by Ben Walls
Driving on U.S. Route 220 in Martinsville, Virginia, the Jones family agrees their hometown is a shell of what it used to be.
“Yeah, there’s not much left here,” said Alyssa Jones, a Virginia Tech student who was born and raised in the area. “It was nice to grow up here, but now there isn’t anything left for me. I don’t see myself living here once I graduate (from Virginia Tech)–unless I become an attorney.”
The Joneses use “empty” to describe their hometown: homeowners and renters are leaving, home values are low compared to a state average and only few small businesses remain open because locals are unable to pay the independent and local prices, according to Alyssa.
The City of Martinsville and surrounding Henry County entered an investors’ crisis in the nineties which left today’s opportunities scarce–only a few residents find success and security, while most have no choice but to look for work elsewhere.
A once-prosperous shipping, textile and furniture center is reduced to so much; Patrick Henry Community College, Martinsville Speedway, law firms, timber businesses, the state-funded Virginia Museum of Natural History, the state-maintained Philpott Dam and the remaining furniture companies drive the economy today.
At one time, however, venture capitalists made a fortune and skilled, blue-collared workers made a comfortable living at Miller Brewing, DuPont, Copenhagen Printing, American Furniture Company and Martinsville Wire and Steel until most businesses outsourced to Central America.
Promising higher margins, Central American governments incentivized Martinsville’s industries where furniture, rubber and textile products could be produced at a lower cost.
Despite Bassett Furniture and Virginia Mirror Company’s major presence in retail today, Martinsville doesn’t have the Fortune 500 presence it once had; the community’s dynamic has changed.
Some of Virginia’s largest logistics companies, Virginia Carolina, R.P. Thomas and Roy Stone, and other tertiary businesses have gone under because businesses have little need to hire shipment companies.
Factories within the city and county crumbled decades ago and remain unused. Even the neighboring Town of Stuart, Virginia built a Walmart on the land where the former J.P. Stephens Elastics Company sold rubber products from its factory.
“People nowadays just do this and that for work,” Alyssa said. “We have potential; we have the factory buildings, the space, the (Smith River) and the railroads. I believe our generation is gifted enough to make the right decisions coming up.”
Alyssa considers her parents, Nick and Tracy, who have done “this and that” for work throughout the years. While the couple makes a living as landlords today, Nick once worked at the various local factories, performed machine repair at his father’s company, Jones Machine Service, and sold insurance for American General Life.
Before joining her husband as a landlord, Tracy was a teacher and worked at Bassett Country Club and Samwell Printing Company.
“Everything was pure greed to the stockholders,” Nick said, who owns 20 mobile homes on 30 acres in Ridgeway, a southern Henry County town. “I’m upset the way it happened, but I understand the investment; people are just trying to see how they can save money.”
At the same time, the Environmental Protection Agency continually fined Martinsville’s industries for dumping in the Smith River.
“I think the city needs to be cleaned up a bit; a lot of the infrastructure is outdated,” Alyssa said. “People just see Martinsville as a has-been city that’s never going to be anything again.”
According to Alyssa, city and county zoning have become problems where only specific manufacturing businesses can practice. As the city has difficulty entering new industries like finance, entrepreneurship and software, investors aren’t taking risks.
“Everything that’s new doesn’t meet the needs of the people,” Alyssa said. “We need to meet the people where they’re at.”
Husband and wife Eddie and Phyllis Holland saw the manufacturers’ decline first-hand; together, they have 60 years’ experience in the satellite manufacturing and the commercial window industries, and Phyllis continues to work full-time at West Window Corporation in Martinsville.
While pointing fingers at politicians and the younger generations, the Hollands blame a post-recession economy, business regulations, inflation and a more-recent COVID-19 pandemic for the area’s fall. Furthermore, they agree the area’s economic negatives outweigh the area’s recent positives.
“Things used to boom,” Eddie said, referring to the furniture companies. “We didn’t seem to have problems one way or the other. Now, we have (the younger generations) who don’t want to work. That’s my theory on it–nobody cares anymore.”
The Martinsville Chamber of Commerce failed to answer requests to speak about the city’s shifting economy and how it plans to adapt.
“Everything was reviving, I think, and we saw more jobs and those who wanted to work,” Eddie said. “But after this COVID thing came out, we can’t do nothing; (the price of) materials, like wood, have tripled in this area.”
Phyllis said the job market has changed a great deal. One could quit their job and receive another “within the hour,” but the Holland and Jones families agree today’s jobs are few and far between. Since few opportunities remain, the Hollands said they are scared for homeowners and renters who are not able to keep up with their property taxes and insurance.
The city and county also entered an opioid abuse epidemic in 2017; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that Martinsville and Henry County are prescribed among the highest doses of prescription opioid drugs in the U.S. The Joneses coined their hometown “the opioid capitol of the world.”
While Americans are supposed to be prescribed about 40 morphine milligram equivalents (MME’s), Martinsville residents receive an average of 4000 MME’s every year. In April 2017 alone, the Martinsville Police Department confiscated 118 pounds of unused prescription drugs from community members.
The same CDC report said Henry County had among the highest MME opioid prescriptions per capita in the country at 957.9 MME’s.
Small business owner and City Councilwoman-elect Tammy Pearson noticed changes in her city too, especially after the Canadian, American and Mexican governments signed the North American Free Trade Agreement. While Pearson was born and raised in Henry County, she noticed her hometown has become “very sad,” but she believes the area has potential.
Along with owning two restaurants and a bowling alley with her husband, Pearson volunteers with The Uptown Partnership and Move to Martinsville, a group of downtown revitalization projects, and she serves on two local boards: the Boys and Girls Club and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
“We want to make sure our children here are growing up in a good, safe environment,” Pearson said. “I’ve definitely seen some changes happening and some really positive changes; I think we’re bringing in some really good companies.”
As a member of the city council, Pearson wants to take advantage of the city’s underground fiber optic network, promote residents’ access to housing, protect small businesses’ interests and encourage residents to pursue trades.
The area also hopes to develop a new generation of workforce leaders with help from the Harvest Foundation’s Student Excellence in Education grant, a full scholarship opportunity for local high school graduates to attend college.
“A lot of older people here still think there’s still manufacturing jobs–well, they’re not,” Pearson said. “I think we have to realize we’re not going to get a lot of manufacturing jobs back. It’s just not going to happen.”
Pearson believes a couple of the missing links to Martinsville’s success is a lack of partnership and competition; as a restaurant owner, Pearson is thrilled to see other restaurants open up in the Uptown district, though newer restaurants serve as competition.
Though Alyssa and Pearson agree Martinsville has potential, some citizens are uncertain. “We were the largest furniture manufacturer in the world,” Eddie said. “I’m looking at things to get better, but I don’t know.”
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