Economic summit attendees explore options for the future

Yahoo

24-04-2025

Beckley – Successful economic development doesn't often glide along a smooth path.
And it is far from a rapid process.
Those were among the sentiments gleaned from a Wednesday presentation by Dr. John Deskins, director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at West Virginia University, on the final day of the Future Forward 2025 Summit and Expo at the Beckley-Raleigh County Convention Center. The two-day event was coordinated by the Beckley-Raleigh County Chamber of Commerce, the New River Gorge Regional Development Authority and West Virginia Hive.
Deskins delivered a wide-ranging presentation that touched on national, state and regional economic development trends today and projections for the future.
Up front, he admitted to being apprehensive that his remarks included at least some negativity.
"I will say it's not a great time to give an economic outlook speech," Deskins said. "We have a lot of uncertainty." Tariff policy talk nationally "has been changing daily," he said. "Tariffs have the potential to have a big impact on our economy, and when the policy discussion is changing daily, like literally this morning, it's hard to provide an economic outlook forecast."
Nationally, slower growth than normal is expected in the coming months, he said. "We expect West Virginia to be mostly stable."
Factors such as tariffs, interest rates and inflation all fit into the mix. "We're just in a wait-and-see mode right now. We still expect growth, but growth will be slower than what we had hoped for."
Deskins also discussed the state's unemployment rate, and he focused on people seeking – or not seeking – jobs in West Virginia. "We don't have a problem with people looking for work and being able to find work," he said. "The problem lies in labor force participation.
"I believe this is our biggest economic development challenge in West Virginia. I've been preaching this for years. This is the biggest problem that we face. The problem is that people aren't looking for work in the first place."
Narrowing his focus to the New River Gorge region, Deskins said the four-county area (Nicholas, Fayette, Raleigh and Summers) all told has about 55,000 jobs, with Raleigh County representing about 35,000 of that sum. He said that, although the region is in recovery from the Covid pandemic, there are only slightly more jobs being filled now than pre-Covid.
The low rate of labor force participation is the main sticking point, he reiterated. "Every county in the region has an even lower labor force participation rate than the state overall," Deskins said. "It's hard to wrap your head around this, but it is a big challenge."
According to Deskins, less than 50 percent of the adults in each of the NRGRDA's counties are active in the workforce, either working or looking for work. "And that makes the economic growth forecast difficult." Summers County, for example, stands at only 38 percent.
Deskins also presented details on per capita personal income, income growth, average salaries and myriad other subjects.
Attracting a data center or a large manufacturing center to the region should help alter the "status quo" baseline, he stressed. "Human capital has to be one of our economic development priorities," Deskins said. "There's no way we'll ever achieve the level of economic prosperity hoped for unless we can get more people in the workforce."
One suggestion broached at a recent conference in which he participated centered on methods to get older men and women to remain in the workforce longer, Deskins said.
Aside from an aging population, potential workers in the region and the state are also affected by "poor health outcomes" related to diabetes, smoking, cancer and other health situations. The drug overdose problem is another of the major issues "holding us down," Deskins said. "West Virginia is literally off the charts" in drug OD mortality rates for the most recent year available, he said. Education outcomes also are a challenge. The state has "a lot of people who don't have the right education, the right training, the right job skills. ... They're just on the sidelines."
"It's hard," Deskins said after his presentation. "We have some quick wins that we could gain. Data centers is probably one of our potentially quickest wins. I don't know if one is considering this region, but I know some are considering West Virginia in general."
He added, "We have potential to attract manufacturing to the area, as well," charting along the "more traditional economic development direction."
"But, thinking long term, we have to think about our people first and foremost," Deskins said. "We have to think about improving those poor health outcomes, the major problem with drug abuse, the poor education (outcomes) that we face.
"And we have to think about making West Virginia just a place where people want to live. We have a lot to leverage. We have a lot of natural amenities, things like the national park (New River Gorge National Park and Preserve), for example, things like the Summit Bechtel (Boy Scouts) camp. All outdoor amenities that we have are things that we can leverage and invest in more to make people want to live here.
"The evidence shows that, if people want to live here, if they move here, jobs will follow. Invest in people, invest in quality of life and also target those short-term, more traditional development opportunities that we have before us."
He concluded, "It's also going to be county-specific. Some counties are going to do better than others. Nobody wants to admit that, but it's true.
"But, especially here in Raleigh, we have a good density, we have an industrial base ... that allows us to build, and we have opportunity. We have fewer jobs than there were a decade ago. It's not going to happen overnight, but we can make improvements and I think there's reasons to be optimistic for the long run."
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In recent months, a study was undertaken by Bowen National Research which collated input from 67 southern West Virginia stakeholders to formulate a housing needs summary in the four-county region of Fayette, Nicholas, Raleigh and Summers served by the NRGRDA.
The Bowen National Research study "provides data to support Build WV Tax incentive access and address community housing needs in the New River Gorge region," according to the NRGRDA website.
The firm's president, Patrick Bowen, was on hand Wednesday to reveal the findings of the study. The study covered a wide range of subjects, including evaluating past, current and projected demographic characteristics; determining current characteristics of major housing components within the market; examining various factors that affect housing market conditions and development; providing housing gap estimates by renter or owner and income segment; and collecting input from community members in an online survey.
The study found, among other areas, that a limited availability in multi-family rental housing units exists, there is a relatively limited amount of for-sale housing, and the region has an overall housing gap of 7,569 units for rental and for-sale product at a variety of affordability levels.
After his presentation, Bowen said local community involvement will be critical.
"Part of (the effort) will be organizing because people can start having a conversation," Bowen explained. "We can put out data, we can provide recommendations, but ultimately the community has to decide what path it wants to go on.
"We have studied some general paths, but because you have different counties with multiple municipalities, each one's going to have different priorities and different resources they can put towards housing; they're all going to decide what each one needs to do."
He referenced a similar study the firm completed in northwest North Carolina, and he said those community members had several meetings after they received their study results, addressing topics such as zoning or policy or how to attract development. Those gatherings at times drew around 80 participants, he noted.
The SWV housing needs assessment was launched on the NRGRDA website on Wednesday. It can be accessed at nrgrda.org/housing-needs-assessment-new-river-gorge/.
Wednesday's activities also included exhibitors, breakout sessions involving business service representative Donnie Pomeroy detailing Workforce West Virginia resources and support, and Donnie Morgan, representing the City of Beckley Planning and Zoning, who outlined the city's zoning regulations and urban planning strategies.
Also on the later agenda were Judy Moore, of WV Hive and the NRGRDA, who spearheaded a discussion on small business and economic development; Lisa Strader, of Visit Southern West Virginia, who showcased the region's tourism initiatives; and a legislative update guided by Sen. Brian Helton, R-Fayette.
• • •
"Today we heard from John Deskins," Jina Belcher, executive director of the NRGRDA, said late Wednesday morning. "He's always very real about the status of the region. We heard a lot of rough statistics to hear, but we heard about a lot of opportunities we have, as well.
"One thing that we are hearing is we are expected to have an increase of folks that want to move to the region. With that, we need to have quality housing, we need to make sure that we have a quality workforce. We talked a lot about opportunities for recruitment, we talked about small business support and that's where we (need to) really focus a lot of our efforts, is looking at diversifying the economy to open up the doors for entrepreneurs to have access to spaces and access to resources that are going to help them grow."
Concerning the possibility of the future arrival in the region of data centers, which were discussed during the morning sessions, Belcher said, "The NRGRDA is taking the perspective that we're working with each of the counties in our region to identify the right locations for these data centers. They are a bit of a controversial topic, and we know this is a priority of the current state administration. They want to find locations for data centers, so we feel we should take a proactive approach and identify where they should go and the best locations for them so that we can market those available locations, rather than open up the floodgates and let them select on their own."
"We're hearing great feedback," Michelle Rotellini, president/CEO of the BRCCC, said of the community participation in Future Forward this week. "Folks are saying that they're learning valuable information. Everyone has learned something that they didn't know."
Rotellini also acknowledged "really useful information" Wednesday morning by Bowen in presenting the regional housing needs assessment crafted by his team. She said the local community would be wise to heed Bowen's advice to establish local guidance to engage in addressing some of the housing issues facing the region. "I'm looking forward to being able to put some task forces together to address some of these issues," said Rotellini.
"I think it (the event overall) has been very successful," she said. "It's getting community leaders and entrepreneurs on the same page so that we now can move forward and work together" from a similar vantage point.
Jordan Wooldridge, BRCCC board chair, said attendees at Future Forward this week had a "shared purpose" that is targeted toward developing a "stronger, more resilient community." The summit/expo was "more than just numbers and forecasts," he said. "It's more about people at the end of the day. It's about partnerships. It's about finding real solutions that will uplift our businesses, empower our workforce and ensure that our communities will thrive."