By Nolan Stout
LURAY — It’s time to invest in Main Street, U.S. Sen. Mark Warner says.
The Luray Downtown Initiative has brought several new businesses and investments to town in the last year, and the two-term Democrat said the trend is spreading throughout the commonwealth.
“There are remarkable things happening in small communities across Virginia where downtowns are being revitalized,” he said. “It takes this kind of public-private collaboration to get things done.”
Warner stopped in Luray on Sunday to discuss economic revitalization with about 40 people at the Mimslyn Inn in Luray as part of a weekend swing through the Valley. The event was hosted by LDI.
Luray is a designated Main Street community through the Virginia Main Street program, which is managed by the Department of Housing and Community Development. It “provides assistance and training to help communities increase the economic vitality of their downtown commercial districts,” according to a press release.
Warner said he’s working to connect various revitalization efforts across the country to allow them to share information and resources.
Luray needs to emphasize tourism, he said, because attracting manufacturing jobs would be difficult due to limited access to the town.
Warner said investing in infrastructure and beautification is essential to revitalization. Since the 1970s, the federal government has cut infrastructure spending in half, he said.
“I think that’s crazy,” Warner said. “That used to be America’s qualitative edge.”
He said revitalization and increasing investment creates more than half of new jobs, and he highlighted efforts in Harrisonburg through Harrisonburg Downtown Renaissance.
“There’s a real energy in Harrisonburg — a lot of new tech companies, a lot of new startup enterprises,” said Warner, who stopped by Pale Fire Brewing Co. in the city on Saturday. “A lot of this five, six years ago was not happening.”
Luray needs to attract businesses that will invest locally, unlike giant companies that are shedding “human capital” to become more productive and cut costs, he said.
“If we don’t find a way to make more people feel like investing in our free enterprise system is actually going to give them a fair shot,” he said, “I feel we’re going to see more and more ... folks on both ends of the political extreme.”
Warner said the country needs to make “capitalism work for more people in the 21st century,” and people in rural areas deserve a fair shake.
“Communities in the Valley, communities in the Southside, Southwest, need to have the same opportunities that the folks in Northern Virginia have,” he said.
Warner also spoke in support of trade deals, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders, who sought the Democratic presidential nomination before endorsing Hillary Clinton last week, have used their opposition to the agreements as a rallying cry on the campaign trail.
Clinton, whom Warner has endorsed, and President Barack Obama support both deals.
Warner said such agreements help the United States set the rules for trade, but have left behind rural communities.
“If you’re a small community in Southside Virginia and you lost your textile mill or you lost your furniture plant based on trade,” he said, “all the stats in the world isn’t going to convince [you].”
Multinational corporations benefit most from the deals, he said, but Washington needs to provide incentive for them to invest back in the U.S.
“I don’t know if you pass a law or you just go sit down with them and say ‘You’re going to expand all this additional profit, and you’re going to be able to add all these jobs. You need to locate some of these jobs in the communities that are left behind,’” Warner said. “We ought to be doing a heck of a lot more for communities that are left behind.”
