Business View Magazine | January 2020

239 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JANUARY 2020 LYNCHBURG, V I RGINI A useful to the town of Lynchburg. I consider it as the most interesting spot in the state.” Lynchburg became a tobacco trading, then commercial, and, much later, an industrial center. By the 1850s, Lynchburg was among the richest towns per capita in the U.S., first using the river, then the railroad, to transport goods. The city limits expanded in 1874, and in the latter 19th century, Lynchburg embraced manufacturing (the city being sometimes referred to as the “Pittsburgh of the South”). In 1880, Lynchburg resident, James Albert Bonsack, invented the first cigarette-rolling machine. By the city’s centennial in 1886, banking activity had increased six fold over the 1860 level. Lynchburg has ten recognized historic districts, four of them in the downtown residential area. Since 1971, 40 buildings have been individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Especially since 2002, downtown Lynchburg has undergone significant revitalization, with hundreds of new loft apartments created through adaptive reuse of historic warehouses and mills. Since 2000, downtown has attracted private investments of more than $110 million, and business activity increased by 205 percent from 2004 to 2014. In 2014, 75 new apartment units were added to downtown, with 155 further units under construction, increasing the number of housing units downtown by 48 percent from 2010 to 2014. In 2015, the $5.8 million Lower Bluffwalk pedestrian street zone opened. Notable projects underway in downtown by the end of 2015 include the $25 million Virginian Hotel restoration project, a $16.6 million restoration of the Academy Center of the Arts, and a $4.6 million expansion of Amazement Square Children’s Museum. Lynchburg offers a skilled labor force, low unemployment rate, and below average cost of living. Industries within the Lynchburg MSA