Senators are good at things like, oh, say, talking. Mark Warner didn’t do as much talking on his Friday tour of Downtown Waynesboro as he did a lot of listening.
“I’m always interested to see how so many smaller communities in Virginia have a kind of new sense of energy around them,” Warner said in an interview with Augusta Free Press and The News Virginian after a Friday tour of the downtown business district.
His hour-long visit started at the Wayne Theatre, with a tour led by executive director Tracy Straight, who fielded questions from Warner on how tickets were selling and the kinds of shows that the theatre is finding to be successful.
Warner later talked with the owners of South River Fly Shop, Initial Inspiration and The French Press coffee shop.
Sitting down at the coffee shop for the 20-minute-plus interview, Warner talked about a stop on his flash visit to the region earlier in the day on Friday in Charlottesville.
“All these entrepreneurs and tech companies there are raising concern about where they can find office space for their back office. I asked, Have any of you been over the mountain? Have you thought about Waynesboro?” Warner said.
Noting the growth of the local arts scene, with the Wayne Theatre, the Shenandoah Valley Art Center and the P. Buckley Moss Museum as anchors, and the thriving local restaurant sector downtown, Warner feels that there is some momentum building in Waynesboro.
There is definitely a sense of momentum on a macro scale with the growth in the so-called gig economy.
“If you look at the overall workforce, about 35 percent of the workforce now is not in the traditional 40-hour-a-week, 52-week-a-year job. They’re part-time, they work in IT,” Warner said. “I would wager that the lady over here, this is her office, the way she’s set up. That just wasn’t the case 30 years ago, 20 years ago.
“I don’t know what’s happening in Waynesboro, but in many communities, and in Staunton they’re doing this now, they start looking at, let’s do a shared workspace where at a very low rent various entrepreneurs can come in and work in this common space,” Warner said.
“It’s probably not going to be filled with just traditional hardware stores. But can you get some entrepreneurs in there, can you get some art space? Can you try to create a community?”
– Story by Chris Graham
Share
Chris Graham
