God gave me two hands: I'll wish with one, and plan with the other.

Tl; dr

"Why would government spend money on a private project?"

Because this wasn't "building a private project." It was paying for a feasibility study that answers a core public infrastructure question: "Can high-voltage power be delivered to the Town of Appomattox?"

"Why wasn't there a study?"

There was. That's what the $75,000 funded.

"Why not make the developer pay?"

The agreement includes a provision for reimbursement upon confirmation of power availability. In early-stage site viability, localities often fund initial engineering validation because the information has public value regardless of the end user.

"Was the Town dragged into something the County was doing?"

The Town was asked to participate as a stakeholder with half the study cost.
My view was that inclusion early is better governance than exclusion.

Timeline

First, a brief timeline:

• Initial "spark" and informal conversations began in May 2023.
• Meetings occurred with the County, CVEC, and AVAIO over the summer.
• September 12, 2023 – the County EDA committed $37,500 toward the Dominion study.
• September 20, 2023 – I presented to the Town EDA and requested the Town participate with the other $37,500.

Q&A

"But Why Spend Money Before the Buyer Puts Money Down?"

Because no serious buyer proceeds without clarity on the threshold question:

Can high-voltage power be delivered to Appomattox on a workable timeline?

That is the first gate.

Site selection follows a disciplined sequence:

1. Feasibility — power, water, transportation, permitting constraints
2. Commercial structure — land control, incentives if appropriate, timelines
3. Permitting and detailed engineering
4. Construction

Everything depends on Step 1. If the infrastructure cannot support the load, there is nothing to negotiate, nothing to permit, nothing to build.

Upon confirmation of high-voltage power availability within the defined timeline, the Town and County are reimbursed for their respective portions of the study. The cost functions as a bridge to establish viability, not as a permanent public expenditure tied to speculation.

"Why do EDAs fund studies like this?"

Economic development authorities exist for the exact kind of early-stage feasibility work that private industry often won't pay for until the locality can demonstrate basic viability.

A high-voltage power study is not a "perk" for a developer. It's a reality check for the locality:

• If the answer is no, we avoid chasing a false lead for years.
• If the answer is yes, we've identified a solution to an existential bottleneck; information that benefits every future industrial prospect, not just one-use case.

Power is not "a data center issue." Power is "whether or not the County has an economic future"

"Why was the Town involved at all if the County owned the industrial park land?"

The County EDA ultimately took the lead because, practically speaking, it owns and controls the industrial park land.

But my view in 2023 (and still today) was: if we are going to explore something of this magnitude, it is good faith governance to bring the Town in early as a stakeholder. The document reflects that the Town EDA was asked to appropriate half of the study cost.

Why Power Is a Problem

Appomattox sits at the end of a single 115kV transmission line that roughly traces Route 727 from the Clover Power Station near Chase City. There is limited interconnection from the east through Farmville, but functionally we are served by one primary path. We are not a hub or junction. We are an end node.

It has been this way, in one form or another, since the early days of electrification here, certainly since the old generator station on Lee-Grant Avenue was folded into VEPCO's system and Appomattox ceased being any kind of generation center. We have never been built as a load-growth priority. The modern grid reflects that history.

When you are at the end of a single transmission corridor, you are, by definition, constrained.

Recent PJM substation constraint pricing data underscores this. On grid-stressing days, demand multiples have spiked as high as 6,300%. That number does not mean your residential bill goes up 63x as Dominion is required to smooth retail rates. But wholesale constraint pricing is a signal, and it tells you where the grid is tight, transmission is limited, and expensive to deliver at the margin.

And we light up red.

Transmission bottlenecks affect reliability, redundancy, and the ability to add meaningful new load of any kind. Manufacturing. Institutional growth. Large commercial users. Even sustained residential expansion. If the high-voltage backbone is thin, everything downstream is limited.

In 2023, my view was simple: before we argue about what kind of industry we want, we need to know whether we can physically serve it. That starts with understanding whether or not high-voltage transmission can be brought into the county, on what timeline, and at what cost.

The alternative is rising tax pressure on a shrinking base. If we cannot grow our commercial and industrial tax base in the 21st-century economy, then the burden shifts to homeowners through personal property and real estate taxes. That is what has happened in countless rural localities that failed to modernize their infrastructure.

What Does Appomattox Have to Offer?

I am proud of where I'm from. I tell everyone.

While in Brașov, Romania, 5,000 miles from Appomattox, a waiter once pressed me when I gave the standard answer to "where are you from?" "…Virginia!" That wasn't specific enough. "Not D.C. though, southern Virginia" didn't satisfy him either. I assumed that saying "Appomattox" would end the exchange with polite confusion. Instead, his face lit up. He spoke fondly of his time spent touring our National Park while visiting a friend at Virginia Tech.

Appomattox carries weight. Reputationally, we are known.

We are known as a good place to live. Safe. Civil. Community-oriented. Hardworking people. Churches full on Sunday. Little League fields lit up at dusk. Marketing copy is easy to write for Appomattox.

Investment Analysts and site selectors know other things too:

• Land is affordable.
• Local taxes are comparatively low.
• Regulations are predictable and reasonable.
• We do not make it difficult to do business.

Those are strengths.

Unfortunately, those strengths aren't tipping the needle: over the last six years, first on the County EDA and then on Town Council, I've been involved with several prospective economic development transactions. I've seen the pitch decks. I've sat in the meetings. I've watched us make it to the final round.

And then we lose.

Not because we are deficient in character or work ethic. Not because our local businesses aren't capable. But because we are competing against counties sitting on interstates, 30 minutes from international airports, embedded in broader industrial ecosystems where suppliers, subcontractors, engineers, and logistics firms are already cross-pollinating.

And to be clear: this is not about displacing or diminishing our existing business owners. I would love nothing more than to see a homegrown company scale to hundreds of millions in plant infrastructure and employ a large workforce right here. That absolutely can happen. It may well happen in the next decade.

But ecosystems rarely grow in isolation. They grow when outside capital intersects with local talent. When a major investment arrives, it creates supplier demand, professional services growth, housing demand, retail expansion, spin-offs, and startups. Outside investment is not a threat to local enterprise. It is fertilizer.

The question is whether we are positioned to capture any of it.

Industry site selectors, whatever sector they represent, begin with fundamentals:

• High-voltage transmission with expansion headroom
• Water capacity at industrial scale
• Transportation access (preferably interstate)
• Fiber connectivity
• Workforce pipeline

On water and transportation, we have been constrained for decades. We do not sit on an interstate which rules out large scale distribution centers and warehousing. We do not have an industrial-scale water supply capable of supporting pharmaceuticals, food processing, cosmetics, or chemical manufacturing. That narrows our competitive field. It means we must be strong, very strong, on the variables we can control.

It all goes back to power.

If electrons are the common denominator of the next economy, and they are, then improving Appomattox's access to high voltage power is an absolute necessity.

For nearly a decade now, my singular objective has been to position Appomattox for a return of domestic capacity. When COVID exposed the fragility of global supply chains, it became obvious that the federal government, regardless of party, would eventually push to reshore production in some form. That shift is now underway. But you don't catch a wave by standing flat-footed.

Step one, before data centers, before advanced manufacturing, before any serious employer even considers us, is power. Do we have it? Can we get it? On what timeline? At what voltage? That is what the study was about.

It wasn't a "data center study." It was an infrastructure viability study. The same study you would need if you were recruiting a Ford F-150 assembly line, a Maytag appliance plant, an Axis security manufacturing facility, or any other "plant" operation.

For fifty years, we benefited from a post-Bretton Woods anomaly. Thomasville was here. Large-scale textile and furniture manufacturing anchored rural America. That era is over. Decisions made in Washington in the 1990s and 2000s pushed those industries to Mexico and Asia.

The industries that are coming back will not look like the ones that left. They will not employ 1,200 line-workers doing repetitive manual labor. The future is electrons. And yes, by the grace of God, Appomattox will make things again. But they will be made with robotics, automation, and highly skilled operators. Fewer people. Higher skill. Higher capital intensity. Much higher energy demand.

You cannot recruit industry to a county of 15,000 people and then say, "We'll figure out the electrons later."

I'd rather you just say that you don't want a 45' building blocking the view.

I'd rather you just say that you don't want a 45' building blocking the view instead of claiming that the EDA committed some kind of moral error by investing in a grid capacity study.

The Economic Development Authorities paying for an engineering study to determine whether Appomattox can access high-voltage transmission is the most boringly predictable outcome of having a board of individuals whose statutorily defined prerogative is to attract economic investment.

To beat the poor horse even more than I have in the previous 1,600 words, here's the question that keeps me up at night:

Do we even have the physical infrastructure to participate in the next economy?

I'll continue to look for solutions to the setbacks that we face as a community. I hope we can instead begin to discuss long-term financial security, responsible growth, future zoning and land use, and community service improvements.

Infrastructure is pretty straightforward though: You either have (or have a plan to obtain) the power, the water, the fiber, and the transmission capacity, or you don't.

And if you don't, you're just wishing in one hand.