Story by Chris Graham

It’s officially over and done with - Toyota will not be coming to the Shenandoah Valley.

The automaker announced in February that it will be building its eighth North American auto-assembly plant at a 1,700-acre site near Tupelo, Miss. - ending years of speculation in the Old Dominion about its possible interest in a location in Augusta County.

That speculation had lingered on even after the very public break in negotiations last year that came at the height of a furor ignited by citizens groups in Augusta upset over the intense behind-the-scenes courting that was undertaken by county officials.

The furor stands out when looking at the boisterously cheerful welcome that Silicon Valley biggie SRI International received when it announced a few months later that it was moving in just a few miles up Interstate 81 in Rockingham County - leading to the obvious question.

Why was the Toyota project reviled, and the SRI project revered?

“When I heard that news story originally, I thought, You know, that’s a great thing to have to come to this area,” says Betty Jo Hamilton, a Middlebrook farmer who helped spearhead the public opposition to Toyota in Augusta County last year.

“SRI certainly could bring a different mindset about the kinds of things that we might see wanting to come into the area,” Hamilton says. “Research and development is a huge part of the industrial picture - industries don’t happen without the research-and-development angle. So yeah, it would be wonderful to see more things like that.

“We want employment possibilities for our population that are upscale-type employment possibilities. We want people to have some upward mobility. We want our young people to be able to use their educations in professional jobs. We don’t necessarily want people to have to be tied into a manufacturing-type society,” Hamilton says.

“Why did the Rockingham-Harrisonburg project not make a splash? I have to say in one sense it’s because it’s an organic outgrowth of the university and the local economy,” says Megan Gallagher, the director of the Shenandoah Valley Network, which links organizations up and down the Shenandoah Valley interested in preserving the local way of life.

“Another important factor is that they came to an existing industrial park,” Gallagher says of SRI International’s decision to locate in the Rockingham Technology Park.

“That park has been there forever - and there’s not much in it. When you come from a smart-growth perspective like ours, we’d love to see that industrial park closer to the university and to the people who might be interacting with it. But at least they did not go out and sprawl out onto new lands,” Gallagher says.

The megasite issue from last year is a study in contrast almost across the board, says Gallagher, the author of a book on development entitled Crossroads: Avoiding Conflict in Economic Development.

“If I was updating the book today, the megasite would be a textbook case of how not to do it. Secrecy, size, scale, location - it pretty much violates every rule of a seamless economic-development action,” Gallagher says.

“It wouldn’t have taken too many conversations to find out that the community probably wouldn’t support the project. I know that there are still officials in local government who claim that the community was hugely supportive of this - and they have a poll to show it. But I watched the media accounts of what took place down there - and I can’t imagine that was just the tip of the iceberg,” Gallagher says.

“Even if they hadn’t disclosed the project, the idea of a megasite anywhere in the county could have been discussed long in advance without harming the confidentiality of the real estate or business recruitment. The fact that it wasn’t - and that a done deal was seemingly cooked - leaves you with nothing but a public outrage. And then the reaction to the public outrage was, Trust us, we know best, shut up, you’re wrong,” Gallagher says.

The fact that Toyota eventually decided that enough was enough and went elsewhere in its search for a site for its newest assembly plant shouldn’t have come as a surprise given the circumstances of how things transpired here, to hear Gallagher tell it.

“Companies leave not because they couldn’t get the land, not because they couldn’t get the water, not because it wasn’t a great site - companies leave because they don’t want that ugly beginning,” Gallagher says.

“Any discussion of that size economic-development project could have occurred - and you could have judged the local tenor. You could have actually built a base of local support, perhaps - or at least understood. And no one would have been embarrassed. I can’t imagine that there wasn’t a bit of embarrassment on the part of the marketing team at the state economic-development partnership. Here they are, the community is up in arms - and a tractorcade to the county board of supervisors meeting? That’s exactly what a new company doesn’t want,” Gallagher says.

That isn’t to say that Augusta residents can expect to not have to deal with similar issues again in the future.

“I think where we’re located, with the two interstates crossing here, and where we are with proximity to the Northeastern markets, yes, I think we will see this issue come up again,” Hamilton says.

“Augusta County is a prime location. We’re eight hours from New York City. We’re eight hours from Atlanta. It’s just a prime location because of the interstates more than anything,” Hamilton says.

“Those people who say that are exactly right, that we’re good for a lot of things,” says Nancy Sorrells, the chair of the Augusta County Board of Supervisors, who was one of two members of the board to express publicly her opposition to the development of the megasite before negotiations on the project were broken off.

“We’re good for agriculture and open space - but that also makes us good for other potential megasites. So we have to be vigilant. I think we have to be focused on strengthening our comprehensive plan and our country ordinances and continuing to develop our vision for where we want to go in our future,” Sorrells says.
“I think we need to be involving the people in that process from the start to the finish,” Sorrells says. “The whole thing about the megasite, I thought, was that we never really went to the people and said, This is an opportunity, here are the pros and the cons, now, what do you think about this?”

Of course, in the end the people did get the chance to weigh in on the issue - even if they had to create that opportunity for themselves.

“I guess I would have rather had it come about in a different fashion - and have the people involved from the very beginning. But I think we see the results in the work on the comp-plan update,” Hamilton says, noting the increased participation in the county planning process that has come in the wake of the megasite discussions of last year.

“People are very interested in the comprehensive plan for Augusta County - and they’re very interested in having input into that. And realize the importance of it - and realize that when you’re thinking about development, whether it’s economic development or residential development, it’s something that you can’t just think about today, you’ve got to think 10, 15, 20 years down the road, that what we do today is going to make a difference 20 years down the road,” Hamilton says.

And one thing that the people are saying loud and clear is that they want to see a more diversified economy than one that would be dominated by a single big player like a Toyota.

“Looking at the economic stability that we get from businesses like SRI that employ, say, 100 to 200 people, rather than having all your eggs in one 2,000-employee basket, if something would happen to that industry that employs a lot of people, your economy doesn’t feel such a fluctuation if something goes downhill in an industry like that,” Hamilton says.

“I don’t know that we’re ever going to see a large influx of manufacturing jobs - just the way that the world is developing, the manufacturing jobs tend to be going overseas. And so we need to be flexible with the changing jobs - and realize that manufacturing jobs aren’t totally the wave of our future. We’ve got to mix that in with high-tech and research kinds of things,” Sorrells says.

“I think we make ourselves less vulnerable to a megasite if we’ve done a good job of creating that balanced economy,” Sorrells says.

Filed under: 7-April 2007 Issue