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SERVING THE ROANOKE/BLACKSBURG/NEW RIVER VALLEY REGION
Getting along
From greenways to water service, local governments are working together
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CONTENTS SERVING THE ROANOKE/BLACKSBURG/ NEW RIVER VALLEY REGION
September 2014 F E AT U R E S COVER STORY
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Joining forces Despite a reputation to the contrary, local governments find ways to work together. by Mason Adams
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MEETINGS & CONVENTIONS Working together
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Regional collaboration on conventions helps boost tourism. by Kathie Dickenson
MEDIA Local news
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Changing times and changing ownership reshape local newspapers. by Alison Weaver
TECHNOLOGY Next generation power
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Move over, silicon. More efficient semiconductors are on the way, and Virginia Tech is playing a role.
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by Cara Ellen Modisett
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COMMUNITY PROFILE: GRANDIN VILLAGE
Grandin Village
Movies, coffee and old-fashioned neighborliness. by Sue Lindsey
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Retiring radio program director
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News from the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce 35
Chamber Champions, event sponsors and new members
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Member news & recognitions
INTERVIEW: Rick Mattioni Under his leadership, WVTF evolved from a local station to the linchpin of Virginia Public Radio. by Tim Thornton
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FROM THE EDITOR
Media malaise
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ccording to a website called CareerCast, newspaper reporter is one of the nation’s 10 most endangered jobs. “Declining subscription and dwindling advertising sales have negatively impacted the hiring power of some newspapers, while others have ceased operations altogether,” the website declared. “Online outlets continue to replace traditional newspapers, and the long-term outlook for newspaper reporters reflects the change.” In other words, the Internet is killing newspapers. Craigslist has taken their classified advertising. Niche sites have taken their display ads. Bloggers and aggregators have taken their audience. Newspapers are shrinking in staff size, in coverage area, in the size and number of their pages. For decades, people have predicted newspapers will soon be as dead as the trees used to make their newsprint. Warren Buffett disagrees. In a letter to editors and publishers of newspapers owned by Berkshire Hathaway in 2012, Buffett wrote: “I believe newspapers that intensively cover their communities will have a good future. No one has ever stopped reading when half-way through a story that was about them or their neighbors. … Technological change has caused us to lose primacy in various key areas, including national news, national sports, stock quotations and employment opportunities. So be it. Our job is to reign supreme in matters of local importance.” Maybe, but at the Virginia Press Association’s most recent annual conference, Virginia Tech Communications Professor Jenn Mackay said her research shows millennials are primarily interested in national and entertainment news. Berkshire Hathaway’s subsidiary, BH Media Group, owns scores of papers, including dailies in Richmond, Charlottesville, Lynchburg, Danville and Roanoke. Doug Hiemstra, BH Media’s chief operating officer, told the Virginia Press Association (VPA) that while some news companies fret over whether their focus should be print-first or Web-first, BH Media is customer-first. The company will deliver information to customers by whatever means customers prefer. That’s not exactly a new concept. Newspaper executives have been saying for decades they’re not running newspaper companies; they’re running news companies. Delivery method is irrelevant so long as the company can pay a staff and make a profit. That’s been a challenge, in part because so many newspapers have for so long put their content online for free. Hiemstra said BH plans to change that. Consumers pay for songs from iTunes, he said, and newspapers deserve to be paid for their intellectual property just as Bruce Springsteen deserves to be paid for his. But in a session at the VPA conference labeled “Digital Best Practices,” the director of one BH Media newspaper’s e-newsletter bragged that he has six columnists – “citizen journalists,” he called them – who regularly send him valuable content. “I don’t pay them anything,” he said. In the 1950s and 1960s, newspapers’ daily circulation exceeded the number of households in the United States. By 1970, households outnumbered daily newspaper sales. Now there are roughly three households for every paper sold. In raw numbers, U.S. daily newspaper circulation peaked in 1973 – 20 years before the first browsers began to make the Internet accessible to the public. Newspapers’ troubles didn’t begin with the World Wide Web.
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SERVING THE ROANOKE/BLACKSBURG/ NEW RIVER VALLEY REGION Vol. 3
SEPTEMBER 2014
President & Publisher Roanoke Business Editor Contributing Editor Contributing Writers
No. 9
Bernard A. Niemeier Tim Thornton Paula C. Squires Mason Adams Kathie Dickenson Sue Lindsey Cara Ellen Modisett Alison Weaver
Art Director Contributing Photographers
Adrienne R. Watson Sam Dean Christina O’Connor Don Petersen
Production Manager Circulation Manager Accounting Manager Vice President of Advertising Account Representative
Kevin L. Dick Karen Chenault Sunny Ogburn Hunter Bendall Lynn Williams
CONTACT: EDITORIAL: (540) 520-2399 ADVERTISING: (540) 597-2499 210 S. Jefferson St., Roanoke, VA 24011-1702 We welcome your feedback. Email Letters to the Editor to Tim Thornton at tthornton@roanoke-business.com
VIRGINIA BUSINESS PUBLICATIONS LLC A portfolio company of Virginia Capital Partners LLC Frederick L. Russell Jr.,, chairman
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The Spring Hollow water treatment plant, an important part of the Western Virginia Water Authority system, treats about 7 million gallons of water each day. It has the capacity to treat more than five times that amount.
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COVER STORY
Joining forces
Despite a reputation to the contrary, local governments find ways to work together byy Mason Adams erome Parnell knew he wanted to launch a brewery somewhere in Virginia. To do that, he needed good water, lots of it, and a good wastewater disposal system. He eventually chose a site near Smith Mountain Lake in Franklin County. That decision birthed Sunken City Brewery, a $2.3 million 8,800-squarefoot business. Sunken City already has grown from four employees when it was founded in 2012 to eight today. Parnell projects it will employ 25 people in three years. The brewery wouldn’t have happened if Franklin County hadn’t joined the Western Virginia Water Authority, a regional organization that provides water and sewer service to much of the Roanoke Valley. “It was very important to make sure we had a solid water source, and we had a solid sewer system,” Parnell says. “Otherwise, I would have lo-
Photo by Don Petersen
cated this brewery in Richmond or Blacksburg. It enabled me to take a risk with Franklin County and have a rural production brewery.” Franklin County wasn’t part of the water authority when it formed in 2004, but it joined five years later, striking a deal that brought water lines south down U.S. 220 from Roanoke County and east from BedROANOKE BUSINESS
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cover story ford County across Hales Ford Bridge. The eastern water line enabled Sunken City’s creation, as well as the $1.1 million expansion of Homestead Creamery in Burnt Chimney. Regional cooperation in Western Virginia has come a long way from the late ’60s and early ’70s. That’s when Salem and Roanoke each built their own civic center, four years and seven miles apart. A 2013 report compiled by the Roanoke Valley-Alleghany Regional Commission found that, despite the conventional wisdom, regional governments do work together on a regular basis. In fact the report — released biennially since 2003 — cited 105 examples of governmental cooperation. What has all that cooperation produced? A growing network of greenways. A beefed-up tourism marketing campaign based around “Virginia’s Blue Ridge.” Economic development projects, including a near miss with Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. and a win with Red Sun Farms, which will employ 200 people in a regional industrial park. More significantly, the various partnerships give the region a leg up when competing in an increasingly global economy. The commission’s list includes
Tyler Godsey, communications manager for the Roanoke Valley-Alleghany Regional Commission, says the commission’s report on cooperation doesn’t “want to call anybody out for trying something and failing.”
the Roanoke Valley Resource Authority, whose creation in 1992 marked an early example of intergovernmental efforts. It maintains a regional landfill and waste manage-
Red Sun Farms is investing $30 million in a 45-acre greenhouse operation in the New River Valley Commerce Park, a cooperative venture that involves the Roanoke and New River valleys.
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ment system. It also includes economic development partnerships, such as the Roanoke Regional Partnership and the New River Valley Economic Development Alliance, which in addition to working for their member localities, collaborate with one another. There are joint efforts to attract tourists through the Roanoke Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau. There are regional governor’s schools, animal shelters, libraries, youth recreation leagues, jails, and water and sewer authorities. The public safety section alone takes up four pages of the 20-page document. Roanoke Valley Greenways built 26 miles of greenway providing pedestrian and bike connections for four localities, and the greenways now rank among the region’s most popular amenities. So, with all those examples, what grade did the region receive in the 2013 Report Card? It turns out the document is more of a politically correct “report card.” There’s no grade, unless you consider credit for being present. “When we do this report, we don’t want to call anybody out for trying something and failing,” says Tyler Godsey, the RVARC’s communications manager. “We know that a lot of these things are risky. If you look through, you’ll see 105 items in this report card. We could pick out things where we can say, ‘That’s not the best way to approach that,’ or ‘It didn’t turn out good,’ but it doesn’t mean the partnerships are any less valuable.” No jurisdictional lines The Roanoke Valley’s administrators are upbeat, too. “I think that people don’t see jurisdictional lines,” Clay Goodman said before he retired as Roanoke County’s administrator. He was Montgomery County’s administrator before coming to Roanoke County and Vinton’s town manager before that. “We see ourselves as a region and work together Godsey photo by Don Petersen Red Sun Farms photo by Christina O’Connor
cover story to the benefit of all of our citizens to compete on a national market.” Roanoke City Manager Chris Morrill says that when he arrived from Savannah, Ga., in 2010, “I thought there was a fairly high level of cooperation already, Morrill compared to other places I’d worked.” He remembers that when his hiring was announced, Goodman and Salem City Manager Kevin Boggess called him almost immediately. A week later the leaders of the Virginia Tech Foundation flew to visit him in Savannah. That still begs the question as to how well the region cooperates compared with other localities. Surely there must be some rivalries when competing to land a significant business. Say an official in a meeting with a potential manufacturer offhandedly mentions dysfunction among supervisors in a neighboring county, which is also under consideration. Then again, perhaps not. After all, the specter of globalization has jolted many regional leaders to see cooperation as a way to share resources and compete on a larger stage. Indeed, it’s hard to find many governmental programs where there isn’t some sort of local cooperation. Aric Bopp, executive director of the NRV Economic Development Alliance, says he thinks 90 percent or more of local rivalries can be traced to athletics, especially at the high-school level. As with sports, competing can create discipline, self-improvement and a team atmosphere. That goes for localities, but also for the Roanoke Valley, the NRV and the larger region. “Competition is not necessarily a negative thing, as long as it is friendly competition, which I see for the most part in the Roanoke and New River valleys,” Bopp says. “It’s not uncommon for Roanoke County and Floyd and Montgomery County and Pulaski all to get looked at for Photo by Don Petersen
A statue of Andrew Lewis stands guard outside the Salem Civic Center — a reminder of the days when local governments weren’t so cooperative.
a project, so they’re all going to put their best foot forward. But we also have people who realize the competition is not Roanoke County. The competition is Tennessee, North Carolina, China, South Korea, India. We need to build ourselves and our
communities up collectively. We have a much better success rate when we talk highly of our neighbors than when we try to tear them down to make ourselves look good.” Success within a locality creates a ripple effect, too. Employers op-
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ROANOKE BUSINESS
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cover story
Former Roanoke County Administrator Elmer Hodge was a big proponent of Spring Hollow Reservoir and other regional projects.
erating in one place usually draw workers from around the region. “I live in north Roanoke County and drive up Plantation [Road] every morning,” Goodman says. “There are people coming in from every-
where to work at Wells Fargo [call center] and Exelis,” which makes night-vision goggles. Goodman’s predecessor, Elmer Hodge, started his job in the literal wake of the Flood of ’85. He
still points to the flood as a turning point when the Roanoke Valley’s localities realized they needed to work together to improve communication among various public-safety agencies. Another major regional initiative was the development of Roanoke County’s Spring Hollow Reservoir before Roanoke and Salem pulled out, leaving the county to forge ahead alone. When the region suffered a lengthy drought, however, Roanoke and Roanoke County began discussions that ultimately resulted in the formation of the Western Virginia Water Authority in 2004. The report’s list of examples has not grown all that substantially since the RVARC began producing it. The 2003 report cited 98 examples of intergovernmental cooperation, only seven fewer than the current list. Still, Godsey says, the 2013 list is “vastly different” from 2003, as partnerships come and go, ac-
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Photo by Don Petersen
cover story cording to need. Some partnerships formed just last year aim to help the region hold its own against global competitors. The Roanoke Valley Broadband Authority provides state-of-the-art Internet service, and the Western Virginia Industrial Facility Authority gives Roanoke Valley governments more flexibility to strike agreements and work together to attract large industry. The mission of the Roanoke Valley Broadband Authority is to coordinate public- and private-sector efforts to improve the region’s Internet infrastructure by encouraging best practices and identifying opportunities for developing fiber-optic cable networks. In June, the authority pitched a consultantrecommended plan to lay a 60-mile “backbone” of fiber that would extend Mid-Atlantic Broadband’s network through Botetourt County, Roanoke, Roanoke County and Salem. The authority seeks funding from those governments to build the $8.2 million project. Roanoke and Salem quickly agreed, but as of early August, the governing bodies in Botetourt County and Roanoke County were leaning against it. The broadband authority may build a smaller version of the fiber network covering only the two funding localities, pending a final decision from Botetourt and Roanoke counties. In the New River Valley, conversation over broadband began in 2003 before eventually culminating in the creation of the New River Valley Network Wireless Authority in 2008. The wireless authority, consisting of Giles and Pulaski counties, partnered with Floyd County’s Citizens Cooperative to build an $11.5 million, 186-mile fiber broadband network across parts of the Roanoke and New River valleys. That project was funded mostly by federal stimulus money with smaller matches from the wireless authority, citizens and the state’s Tobacco Commission.
Regional industrial authorities The Western Virginia Industrial Facility Authority, formed late in 2013, studies potential large economic development sites, determines what needs to happen to attract business at each site and allows its members — Botetourt, Franklin and Roanoke, counties, Roanoke, Salem and Vinton — to enter into individual agreements with one another. “Nothing’s mandated, but you have more opportunities to work as a group,” Goodman says. He offered a hypothetical example: “The city of Salem is limited with open space. They’re filled up, not quite full, but it’s hard for them to find a 100-acre tract. They might want to work with Roanoke and Roanoke County. The three of us can form one park to be located in one [locality] or maybe straddle localities, and all of us share in building the park and also share revenue from taxes and utilities.”
The new authority builds on previous economic development partnerships, both formal and informal. In the oft-cited courting of Sierra Nevada, Roanoke, Roanoke County and others worked handin-hand with the Roanoke Regional Partnership and the state to make the company’s short list for its East Coast headquarters. Although ultimately unsuccessful — Sierra Nevada chose to build in Western North Carolina — the efforts proved to be a high-profile case study in regional cooperation and helped further entrench those partnerships. “It was an outstanding effort on the part of the governing bodies, the Western Virginia Water Authority and businesses,” says Elmer Hodge. “I’d count that as a major turning point. If we can pull together on a project like that, we can handle most anything.” Would the new Western Virginia Industrial Facility Authority have helped land Sierra Nevada? “Per-
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cover story haps,” says Morrill. It would have enabled the localities to move faster in some respects, he says, but, “I don’t know that the outcome would have been different, because the state of North Carolina stepped up with some huge financial incentives.” Of the six members, Roanoke and Roanoke County also are members of Virginia’s first regional industrial facilities authority, which includes 13 localities and was created in 1999. That authority jointly operates the New River Valley Commerce Park, which includes nearly 1,000 acres. The industrial park’s first tenant, announced in 2013, is organic vegetable producer Red Sun Farms. The Mexican-owned company is investing $30 million in a 45-acre greenhouse production operation. The industrial park is one example of the Roanoke Valley working with the New River Valley. However, inter-valley cooperation doesn’t happen quite as often as intra-valley
Beth Doughty, executive director of the Roanoke Regional Partnership, says she expects cooperation to grow.
partnerships. They’re in different watersheds, different Virginia planning district commissions, different metropolitan statistical areas (MSA). That doesn’t mean the two regions don’t work together. The NRV Economic Development Alliance and Roanoke Regional Partnership network work together regularly. Virginia Tech in Blacksburg and Roanoke-based Carilion Clinic are partners on a research center
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and medical school that recently graduated its first class. The Smart Way commuter bus links Blacksburg to Roanoke to an Amtrak station in Lynchburg. In December, Roanoke Regional Airport changed its name to the Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport. That’s mostly a cosmetic change, but it does acknowledge the connection between the two regions. Changes happen in other ways, too. “The recent census redefined the MSA boundaries,” Godsey says. “There’s now a tiny sliver of Montgomery County that falls within the urbanized boundaries of Roanoke. So we now have a seat on its metropolitan planning organization (MPO). These aren’t just token memberships.” Hodge sees a trend toward involving counties outside the Roanoke Valley’s core. “In the early years there was a feeling that the cooperative efforts were limited to Roanoke city, Salem and Roanoke County,” Hodge says. “They really weren’t paying much attention to what was happening in the next counties out. As development took place at Smith Mountain Lake and Bedford County and Montgomery County, a lot of us realized that the next ring of counties were strong players and needed to be at the table. And it worked out.” Room for improvement There’s still room for improvement, though. Hodge says he’d like to see more joint marketing efforts. Some already occur, as with the Roanoke Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau, but overall the region’s marketing falls far short of Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia, Hodge says. He says his “biggest concern” is workforce development. That said, there is an existing Western Virginia Workforce Development Board with offices in Covington, Rocky Mount, Roanoke and Salem. Godsey also says it’s hard to find data to assess areas for improvement. “It’s no easy task,” he says. “If I don’t Photo by Don Petersen
cover story have data, even if it doesn’t work the way I think it should, it’s more difficult than just saying the workforce development board needs to do a better job.” Transportation is a related issue. Valley Metro serves Roanoke, Salem, Vinton and some parts of Roanoke County, but it doesn’t include stops near large regional employers such as ITT and the Wells Fargo call center. “These large employment centers are outside our transit system,” Godsey says. “Businesses don’t want to pay money for this. They’ve already made investments in the community and think the local governments should support it. We’d love to see more work being done to bridge the gap between the transit system and employment centers.” Another area with room for expansion is joint purchasing agreements between local governments. Godsey says many governments have expressed a willingness to explore the idea, but it’s hard to nail down specifics. Then there’s the looming elephant bearing down on the region: stormwater management. Federally mandated regulations are forcing localities to assess their stormwater systems and obtain funding for improvements. Roanoke already has implemented a fee. Other localities are likely to follow. Since watersheds cross governmental boundaries, however, the idea of regionalizing stormwater management has been much discussed, though not yet implemented. Beth Doughty of the Roanoke Regional Partnership says she expects that more regional cooperative efforts will take place in the future. Given the sheer number of examples today, it’s hard to envision Western Virginia going back in that regard. “I don’t think we’re going to go back to building silos. We’re going to continue to knock silos down,” Doughty says. “When you look at cooperation, necessity is the mother of invention. And there has been overall a realization that we are in this together.”
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MEETINGS & CONVENTIONS
Working together Regional collaboration on conventions helps boost tourism
CUTLINE INFO....Waiting on conventions photo from Christina she is shooting The Inn at VT or Smith Mountain Lake
Students of Lillie McAnge’s Madeira Embroidery School work in the Drillfield meeting room, one of the 10 dedicated meeting rooms on the second level of The Inn at Virginia Tech’s conference center. by Kathie Dickenson
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bout 950 people attended the Virginia State Reading Association’s 2014 annual conference at the Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center. For three days, they hung out at the hotel for meetings and walked downtown in the evenings for meals. Roanoke is in a rotation of three sites for the conference; VSRA will be back in 2017. “We love having our conference in Roanoke,” says VSRA President and convention chair Kim Lancaster. Many national presenters, including children’s authors and reading professionals, have told Lancaster that Roanoke is their favorite site. Anna Dewdney, author of the Llama Llama series, spent an afternoon of her visit hiking and said she will return when she has time to do more. “I think our conference attendees are great ambassadors for the Roanoke Valley,” says Lancaster. “I know
Photo by Christina O’Connor
that several have brought their families back to visit because they loved it so much.” Such return visits indicate that conferences and other meetings can be effective marketing tools for the region. Not only do they represent a lucrative form of tourism, but conventions also help boost other types of tourism. Easy access and diversity of venues draw organizations to the area. Recreational, educational and cultural resources – and plain old southern hospitality – bring people back with their families or friends. It works in reverse, too. Tourists and residents promote the region as a meeting site to groups to which they belong. A study conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC for the Convention Industry Council estimates total direct spending associated with U.S. meetings activity in 2012 at more
than $280 billion. About $130 billion (46 percent) of that spending was on travel and tourism commodities such as lodging, food service and transportation, with $150 billion (54 percent) spent on meeting planning and production costs, venue rental, and other non-travel and tourism commodities. The most recent figures available from the Virginia Tourism Corp. show that in the localities that belong to the Roanoke Valley Convention & Visitors Bureau – the cities of Roanoke and Salem and the counties of Botetourt, Franklin and Roanoke – travel expenditures in 2012 reached $730,369,363, a 3.8 percent increase over 2011. Regional tourism-supported jobs in those localities totaled 7,236 in 2012, compared with 7,160 in 2011 while state and local tourism-related taxes totaled more than $52.4 million in 2012, up from $50.9 million in 2011. In 2013 the area hosted 33 conROANOKE BUSINESS
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meetings & conventions
The Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center has 331 rooms and banquet space for 1,100 in downtown Roanoke.
vention and sports groups comprising more than 35,000 participants, an increase from the 27 groups and 28,000 participants who visited in 2012. The Roanoke Valley offers the largest meeting facilities in Virgin-
ia west of Richmond, says Catherine Fox, director of public relations and tourism for the Roanoke Valley Convention & Visitors Bureau (RVCVB). These include the Roanoke Civic Center, with 110,000 square feet of theater, exhibit, classroom and ban-
quet space, and the Salem Civic Center with 40,000 total square feet. The Conference Center of Roanoke, an International Association of Conference Centres-approved facility adjoining the Hotel Roanoke, offers 63,000 square feet of flexible meeting space. It can accommodate groups from 10 to 1,400 and offers technology and walking access to downtown dining and cultural amenities such as Center in the Square, the Taubman Museum and the City Market. Landon Howard, RVCVB’s president, says the Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport is essential for attracting organizations to the region and that the coming of passenger rail to Roanoke will “open up the region to the world.” Lisa Bleakley, Montgomery County’s regional tourism director, says there are four types of business that draw tourists to the county: university-related, 40 percent; corporate, 20 percent; group business including collegiate sports, 11 percent;
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Photo by Don Petersen
meetings & conventions and leisure travel, about 30 percent. In the New River Valley, Radford University and Virginia Tech provide the largest meeting facilities. RU’s array of auditoriums and technologyequipped classrooms seat 50 to 1,500, and during the summer, about 2,000 residence hall beds are available at any one time. At Selu, RU’s 360-acre conservancy on the Little River, smaller groups participate in outdoor and team-building activities. RU’s director of conference services, Tanya Ridpath, says in the last 10 years the annual number of conference attendees has grown from about 2,000 to Ridpath 6,000. These represent diverse groups such as the Virginia Governor’s School for the Humanities and the Visual & Performing Arts, the Southeast Unitarian Universalist Summer Institute, RU’s new student orientation, athletic camps and the Virginia High School League Spring Jubilee. Although a local econom-
ic impact figure is hard to pin down, Ridpath says visitors, especially families of VHSL athletes and new RU students, use hotels and restaurants throughout the New River Valley. In 2013, approximately 90 programs, such as conferences, meetings, short courses and symposia, took place in the New River Valley. These programs involved about 8,242 participants. The projected 2014 schedule includes 86 programs and 8,065 participants, but those numbers will likely be higher by the end of the year, explains Scott Weimer, director of Tech’s continuing and professional education office, who provided data available in mid-July. “We regularly book new events between now and December.” In Roanoke, 113 Virginia Tech-related programs involving 12,620 participants took place in 2013. Projected for 2014 are 87 programs including 11,039 participants. Again, according to Weimer, 2014 numbers will increase by the year’s end. Summer sports and youth camps are big draws for Virginia Tech as well.
They consistently bring in 100-120 different groups and 12,000 people to campus each year, says Eric Wininger, assistant director of conference services. The Inn at Virginia Tech and adjoining Skelton Conference Center provided a strong boost to the NRV’s meeting assets when it opened in 2005. A full-service conference hotel, the facility offers 147 guest rooms and suites and nearly 24,000 square feet of meeting and banquet space. It is located on the Virginia Tech campus, close to downtown Blacksburg. Surrounding areas offer smaller venues, as well as cultural and outdoor resources, such as the Harvester Performance Center in Franklin County, the Floyd Country Store and the Appalachian Trail. Relationships among institutions and localities also are important. The Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and VTC Research Institute have become powerful assets to the Roanoke Valley, increasing interest from potential visitors and multiplying connections for identifying
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ROANOKE BUSINESS
17
meetings & conventions and bringing in organizations. According to Howard, David Trinkle, associate dean for community and culture for the medical school, and Michael FriedlandTrinkle er, executive director of the research institute, worked closely with Roanoke officials to win selection as the site of the fifth Collaborating Across Borders (CAB V) conference in September 2015. Bien-
nial international CAB conferences focus on preparing students across health-care fields to work in collaborative teams. CAB IV was held in Vancouver in 2013. Friedlander A willingness of localities to collaborate in promoting the region also is strong. “Visitors do not see county lines or city limits,” Howard emphasizes. Cooperation “leads to success for all.”
AT THE
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Open Late Thursdays & First Fridays Open Tuesdays–Saturdays: 10am–5pm Thursdays and First Fridays: 5–9pm 18
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RVCVB receives direct funding from the cities of Roanoke and Salem and the counties of Botetourt, Franklin and Roanoke and works with more than 700 dues-paying private industry partners both inside and outside those jurisdictions. The trade organization has adopted the brand Virginia’s Blue Ridge because the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Blue Ridge Mountains “are two internationally known brands,” says Howard. Like Howard, Montgomery County’s Bleakley believes tourists have a broad view of the region. A visitor to Blacksburg, she points out, might hike to the Cascades in Giles County, eat a meal at a Christiansburg restaurant or shop on the Roanoke City Market. “Depending on where people are coming from and their experience with us, they may think of all that as one big place.” Although the New River Valley is limited to medium-size overnight meetings by its number of hotel rooms, Roanoke’s meeting customers often take advantage of the NRV’s attractions before, during or after conferences, and some will come back with families and friends, says Bleakley. Other shared benefits are intentional. When RVCVB hosts travel writers, tour planners and other travel industry professionals for familiarization tours, or “fams,” they send their guests to the New River Valley as well, Bleakley explains. Localities also collaborate to do more cost effective advertising. “Working together with mutual respect is so important,” says Howard, “and focusing on the customer’s needs is really key. The market share for potential visitation to this area is unlimited – it’s not just a one-size pie, and the pie has the ability to grow incredibly. There are over 6 billion people in the world. So many of those people have the means to travel … and it’s a natural human desire to go and discover other places. The more we work together … the more the likelihood we’ll have visitation, and the money spent and the jobs produced that are needed to drive the economy.”
meetings & conventions
Places to meet The Roanoke and New River valleys’ more than 300,000 square feet of meeting and conference space provide thousands of jobs and hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to the valleys’ economy.
“Entertaining since 1925”
Roanoke Valley Meeting facility
Location
Conference space
Banquet capacity
Guest rooms
2,400
200
120
(540) 562-1912
in square feet
Phone
Baymont Inn & Suites
Salem
Holiday Inn - Valley View
Roanoke
11,500
370
153
(540) 362-4500
Holiday Inn - Tanglewood
Roanoke
9,000
500
190
(540) 774-4400
Mariners Landing Resort Community & Conference Center
Huddleston
15,000
N/A
1-3 bedroom condos
(540) 892-6391
Natural Bridge Park & Historic Hotel
Natural Bridge
Roanoke Civic Center
Roanoke
Salem Civic Center
(Smith Mountain Lake)
(includes outdoor meeting spaces)
(with space for up to 200)
9,000
400
155
(540) 291-2121
110,000
2,000
N/A
(540) 853-5483
Salem
40,000
2,000
N/A
(540) 375-3004
Sheraton Roanoke Hotel & Conference Center
Roanoke
17,000
500
320
(540) 563-9300
The Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center
Roanoke
63,000
1,100
331
(540) 985-5900
400
53 hotelstyle rooms. Dormitorystyle lodges sleep up to 220 people
(540) 721-2759
W.E. Skelton 4-H Educational Conference Center
Wirtz
(Smith Mountain Lake)
16,000
Corporate packages including state of the art Audio/Visual system available. Affordable luxury comes standard. 1/3 VER The Patrick Henry Ballroom & Conference Center www.phballroom.com | info@phballroom.com (540) 525 - 9062
26th ANNUAL
September 27: 11am-6pm September 28: 11am-5pm
New River Valley
LakeWatch Plantation, Conference space
14734 Booker T. Washington Highway, Moneta, VA
in square feet
Banquet capacity
Guest rooms
24,000
700
147
Phone
Meeting facility
Location
Inn at Virginia Tech & Skelton Conference Center
Blacksburg
Hilton Garden Inn
Blacksburg
1,276
86
137
(540) 552-5005
Holiday Inn & Conference Center
Blacksburg
5,100
187
137
(540) 552-7001
1,000
Dormitory rooms for up to 2,000 people (in summer)
(540) 831-5800
190
100 units housing up to 250 people
Radford University
Host your event at the Patrick Henry.
(540) 231-8000
• 27 Virginia Wineries • 85+ Quality Craft & Food Vendors • Live Bands Rain or Shine • No refunds • No pets • Ticket does not include cost of food
Radford
Many classrooms and auditoriums seating 10-1,500
Platinum Sponsor FREE PARKING
Call 540.721.1203 or www.visitsmithmountainlake.com Advance Tickets: $20 Taster $12 Designated Driver $25 Taster - $15 DD at Gate ((Children 12 & under free admission))
Mountain Lake Lodge
Pembroke
9,535
(540) 626-7121
Source: Roanoke Business research
ROANOKE BUSINESS
19
MEDIA
Local news
Changing times and changing ownership reshape local newspapers
Roanoke Star-Sentinel Publisher Stuart Revercomb says his paper fills a niche in the community.
by Alison Weaver
W
hen Warren Buffett’s BH Media Group bought The Roanoke Times, the acquisition garnered considerable attention. Many people were flattered to think that Buffett even knew Roanoke existed, but others worried about what effect it might have on news coverage. BH Media now owns 30 publications in Virginia, including dailies such as the Richmond Times-Dispatch, The (Charlottesville) Daily Progress, The (Lynchburg) News and Advance and the Bristol Herald Courier. Many of the papers BH Media acquired had been owned by Media General, which sought to divest itself of them in the face of financial difficulties. “Anytime there’s a consolidation of ownership in any industry, there’s a reason for concern,” says Pam Luecke,
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SEPTEMBER 2014
Reynolds professor of business journalism at Washington & Lee University. “However, just because the ownership is the same doesn’t necessarily mean the number of voices is limited.” Still, there’s a fear about sameness. “The fear is that all of the newspapers will have the exact same stories from the exact same perspective,” says Jenn Burleson Mackay, an associate professor in Virginia Tech’s department of communications and a former Roanoke Times reporter. “I think the key with Buffett’s publications is that he is buying local newspapers. He’s not trying to influence a national media agenda with his purchases.” The Times has been the dominant daily newspaper in the western half of Virginia for more than a hundred years and has had relatively few
changes in ownership. In its heyday in the 1930s – and before a change in FCC regulations – a group of investors headed by J. B. Fishburn published morning and evening newspapers, owned Roanoke’s first radio station (now WFIR) and WDBJ-TV. In 1969, Times-World Corp. merged with the Batten family’s Landmark Communications and passed the next 44 years as a privately held corporation. Frank Batten Jr. began trying to sell the company’s various holdings in 2008, including The Weather Channel. In May of 2013 BH Media Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., purchased the Times. The paper had struggled with declining circulation, seeing its weekday circulation drop from more than Photo by Don Petersen
100,000 to 67,000 on the date of the sale, according to the Times. Once one of Roanoke’s largest employers, the company had dwindled to about 300 employees. Changes have come in rapid succession since BH Media’s purchase. Editor Carole Tarrant was terminated in July 2013 and replaced by Joe Stinnett, who retired a year later and was replaced by Lawrence McConnell. Thirty-one employees were laid off, including five newsroom staffers. In addition, a stream of high-profile news veterans has voluntarily made its way to the exit. “I think the real threat to newspaper content right now isn’t the change in ownership. It’s the reduced number of newspaper employees and the loss of experienced staff,” Mackay says. “As newspaper staffs shrink and experienced journalists are hung out to dry, vital experience is lost.” Employees say the newsroom staff now numbers about 65, down from 115 full-time and six part-time workers
Photo by Don Petersen
bureau has a skeleton crew.” In the past, the Times staffed bureaus in Lexington, Wytheville and Richmond. “One thing I worry about is fewer resources covering the state capitol,” Luecke says. “I’m a big believer in hiring more smart, curious journalists. There’s no substitute for paid journalists doing their job.”
BH Media’s 30 Virginia newspapers include The Roanoke Times and The Floyd Press.
in 2002. Times publisher Terry Jamerson did not respond to a request for an interview. According to one Times employee, “Staffing feels thin. We no longer have reporters assigned to Radford, Pulaski, Giles, Floyd, Bedford, the environment, religion or real estate. There is no graphic artist or art department, and the New River Valley
Evolving media Pew Research Center tracks where people get their news in a biennial survey by asking which sources people used the prior day. In the 2012 survey, 55 percent said they had watched TV news, 50 percent reported seeing digital news and 29 percent said they had read a newspaper. That doesn’t necessarily spell doom for print media. A 2014 survey by the Media Insight Project found “the majority of Americans across generations now combine a mix of sources and technologies to get their news each week.” “I think newspapers have been
ROANOKE BUSINESS
21
media ahead of the pack in many ways. They’ve been incorporating the Internet for years and adapting to tablets and mobile devices,” says Luecke. “I’m heartened that people are now being asked to pay for content – and they’re doing it.” Making people pay for newspapers’ online content is part of the BH Media plan. Although the company hasn’t constructed a paywall in Roanoke yet, it has introduced online subscriptions at the News & Record in Greensboro, N.C. With so many options available, consumers appear to be becoming more discerning about where they get their news. Another Pew Research Center report in 2013 found that nearly one-third of adults surveyed said they had stopped using a news outlet – not just a newspaper – because it “no longer provided the news and information they had grown accustomed to.” However, at least in the Roanoke area, it appears people are migrating toward smaller, hyper local newspapers.
Stuart Revercomb, publisher of The Roanoke Star-Sentinel, has seen a steady rise in circulation since founding the paper in 2007. In the past five years, circulation has climbed from about 11,000 to 18,200. The paper, which is published every other week, “apparently fills a niche in this community,” Revercomb says. “We’re also growing on the digital side, averaging about 4,800 unique users daily [on the website].” A string of long-term weeklies is also bucking the trend toward nonlocal corporate ownership. In 2011, the Brockenbrough family of Christiansburg and Roanoke County purchased seven newspapers at a bankruptcy auction: Salem Times-Register (founded in 1854), New Castle Record (1885), News Messenger (covering the New River Valley since 1869), Radford News Journal (1884), Fincastle Herald (1866) and Vinton Messenger (the newbie at only 50 years old). The seventh paper, Cave Spring Connection, was discontinued in 2013. Before the sale, the papers
were owned by investors in Alabama. “We thought we could make the papers a little better and make a small profit,” says Connie BrockenbroughVaughn, president of Montgomery Publishing, “It’s not growing substantially, but it’s steady, and I think that’s the best we can hope for.” She attributes the papers’ success to their narrow markets. “All of the papers serve an identifiable, cohesive community. For example, the Vinton Messenger is about Vinton. Vintonites care deeply about what’s happening in the world, but they also care deeply about what their neighbors are doing and what their local government is doing.” BH Media seems to be banking on a similar formula for success. Buffet wrote back in 2012, “No one has ever stopped reading when half-way through a story that was about them or their neighbors.” Editor’s note: Alison Weaver resigned from her position as copy chief at The Roanoke Times in 2008.
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TECHNOLOGY Fred Lee, director of the Center for Power Electronics Systems and a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech, with his wind turbine on the roof of Whittemore Hall.
Next generation
power Move over, silicon. More efficient semiconductors are on the way, and Virginia Tech is playing a role.
by Cara Ellen Modisett echnology can be a doubleedged sword. As systems become more efficient, machines fill jobs once filled by humans. But designing, building and utilizing those machines can also create jobs. It’s in that triumvirate – engineering, manufacturing and application – that a new federal initiative is investing millions of dollars. Among the key goals? Bring
T
Photo courtesy Virginia Tech
manufacturing and engineering jobs back to the U.S and connect engineers, builders and businesses in the creation of new tools. Virginia Tech is a key player in this new effort. As part of a public/ private consortium that’s studying semiconductors, it’s on the driving edge of a new technology that could provide a cost-effective alternative to older silicon-based power electronics. Imagine a new genera-
tion of power that could cut heat loss by 75 to 80 percent. That’s the equivalent of the power produced by three Hoover dams in one year. North Carolina State University is spearheading the consortium, one of the four manufacturing institutes created and supported by the federal government with a commitment of $200 million. At N.C. State, the institute will focus on the research and development ROANOKE BUSINESS
23
technology It takes big and expensive equipment, like this Titan microscope at N.C. State, to perfect the small and efficient wide band gap semiconductors.
of power electronics – specifically the development of wide band gap (WBG) semiconductors, a cost-effective and greener alternative to silicon-based power electronics. Power electronics has been the focus of study and teaching for years for Fred Lee, director of the Center for Power Electronics Systems and a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech. His work is at the root of N.C. State’s role. In 1998, he led Virginia Tech’s establishment of a national science foundation engineering and research center. One of the center’s faculty members, Alex Huang, moved to N.C. State after 10 years with the idea of starting a similar center. He founded the National Science Foundation FREEDM Systems Center for research, education and innovation in renewable energy, focused on smart grid and information technology, while Virginia Tech’s focus has been 24
SEPTEMBER 2014
industrial applications. N.C. State University’s consortium was chosen as the second institute in the federal administration’s program. N.C. State and Virginia Tech are two of five universities in the Next Generation Power Electronics National Manufacturing Innovation Institute. The others are Arizona State, Florida State and the University of California at Santa Barbara. The institute also includes 18 private companies, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. The other two institutes are the Lightweight and Modern Metals Manufacturing Innovation Institute, based in Detroit, and the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute, based in Chicago. The very first institute, America Makes (formerly the National Additive Manufacturing Institute), was founded in 2012 in Youngstown,
Ohio. All four are intended to be part of an eventual National Network for Manufacturing Innovation, each supported with $70 million in federal funding. Lee says President Barack Obama recognizes the opportunity in wideband gap. “No one has a competitive edge at this time,” Lee says. Plus, the new technology could lead to jobs. During recent remarks at the White House, Obama noted that manufacturers have added more than 620,000 new manufacturing jobs over the last four years. “That’s the first sustained manufacturing growth in over 20 years,” the president said. Next gen power electronics WBG semiconductors are the newest evolution of power electronics — that form of electronics that “processes and conditions,” to borrow Lee’s words, electricity, in order to power everything from heavy industrial machinery to refrigerators, air conditioners and smart phones. Lee found his way into engineering almost by chance. He and his fiancée Leei Wang had come to the U.S. from their native Taiwan. He went in Missouri; she enrolled in North Carolina. To close the geographic gap, Lee came to Duke University and didn’t know what he wanted to study. “What the heck?” he recalls thinking. “I will just go with the best professors.” Duke’s engineering department was outstanding, so he looked for the best professors there, and finished a Ph.D. in 1974. At Virginia Tech since 1977, Lee is director of the Center for Power Electronics Systems. “CPES is the first Engineering Research Center funded by the National Science Foundation in the field of power electronics,” he says, “and the first and only ERC in the State of Virginia.” Its work in high frequency power conversion is closely connected with WBG research. Over the years, Lee has watched U.S. manufacturing jobs move overseas, followed by engineering jobs ... as companies grew and tried to keep up with their own growth and reduce Photo by Marc Hall, courtesy North Carolina State University
technology their costs. “That ... is difficult to reverse. Right now, everything’s done with silicon,” says Lee. But, “silicon development has reached its theoretical limits.” WBG semiconductor materials are the same as those used in LED light fixtures. Shifting from siliconbased power electronics to WBG semiconductor-based electronics, says Lee, means strides forward in energy savings, cost savings and environmental preservation. According to the Electric Power Research Institute, power electronics is currently used to process and condition 40 percent of the country’s electrical power needs. Lee says if that increased to 80 percent, he estimates a savings, in the U.S. alone, of the equivalent of 800 fossil-fuelpowered plants every year. “WBG devices will provide further improvement in efficiency by one to two percent over silicon counterparts. Let alone the dramatic size, weight and cost reduction in the overall power processing systems. One percent improvement in efficiency of power electronics equipment worldwide will save 40 GW of electrical power, which is equivalent to the output of 40 nuclear power plants.” “if we don’t [go to 80 percent], we will be in trouble 50 years from now,” he says, referring to the environment. The numbers and the projections are impressive. WBG semiconductors can operate at temperatures of up to 300 degrees Celsius, as opposed to 150 degrees with silicon-based power electronics. This means less need for insulation and cooling systems. They can handle voltages 10 times higher than silicon-based semiconductors. The semiconductors also are smaller, and they lose up to 90 percent less energy when transferring electricity. In the U.S., power supplies (including adaptors such as the ones people use for computers) account for at least two percent of the country’s energy consumption. Shifting those to WBG technology would make them three to five times smaller and less expensive because of the reduction of materials. Plus, it would
cut heat loss by that 75 to 80 percent. WBG technology doesn’t apply only to light bulbs and smart phones. The semiconductors can power industrial manufacturing, air conditioning units, household appliances, electric cars. The consortium is tasked with taking the lead over the next five years in developing WBG technology as a competitive alternative to older technology, to be used across a wide range of industries, creating
new jobs and training new engineers. Lee says the overall goal of the Next Generation Power Electronics Innovation Institute will be a collaborative one. The researchers, the builders and the industry need to communicate so they can build a private/public partnership that connects research with the market, manufacturers with end users, people with jobs and the present with a sustainable future.
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ROANOKE BUSINESS
25
“We’re with Valley”
“We really enjoy doing business with a bank that gives so much back to our community”
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COMMUNITY PROFILE: Grandin Village
Grandin Village Movies, coffee and old-fashioned neighborliness
The Grandin Theatre has been part of Grandin Village since 1932 — with the exception of a few years it was dark.
by Sue Lindsey
M
ovies. Upscale furniture. Local produce. These are a few of the things people can find in Grandin Village along with a business incubator, used books, yoga. The community, spanning a few blocks of Grandin Road and
Photo by Don Petersen
Memorial Avenue in Southwest Roanoke, definitely has a happening vibe. During the summer, parking is at a premium on weekend nights, and often there’s a line for cones at Pop’s Ice Cream & Soda Bar. The village is contained within the Raleigh Court neighborhood
of more than 11,000 residents about 2.5 miles from downtown. Many people walk from their homes to the business district. At the same time, the primary anchors – the Grandin Theatre and Roanoke Natural Foods Coop – help draw patrons from other neighborhoods.
community profile
Roanoke Natural Foods Co-Op, the largest cooperatively owned natural foods store in Virginia, has long been a Grandin Village anchor.
The Grandin, the only independent movie theater in the Roanoke Valley, is a venue for art films as well as first-run movies. The co-op is the largest cooperatively owned natural foods grocery in the state, according to its website. Many of the other businesses are natural spinoffs. Restaurants, a coffee shop, ice cream and cupcake shops appeal to moviegoers. A seasonal farmers market on Saturdays, a farm-to-table restaurant and a yoga studio support the coop’s ideals. “When I think of Grandin Village, I think of this eclectic group of businesses,” says Susan Stump, assistant vice president and manager of Valley Bank’s office in the community as well as president of the Grandin Village Business Association. “The owners are excited to be in the village.”
28
SEPTEMBER 2014
Michelle Bennett knew she wanted to be in Grandin Village when she decided to open a coffee shop after she was laid off from
her marketing and graphic design job at Center in the Square at age 50. Her CUPS Coffee & Tea has been open for four years. “It’s a neighborhood in the old style in that people send their kids – not little tiny kids but middle-schoolers – down here to the village to get coffee or ice cream or something, and they’re not too worried about them,” Bennett says. “There’s enough people out there sort of keeping an eye on things.” The village came into being in the 1920s with a few shops to serve the residential area that was developed once Memorial Bridge was built, and a trolley line ran downtown. Back then, there were grocery stores, a drugstore, dry cleaners and eventually gas stations, according to “Greater Raleigh Court.” That’s the title of neighborhood history written by the Rev. Nelson Harris, former city mayor and pastor of the village’s Virginia Heights Baptist Church. The oldest businesses still in operation are the Grandin Theatre and Community Inn, both of which opened in the 1930s. The theater had seating for 944 when it opened in 1932, according to its website. “I would say the arrival of the Grandin Theatre was probably the
The LEAP Community Market brings food from 18 farmers and food producers within 100 miles to Grandin Village every Saturday from April through October. Photo credit
community profile most significant business that then gave the Grandin Village its heart and soul,” Harris says. Among the newer occupants is the Grandin CoLab. It offers business services and resources to startup entrepreneurs, freelancers and consultants in a 10,000-squarefoot space that formerly was a CVS pharmacy. The operation, which opened in March, already serves 40 entrepreneurs, according to spokeswoman Taylor Ricotta. But the tiny district has had its share of hard times; a number of businesses have come and gone over the years. The Grandin Theatre has closed several times because of financial difficulties, most recently in 2001. When it closed then, Harris says, the village had vacant storefronts. He believes the theater’s revival a year later – and especially the way it came about – put the whole district on a firmer footing. Harris sits on the board of the foundation that now operates the theater as a nonprofit. The community rallied to renovate and reopen the Grandin. The city of Roanoke gave $500,000 toward the project, dependent upon an equal amount being raised from donations. The community responded with $700,000, part of it
from engraved stars sold at $1,000 apiece and embedded in the sidewalk outside the theater. “It wasn’t like Norfolk Southern (Railway) gave $100,000,” Harris says. “This was basically donations ranging from five bucks up to several thousand dollars.” Since the theater reopened, the number of restaurants has grown and specialty stores have come in. The village no longer has a hardware store, for instance, but Star-
light Bicycles moved in earlier this year. “You’ve got eight to 10 restaurants right here,” Harris says, noting that none is a chain establishment. “That’s pretty amazing.” Harris says his 77-year-old dad, Charles Harris, grew up on nearby Westover Avenue and has lived in Raleigh Court for most his life. “He has told me many times … ‘Grandin Road is healthier today than I can ever remember it in my lifetime,’ ” Nelson Harris says.
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ROANOKE BUSINESS
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community profile
Regulars at CUPS Coffee & Tea can store their own coffee mugs at the shop.
Brent Cochran, manager of the Saturday farmers market started by the co-op in 2009, says
the project was a success from the beginning. “I would definitely say it’s because of the neighborhood,”
Melody Black, one of many businesswomen in Grandin Village, cuts hair in her Grandin Road Barber Shop.
30
SEPTEMBER 2014
he says. “Raleigh Court is an affluent neighborhood, but one of the more progressive.” The village’s fondness for its neighbors is obvious. Regulars can store their own coffee mugs at CUPS. A water bowl for passing dogs sits outside Pop’s. A few years ago, the city widened the sidewalk on the west side of Grandin Road and put in stamped crosswalks. The sidewalk in front of the coop has attracted gatherings of young people that at times have concerned business owners. The business association supports the street musicians who have shown up this year as a positive influence, Stump said. “The business owners cannot monitor and police that area,” she said, adding that the more neighborhood folks who show up to listen to music, the better. “Flood this area with responsible people.” Several community events bring people to the village from outside the neighborhood. The Grandin Road Holiday Children’s Parade kicks off the Christmas season every year, and Stump said Grandin Chillage offers music, beer and wine about six times a year. A new event Sept. 6, Wine and Swine, will offer wine and food tastings. Earth Day festivities, which moved to the village four years ago, have grown to attract as many as 1,500 people, according to Polly Branch, who coordinates the organizing committee. Bennett notes that most of the business owners are women, and she has a marketing idea to capitalize on that. A 2015 calendar along the order of the movie, “Calendar Girls,” will feature 16 village businesswomen at work in tastefully nude poses. Bennett says she was committed to the project out of respect for the village’s work ethic. “We’re all boots on the ground. It’s amazing and cool,” Bennett says. “And we’re deciding to promote the … hell out of it.” Photos by Don Petersen
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INTERVIEW: Rick Mattioni, program director at WVTF and Radio IQ
Under his leadership, WVTF evolved from a local station to linchpin of Virginia Public Radio
Rick Mattioni is retiring after 26 years at WVTF and 40 years in broadcasting.
by Tim Thornton
ick Mattioni got started in radio because he was homesick for Argentina. His family moved from Argentina to the United States when Mattioni was 8. When he was about 10, he talked his parents into buying him a short wave radio. With the aid of a schoolmate who grew up to be a radio engineer, Mattioni went to work. “We lived in a row house in Hagerstown, Maryland,” Mattioni says. “It was a three-story, so we went up on top of the third story where they had a tower for the TV antennas in the building. We climbed the tower, and we strung a wire from there to another tower next door and brought the wire down to our first floor-apartment and my radio receiver and that’s how I was able to pick up radio stations from all over the country and all over the world. “That fueled my interest in radio. I was
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just crazy about it.” Mattioni’s interest led to part-time jobs in radio and television, a stint in the Army working for American Forces Radio and Television in Europe, then a little commercial television and radio before landing his first public radio job at WAER in Syracuse, N.Y. That’s where Mattioni worked just before he came to Roanoke and WVTF in October 1987. Now Mattioni, WVTF’s program director, is retiring. His last day on the job will be Sept. 30. “Professionally, full time, this is my 40th year,” the 62-year-old Mattioni says. “And that’s enough.” In retirement, Mattioni plans do some touring on his motorcycle, to offer his services as a consultant, especially to small public radio stations, and do whatever he can to help public radio. He also plans to continue advising Roanoke College’s radio station, WRKE. “I take great joy in seeing the excite-
ment of college-age students for what we sort of take for granted,” Mattioni says. “You tend to get jaded after a while, so to see people get excited about creating radio makes me happy.” As he looked forward to retirement, Mattioni sat down to talk about WVTF, public radio and the evolution of media over his career. Roanoke Business: You say your job as program director is to serve the audience. How do you do that? How do you decide what to put on the air? Rick Mattioni: The first thing any good programmer needs to recognize is he or she works for the listener. That’s who I work for. And I’m not going to do anything to upset the balance of their listening habits. First of all, I owe that to them. But secondly I owe that to my boss and his boss and so on, to make good, solid programming decisions. … The second is a good program director does his or her research, not only research about audience data about your own station, or in our case stations, but nationally, trends and all that, so that you understand what the patterns are and where the future of radio is going. RB: How has the station’s funding changed since you came to WVTF? Mattioni: We got money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. ... Somewhere in the mid-90s, our previous boss, Steve Mills, got together with some other managers in the system to get state funding for public radio because the state was funding public television, but ironically not public radio which had three, four times the size audience. … During the McDonnell administration, it was put in the budget to drop public broadcasting. Losing that state support did cause some issues for us. … I think at one point it was as high as $120,000.Then it was down to 70some thousand. But even that, to us, is a lot of money. The CPB funding has been down, but not drastically down. … The largest single source of funding is listener funding. That’s more than half our funding. That’s been going up. I know that when I first started working here it was maybe about a quarter of our annual budget. Photo by Sam Dean
RB: Some of the biggest changes during your time at WVTF were the introduction of Radio IQ and the expansion of the coverage area. Tell us about that. Mattioni: Just before I got here, we expanded to serve Charlottesville. Then, we put a beefier transmitter on the air to serve Charlottesville in the mid-90s. That also got us into Waynesboro and Staunton. Then we went to the southwestern parts, putting a transmitter on in Marion and one in Wise. Then, of course, all the Radio IQ – we have 23 signals on the air now, 23 analog and eight digital. That’s a lot. And, of course, we have the three programs stream on the air [WVTF, Radio IQ and the Radio Reading Service that serves listeners with visual impairment] and the three Internet live streams. … We need to expand far enough to get enough listeners because having just the listeners in any one spot, we wouldn’t be able to provide the service we provide. For instance, we wouldn’t be able to have a full-time news staff. I mean, we have the largest news staff of any public station – well, most public stations don’t have a news staff, per se. We have a very large commitment. [The station’s webpage lists a half-dozen people who devote at least part of their time to news.] I would dare to say we’re probably up there with commercial stations that would – back in the day would – have eight, nine people. They’re down to two or three. So we’re all of sudden the main player in state and regional news. We also have studios and offices in downtown Charlottesville … and we have a news bureau in Blacksburg. RB: The other big thing seems to be the development of Virginia Public Radio. How did that come about? Mattioni: We had a stringer, a freelance person, producing news on a daily basis out of Charlottesville. I couldn’t afford a full-time person. We have a full-time person now. I had another person, I think, in Blacksburg. I thought, wouldn’t it be great if I could get some of these other stations, maybe the station in Richmond, to contribute to the news content and then we could sort of swap stories. … So I contacted all these stations and I said, “Well,
can we get together at some point and talk about this?” So we did. … and I said, “What would you all think if we created this thing called Virginia Public Radio … what would you think if we managed it?” They all said, “Go ahead, knock yourself out.” I’m proud to say to this day we have WMRA in Harrisonburg. We have WHRO, WHRV in Norfolk … We also have WAMU in Washington … We have WTJU in Charlottesville … We have WVRU n Radford … and we just added Alleghany Mountain Radio. They have a transmitter in Highland and Bath counties. … So now we pretty much cover the whole state with our signals and the signals of the other stations. We have our own staff … We also take money that‘s in the VPR coffers and use it to pay freelance people … and we also have a bureau in Richmond. RB: How has that changed what you cover? Mattioni: Public Radio news has to be issue-driven in order for it to be successful. And it has to take a broader approach. … You know that you have to focus on issues. … It’s a matter of establishing priorities and doing the kinds of stories that resonate well with public radio listeners. RB: Who is your competition and how do you compete against them? Mattioni: The biggest competition for us is from us. The biggest competition for WVTF is Radio IQ and the biggest competition for Radio IQ is WVTF. … The other competition would be other radio that is targeted the same way ours is. For example, in Richmond, the biggest competition is the other NPR station in Richmond. … I think, increasingly the competition is Pandora for music … online listening, when it’s not online listening to us. … The competition today is so fractured it could be coming from any direction. … There was a time when AM was the predominant spectrum. And then FM started gaining ground and there was a point, a tipping point, where FM now had 51 percent of the audience and AM had 49. Well now it’s like FM’s got like 92, 93 percent of the listening, and the AM listening that’s being done is predominantly on a handful of stations. So, at some point, there will be a tipping point for online listening and broadcast listening. … But that’s down
the line because 93.6 percent of all the listening for public radio is over a broadcast, over the air, terrestrial transmitter. RB: How do you see WVTF’s position in the area in terms of the evolution of media in general? Mattioni: One of the things that makes me sadder than anything else is seeing less news being done by newspapers. … The bedrock of journalism in this country has been newspapers.The Roanoke Times has done excellent journalism. I would hate to see that go away. I have seen that happen in television, just by watching local television. Now the stories are getting shorter, and they’re more feel-good stories. Yeah, they cover the hard news and all of that, but not with the depth that they used to cover it. That’s where I see the biggest change in the media landscape. For commercial radio, the news is the quicker pace, the shorter sound bites, the thumping of the stuff in the background, the jingles, all that while you’re trying to read the news. I see newspapers having their staffs cut and therefore their content is cut. I see some fracturing of the radio audience.With local listeners, meaning anywhere that we’re a local signal, there is the option to listen to somebody else that is not local. We didn’t have that before. … That pie is going to be cut into smaller and smaller pieces for local stations because of the options that are out there. … I think we’re seeing it happening now to a small degree. … That, I think, has been a phenomenal change. Another thing is localism – a lot of the localism is gone. That’s where I think a lot of the strength lies for public radio. A national source is not going to come in and cover what’s happening in the state or the region or the localities. … So the strength is to beef up what you’re doing locally. … That’s something to think about for the next person coming in, is how to keep that localism and at the same to time to keep the stationality – that’s a public radio term – prominently enough so that listeners recognize it’s us; we’re the ones doing this. Because, if they don’t recognize that, why should they A) come back to hear more of, or B) support it. If we don’t have the support, we can’t do what we do. ROANOKE BUSINESS
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2014 CHAMBER CHAMPIONS BB&T Brown Edwards Cox Business Gentry Locke Rakes & Moore LeClairRyan LifeWorks REHAB (Medical Facilities of America) MB Contractors Pepsi Bottling Group rev.net Richfield Retirement Community Spilman Thomas & Battle PLLC Trane Valley Bank Woods Rogers Attorneys at Law Note: Chamber Champions are members who support the Roanoke Regional Chamber through year-round sponsorships in exchange for year-round recognition.
EVENT SPONSORS The 2014 Leadership Roanoke–Valley graduating Business After Hours June 26 class held graduation ceremonies at Roanoke College on June 4.
Davenport Energy First Piedmont Spilman Thomas & Battle PLLC
2014 State of the City Address – Aug. 8 Appalachian Power Cox First Citizens Bank Hall Associates RGC Resources
NEW MEMBERS New members join chamber
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SPONSORED CONTENT | Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce
Member news & recognitions The Answer Network of Roanoke has been honored with the exclusive Association of TeleServices International (ATSI) 2014 Award of Excellence for the seventh consecutive year. The award is presented annually by the ATSI, the industry’s trade association, for providers of telecommunications and call center services, including telephone answering and message delivery across North America and the United Kingdom. As a seven-time winner, Answer Network also earned the Emerald Award.
She has 16 years of experience in municipal management as a past commissioner of public works, public works director and traffic engineering.
Shores
Hartman
Witt
Thompson
The Roanoke office of Cushman & Wakefield |Thalhimer has announced the hirGutshall ing of Price Gutshall as a sales and leasing associate specializing in office and downtown properties. Gutshall had served as vice president of economic development at Downtown Roanoke Inc.
HomeTrust Bank has announced the members of its Roanoke commercial banking team. They include: Adam Shores, market president; Catherine Hartman, senior credit officer; Precious “Penny” Witt, treasury management sales officer; and Lana Thompson, commercial support specialist.
Daxko has announced the acquisition of NetVentures Corp., a provider of software-as-aservice solutions for YMCAs and Jewish Community Centers (JCC). The combined business results in Daxko handling the enterprise software needs for over 600 member-based organizations, including YMCAs and JCCs in all 50 states. NetVentures has been in business in the region for over 12 years.
The Roanoke County Board of Supervisors unanimously appointed Daniel R. O’Donnell as O’Donnell the interim county administrator. O’Donnell, who had served as assistant county administrator since 2000, replaced Clay Goodman, who retired July 31.
Draper Aden Associates has announced that Mary Ann Conroy has joined the Conroy firm as a senior project manager on the Utilities Engineering Team in the Blacksburg office.
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Gilchrist
SunTrust Bank has named Vic Gilchrist the commercial banking relationship manager.
The International Economic Development Council (IEDC) has announced that the Roanoke County Department of Eco-
SEPTEMBER 2014
nomic Development has once again been recognized as one of 41 economic development organizations accredited by IEDC as an Accredited Economic Development Organization (AEDO). Originally accredited in 2004, the department was reaccredited by IEDC after nine successful years of activity as an AEDO member. Roanoke County School System Superintendent Dr. Lorraine Lange, Union First Market Bank and educators from William Byrd High School recently honored graduates from the “My Money, My Future” program, a financial education course designed to empower young people with the skills needed to make sound financial decisions. Union First Market Bank has partnered with lead-
ing education technology company EverFi Inc., to bring this interactive, Web-based financial management program to more than 17,000 students in 110 schools in Virginia in the 2013-14 school year. Roanoke County’s Glenvar Branch Library, which opened in July 2013, has received confirmation that it has earned LEED silver certification for sustainable design and construction. Features that earned the building certification including the razing of an outdated existing library, keeping 51 tons of construction and demolition waste out of the landfill by recycling materials, setting aside reserved parking for low-emitting vehicles and incorporating a rain garden for storm water management.
Callahan
Jessee
Kuhnel
Leitch
Morse
Oddo
Rainsburg
Thompson
LeClairRyan has announced that eight of its Roanokebased attorneys were selected by their peers as 2014 Virginia Super Lawyers. Each year, Law & Politics magazine completes a multistep process to determine the top five percent of licensed attorneys in the states in which they publish a listing. The honored LeClairRyan attorneys and the practice for which they were selected are: William E. Callahan Jr., bankruptcy, business; John T. Jessee, personal injury defense, medical malpractice; Paul C. Kuhnel, personal injury defense, medical malpractice; Powell M. Leitch III, personal injury and medical malpractice; Clinton S. Morse, employment and labor; Kevin P. Oddo, business litigation; Joseph M. Rainsburg, appellate; and Lori D. Thompson, bankruptcy, business.
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