Economic Development by Design: Quality of Life as the True Measure

Note: This the fourth of a 5-part series that expands on the April 22 presentation (1:56) on Economic Development to the Board of Supervisors and the subsequent Town Talk interview with Mike McCool.

In my previous letters, I have outlined Warren County’s unique advantages as the gateway to Shenandoah National Park and explored how strategic tourism development can build a sustainable, diversified economy. Today, I want to examine the fundamental question that should guide all our economic development decisions: What are we really trying to achieve?

The answer, I believe, must be improving the quality of life for Warren County residents. Economic development that generates impressive tax revenue but fails to create meaningful employment opportunities, or that concentrates economic power in the hands of a few large employers, ultimately serves government more than citizens. Our goal should be an economy that provides gainful employment across skill levels and supports the community amenities that allow people to enjoy the fruits of their labor in pleasant surroundings.

The True Purpose of Economic Development

Too often, economic development discussions focus primarily on tax revenue generation, as if the county government were the primary beneficiary rather than the people it serves. This approach gets the priorities backward. Government revenue is not the goal of economic development; it is an outcome that should enable appropriate levels of public services to support community quality of life.

Warren County needs adequate public services, but not extravagant ones. Our residents need good roads, reliable emergency services, quality schools, and effective county administration. But they also need jobs that provide dignity and economic security, businesses that offer goods and services close to home, and an economic environment that attracts and retains young families while supporting those who have chosen to make Warren County their permanent home.

When we evaluate economic development opportunities through this lens, the advantages of distributed employment over concentrated employment become clear. As I discussed in previous letters, tourism development creates hundreds of jobs across multiple skill levels and business types. A robust tourism economy employs everyone from entry-level service workers to skilled tradespersons to business owners and managers. It creates opportunities for local entrepreneurship and builds wealth throughout the community rather than concentrating it in a single large employer.

This does not mean we should ignore opportunities for industrial employers, but it does mean we should evaluate them based on their contribution to community-wide prosperity rather than simply their tax payments.

Applying Quality-of-Life Criteria to Industrial Development

While I have emphasized tourism development in previous letters, Warren County should also pursue appropriate industrial opportunities. However, we should apply the same criteria to industrial prospects that we apply to tourism: prioritizing job creation and community benefit over tax revenue alone.

This approach leads to important questions about the types of industrial development we should encourage. Not all industrial development contributes equally to community prosperity, and in a county with limited available industrial land, we must be selective about how that land is utilized.

Consider employment density as a key criterion. Warren County has finite space suitable for industrial development, and land use decisions made today will constrain options for decades to come. A data center that employs 25 people on a 50-acre site uses land that could alternatively support a manufacturing facility employing 250 people. The choice is not just about immediate tax revenue; it’s about long-term economic opportunity for our residents.

Data centers, while potentially generating substantial tax revenue, create very few jobs relative to their land requirements. The tax revenue potential is uncertain because data centers often qualify for significant tax exemptions, and their equipment depreciates rapidly, reducing assessed values over time. Loudoun County, for example, faced a $60 million budget shortfall in 2021 when data center equipment values came in $1.1 billion below forecasts, forcing the county to consider borrowing or cutting services to balance its budget. Moreover, counties often find themselves outmatched by large technology corporations that employ sophisticated tax strategies and legal teams to challenge property assessments, creating additional uncertainty in revenue projections. More importantly, they represent a one-way land use decision. Once a site is developed as a data center, it cannot easily be repurposed for higher-employment manufacturing or other uses that might better serve community economic development over the long term.

Warren County’s Manufacturing Potential

The proliferation of data centers in Northern Virginia is creating market disruption that presents Warren County with an opportunity. As land costs and competition increase in traditional data center markets, manufacturing companies seeking well-located facilities with reasonable costs are looking westward. Warren County is uniquely positioned to attract such businesses.

Our location at the intersection of I-66 and I-81, combined with proximity to the Virginia Inland Port, creates logistics advantages that manufacturing companies value highly. These transportation connections enable efficient movement of goods to major population centers while offering cost advantages over more congested areas closer to Washington, D.C.

Light manufacturing operations typically offer several advantages over data centers from a community development perspective: higher employment density, diverse skill-level job opportunities, and greater integration with the local economy through supply chain relationships and worker spending.

Warren County should seek to position itself as an ideal location for light manufacturing companies seeking to balance market access with operational efficiency. This approach requires sustained effort over several years, but it could yield much greater employment and economic diversification than reactive acceptance of data center developers who are knocking on our door.

A Balanced Approach to Economic Development

Warren County’s economic future need not depend on choosing between tourism and industrial development. A balanced approach would prioritize tourism development—building on our existing advantages and creating immediate employment opportunities—while simultaneously cultivating conditions attractive to high-employment industrial prospects.

This strategy recognizes that tourism infrastructure serves multiple purposes. Prospective asset development projects such as convention facilities and sports complexes, which of course have to meet withstand strenuous financial scrutiny, don’t just generate direct tourism revenue for the locales where they are located; they also enhance the appeal to businesses considering relocation by demonstrating community amenities and quality of life. The same would be true for Warren County if such projects proved economically feasible.

Similarly, the workforce developed through tourism—customer service skills, hospitality management, event coordination—transfers readily to other sectors and demonstrates to manufacturers that Warren County possesses a capable, customer-oriented workforce.

The Urgency of Action

Warren County has been operating under austerity budget conditions for several years due to the financial devastation caused by the EDA scandal. Not only was economic development stalled for many years while the scandal unfolded, but the financial blow was crippling to county operations. We have made significant progress in recovering from that crisis, reducing our debt burden, and stabilizing county finances.

The county must persevere through these remaining austerity measures as we are not quite through the recovery period. However, without a doubt, it is well past time to restart the economic development engine of Warren County. We need leadership committed to a concrete plan of action rather than continued drift.

There is a real risk that continued pressure from tight budgets may lead to one of two unwise responses: a precipitous tax increase on residents and businesses or misuse of debt financing to fund ongoing government services rather than productive investments. Both responses would compound our economic challenges rather than solve them. When prospective investments that entail some measures of debt are considered, it is imperative that those evaluations are conducted in a highly structured and transparent way, such as the Economic Development Process (EDP) that I presented to the BOS on 4/22/2025.

The alternative is strategic prioritization on economic development initiatives that can ramp up relatively quickly based on existing competencies in tourism while putting in place the mechanisms to recruit light industrial employers, both of which generate sustainable revenue growth through job creation and business expansion but on different timelines. This approach requires patience and discipline—investing in projects that create long-term economic value rather than quick fixes that provide temporary budget relief but leave underlying economic weaknesses unaddressed.

The Path Forward

As we consider specific economic development proposals, we should consistently apply several key criteria: Does this opportunity create meaningful employment for our residents? Does it enhance or detract from the community’s quality of life? Does it build on Warren County’s existing advantages? And does it position us for continued economic growth of the high employment density type rather than dependence on low employment density?

These questions should guide our evaluation of tourism projects, industrial prospects, and any other economic development opportunities. The goal is not maximum tax revenue for county government but maximum benefit for the people who call Warren County home.

In my final letter in this series, I will outline specific steps Warren County can take to implement this vision, establishing transparent processes and clear criteria for economic development decisions that serve our community’s long-term interests.

Until then, I encourage all citizens to think beyond simple comparisons of tax revenue when evaluating economic development proposals. The true measure of successful economic development is not the size of the checks written to county government, but the prosperity and quality of life it creates for the families and businesses that make Warren County their home.

Rich Jamieson
Warren County Board of Supervisors