Luke Allison walks into the former auditorium at the old Jefferson Elementary School in Pulaski and throws open his arms. “This is the problem,” he says.
This may also be the solution, too, but that’s getting ahead of things.
What I see are walls covered with graffiti, broken windows and ceiling tiles falling down from a water-damaged roof. Those are what look like problems to me, but that’s not what Allison sees. To him, all those problems can be fixed.
What he sees is something I can’t: He sees the rules governing historic tax credits.
A real estate developer like he is would look at a big room with a ceiling more than 20 feet high and see a space that could be divided into two stories and multiple apartments. However, he says, to qualify for historic tax credits, “DHR [the Department of Historic Resources] would require you to leave this the way it is.”
How can those two things be reconciled? In this case, he and others have a different idea. Allison is chief development officer for Vegg Inc.; Cody Journell is the CEO. They envision turning this space into a “grow house” for indoor agriculture. “This could generate $1 million worth of lettuce every year,” Allison says.
That’s not what this column is about, though. Cardinal’s technology writer, Tad Dickens, wrote last fall about how Vegg has partnered with another Pulaski company, MOVA Technologies, to use MOVA’s carbon-capture technology to capture carbon dioxide out of the air and use it to accelerate the growth of whatever produce Vegg winds up growing.
This column is about something else Vegg is doing: It’s using an old school. Allison is as effusive about the potential uses of old school buildings as he is the Vegg concept. He says old school buildings such as Jefferson Elementary School — built in 1923, closed in 1994 — are perfect for indoor growing. “With old buildings, they’re all brick so they have a high thermal mass,” he says. “They’ll maintain a temperature in temperate climates.” Those high ceilings in the auditorium that make it difficult to use the space for apartments are also perfect for stacks upon stacks of growing vegetables, he says.
Right now, Vegg is about a year and a half to two years away from converting the old Jefferson school in downtown Pulaski into a growing space. However, if Vegg takes off, Allison sees the potential for other growing sites in old schools across Southwest Virginia. The pandemic, he says, has shown the risks of a food supply chain linked to overseas suppliers, or even ones on the other side of the country. Here’s a way to mass-produce food year-around in a part of the country that otherwise isn’t suited for year-round agriculture, he says.
That’s not what this column is about, either. It’s about using an old school for something, anything. In Vegg’s case, it just happens to be indoor growing, but it could be something else.
That brings us to this: In 2017, Dickenson County was embroiled in a controversy over what to do with some of its old schools, specifically the one in Clintwood — a grand old building that dated to 1918. I was with The Roanoke Times then and I wrote an editorial proposing that rather than tear down the building, the county should declare it an enterprise zone as a way to help jumpstart budding entrepreneurs in the region. Enterprise zones — places with lower taxes — have had mixed reviews over the years, but they’ve also been championed by politicians as ideologically diverse as Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama as a way to create jobs in blighted areas. My thinking was, even if the track record for enterprise zones is only so-so, something is still better than nothing. Southwest Virginia is a place that needs jobs. It also has a lot of old, shut-down schools, and they could be used for something.
Dickenson County apparently didn’t think much of that. It demolished the school (it was in a flood zone, so there’s that). However, two state legislators liked my idea: then-Del. Todd Pillion, R-Washington County, and then-state Sen. Ben Chafin, R-Russell County. (Chafin has since died and Pillion has now moved to the state Senate.) They introduced legislation in 2018 that gives localities the power to declare abandoned schools as “abandoned school revitalization zones” where localities could encourage development by reducing permit fees, user fees or various taxes. The measure passed both houses unanimously and was signed into law by then-Gov. Ralph Northam.
How’s it worked out since then?
Well, nobody knows.
Since this is a local option, the state Department of Taxation doesn’t track it. Nobody tracks it. If there’s any locality that has taken advantage of this provision, I’d love to hear from them. When I heard about Vegg using the old school in Pulaski, I thought perhaps that was an example, but Pulaski County Administrator Jonathan Sweet tells me no, the county has not created an abandoned school revitalization zone.
Since Vegg is forging ahead with its plans, maybe it doesn’t need an abandoned school revitalization zone. However, Vegg does show what’s possible with old schools. In some places, old schools have been used for housing — The Billy Byrd lofts in Vinton and the former Fieldale School and John Redd School in Henry County come to mind. (See the story that Cardinal’s Martinsville-Henry County reporter, Dean-Paul Stephens, wrote about the conversion of Fieldale into housing. Those developers preserved the old auditorium as community space, which satisfies the tax credit rules.) I’m sure there are others. Some old schools have become community centers. Mike Dame recently wrote about an effort to convert the former Montvale Elementary School in Bedford County into such a facility.
Others, though, sit abandoned, and those numbers are growing. Franklin County and Russell County have just closed two schools apiece, the result of declining enrollment. Bristol has closed three schools as part of a consolidation plan and is now seeking proposals on what to do with the old ones. Bedford County and Lynchburg both considered closing some schools, but opted to keep them open — for now.
Given declining enrollments in most localities — a product of both declining birth rates and a general loss of population in many localities — it’s likely other places will be confronted with the unpleasant option of closing some schools.
It’s not my place to tell localities what they should do with their buildings; different ones have different needs. However, they should all be aware that this abandoned school revitalization zone is an option. Many of these buildings are in fine shape physically; they’re only closing because they don’t have enough students. (The physical problems with the Pulaski school have come from the building sitting vacant for three decades.) Old schools are also set up well to serve as co-working spaces or business incubators — lots of rooms, some common areas, parking. Communities that want to grow more small businesses would do well to consider this option.
Allison also makes another case for preserving old school buildings: This is part of our culture. He thinks “the definition of culture is wrong,” he says. Culture isn’t simply how people live, it’s the built environment, too. “If we were to save these buildings, we could save a lot of the culture, as well as create new opportunities.”
That seems a pretty good solution.
Why these are so controversial in rural Virginia
I write a weekly political newsletter, West of the Capital, that goes out every Friday afternoon. This week I’ll look at:
- The rural pushback against solar energy.
- How Ohio is doing something that Virginia could have done (and might yet do) and how it’s working out.
- Congressional fundraising.
- A trivia question that will test your knowledge of Virginia governors.
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