completely collapse, Danville will be paying $1,000,000 a year back to the Tobacco Commission.
• Mayor Mike Gillette and two other Lynchburg council members came for the welcoming then were outta-here 15 minutes later never to be seen again that day.
• Danville could learn a lot of lessons from Lynchburg’s City Hall. One-stop service for pretty much everything that you need in Lynchburg.
• Danville could also make an investment in technology in council chambers like Lynchburg has (once they have the money for it… which isn’t going to be soon).
• Danville’s lofts/apartments building strategy in downtown is starting to work well thanks to the hospital’s residency program and Averett. Lynchburg seems to have a limitless supply of people willing and able to pay higher-end market rates for apartments and condos. Danville doesn’t have that limitless supply yet.
• Lynchburg’s downtown is fueled by medium-casual and high end non-franchised restaurants. Danville has Dell’Anno’s Pizza Kitchen, Jake’s on Main and the Golden Leaf Bistro… and that’s it. Yet.
• Boy, we sure did spend a lot of time talking about downtown parking today. HINT HINT HINT!
• I seem to remember that the River District parking study said that “The city needs to move to paid public parking in the future.” HINT HINT HINT!
• Part of the Danville Development Authority’s mission is “to make decisions and policies on parking” and to “issue debts/bonds for parking”. HINT HINT HINT!
• After the tour is over, we headed to the Craddock-Terry Hotel. That’s a boutique hotel that the City of Lynchburg worked with Hal Craddock and his partners to get built in a “public/private partnership”.  HINT HINT HINT! Pay no attention to the fact that Craddock’s group stuck the city with loan payments for multiple years before paying everything off.
• On the tour of the hotel, we heard how much a “public/private” partnership helped all of this finally come together. HINT HINT HINT!
• The Dan River Towers project in the old Dan River Research Building downtown has a plan for a high-end restaurant and Hal Craddock is one of the developers. HINT HINT HINT!
• Surprisingly (or sadly not surprisingly) at the reception, the seating became quite segregated as most of the black people went to one table and the white people went to the others. I will make it clear that does NOT hold true for Sherman Saunders or Telly Tucker, who mixed with everyone in the room.
• If you are on Danville City Council and your last name isn’t Saunders or Miller, you sure didn’t get much talk time with the Register & Bee on this trip.
• The food was awesome. Shoemaker’s restaurant did a terrific job on that.
• The bus ride home was quite non-eventful and much quieter.

So what’s going to come out of this? Here’s my predictions (Hint: I gave you HINT HINT HINTs!).

This trip to Lynchburg wasn’t a random event. Something is going on behind the economic development scenes.

My first prediction is that Danville will create a “parking authority” by means of the Danville Development Authority. That parking authority will try to either buy up or offer management services to the private parking lots around the downtown area. Just like Lynchburg, parking permit fees and parking fines would go to the parking authority’s funds for further parking developments. I’m betting that you’ll also see parking meters return on a limited basis within the next two years. This prediction is mild compared to my second one.

My second prediction is that Danville will somehow go into a “public/private partnership” to get something going in the downtown area. Whether it’s Hal Craddock’s restaurant proposal,  Hal Craddock’s boutique hotel concept or Hal Craddock’s Taxidermy Emporium, something is going to happen and the city is going to find some way to help with the financing. When that happens (and I’m predicting it will), I expect howls of protests from the small business owners that will have a legitimate right to say “Where the hell was this idea when my business was struggling?” I look forward to that outrage.

My final prediction is that Danville City Council will get an electronic voting board. Hopefully it will have bells, buzzers and fireworks. Oh wait, the fireworks will start when these things I’ve predicted start to come true.