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Community Profile: Fredericksburg


Germany-based grocer Lidl is building a $125 million distribution center in Spotsylvania County that is expected to create 200 jobs.


population or a few exits off of I-95, or preferably both. The region’s King George County, to the east, has neither of those things, but it has a healthy local economy with a September unemployment rate of 4 percent, which is in line with its neighbors. The county’s biggest asset is the


Naval Surface Warfare Center, on the Potomac River. It has 4,850 civil- ian employees, according to county figures, with a $499 million annual civilian payroll. It also has 1,807 con- tractors supporting the facility. King George is the region’s


Lidl broke ground a year ago on a $125 million distribution center. That facility is expected to create 200 jobs. Even farther south, North


Carolina-based grocery chain Harris Teeter announced plans in late 2015 to build a new distribution center on 190 acres in Caroline County. The facility will eventually be 1.5 million square feet, and the company says it will employ about 400 people. The project hasn’t broken ground yet, but Harris Teeter already bought the property, says Gary Wilson, Caroline’s economic development director. It’s worth noting that this Harris


Teeter project is about 40 miles south of Stafford’s new technology park. Caroline, with just under 30,000 residents, is less than a quarter the size of its northern neighbors, so there’s much less commercial activity. Plus, says Wilson, “We don’t have federal investment here.” The other big project coming soon to Caroline is a new Walmart superstore, which will likely break ground in 2018 and


84 DECEMBER 2016


bring another 500 jobs. The county also is getting a


major road expansion, a $26 million project paid for with state and local funds at its state Route 639 inter- change with I-95. “It’s a really good project for us, because it completely opens up this corridor to commer- cial access,” Wilson says. Here’s one more


Wilson


location-related example for Caroline: Wilson says the county has a ready- to-go data center site near I-95 with dark fiber and sufficient


power and water. The county doesn’t have any other data centers, but Washington-area companies looking for data redundancy should take a look, Wilson says. “We’re where they should be. We have the utilities and the resources.”


Naval center major employer That seems to be key to attract-


ing the bigger private-sector deals in this region — have a growing


smallest locality in population, at 25,500, smaller even than the city of Fredericksburg, which has about 28,000 people. The city’s downtown is in the midst of a makeover, with several new upscale townhome and condo projects planned or already completed. Its restaurant sector is thriving, too — the city’s annual meals t ax receipts are up $1.1 mil- lion this year compared with 2013. The city’s downtown is unique


in the region and is a destination for locals and visitors. But, much of the region’s economy is still driven by the Washington economy. You could reasonably say its gravity reaches to the southernmost station of the Virginia Railway Express, which opened a year ago. On weekdays the earliest north-


bound train leaves at 4:57 a.m., and even those passengers have to drive to catch the train because there is no housing near the station, just woods. That’s been the formula here


for a few decades. If you’re willing to commute a long way, you can buy a house for way less. But, Roberts with the regional alliance says that commuter ethic might be retired with the baby boomers. By 2025, he says, about 75 percent of the nation’s workforce will be millennials. “I’m curious if they’re going


to want to do that two-hour com- mute,” he says. If they don’t, com- panies will have another reason to move here. “Given the quality of life here, that’s where the employers are going to go.”


Photo by Mark Rhodes


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