If the topic is what kind of businesses Stafford County officials should try to attract, at least one supervisor knows what she wants to see.
The focus should be on those ventures for which residents already clamor, Supervisor Crystal Vanuch said Tuesday night, such as a bowling alley or a movie theater.
Vanuch spoke on the subject during and after a joint meeting of the Board of Supervisors and the county’s Economic Development Authority, which aims to draw new businesses as well as retain and support existing firms.
“What we’ve asked the EDA to look at is how to [draw] those businesses that our residents ask us about every time we have a town hall, every time we have a public meeting,” Vanuch, who represents the Rock Hill District, told her colleagues. “I was at a meeting on a roundabout by Augustine, and I was getting asked about a bowling alley, a movie theater. And: ‘What are we going to do with our kids?’”
Economic development officials should look at what other counties are doing to attract the businesses that Stafford residents desire, she said. The answer could be incentives such as tax holidays or waivers on local taxes, or streamlined planning and zoning approvals.
“Both the EDA and the Economic Development Department, I think, should be able to develop an economic development incentive program to incentivize the businesses that we know our residents want and need,” Vanuch told the Free Press after the meeting. “Why don’t we give funding to that?”
What Stafford doesn’t need, reasoned Vanuch, are those businesses that say they require more residents to be in the county before they can move there. In her opinion, the locality already has infrastructure issues.
“We already have road challenges,” Vanuch said. “We already have 7,000 houses approved that haven’t even been built. So I would struggle to understand how a business is going to come here and say, ‘You need to have more housing,’ It just doesn’t make sense.”
A former economic development director for Stafford did a “retail gap” analysis that outlined the kinds of businesses the county lacks, she said. They included fine dining, some chain restaurants, women’s clothing stores and entertainment options.
EDA members said Tuesday that they want to try to ensure their economic development strategies reflect what’s important to the Board of Supervisors. Originally known as the “Industrial Development Authority,” the EDA was formed to foster business growth by providing financial support and incentives to attract manufacturers and major employers to the county.
“Stafford is in the right place for growth,” said EDA chair Jack Rowley. “This is the right time to achieve our mutual plans for Stafford and for the future.”
Or, as EDA Treasurer Price Jett put it, the EDA should be in line with the goals of the county’s Economic Development Department and the supervisors.
“We want to make sure the EDA is not going in one direction where the county [supervisors are] going in another,” Jett said. “Sort of those three things working in harmony almost as if three cords bound together in a rope, rather than working in different directions, or, at worst, working at odds with one another.”
