Link.
I grew up in the area and thought it was interesting to see local stories covered by bigger outlets. This has been boiling over for the last year or two. Essentially Bristol, VA's been on the decline for years for multiple reasons, and now the city's attempting a Hail Mary with a broken arm. All the while, thanks to state legislation helping border cities, Bristol, TN has prospered beyond people's wildest dreams.
It's a pretty long article and goes into depth on more issues besides the Falls catastrophe, but it's the elephant in the room. So much money has been sunk into it the city has no choice but to continue trying to make it succeed. Meanwhile the city manager has plans to make the city viable again, but he needs to get creative. Like possibly converting the closed mall into a cannabidiol facility.
I grew up in the area and thought it was interesting to see local stories covered by bigger outlets. This has been boiling over for the last year or two. Essentially Bristol, VA's been on the decline for years for multiple reasons, and now the city's attempting a Hail Mary with a broken arm. All the while, thanks to state legislation helping border cities, Bristol, TN has prospered beyond people's wildest dreams.
It started with a giant hole in the ground. The old city landfill in Bristol, Va., filled up about 20 years ago, and city leaders decided to build a new one in an abandoned rock quarry. It made sense — the quarry was a 20-acre pit, why not just fill it with trash?
But the limestone walls of the pit were porous. To prevent dangerous chemicals from seeping out, the city had to buy a new lining for the landfill walls roughly every two years, at a cost of $1.2million each time.
Fees didn't cover the cost of operating the landfill, let alone replacing the liners. Today, the city carries more than $30million in debt from the landfill and had to write off $22million siphoned from the general fund to cover expenses.
Bristol needed a break.
So just as city leaders had tapped an old quarry to stay in the garbage business, they tapped another old quarry and decided to go into the commercial real estate business. Christened The Falls, the city-owned development was going to be a $260million hub of restaurants and shops just off the highway.
But there was a potential problem: Less than 10 miles farther down I-81, an even bigger commercial development was underway. Across the line in Tennessee.
The Tennessee General Assembly passed a law aimed at helping its border cities compete with rivals in other states. Tennessee has no personal income tax, but it has sales tax of up to 9.75 percent — nearly twice Virginia's maximum 5.3 percent.
The difference tends to make people near the borders want to live in Tennessee and shop in Virginia. The new law allowed developers who built retail within 15 miles of a border to recoup some of the sales tax, making projects more attractive.
(Real estate developer Steve) Johnson, who had his eye on a 200-acre piece of property along the highway, pounced. His development was called The Pinnacle, and it was unlike anything else in the region: A million square feet of shops and restaurants, anchored by a Bass Pro Shop, CarMax, Marshalls and a Belk department store. The project would be worth nearly $250million.
In Bristol, Va., the reaction was near-panic. Local officials asked Johnson to consider developing The Falls instead. They rushed legislation through the Virginia General Assembly to create sales tax revenue rebates for project developers.
Johnson says he spent a month studying the site for The Falls and came to a conclusion. "It was undevelopable," he said. The quarry site would be expensive to level and grade, the roads were too small, the spot was just wrong.
But the city found another developer and did it anyway.
Today, The Pinnacle boasts about 70 merchants. The Falls, so far, has fewer than 10. Rather than help the city deal with its landfill debt burden, The Falls has made the problem far worse. It added nearly $48million to the city's tab, essentially maxing out its debt capacity.
It's a pretty long article and goes into depth on more issues besides the Falls catastrophe, but it's the elephant in the room. So much money has been sunk into it the city has no choice but to continue trying to make it succeed. Meanwhile the city manager has plans to make the city viable again, but he needs to get creative. Like possibly converting the closed mall into a cannabidiol facility.