Photo by Robbie Skinner.
Upshur County
Robert Hinton, executive director of the Upshur County
Development Authority, is laser focused on the diversification
of industry in Upshur County.
“I’d like to see us not be as impacted by the ebb and flow
of oil and gas as we have been in the past,” he says. “I’d like
to see more knowledge-based work and job opportunities that
match the skill sets of college graduates. This would help turn
the corner on economic growth.”
With this goal in mind, Hinton and other leaders in Upshur
County have worked toward nurturing the region’s top indus-
tries, including agriculture, manufacturing, STEM, timber,
health care and aerospace.
With a variety of properties ready for development, a ready and
willing workforce and major employers like Aleris Corporation;
SEFPRO; Weyerhaeuser; Weatherford; MRC Global; Baker
Hughes; A.F. Wendling’s Foodservice; AFP Logs & Lumber,
Inc.; West Virginia Split Rail; J.F. Allen Company; WVU Med-
icine; and West Virginia Wesleyan College (WVWC), Upshur
County is open for business.
“At the Upshur County Development Authority, we try to
sustain the job creation we have in the county for existing
businesses,” says Hinton. “We try to make sure they have the
resources they need to stay in business and excel and grow.
We try to recruit new companies to our area while also trying
to figure out what opportunities are untapped. For a while
we were heavy into oil and gas, but we’re trying to figure out
new solutions to job creation and find some new industries.”
While the development authority focuses a lot on the area’s
wood products industry, it is also seeing local and corporate
investments in the growing hemp industry. In addition, the
county recently completed a state-of-the-art innovation center,
a 25,000-square-foot facility on Main Street in Buckhannon
that provides flex office and coworking space for entrepreneurs
with access to a full-time small business coach.
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WEST VIRGINIA EXECUTIVE
“We have seen immense growth in entrepreneurs and small
businesses,” says Hinton. “From a standpoint of statistics, last
year new business creation and small business access to capital
was about $9 million. Our innovation center has seen an influx
in tech-type entrepreneurs and knowledge-based companies
that are finding space in the innovation center and using those
resources.”
To piggyback off this success, the county is also promoting
telework as an up-and-coming industry. This includes identifying
companies that offer remote work and the skills they are look-
ing for and working with WVWC and Pierpont Community &
Technical College to create coursework for building those skills.
“Our biggest challenge as a county is population,” says
Hinton. “When recruiting businesses to the area, they all look at
overall population, which hurts us, but it can also become an
advantage in attracting other types of businesses and jobs. We are
working on telework/remote work recruiting opportunities. We
will pinpoint companies that have remote jobs available and find
prospective folks with those skills. We have a well-connected
region in terms of broadband, which gives people the ability to
do telework. That is an advantage in a small town. People are
migrating toward this type of lifestyle. Traffic jams are a pain.
That is part of our recruitment strategy—quality of place.”
Part of that quality includes Upshur County’s top-tier health
care, ample housing options, creative culture and an active
arts community, including the Upshur Arts Alliance, Inc. The
alliance is a nonprofit organization that promotes, enhances
and contributes to the educational, artistic and cultural lives
of residents, making the county attractive to millennials and
young families.
“A lot of people associate Buckhannon and Upshur County
with classic, small-town America,” says Laura Meadows,
executive director of the Upshur County CVB. “You can rattle
off the tangible features like the main streets, flowers and
picturesque things you can physically see, but to take it a little
bit deeper, there is something intangible about it that people
can’t quite describe. There is a certain atmosphere and a sense
of community here.”
In May 2019, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin announced that an
additional $100 million had been secured for the West Virginia
Department of Transportation to complete Corridor H. With
this push, area residents and leaders are hopeful the completed
roadway will be used by investors and visitors eager to see what
makes this piece of Almost Heaven so special.
Photo by Robbie Skinner.