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With Election Day coming up on Tuesday, Nov. 8, the Collegiate Times caught up with the candidates running for seats in the Blacksburg Town Council to hear their thoughts on some of the biggest local issues.
The seven members of the Council serve staggered four-year terms and are the legislative body of the local government. The Council passes new ordinances, makes rules about land use and long-term planning, and sets all tax rates.
This year, five candidates are running for three open spots. Of the candidates, John Bush and Leslie Hager-Smith are incumbents. Melvyn Jay “Mel” Huber, Paul Lancaster and Michael Sutphin are the candidates who do not currently hold Council seats. Huber was unvailable for comment.
Each day this week, the CT will feature one question posed to all candidates, so readers can compare their answers and learn more about them. Today’s question deals with developing better business in Blacksburg:
Several businesses have shut down this year, including a few chains and local businesses. How will you create a strong business environment in Blacksburg, while maintaining the smart growth and charms that people love about the town?
John Bush
Michael Sutphin
In 2009, the Town Council approved an incentives package that would encourage entrepreneurs and start-up businesses in our downtown area specifically. And what it did is after a business had been there for one year, the town of Blacksburg would waive its business license and other fees it has to pay for the town after a year. That would create an incentive for businesses downtown to remain there after a year. I think something like that — any program that provides tax benefits and incentives onto business — could help to improve not only our downtown. But I think that program could be extended to other commercial centers like University City Boulevard.
Other ways the town of Blacksburg can work on economic development is to actively recruit businesses, and I think it can also partner with the county to do this. It should be an easy sell to the businesses, because when it comes to us or when it comes to Montgomery County close to the Appalachian Trail, we've got a research university that brings a well-educated work force. We're hopefully, by 2015, going to be able to expand broadband access, have one gigabyte of connectivity. So it should be a great place for anything that's doing the outdoors, anything that's doing something with high tech industry or wants young, more involved people. I think we can work to sell and pitch Blacksburg as a place you'd want to do business.
Paul Lancaster
There are a lot of people who just come downtown to work for the day for a service industry, and then go home and have no other particular reason to be here. You’ve heard about Modea coming to the old Blacksburg Middle School site. I’d like to see a couple more businesses of that type bringing in 150 to 200 workers in various spots. If we can build a basis of downtown businesses that don’t just sell stuff to each other, I think we draw people who not only want to work downtown, but go ahead and live downtown or near downtown and eat downtown.
The one question, of course, is whether we could have a big box store anywhere. We have a special-use permit that gives us 10,000 square feet, about a third of the Walmart in Christiansburg. It would take an additional permit to build anything bigger than that. I would look at a proposal to build such a building.
Obviously, location is a big issue. There is some empty property down on South Main that’s right off the bypass and wouldn’t need any great amount of extra infrastructure. There are places where we could put in a large store like Target or Kohl’s or something like that. What I’d like to see also is a store moving into First and Main that would draw people there daily. We need a store where people need to stop after work and pick up a pair of socks or underwear.
One other thing there is that the town has made a change in that we didn’t used to allow offices on the first floor of downtown because we want the retail businesses there. We are making more exceptions to that to fill in the spaces. We’re hoping that as the economy improves, retailers will want to move downtown and will want to pay more for the space than the offices do.
A version of this article appeared in the Nov 2 issue of the Collegiate Times.
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Mr. Lancaster was part of the Wal-Mart controversy a few years back. His comments make it clear that he hasn't moved on. His idea of business development is big boxes, period.
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If we had the wal mart we would also have the movie theater by now and those businesses that closed at the new main street development would still be open. Blacksburgs biggest mistake was turning down that wal mart.
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No, the reason we have no movie theater is because there are 14 screens in Christiansburg, only a few miles away. A B'brg theater could not hope to compete in a bidding war for first-run movies against that business.
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another movie theater might be a tough business to open b/c of the one in christiansburg, but it should be a welcome idea b/c competition always drives prices down!
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I was hoping to hear from John Bush . We don't need more studies, how about more actions ? The license fee is not enough to keep a business, it amount to less than a 2k$ incentive, if you last a year. A trolley that goes form one dead shopping center through the bars downtown to another dead shopping center. What is the point of that ? Doesn't the BT already do that ?
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