Editor’s Note: This article is now complete. We’ll have a BreakDown article to go in-depth on this trip and a bonus photo article.
SouthsideCentral is riding along with Danville City Council and the Industrial Development Authority to tour Lynchburg’s redevelopment efforts in their downtown… and you’re right here with us! The bus leaves around 12:30 PM and we’ll be back in town around 9:00 PM.
Be sure to refresh this page often throughout the day as we’ll be adding photos, commentary and what’s happening all throughout the trip. We’ll clean the article up when we get home and add some bonus coverage. It’s the only LIVE! coverage of this, and we’re glad you’re following along!
And I thought I was running late…
All righty! We’re the first to arrive.
It’s 11:45 AM, and I’m still the only one here. Nice. Mark Aron from River City TV stopped by to say hello. He’ll be videoing today’s road trip and will make a TV program out of it. Today’s schedule is to arrive at Lynchburg City Hall at 2:00 PM. We’ll have a presentation about their Downtown & Riverfront Master Plan and the Bluffwalk. At 3:30 PM, we’ll head to Monument Terrace and board Lynchburg’s trolley for a tour of the redevelopment area. After a reception at the Craddock-Terry Hotel, we’ll head back home.
John Gilstrap beats me to the bus
People are starting to arrive. And we’re ready to go.
Mayor Sherman Saunders, Vice Mayor Gary Miller, Buddy Rawley, John Gilstrap, James Buckner, and Lee Vogler are on the bus. We’ll pick up Larry Campbell at WKBY outside of Chatham. That’s seven out nine council members. From the IDA, we’ve got Neal Morris. That’s it. Boo.
City Manager Joe King, Economic Development director Telly Tucker. Corrie Teague, Arnold Hendrix and Mark Aron are here from the city. City Attorney Clarke Whitfield will meet us in Lynchburg. Denise Thibodeau from the Danville Register & Bee is the other media representative with us.
Telly Tucker talks to IDA Chairman Neal Morris
Mark Aron is way too comfortable back there.
We’re riding on a beautiful D&M Bus Lines bus today. Super comfortable and it’s even got wi-fi. At 1:30 PM, we’re at the intersection with Route 40.
1:55 PM – We’re 11 miles out of Lynchburg. Telly Tucker tells us about today’s plans.
2:25 PM – We’re here.
Lynchburg Mayor Michael Gillette welcomes the group.
Danville’s delegation takes up the first two rows of seats.
The Mayor of Lynchburg welcomes the group. Larry Campbell asks about the success/failure rate of local businesses. The question is deflected professionally.
Lynchburg has a parking manager. Wow. They’ve also got a nice electronic voting board for City Council votes. I’m betting Danville will have one soon. Sherman Saunders is quite intrigued by it, and Lynchburg City Clerk Valeria Chambers gives us a demo and lights up the board for us.
Ooooh… fancy!
Lynchburg has adopted a 20-year master plan for their downtown, committing one million dollars a year to it. The city gets around $500K in meals & lodging taxes from just the Craddock-Terry hotel downtown. I asked City Manager Kimball Payne if that $1M commitment was ever questioned due to tough budget times, and he said it has always passed cleanly.
We’re getting a presentation about the downtown redevelopment.
Lynchburg’s Council chambers are state-of-the-art (at least compared to Danville). City staff have their own seating area and monitors are at each seat. Large-screen monitors are also on the wall.
Lynchburg owns 3 parking decks and more are privately owned. They are starting to put parking meters on a small area. The ciry manager said he’s having to get people used to the “parking isn’t free” concept. All parking & permit fees along with fines go to the parking authority, and that pays for the staff & operations (but not the public works maintenance costs). Interestingly, they don’t require 40 parking places for a 40 apartment unit development.
3:45 PM – We’re running over and our trolley is waiting.
Compare Lynchburg’s City Hall area with Danville’s.
Now this is a perfect way to combine services into a one-stop convenience.
Our trolley ride starts at 4 PM.
Is everybody having a good time?
Lynchburg’s economic development team points out places on our tour.
The view from the Bluffwalk.
What a view.
We’re touring one of the beautiful new apartments on the Bluffwalk.
Our last stop of the day is the amazing Craddock-Terry Hotel.
Let’s take a tour of the Craddock-Terry Hotel.
Being an old shoe factory, you’ll notice the shoe theme. If you leave that shoeshine box outside of your room overnight, they will fill it with your breakfast in the morning.
This is one of their banquet rooms.
This is the wood-fired pizza restaurant on the 1st floor. Denise Thibodeau, hello!
Our reception at the Craddock-Terry Hotel to end the night.
We’re going to have a BreakDownbonus photo article
A legislative junket to Lynchburg?! What next — Bali?!!
How much is this costing us? Bus with WiFi!
OMG! A voting board? A voting board for 9 would be silly! Oh maybe they can then electronically track votes and be able to share with people if they use this? If that is the case, it would be helpful when a voter wants to look over all votes by an incumbent. I like this possibility and would support it if it provides an easy access to all votes of the members.
I sat in an all-day equally important meeting today (9:30-4:00) concerning tourism for Danville-Pittsylvania. I was disappointed with the attendance of local leadership. A lot of information was shared and it was very educational. This two-day meeting was planned months ago in coordination with the Virginia Tourism Bureau, The DPC Chamber, City of Danville, and Pittsylvania County for government leadership, staff, elected officials, and local business leaders to discuss how we can move forward in marketing our area as a tourism destination. We identified pages and pages of interesting places to visit, some I didn’t even know about. Tourism is big business…. the economic impact for tourism in both Danville & PittsCo is up, and the local tax receipts for both localities was $1.9 million for each in 2013……..up 4.5% for PittsCo and up 1.9% for the City. The next part of this two-day event is next Thursday, November 6, 9:30-4:00. Anyone interested in attending, please let me know. Feel free to contact me personally if you’d like to know who was and was not at this very important meeting today.
I’m guessing those who were in Lynchburg didn’t make it. Ooh, an idea…perhaps the efforts of the County to develop anything might be taken a smidge more seriously if there were an economic development director.
I know, I know, tell it to the rest of the board.
Its ridiculous that so many council members and also staff from econ development blew off the tourism meeting for this junket. If it’s true that the tourism meeting has been on the calendar for some time, then I find this a serious embarrassment for the city of Danville.
Further, some may not think it’s a big deal, but it also irks me that some of our city leadership can’t even make an effort to wear a tie or dress respectfully to meet with leaders from another city. A good laugh can be found at Vogler’s FB page with another one of his self promoting selfies. whatever.
Putting time and energy behind generating more tourism money and exposure should be more of a priority than visiting Lynchburg and ooohing and ahhing over what we don’t have….and I’m sure the consultants hired have already covered all the best practices from around the region and US.
Good feedback. God Bless sir or ma’am. Sorry I don’t how to address you since you don’t use your actual name. There is another meeting with the tourism group next week ya know….
As far as our attire, we were told to dress casual. But if you pick out a tie, I’ll wear it next time just for you. I appreciate you following my Facebook page by the way. Please feel free to share your comments there, as well.
Thanks Mr Vogler for the banter. My issue is that the while the tourism group meets again next week (ya know), you and others missed the first part of the meeting. Is next week’s meeting a repeat of the meeting you and the group missed today? If so, my apologies. Oh, and you’re correct in that I do choose not to reveal my identity in this forum…you’re a public figure and I want to avoid any retribution.
And as they visit another city to get development ideas………back in Danville another Tobacco Commission money recipient slowly sneaks off into the night……
Interesting. Any clues as to which “business”?
Also….I find it interesting that this junket took a visit to the Craddock-Terry. Don’t forget that Hal Craddock was part of the group that purchased the old Long Mill and wanted to implement a similar project in Danville. I’m not sure if it’s still up, but the Western Sizzlin used to have pictures of the concept in its lobby.
Biggest thing D’ville could do to improve its downtown? Move the Farmer’s Market to Main Street. If you notice, L’burg puts its market right in the middle of downtown. That helps create foot traffic for all the businesses on Saturday mornings.. So many people just park at D’ville’s farmer’s market, make a quick purchase, and leave. Very, very poor planning.
The tourism meeting was scheduled months ago so why was this trip to Lynchburg scheduled on the very same day? We had the state tourism commission staff, Sandra Tanner, there to spend all day working with local representatives on a regional Pittsylvania County/Danville Strategic Tourism Plan. She and everyone else in the room were appalled that NO ONE representing Danville came. Tourism is the SECOND Largest industry in the state and no one from economic development could attend?
Ridiculous to think sitting around in a room all day yakking with fellow bureaucrats is more valuable than expanding horizons by a mix of people going to another city to see what’s going on. Some people like to sit and yak while others like to go see something happening. My hat’s off to the travelers!
I’m not sure I automatically buy that either of the options was better than the other. I’d sort of like to see an account of what got done at each thing before making up my mind.
It seems to me there are enough people working for the City of Danville that someone could have been given the assignment to attend this tourism meeting. I would like to know who received the notification of the meeting and if it was just deemed a waste of time.
Obviously what has been going on with economic development in Danville has not worked! Where is the leadership?
the meeting next week is not a repeat of the meeting yesterday! it was stated clearly that the meetings will be different and people needed to attend both meetings!
I can assure you that speaking as one citizen of Danville I am also appalled that the leadership of the city could not find one person to attend this meeting. No doubt, we would have gained a lot more from one person attending the tourism meeting than we will ever gain from having all those people on that little excursion to Lynchburg.
Tourism falls under the Parks & Recreation Department. If people are going to point fingers at any city department, that’s the proper place to point.
Nope, I’m pointing my finger at the entire city leadership. The entire bunch from Joe King all the way down the line have fumbled so many balls it is starting to be more than embarrassing. At some point the “buck will stop here” and it should stop at Joe King since ultimately he is in charge as you have repeatedly pointed out in previous posts.
I’m not this time. If there’s fault here, it’s in Bill Sgrinia’s department and he should take the heat for it. This type of workshop isn’t the type of thing that the city manager should be actively managing. Side note: When King debuted the budget proposal four (?) years ago that slashed the tourism department, he said that nobody comes to Danville for a week’s vacation. He was right. Danville’s tourism business is mainly event-based. Taking your family on the Civil War Trails isn’t going to be high on the excitement scale.
How about a report on the Lynchburg Riders dinner. Wondering if you lived it up or kept on a modest budget?
I don’t know anything about the Lynchburg Riders dinner. I’d be glad to be informed on events like that.
Where did you and others have dinner on the bus trip to Lynchburg? Or maybe you came home hungry. Just wondering.
We had a reception at the Craddock-Terry Hotel. I’ll add more to the article on Saturday and do a BreakDown.
I just realized that you meant what we had for dinner. I strangely thought “Lynchburg Riders” was some group from Lynchburg. Oops.
I think it’s always edifying to know how people treat the taxpayer’s dollar when they use it to feed themselves.
Lynchburg is not a new neighbor of ours, so why the “sudden” interest. They could have used technology to visit couldn’t they? They should be looking for ways to save money as they try to learn what others promote themselves for business. Council gave themselves a raise, retirees extra money, and we owe millions due to failed business they helped to provide funds to. Our utility department, which was once profitable, now is in the red-and they take a bud trip to Lynchburg.
Why, I think I’ll write a BreakDown article about all of your points! (Actually have been writing it today…)
[…] Lynchburg Trip With City Council & The IDA – LIVE! (10/30/2014) […]
[…] Lynchburg Trip With City Council & The IDA – LIVE! (10/30/2014) […]
[…] Lynchburg Trip With City Council & The IDA – LIVE! (10/30/2014) […]