within 60 miles of Roanoke, including a medical school in the city’s downtown. The area has more than a dozen craft breweries, an expanding innovation cor- ridor, Virginia Tech and its Corporate Research Center and a well-publicized reputation as an outdoor adventure play- ground. Yet it still has a problem attract- ing and keeping young professionals.


Director of talent attraction The Roanoke Regional Partner-


ship plans to do something about that problem. It expects to hire a director of talent attraction to promote the area to millennials the way that Pete Eshelman, the partnership’s director of outdoor branding, has promoted the region as a mecca for runners, hikers, campers and cyclists. The purpose of the new position,


which the partnership plans to fill in early August, will be to capture young professionals in the area before they get away and to lure back those who’ve already left. Such a position is unusual among smaller metro markets, according to Beth Doughty, the partnership’s execu- tive director, but it’s common in larger areas. “It’s part of modern economic development,” she says. The partnership also is working


on more traditional means of economic development, such as leading an effort


money in it.” Young saw something else in t he


Star City. “I saw it was cool before it saw it was cool,” she says. The first time her family came to


town, the Roanoke Museum of Fine Arts (now the Taubman Museum of Art) was featuring the work of renowned Georgia folk artist Howard Finster. “Any place that is hip enough to have Howard Finster in its art gallery is hip enough for me,” she says. Her grown children, however, now


live in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. “A lot of things that make it so livable and lovable in Roanoke are things that do not appeal to them,” Young says. They aren’t the only ones. There


are at least 20 colleges and universities www.VirginiaBusiness.com VIRGINIA BUSINESS 33


to identify and assemble large sites for potential employers. Developing and maintaining a healthy economy, however, involves much more than attracting big companies. According to the Virginia Employment Commission, Roanoke alone has nearly 1,700 businesses with four or fewer employees. “Employment is all kinds of different profiles,” Doughty says. “It’s jobs, jobs, jobs, as everybody says, but it’s not limited to a big box where people work.” In addition to building upon the


region’s relatively new identity as a hip, outdoorsy place, the director of talent attraction can take heart from recent research from the Urban Land Institute showing two Virginia metro areas are already millennial magnets. Hampton Roads’ millennial population grew by more than 16 percent between 2010 and 2015. In the Richmond area, the popula- tion grew by nearly 15 percent. Only one other metro in the country topped 10 percent, the Riverside-San Bernardino- Ontario area of California, which saw an 11.7 percent increase. It’s true the New York-Newark-


Jersey City metroplex attracted more millennials than the top four percentage leaders combined, but the metroplex is a very big place. Those new New Yorkers increased the area’s millennial count by less than 3 percent.


Taylor Ricotta remembers wanting to leave the area when she was growing up. Now she promotes the region to other young professionals.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104