Photos courtesy of Virginia Tech

These images show results representative of the capabilities of nanotechnology instruments in use at Virginia Tech's Nanoscale Characterization and Fabrication Laboratory.

Photos courtesy of Virginia Tech

These images show results representative of the capabilities of nanotechnology instruments in use at Virginia Tech's Nanoscale Characterization and Fabrication Laboratory.

Photos courtesy of Virginia Tech

These images show results representative of the capabilities of nanotechnology instruments in use at Virginia Tech's Nanoscale Characterization and Fabrication Laboratory.

The Roanoke Times | File 2007

Luna nanoWorks in Danville is one of a few nanotechnology companies in Southwest Virginia.

The unemployment rate in Southwest Virginia is rising and new jobs can't get here soon enough.

Now, one of the communities that's contracting economically is advancing a bold strategic economic plan.

Representatives of the hard-hit Pulaski area are proposing the region's governments invest in what is expected to become a trillion-dollar industry during the next 10 years -- nanotechnology.

Nanotech -- working with particles smaller than a cell -- is an emerging science in which the New River Valley is ahead of the curve because of research under way at Virginia Tech and the presence of a handful of companies that have developed or are developing related products.

Now, the town and county of Pulaski are proposing that the next step forward be a business park geared to nanotech companies.

The price tag for the park's anchor building will be at least $16 million, more than most individual governments can afford alone. It is expected to take a group of local governments pooling their funds, winning state and federal grants and luring private investors to the table to pull the project off.

Vacant park considered

Virginia's First Regional Industrial Facility Authority, a coalition of 15 governments that formed a pact 10 years ago to undertake major economic development projects in teams, is expected this spring or summer to consider whether to build the park.

The authority's board of directors, with members from Bland County to Roanoke, voted unanimously in December to begin a detailed analysis.

Pulaski-area representatives are working up a prospectus describing the opportunity, drawing upon about $300,000 worth of work by several consultants who found the project has a chance of success.

The prospectus will be presented to the board April 8, officials said Wednesday. Also Wednesday, engineers told the board they are progressing with design work for a planned sewer and water system upgrade that will raise the capacity of the park's systems from 100,000 gallons a day to 1 million gallons a day.

As envisioned, Virginia Nanotechnology Park would feature a 50,000-square-foot, multi-tenant building for lease to energy, environmental and medical companies using nanotechnology.

The tenants would bring high-tech jobs and generate tax revenue to be shared by all participating governments, under the concept. Worker training would be offered.

"I think it a worthy concept to explore," said Brian Townsend, Roanoke's assistant city manager for community development.

Architects who looked at more than 15 existing buildings in Southwest Virginia said the preferred site for the park should be the 973-acre New River Valley Commerce Park in Pulaski County for a host of location-driven and technical reasons.

"What makes this concept happen is our proximity to Tech," said John White, economic development director for the town of Pulaski. The park and the state's largest research university are 22 miles apart, a drive of about half an hour.

In addition, nanotechnology firms need clean rooms and vibration-free environments, a setting not easily created in a former textile or furniture factory, even though they are plentiful in the area.

Such a setting requires new structures and new structures require green space, White said, which is what the commerce park has plenty of.

The park was formed by 11 of the 15 governments in the joint industrial authority in 2003 to lure a large manufacturer. It has sat vacant.

White hopes the park will generate 50 to 100 jobs at the start. The plan is by no means the entire answer to Southwest Virginia's economic woes, but one long-term strategy, White said.

High-tech jobs could help replace old-economy work

You don't have to hunt long in rural Southwest Virginia for reasons why new industry makes sense.

Longtime industries including textiles, furniture and car parts employers are fading away. Buildings once occupied by Renfro, Virginia Maid, Sadler Hosiery, New River Industries, Pulaski Furniture and Jefferson Mills sit empty in or near downtown Pulaski.

In the Pulaski County Corporate Center is TMD Friction, which recently announced the closure of its 15-year-old brake factory by May 31, putting 140 people out of work.

Unemployment across 13 Southwest Virginia communities represented by the New River Valley/Mount Rogers Workforce Investment Board stood at 7.1 percent in December 2008, up from 4.2 percent in December 2007.

Giles County, the worst hit in the New River Valley, was at 7.7 percent in December, but the city of Galax had the highest unemployment in the New River/Mount Rogers area in December at 10.9 percent, said Marty Holliday, program planner at the board.

As many communities aspire to do after old-economy industries reach the end of their life cycle, Southwest Virginia is seeking new engines of growth. In this case, the region has a foothold in nanotechnology from which leaders hope to climb to new economic highs.

According to an analysis by Tech's Office of Economic Development, Virginia led the Southeast in National Science Foundation grants for basic nanotechnology research from 2003 through 2007 with 187. Virginia Tech and nearby nanotech firms captured 61 of them valued at $15 million, more grants than in any other region of the state.

Further defining the New River Valley as a nanotech hot spot, Virginia won 89 grants for applied research during the same period, the most of any Southeast state. New River Valley firms received the majority of them, garnering 47 worth $16 million.

In one of the area's best-known nanontechnology unions resulting from Virginia Tech research and entrepreneurial energy, Luna Innovations Inc. placed a nano-manufacturing and research center in Danville in 2005 after the city gave the company $900,000 in incentives.

Luna, which is based in Roanoke, is developing what it calls an improved MRI contrast agent based in part on breakthroughs in the nano realm by a Virginia Tech professor, Harry Dorn, who directs Tech's Carbonaceous Nanomaterials Center.

The Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center in Blacksburg is another venue of nano-related business activity, with multiple firms present and a major nanotech research center. But the park, owned by the Virginia Tech Foundation, allows only biotech and software manufacturing with a research component.

The niche for the proposed new business park would be to broadly support pre-manufacturing and manufacturing activities of nanomaterials.

Those companies wishing to complete final product and process development would occupy a multi-tenant, anchor facility that Thompson & Litton architects in Radford said would probably cost $16 million. Companies ready to produce a product could build and operate at one of eight individual-use sites, at their expense.

A pre-treatment sewage plant would filter any incompatible nanoparticles before liquid waste is sent to the municipal treatment facility. That system represents a likely additional expense, as would the required land. A price tag for the entire project is still being developed.

Additional support could create a nano cluster

Analysts believe the nanotech park does not have to rely solely on existing local companies but could, in fact, attract clients from among 300 nano-related firms in the United States that are almost ready to begin producing a product or are producing a product and not tied to any particular location.

If enough of them gather, Southwest Virginia would be on its way to having a bona fide nanotech industry cluster -- which analysts define as a concentration of companies in the same field that compete and cooperate.

Clustered companies may operate more efficiently than isolated firms because they can share a climate of innovation as well as suppliers, infrastructure and specialized labor, for example.

The catalyst for nanotechnology's rise in the New River Valley is Virginia Tech.

The university is placing a large bet on nanotechnology as a core discipline of the Tech's Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science, which strives to invent sustainable technologies from the merged efforts of engineering, science, biology and the humanities.

Fifteen months ago, Tech opened its Nanoscale Characterization and Fabrication Laboratory housing $12 million worth of specialized instruments at the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center.

ICTAS director Roop Mahajan said 100 university researchers are working with some aspect of nanotech.

"People have dubbed it [nanotechnology] the next industrial revolution," he said.

Lux Research estimated the worldwide market for nanotech goods and services will grow from $150 billion in 2007 to near $3 trillion in 2015, Mahajan noted.

"I see potential for our inventors, researchers to take their ideas from the bench to the marketplace," Mahajan said.

A commercialization-focused facility near the university and near similar companies such as is envisioned at the proposed business park "makes a lot of sense," he added.

Aric Bopp, who directs the New River Valley Economic Development Alliance, called the initiative "very forward thinking. I think it has some real merit and real potential, but like many great ideas, it is going to require risk, revenue and people's time to bring it to fruition."

Rick Claus, president of NanoSonic in Blacksburg, endorsed the potential for nanotech industries to create jobs.

Of the park, he wrote by e-mail: "There are similar nanotechnology groups/parks/initiatives underway all around the country, many times near other universities. It will be interesting to see how a new nanotechnology park 15 miles away from our local research university campus will be able to effectively leverage university resources and compete with established efforts in states like California, Massachusetts, New York, Michigan, Texas and elsewhere."

Tech analysts found that there is still time for the New River Valley to define itself as a prominent center of nanotechnology.

After surveying 60 business venues across the United States, Tech's team found no facility or business park designed to support nanotechnology firms in the pre-manufacturing or manufacturing phase as the proposed Virginia Nanotechnology Park would be.

NanoChemonics, a producer of nanomaterials in Pulaski County, has said it might be willing to locate as a potential anchor tenant in the proposed park and could bring its customers to the table for joint ventures.

Tim Hopkins, the company's president, called nanotechnology "incredible" with potential to advance energy generation, environmental remediation, medicine, and the cleanliness of water and air, to name a few examples.

"The days of making widgets are over," Hopkins wrote by e-mail. "We must begin to focus our efforts on science and technology, and keep it at home."