In the late 1980s, the Radford Army Ammunition Plant, commonly known as the Arsenal, employed nearly 4,000 people. By 1995, it employed 1,400. Nearly two-thirds of the workforce lost their jobs in the span of a few years, and both our fathers were among them.
We have worked together on economic development in the Roanoke Valley for a decade, one of us as a volunteer and the other as a practitioner contributing to a shared regional effort that has created more than 3,700 jobs and $1.57 billion in capital investment since 2022. It was only recently that we learned of this shared personal history.
At the Arsenal, layoffs ran strictly by seniority through a “bumping” process; the least-senior workers went “out the gate.” The cuts were so sweeping they reached loyal employees with ten years of service. In 1991, as the decline gathered, the Virginia Employment Commission’s Radford job services manager warned that laid-off workers could expect “slim pickings” — few jobs, and especially few high-paying ones. The Roanoke Times reported 7,475 unemployed across the New River Valley.
The statistics were sobering. The personal stories were more so. Every one of those jobs belonged to a family, many with children. Families scrimped to afford groceries, utilities, and housing. Many relied on the kindness of relatives and neighbors. Many simply went without. The economic impact was real; the human impact was deeper. Anyone in Southwest Virginia old enough to remember those years carries that memory still.
We were the lucky ones. Our fathers’ resilience carried our families through. Personal sacrifices including long commutes to find work were required. Families navigated difficult circumstances and ours were not immune. In spite of the challenge, both of us went on to college, earned degrees and now lead organizations in the Roanoke Valley. We also came away with the realization that one of the most important priorities to a working parent is the dignity of providing for a family. The self-determination we saw in our fathers and families is something we have tried to model in our own lives, and it is why both of us have given so much of our careers to creating jobs and opportunity.
That lesson is not just history. Yokohama closed its Salem plant, eliminating 570 jobs this year. Voyant Beauty closed, laying off 95 manufacturing workers. Automation, global competition and corporate consolidation still reach into the manufacturing sector that built this region. The economy will keep changing. The question is whether the region and state is welcoming to business and whether both are ready to put people to work in what is growing.
Thankfully, what is growing is already here, and it is the data center ecosystem. More than 4,000 workers in the region build and service what data centers need, at Virginia Transformer, Munters, Carter Machinery, New River Electrical, and others. They are welders, electricians, machinists, HVAC technicians, heavy-equipment mechanics and logistics workers — the manufacturing skills Southwest Virginia is known for. Recent coverage has documented growth on the order of 200 percent at Virginia Transformer and Munters, making the data center supply chain easily the fastest-growing manufacturing sector in the Roanoke region. Data centers and their supply chain are the largest blue-collar jobs opportunity of this generation.
The data center campuses proposed in Botetourt County and at Wood Haven Technology Park extend that story. They mean work for technicians on the data center floor and for the mechanical, electrical and plumbing contractors who keep a mission-critical facility running around the clock. Research suggests six to nine jobs are created elsewhere in the regional economy for every job on a data center campus. These jobs are durable. A 24/7 facility, anchored by deep capital investment and long-term utility commitments, cannot be offshored. They pay well without requiring a four-year degree, and the wages circulate through local retail and services.
We know the concerns — electricity rates, water, land use — and we take them seriously. They are being addressed through large-load rate policy that protects residential customers, through water supply planning, and through normal economic development practices such as deliberate land use and zoning decisions by local governments. These projects are being developed responsibly.
And the opportunity does not end with jobs. After all, social mobility requires more than living wage career pathways. Specifically, quality public education is required to prepare the children of blue-collar workers for successful higher education, a factor that was true for both of us. Data centers are among the highest-value investments a locality can host. Research from the Northern Virginia Technology Council shows local tax rates would need to be 91 percent higher in Loudoun County if data centers were not contributing to local revenues. A data center generates more than 10 times the local tax revenue of a manufacturer on a similarly sized site. For local governments in the region facing inflation and the rising cost of state and federal mandates, that revenue could sustain quality public schools, a primary component of any successful community. Research has proven there is simply no upward mobility without quality public education.
Our fathers did not have a choice in the Arsenal cutbacks of the early 1990s. This generation does have a choice — to support meaningful career pathways that create social mobility and to welcome investments that fund quality of life: public education, parks and public safety. The next major industrial build-out is happening now. The only two questions are whether the build-out is happening here, where our communities can benefit, and whether our family and friends are the ones working in it.
The data center question is not abstract to us. We are two sons of laid-off Arsenal workers, who have a particular perspective on this moment. Our families persisted because they were resilient, because our schools were good and because the region still offered a pathway up. We are what happens when working-class families get a fair shot. The data center ecosystem can give the next generation in Southwest Virginia that same shot: a good job that doesn’t require leaving home, and schools strong enough to open doors their parents never had. The goal of economic development is to make our story ordinary, not exceptional.
Paul Nester is is currently president and CEO of RGC Resources, Inc., a Nasdaq listed
company and parent of Roanoke Gas Company and RGC Midstream. John Hull is the president/CEO of the Roanoke Regional Partnership. He also serves as the executive director of the Western Virginia Regional Industrial Facility Authority.
