Small town, big opportunities
Take Carter Lewis for example. Lewis jetted up to Sarah Lawrence College directly after graduating from Tandem Friends School in 2002. But she soon found herself getting pulled back to Charlottesville, babysitting part-time, and working at Live Nation’s basement call center in Crozet.
Lewis knew she wanted more than just getting yelled at by upset customers though, so she set out to educate people about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and the harmful effects that drugs like Ritalin can cause on early development in young people. Lewis was placed on the drug when she was 6 years old, and she said it has altered her life in a way she feels parents need to be aware of.
In 2010 she launched a website, ritalinawareness.com, and slowly Charlottesville’s networking magic started to kick in. She began to do some consulting with concerned parents of children with ADHD. And then Lewis met a woman through a friend’s mother, who in turn referred her to another woman, who had started a networking group for women and wanted Lewis to speak to them. So she went, told her story, and talked about her cause. Another parent in the group e-mailed her afterwards and offered her an opportunity to speak to a parent’s support group at a local school in town, the first of many speaking engagement she plans to do.
“The town is small enough to not only make that sort of networking possible, but effective. Whereas in a bigger city, you can have a great idea or project but not know where to track the people down to do it,” said Lewis. “Here, you mention it to someone and they know someone or know someone that knows someone. Or you run into someone on the street.”
Zuckerman said that rang true for her as well, both in launching Common Ground but also in helping her husband, Ethan, start their kombucha company, Barefoot Bucha, out of Nelson County.
“In L.A. you’d meet someone and have a great connection and then you’d never hear from them,” said Zuckerman. “There’s not a sense of personal responsibility to follow-up with someone. And here, it’s not that way. You will see that person again inevitably or you’re connected to a mutual friend that matters to the both of you. So making those connections is easier and people feel more responsible to get back to you.”
It’s that sort of small town connectivity that allowed Josh Hunt to hire the person he wanted to run his kitchen. Hunt moved back to town to help his stepbrother launch Beer Run, and they both decided they needed Hernan Franco, the chef from Hunt’s mother’s old Italian restaurant, Rococo’s. But they couldn’t find him.
“We were at Lowes one day, while we were doing the buildout and we saw him all the way down one of those huge aisles,” recalled Hunt. “My brother and I both broke into an all out sprint and nearly tackled him. And he’s been with us the whole time. I was also able to pull in a lot of other people who I knew from my time working at other restaurants.”
But not every part of Hunt’s transition home was as smooth. When he moved back to Charlottesville, he traded in his Winnebago, which was parked on a wide swath of remote land in Austin with two cabins, a Buddhist garden, and a fire pit, where he would barbeque every night under 40′ elm trees. In exchange, he got a tiny efficiency apartment in Belmont, 14-hour work days, and the limitations that accompany a small town’s ambition to wear big-city pants.
“I didn’t realize how free I was,” said Hunt. “All of a sudden I just felt very confined and I was working a lot of really long hours. And in a big city, if you need something, you can get it.”
Then there’s the history that envelopes Charlottesville, from racial segregation and gentrification to claiming to be home to some of the oldest multi-generational wealth in the country. There are elements of the town that have in many ways been defined by their resistance to change.
“I do think Charlottesville has an old energy vs. newer, more progressive, energy dynamic,” said Hunt. “Especially being on the East Coast in a place that values its history like people do in this area. Sometimes that stuff can handcuff you from growth and evolution. I definitely have seen that.”
Hunt wanted to distance his life and his business from associations with the old money Charlottesville he felt stifled by growing up. That’s why he named his place Beer Run.
“I wanted a place where everybody felt welcome. That was part of the reason we called it Beer Run. It’s not an elitist name, I think people see it and say, ‘Oh, I like beer, let’s go in there.’”
The choice to move back to Charlottesville is not solely governed by a longing for home or the desire to embrace a smaller community. There are economic reasons as well.
Charlottesville has an exceedingly low unemployment rate—4.9 percent—as compared to the country—7.3 percent—and even Virginia as a whole—5.8 percent. And while the cost of living is more expensive than many think it should be in Charlottesville, it pales in comparison to most big cities like Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, or New York City.
Plus, for many, there is already a built-in support structure here: family. Within the last several years, two of my best friends growing up moved back to town, shacking up with their respective families for several months to save money, get settled, and launch new plans that would keep them local.
Lewis did the same thing.
“I didn’t think I could survive in New York,” she recalled after spending a summer living near Little Italy while in school at Sarah Lawrence. “I was there for a month and couldn’t find a job and so I thought twice about pursuing that after college. It’s tough if you don’t know anyone. I couldn’t even get a waitressing job.”
There used to be a stigma about moving home—and for some of my childhood friends who have opted not to return to Charlottesville, that stigma still exists—that you were less of a person, or a failure, if you moved back, especially if you moved in with your parents. But that appears to be slowly dying.
Instead of having a return to Charlottesville be a mark of shame, boomeranger Loren Oppenheimer said he sees more and more young people looking at their homecoming as an opportunity. Rather than a sign of weakness, it’s becoming a sign of strength and a pursuit of passion that bucks the stereotypical societal norms of what it means to be “successful.”