The Wise County Industrial Development Authority is working on two housing projects that could bring around 100 new units in and around the town of Wise.
The hope is the development will help address the shortage of market‑rate and workforce housing — a deficiency that has “hindered the area’s ability to attract well‑paid, higher‑skilled workers,” according to a 2023 countywide housing assessment.
One will be half a mile from downtown Wise at the former J.J. Kelly High School property, which the authority plans to purchase from the county in the next two months. The other property, which the authority already owns, is on Patriot Drive near the University of Virginia’s College at Wise.
The properties will be evaluated for either single-family homes in a subdivision layout or multi-family townhouses, said Brian Falin, Wise County’s economic development supervisor and the director of the county’s development authority. The most needed houses are in the $200,000-$250,000 range, which is the aim for the two projects, he added.
There’s not a timeline for when they will be completed because both are still in site development stages.
Like localities across the country and region, Wise County is in a housing crisis, with minimal construction and a decline in population since 2010, according to the report. But it is also experiencing an uptick of people looking toward the region for lower housing costs and businesses hoping to capitalize on cheaper land.
Gov. Abigail Spanberger visited far Southwest Virginia in May and said the region needed at least 8,600 new housing units to support economic development. Housing is essential to economic development, the Wise County report said, both to bring new work in and attract employees already working in the area.
Wise County is taking advantage of a new state law that gives industrial development authorities the power to take on housing projects. In localities with active housing authorities, IDAs were not permitted to use their powers in relation to single or multifamily units.
Attracting people commuting from the Tri-Cities or Abingdon to live in Wise County would help in several ways, Falin said, including bringing in tax revenue, population growth and retail sales.
“If we can make some positive impacts there, it really drives everything,” he said.
J.J. Kelly site will be the first to get moving
Since Wise County went through school consolidation in 2011, there have been many conversations about how the old J.J. Kelly school could be used, Falin said in a phone interview. Plans to use the building for county offices proved costly because it was deteriorating.
Conversations about housing began after the county demolished the building in 2022. Already being in a residential area and its proximity to Wise’s Main Street means it’s a prime site for a large-scale housing development, Falin said.
The authority will purchase nine acres from the county with a loan from the Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority. The authority was awarded an up to $250,000 loan to finance the purchase at a Sept. 10 meeting.
It also applied for funding through the Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization Program and was awarded a $1.8 million grant for site development in August, including sidewalk demolition and sediment control.
Falin said officials expect site development to wrap up a year from now, and then they will look for a developer. Hopefully, bringing down site development costs helps attract a developer to the area, Falin said, which might be a challenge with lower home prices.
The authority will not be involved in the actual housing construction and will get the land into the hands of a developer through an agreement, Falin said. But it will decide on the type of housing as presented by prospective developers.
Falin said this site has the potential for 30 to 75 units, depending on the type of housing: on the lower end if they go with single-family homes and the higher end if they wind up with townhouses. He anticipates development will happen in phases and be driven by demand.
The site off Patriot Drive
Falin said the authority has for several years owned the Patriot Drive property, which was once targeted for small-scale commercial development. After the pandemic decreased the desire for office space, officials realized they needed to shift gears.
The 10.5-acre property is adjacent to the Health Wagon and close to UVa-Wise, and there are opportunities to create walking trails straight to campus, Falin said.
“We think that will make this very attractive to faculty and staff and to bring some additional workforce to [the college],” he said.
The 2023 assessment stated that faculty and staff face a “two-pronged issue” of affordable housing that is in poor condition and being unable to afford housing on the higher end. “This has resulted in potential faculty members turning down jobs due to the lack of mid-range housing,” the report noted.
Falin said the biggest hurdle to this property is the need for traffic infrastructure improvements. Turn lanes need to be brought up to state standards and utilities relocated as a result.
The county has approved $850,000 so far for these improvements, he added, and the authority is still seeking funding for the utility relocations.
The authority can’t move forward until there is a transportation plan, but after that, it will look toward site development with plans to develop a subdivision on the property. Falin said he anticipates it will be six months to a year before officials can start the design phase.
At this site, they are focused on single-family housing, Falin said, anticipating 25-30 homes that are 1,200-1,500 square feet.
The property, which is on county land, is already zoned for a residential area. Falin said the authority is considering leading the housing construction itself on a ramp-up schedule, with money from the sale of homes reinvested into additional units.
Because of its location and the authority’s ownership of the property, Falin said it’s a good opportunity “for us to test our work on the housing development side.”
New legislation invites development authorities into the housing market while workers move to the region
Under new legislation in July, IDAs across Virginia now have the power to participate in the housing market by readying properties for single or multifamily housing.
Previously, this power was limited by a requirement that adaptive reuse projects be 80% housing and 20% commercial, said Del. Eric Phillips, R-Henry County. The legislation, which Phillips co-sponsored, allows development authorities to work on total housing projects and develop sites to make them more attractive to developers, he said.
The hurdle to housing development is the predevelopment costs, Phillips said, and IDAs are uniquely positioned to lower these by applying for grant funding, as Wise County did at the J.J. Kelly site. In Martinsville, Phillips said, similar work is being done to convert an old furniture factory into apartments, using grant money to prepare the site before selling it to a developer.
With the passage of the bill, all development authorities can work on housing projects regardless of the status of their locality’s housing authority. Many localities in the Southwest have their own housing authorities, and historically, those focus on public housing for families with low incomes, Falin said. Opening the door to development authorities allows Falin to “focus on different types of housing,” he said.
A state spokesperson said the primary difference now is that housing authorities may operate facilities, while IDAs are unable to do so. The bill also gives development authorities the power to issue bonds for the construction of affordable housing, which previously had been limited to grants only.
It’s not clear if neighboring counties in the far Southwest or Southside have taken advantage of these powers yet. In Dickenson County, officials hope to, but there is not a readily available site for a new housing project, said Dana Cronkhite, executive director of the Dickenson County Industrial Development Authority and the county’s economic development director.
