Work on the new $26.5 million Regional Workforce and Child Development Hub in Abingdon is 99% complete, the staff will move in at the end of the month, and it is expected to open in early September, Travis Staton, president and CEO of EO, said Thursday.
EO — which is short for “Endless Opportunity” and previously was the program arm of the United Way of Southwest Virginia — has been working on the hub since July 2023. A public ribbon-cutting ceremony will likely be held in October, which Staton hopes will be attended by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who has spoken favorably about the project several times.
The hub was built in a former Kmart building that totals 87,000 square feet in a shopping center off Interstate 81’s Exit 17.
The hub will house an early childhood development center that will serve 300 children up to 4 years old and will be operated by Ballad Health.
It will also offer workforce training with STEM labs for teacher training, and a shared services alliance designed to strengthen early child care and education providers. The building will be home to Career Commons, which will provide students across Southwest Virginia with hands-on career simulation.
The hub will address the serious gap between the child care needed in the region and what’s available. Staton said that before the COVID-19 pandemic, the gap in Southwest Virginia was three times greater than the state average, which translated to about 7,000 children. Child care costs have also risen above what many families can afford.
Many businesses in the area also operate with an employee deficit, and owners have expressed an urgent need for career and technical skill development and training for the emerging workforce.
Once Staton had the idea for the center, he said he realized he had to start from scratch with planning and design because no such facility exists.
On Wednesday, The Innovate Fund, a community development entity based in Greenville, South Carolina, announced it is making a New Market Tax Credit investment of $5.5 million in the Abingdon project.
The NMTC Program attracts private capital to low-income communities by allowing investors to receive a tax credit against their federal income tax in exchange for making equity investments in specialized financial intermediaries called Community Development Entities. The credit totals 39% of the original investment amount and is claimed over seven years, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
“These funds help us cover some of the construction costs, but also help us have resources available so we can essentially operate the building and run the programmatic functions inside the building that we will be doing over decades to come,” Staton said.
He said he was working with the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development on getting some of its Industrial Revitalization Funds for the project when he learned about the New Market Tax Credit funding.
It turns out that the workforce/child care hub fit well with The Innovate Fund’s mission, and it didn’t hurt that TIF program manager Emma Wyatt lives in Abingdon and had heard about the project in church. The hub will be the first NMTC project to be completed in Washington County, according to Wyatt.
Reservations are already being taken for K-12 student field trips to the hub, and calls from parents interested in child care are being fielded, according to Staton. They are also in the final stretch of moving in furniture for the child care side of the building.
EO has a temporary certificate of occupancy for the building, with a final certificate expected next week. Hiring is also underway for the more than 100 jobs that are being created by all areas of the hub.
After a grand opening in October, Staton said the plan is to hold an open house for the community in November.
Everyone involved with the hub is excited for it to open and to get to work, Staton said.
“We just want everybody to have good jobs and livable wages and have good places for their children to be cared for so we can keep our economy moving forward,” he said.