The Warren Sentinel

Article date: October 14, 2004

Sweeping Avtex developmental plan reviewed

 By Roger Bianchini

At a work session last Friday, the Front Royal-Warren County Economic Development Authority was presented with a stirring vision of the potential for the Avtex Business Park and its impact on the community.

The vision-spearheaded by EDA Executive Director Paul Carroll and expected to be voted on at tomorrow’s EDA board meeting - is based on development of the 162-acre business park as a mixed-use site centered on innovative technologies and the hospitality industry.

Carroll presented to the EDA a plan that he said would make the redeveloped Avtex site an international, cutting-edge center for the trading of ideas that will be at the root of the future of business and industry worldwide.

Tied to a hotel and conference center designed to be a landmark of the Northern Shenandoah Valley coupled with development of world class culinary and wine institutes, Carroll told the EDA this vision would irrevocably move Warren County and Front Royal from a somewhat closed, provincial and rustic past toward a more sophisticated, yet still small-town, environment at the forefront of international business innovation and cooperation.  As such the community would become populated by some of the cultural amenities characteristic of such settings, the plan envisions.

Ultimately, realization of this vision would not just impact the future of the community at large, but perhaps most particularly its youth, Carroll stated in the plan.

“One of the greatest potential beneficiaries of ‘Royal Phoenix’ [the project’s working title] is Warren County’s youth,” Carroll wrote in the plan presented to the EDA.  “Royal Phoenix will bring both a world of ideas and a world of visitors to the area.  The county’s youth should have exposure and access to this influx of people and ideas.”

To facilitate that interaction, the conceptual plan suggests numerous interactions between county and town government, the county public school system and Royal Phoenix’s private industry client base that will involve county students as early as junior high school and continue through high school graduation and higher education as well.

“The youth must understand the value of what is emerging at Royal Phoenix and feel connected to its development.” Carroll wrote.  “To engender such an understanding in the youth, the EDA, county schools, private schools and outside organizations need to develop and find funding for youth specific initiatives.”

Among the specific suggestions made in the plan are for a summer science camp that will showcase the innovative technologies being featured by the Royal Phoenix companies.  The potential of expansion of the camp to a national level centred around the Warren County business and educational community is also raised.

Carroll’s plan states that this “larger program would place Warren County students in the midst of the scientific best and brightest of their generation.  It would also establish Warren County and its incubator and showcase as a national technology center in the minds of the next generation of technology and science innovators”.

The development of increased science and language curricula in the county schools is suggested so that county youth can seek, “internships and community services opportunities that allow them direct access to our foreign visitors.  This exposure will not only encourage the young students to explore the world beyond Warren County, Virginia and the U.S., but also create the desire to continue on in education to learn fore about our global community.”

But the crucial flip side of that educational and business developmental coin is that it gives students the opportunity to either stay in or return to their community with the potential for meaningful, creative and financially rewarding careers, Carroll said.

“One of the reasons we selected Paul as our executive director is that we were looking for someone who had that experience of working with development and had more of a sense of vision [rather ] than just execution,” EDA Board Chairman John LaBarca said following last Friday’s work session.

“What we heard today has been primarily Paul’s work and it is a view of the future- what it could be not just based on gut feeling.  He’s done a lot of homework, talked to a lot of experts and brought a lot of data together that says what we are proposing today is possible, some perhaps more so than others, and we’ll find that out as time goes on,” LaBarca said.

“It’s the beginning of the process but we’ve put some stakes in the ground as to what we want to have in this process at certain points,” LaBarca continued.  “In four months we want to have the marketing effort done, in five months we want to be in a position to contract out to developers, preferable for the entire business park site and then deal with the Conservancy [Park later].”

LaBarca credited the EDA Board for its level of perception and input into the process during the work session.

“You saw today [that] we’ve got a lot of expertise in the room.  There was a lot of interaction this morning. So this was not just a sit down [and listen session], we got a lot of good guidance.  This is a strong beginning and I think we’re headed for a resolution,” LaBarca said.

“Like John said, we brought Paul in to take this to the next level,” EDA board vice chairman Rick Novak added.

“And I think we have a very optimistic, good plan to accomplish that.  All plans are subject to change but we’ll take this thin forward, present it to some developers and see what they say about it, how they would tweak it a little bit but I think we’ve make a really good start,” Novak said.

“When I look at this vision it is based on a lot of work that has already taken place,” Carroll said of developing the Conceptual Plan he presented to the Board.

“There’s been a lot going on in the community, in the EDA [and] in stakeholder groups.  And this is how to take all that work and build on it.  That’s where it is and I think it’s very exciting right now that we’re at a point where we want to make sure that this works well, that it provide jobs for the people, training for the people of Front Royal and Warren County,” Carroll said.