Heartwood nears opening

By MARK SAGE/Staff

Todd Christensen promises 300 new businesses and 1,000 jobs within three years.
The executive director of the Southwest Virginia Cultural Heritage Commission, the group overseeing next month’s opening of Abingdon’s Heartwood, said he’s sure the artisan gateway will be responsible for even more than that. The trouble will be in documenting, he said.
In the past four years, Christensen said, Floyd County has seen 25 new businesses, all attributable to its involvement with The Crooked Road music trail. In fact, Christensen said, since 2003, when The Crooked Road got its start, localities associated with it have had meals and lodging taxes increase by 60 percent. Non-affiliated localities, in the same time frame, saw a 35 percent increase, he said.
Christensen said that everybody laughed when organizers said they wanted The Crooked Road to be nationally known. Today, it’s internationally known, having been featured in, among others, The Washington Post and The New York Times. Everybody now wants a Crooked Road, Christensen said.
In the future, he said, everyone will want a Heartwood. But they won’t be able to have one, Virginia Tourism spokeswoman Tamra Talmadge said. Heartwood is unique and tied to the generations-old culture here, she said. It’s authentic, it’s local and it’s new, she said, all things that travelers crave. Talmadge said that Heartwood is presenting an old culture in a new skin and can’t be replicated.
Talmadge and Christensen said what Heartwood promises is especially important to the younger generations. Christensen pointed to the popularity of old-time and bluegrass music with that age group. Go to Floyd or Galax, he said, and you’ll find that the majority of those making and enjoying the music are under 27.
In three years, marketing director Chuck Riedhammer said, everyone will associate Southwest Virginia with culture, and not of the backwoods, stereotyped variety. Coming with the opening of the building is a million dollar marketing campaign, paid for by Appalachian Regional Commission funding, to make sure that happens.
Christensen said the idea is to preserve the culture while simultaneously marketing it. The goal is to draw outsiders deeper into the region through the Abingdon gateway. At the same time, he promises to not do anything that would hurt tourism in Abingdon. He said that Abingdon is unique in that it’s always operated as a creative economy. Other localities are just coming to grips with the need to so. Part of the job of Christensen’s group is to move communities away from goods and services centers to cultural centers. Goods and services are dying, he said, as Wal-Mart continues to siphon customers away.
Christensen said the group started a project in Glade Spring two years ago. Take pictures now, he said, because in a few more years it will be unrecognizable. Another goal is to attract Southwest Virginians to further explore Southwest Virginia. To that end, Heartwood has been doing a lot of internal marketing, Christensen said.
The 30,000-square-foot facility, which opens June 15, will feature the best of local crafts, music and food. It has four artisan galleries, a performance space in the middle, a gift shop, a coffee and wine bar and a restaurant. Diana Blackburn, executive director of Round the Mountain, which will be based out of Heartwood, said more than 200 artisans from the network have been evaluated. Her group, which just finished printing the final brochure for the 15 artisan trails around the region, is responsible for jurying the crafts. She said it’s a rigorous standard, with each craftsman required to submit five pieces for consideration. If even one fails to pass muster, they don’t display. They also have to be willing to sell the pieces they use for the jurying process.
Christensen said the commission made a decision to not include artisan studios at Heartwood. Instead, it’s looking to help the town create an artisan quarter, a concept he believes would take Abingdon to a whole new level.
Part artisan center, part restaurant, part visitors center and part rest area, Heartwood will employ 30 full-time workers and is projected to draw more than 270,000 visitors annually.
Blackburn said that not all of those will have time to follow the artisan or music trails deeper into the region, but the centralized location overlooking Interstate 81 off Exit 14 will give them a taste so they’ll hopefully plan a trip to do just that.
Christensen said Heartwood was projected to generate more than $28 million in revenue. So far the funding for the $17 million project has come from the Appalachian Regional Commission, Abingdon, Washington County and the other 18 counties and four cities in Southwest Virginia. Long-term funding will come from site-generated revenue from food and retail sales as well as from contributions from counties and cities surrounding.
Heartwood will be open Sunday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. It is available for special events, including conferences and weddings.
Seven years in the making and billed as the physical embodiment of the creative economy, just don’t call it Tamarack. Christensen said Heartwood is nothing like the Beckley, W.Va., artisans center that features music, crafts and food off Interstate 77. Named after the Tamarack tree, the 22,000-square-foot facility there was built in 1996 to showcase West Virginia culture but has been plagued with financial trouble. In 2008, The Associated Press reported that the Parkways Authority-run center would be offered for lease to a private entity. In 2010, the AP reported that plans to lease the facility were put on hold after no one showed interest.
Heartwood serves Bland, Buchanan, Carroll, Dickenson, Floyd, Franklin, Giles, Grayson, Lee, Montgomery, Patrick, Pulaski, Russell, Scott, Smyth, Tazewell, Washington, Wise and Wythe counties and the cities of Bristol, Va., Norton, Galax and Radford. All the crafts displayed will come from local artisans from those counties. The building, which is LEEDs certified and features 23 geothermal wells for heating and cooling, was even built with locally harvested wood, dried by solar kiln at the sawmill. The building was designed by Roanoke, Va.,-based Spectrum Designs. Its interior was designed by Richmond-based The 1717 Design Group.
Mark Sage can be contacted at 228-6611 or jsage@wythenews.com.