For more than a century, Danville was the economic powerhouse of south-central Virgina, based on the strength of its textile manufacturing industry and its tobacco growing and processing sector. But automation and low-cost overseas competition decimated employment in the US textile industry, eliminating 62% of jobs from 1950 to 2000. Beginning in the 1990s, the anti-smoking crusade shrank the number of Virginia tobacco farms from 6,000 in 1997 to only 300 in 2017.
What followed was both predictable and grim: textile mill closings, a sharp economic decline and out-migration of the labor force that drove local businesses under and left behind an aging population living on pensions and Social Security payments. It was a story repeated in rural place around the world – one that seemed seemed to offer no hope for the future.
Assets and Priorities
Danville may have been down, but it was by no means out. The city’s economic history had created a low-skilled workforce – but one with a legacy of manufacturing experience that might, someday, be of value. The city was also home to a university and community college that offered both academic and career-focused fields of study, and under-utilized industrial parks that nonetheless offered available space for investment. There was also a high-value asset hiding in plain sight: the city-owned electric company, Danville Utilities. Like government-owned rural utilities across the US, it was the legacy of electrification in the first decades of the 20th Century, when for-profit companies bypassed rural areas in favor of the more profitable cities and local governments took on the job of building out the electric grid.
Crisis has a way of focusing the mind, and Danville’s government and business leaders were determined to revive their remembered prosperity. From their work gradually emerged clear priorities. They needed to bring Danville a broadband network that could meet the new needs of business and residents. The city required programs for young and adult learners to equip them with skills and knowledge for today’s economy. Industries had to be targeted for relocation and entrepreneurs for startups through business attraction, support and retention programs.
Technical and Human Infrastructure
Turning priorities into achievements demanded money. Here, Danville benefited from an aftereffect of tobacco’s decline. In 1998, attorneys general from multiple US states reached an historic settlement with the major tobacco companies. It resolved lawsuits seeking reimbursement for the cost of treating tobacco-related illness – and produced billions of dollars in annual payments to states. To put the money to work, Virginia formed a Tobacco Commission.
Local determination and Tobacco Commission funding combined to spark a wave of change for the city. Danville Utilities had already built the nDanville fiber network in 2004 to serve the needs of government. In 2007, the utility opened it to serve as a middle mile for commercial ISPs bringing service into the community. The economic success of that move led the company to build out a fiber-to-the-premise network of its own, which eventually expanded to 165 miles (264 km) to serve subscribers across the county.
The city’s public schools ploughed Tobacco Commission funding into educational technology and learning labs for robotics and CAD systems. Partnering with Danville Community College, the schools introduce a STEM curriculum and established a magnet school for advanced learners and a career education center to guide students into employment. Meanwhile, the community college launched its own advanced manufacturing training center teaching skills in robotics, factory automation and electronics. By 2011, 73% of high school graduates were choosing to pursue higher education.
Strategic Successes
These achievements accelerated economic transformation. During the pandemic years, Danville was on the receiving end of US$1.1 billion in private investment commitments, many in advanced manufacturing. The money went into its industrial parks and helped found a new Cyber Park for digital industries. The city also partnered with local businesses and county government to establish, using yet more Tobacco Commission funding, an incubator called The Learning Place offering pitch competitions, consulting and seed funding to entrepreneurs. All these developments leveraged one more hidden advantage among Danville’s assets: a one-hour drive time to the Raleigh-Durham Research Triangle cluster in North Carolina, allowing the city to attract Triangle companies, employees and entrepreneurs with its much lower cost of living and easier lifestyle.
As the local economy returned to growth, out-migration eased, then reversed. The city began redevelopment of its downtown River District to convert long-abandoned textile mills into lofts and trendy apartments for incoming young workers. Investment announcements – including a US$1 billion hyperscale data center campus – have led Site Selection magazine to twice name Danville as one of the top 10 “micropolitan cities” in the United States. From near-death, Danville applied the principles of what is now the Intelligent Community Strategy to power its rebirth and to continue adapting to a global economy that refuses to stand still.
Population: 42,000
Website: www.danville-va.gov
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