Sunday, March 07, 2010
Clifton Forge's new hopes
Entrepreneurs see an upside after the town's long decline. Rick Tabb has helped raise money to build a new train station. Louise Belmont wants to turn the former Clifton Forge High School into an arts college.
Clifton Forge storefronts have recently begun to fill with new restaurants, galleries and retail shops.
Photos by Sam Dean | The Roanoke Times
Jim Bay recently opened the Old Forge Coffee Co. in Clifton Forge so that transplants like John and Debbie Gatlin can get their caffeine in a coffee shop setting.
The latest from The Ticker blog
CLIFTON FORGE -- A former railroad boomtown turned near ghost town of the Alleghany Highlands, Clifton Forge welcomes a hint of gridlock.
A coffee shop, pub, signmaker, and a photography and blacksmith gallery have revived the business district on East Ridgeway Street in the past six months. And three entrepreneurs who direct new nonprofit groups seek to bring railroad and arts enthusiasts to town.
The entrepreneurs are drawing regular local clientele as well as outsiders to a downtown that for decades was nearly deserted. Now, parking spaces fill up in the afternoons and evenings, evidence of progress, town leaders say.
"It's the principle of spontaneous combustion -- they just pop up like spring flowers," said Helen Kostel, a 47-year resident of Alleghany County.
Enterprising visions
Economic expansion in the town of nearly 4,000 people comes because of a serendipitous mix of affluent retirees and transplants pursuing individual goals:
Rick Tabb, a 51-year-old business consultant from Louisville, Ky., stopped in Clifton Forge four years ago to research a detective novel he planned to write set on an old-time passenger train.
Now director of the Chesapeake & Ohio Historical Society, Tabb turned the old freight depot into the group's museum last year and brought nearly 10,000 tourists to town. He then raised about $160,000, or half of what the society will need, to build a new train station for possible Amtrak service.
Bear Mountain Signs, a custom sign designer, opened five months ago. Sales have grown at least 60 percent since its first month in business, owner Melissa Hundley, 46, estimated.
In the same month, Fire and Light Gallery, displaying photography and metalwork, moved in across the street. Revenue is up about 10 percent since last year, but co-owner Chuck Almarez, 64, said he's not sure of the exact number.
Riders Up! Outfitters, an outdoor recreation rental and retail store, added 1,000 square feet with its new location on Ridgeway Street in October. Sales have grown since 2008, but co-owner Tom Kirlin, 47, said he wouldn't disclose specific figures. The store benefits largely from some of the 200,000 travelers a year who visit Douthat State Park, which straddles the Bath County and Alleghany County lines.
Old Forge Coffee Co., with a $7,000 espresso machine and wireless Internet access, began business in January. It gets 40 to 50 patrons a day, owner Jim Bay, 46, said.
Jack Mason's Tavern has anchored the end of Ridgeway Street's business district since it opened in November. Owners Wendy Hudler, 49, and Martha Atterholt, 40, bought the building when they moved from Arizona to Eagle Rock last year. They have made a profit with the restaurant, and sales are better than they had expected, Atterholt said.
Jo Ann Carter Gideons, 62, of Powhatan gutted a $15,000 house on Jefferson Avenue. She's spending at least $100,000 renovating it and plans to open the seven-bedroom Red Lantern Inn there by May.
A retiree who moved to Clifton Forge three years ago, John Hillert began the Masonic Theatre Preservation Foundation last year and is renovating a 105-year-old theater on Main Street.
The four-story building will cost $3.5 million to $5 million to redo and should open by November 2011, Hillert, 59, said. The nonprofit group has secured about half the funding through tax credits and sponsorships. Construction contractors will start work in November if the group secures an additional 20 percent of the funds. "And we're confident we will," Hillert said.
There's also buzz about what Louise Belmont may bring to town.
The Reynolds Metals Co. heiress and a six-year resident of Low Moor is the catalyst who sparked enterprising vision in many locals, Clifton Forge business owners say.
Belmont, 73, dreams of turning the former Clifton Forge High School into an arts college.
She has an option on the vacant Lowell Street building, and wants the Clifton Forge Co., a group she formed to spearhead the arts school, to buy it for $60,000. The 80-year-old two-story building has a broken steam boiler, an old roof, no air conditioning, no sprinkler systems, and its layout doesn't meet Americans with Disabilities Act codes.
With a $25,000 state grant, the city hired Roanoke's Hill Studio last year to study the project. That study hasn't been released to the public.
However, contractors estimated the school would cost up to $10 million to redesign and renovate, according to Meade Snyder, treasurer of Clifton Forge Co., which acts as the project manager.
Kostel, another board member in the group, said she's sure they will complete the project, then asked, "Where does that money come from?"
They'll apply for historic tax credits and grants, Snyder said. A world-recognized institute like Savannah College of Art and Design may want to partner with them, he added.
SCAD has no plans to open a location in Clifton Forge, spokeswoman Ally Hughes said.
Chugging back to life
A few years ago, "You could have rolled a marble at 7 o'clock from one end of town and not hit a car," said Glen Bryant, 56. The blacksmith and gallery co-owner knows nearly everyone around but has begun to notice strangers on weekend nights at Jack Mason's Tavern, he said.
Still, residents liken the town to Andy Griffith's Mayberry, but steeped in tradition from the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, now CSX Transportation.
The C&O shops swelled with the demand for steam locomotives for almost a century. But by the 1980s, the disappearance of steam engines and decline of train travel had shuttered the shops.
By 2001, the city, crippled with high real estate taxes and $451,000 in debt, reverted to town status -- just the second Virginia locale to do so. Then, the median household income in Clifton Forge was $26,090, or $16,000 less than the national median income.
Seven years later, Clifton Forge had built a $226,000 surplus, but many residents remained impoverished or unemployed.
Clifton Forge's destitution is apparent one block from East Ridgeway Street, on Keswick Street, where all but three or four of 14 houses are vacant and have peeled siding, boarded windows, crooked porch awnings and front yards dotted with debris and abandoned tools.
The town received $138,000 in grants last year to remove dilapidated houses. Five buildings have been razed, and four more should be gone by May, said Andy Morris, Clifton Forge's community development director.
Demolishing these types of buildings or restoring them is Clifton Forge's biggest challenge, said Town Manager Tracey Shiflett.
He has a folder marked with the word "Blight" at the top of the stack behind his desk in the town hall.
Next to that folder, Shiflett keeps a similar one marked "Goals," such as adding second-floor residences in buildings downtown.
An influx of young people -- lured by opportunities in town or by happenstance -- is necessary if the town will survive, according to David Kleppinger, director of the Alleghany Highlands Economic Development Corp.
In the 2000 census, Clifton Forge ranked as having one of the most aged populations in Virginia, with a median age of 43, and nearly a quarter of its population 65 or older. Those numbers haven't changed much since then, according to the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.
"It's not a complete community unless it's demographically balanced," Kleppinger said.
Staff writer Matt Chittum contributed to this report.
