Business View Civil & Municipal | July 2022

121 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 7 segregated school, into a new training and childcare facility—it will be a really cool community center,” Sweet contributes. “And then the old Jefferson School in downtown Pulaski is planning to be adaptively reused as well. A local team is looking at vertical indoor agriculture for that space with state and institutional partners becoming very interested in helping us with this project. So, in total, we will have had eight former school redevelopment projects over the last six years. The latest completed project is at the former Newbern Elementary School. It’s been successfully transitioned into a private research, development, and design center for a new electric vehicle company, TROVA Commercial Vehicle. One of our neatest projects is happening near the Draper Village in Historic Draper, out of the annex that was left from a school that was destroyed by a tornado. Local entrepreneurs are looking to turn it into a next-level ice cream shop and visitor attraction.” Like the Pulaski County Visitor Center, this establishment will offer patrons and guests self-guided information about the county’s trail system, wineries, distilleries, boutiques, events and other local attractions, to further share the county’s destination assets and better reach interested audiences. “Debbie Gardner, who operates a property management company called New River Retreat, is one of our most impactful entrepreneurial collaborators,” Sweet shares. “She accommodates and supports other eclectic entrepreneurs in a constellation of germane business operations housed within the Draper Village, almost like a small business incubator. She has this complete, wraparound, holistic approach to supporting and elevating all the folks who are in the Village. She’s helped put Draper on the map and is responsible for a big part of the county’s positive image because of the affinity that folks get for our community when they visit and spend time in the Draper Village or at a New River Retreat property.” PULASK I COUNTY , V I RGINI A Another way that Pulaski County is working to bolster its strongest economic assets is through collaborative grant application with strategic partners led by Virginia Tech’s Office of Economic Development. They’ve recently partnered on the submittal of a $100M proposal for Build Back Better – a support package geared at advancing electric and autonomous vehicle production – to help build out their electric vehicle infrastructure, support workforce needs, build a strategic partner network and elevate the region as the premier electric vehicle, research, development, test, and manufacturing hub.