This article was published in the Spirit of Jefferson on 3/29/23.
I want to believe that people are well served by the representatives they elect. I’d like to believe that being well served also suggests that people are content with where they are and content to stay put. If they do want to stay, it’s, furthermore, an indication that they see themselves as important components of their neighborhoods and communities.
It seems sad that people might find themselves regretting the circumstances that put them where they are, see themselves as not belonging. These unfortunate circumstances could include the accident of being born where they don’t feel they belong. Or maybe people are made unhappy by seeing others around them as not belonging. Things would be better, they feel, if those others would go away. Or some feel that those they elected to office have failed them.
All of these factors–I don’t fit in here; they don’t belong here; we got the wrong people in office—build discontent and a community suffers for it.
I recently interviewed Andy Colandrea, an elected city council member from Ranson, who is half way through his first of four years in that role. He is OK with people calling him “Andy.” He’s a first name only kind of person, as you can infer from the name of his business, Andy’s Pizza.
Colandrea won his election by a large margin (a 50 point spread from his competitor), but the entire election tallied only 5 percent of the voting age population. That’s not an unusually low number, by the way, it’s a typically low number for a Ranson municipal election.
Colandrea summed up his feelings about why he was glad to be who he is in Ranson, that is, a resident, a business owner, and a politician. “I’ve never seen people as nice as the people in Ranson,” he says.
I don’t know if that opinion would be shared if I asked other Ranson citizens or citizens from other municipalities, say neighboring Charles Town. It’s the kind of pronouncement you would expect from a politician. Even so, it is possible that even if he’s exaggerating, he’s right.
Maybe Ranson has an atmosphere and a feeling of fellowship that embraces all of its residents and infuses them with a sense of well-being. Maybe that’s what makes them nice. But maybe that only applies to the 5 percent who actually voted. What do the other 95 percent think?
Being nice is an important quality to attribute to any place, but especially a place like Ranson, which is young in comparison to the other municipalities in the county, and learning to walk tall. Ranson is having growing pains and still developing its personality. It doesn’t shine as brightly (yet) as the other major municipalities in the county. For instance, in the online advertising for the new Presidents Pointe subdivision in Ranson, the images feature Charles Town, Harpers Ferry and, oddly enough, the New River Gorge bridge.
Ranson isn’t Shepherdstown, Charles Town, Harpers Ferry or Bolivar. It’s rougher in many respects, but in comparison, it’s not stodgy, as you sometimes hear the other towns described. One of the reasons may be that it’s a place that hasn’t yet been stamped so clearly by history, arts and wealth. It can still lay claim to being diverse and celebrating its diversity.
When Colandrea and I talked about his own vision for the town, he wanted some of what the other towns have, but also wanted to keep some of what defines Ranson today. “I want beautiful homes and a diverse population,” he said. He actually wants more than that though. He wants reasons for residents to stay here. To his mind, this means that local government has to provide what the citizens of today’s Ranson want, not cater to what the citizens of our wealthier communities might want. He wants affordable entertainment spots for both young people and adults. He sees having fun and having places to have fun as important in keeping people “nice.”
Colandrea considers the Ranson government of 10 years ago to have made a mistake in not amending the city code to allow a Great Wolf Lodge entertainment complex to set up in town. I’d never heard of the lodge, so got a lesson in how an operation aimed at keeping kids occupied and happy, and held promise of being a major tourist attraction would benefit the whole Eastern Panhandle. But more immediately for Ranson, it would have been an income generator for the city.
The Ranson government of the last decade published a comprehensive plan for the city in 2012 with a vision that would guide the city’s development for the next 30 years. The plan is too detailed to spell out here in all its particulars (it’s available on the city’s website), but it included restoring the Old Town area, building parks, making the city walkable and integrating all its residential and mixed use developments. This last point is important because Ranson doesn’t give the appearance of being a unified whole. It’s a conglomeration of scattered, unconnected neighborhoods—some new, some depressed, some historic, some impoverished.
Bearing the signs of its past as an industrial annex to sedate Charles Town some 100 years ago, along with the recent annexation of farmland, it has abandoned factory buildings, brownfield scars of demolished factories and fallow agricultural fields. It also is technically the home of the new Rockwool plant—far to the north next to Kearneysville, rather than any other place in Ranson—and the busy Potomac Marketplace commercial district on W. Va. Route 9.
In other words, it’s got it all, but you would be surprised to know that it was all of a piece.
The Vision of Ranson’s comprehensive plan sets the following overarching goals: “Maintain the quality of life and the community for the citizens within the Urban Growth Boundary of the City of Ranson by enhancing development, revitalizing ‘downtown Ranson,’ recognizing and protecting the natural resources, encouraging economic growth and providing new community facilities.” Notice that downtown Ranson is put in quotes, indicating that it doesn’t really exist.
Colandrea’s focus as a council member, it’s fair to say, is focused particularly on “encouraging economic growth,” making it a desirable place for businesses to set up operations. He’s a convinced capitalist, who sees everything else in the comprehensive plan to be achievable only if there is a thriving business community to provide the tax base for community facilities and to protect natural resources. He regrets that Rockwool doesn’t contribute to the property tax base, and would prefer businesses that show their commitment to the community with tax dollars, not tax breaks.
The reason he and three other “reformers” ran and won in the municipal elections in July 2022 was to increase transparency in local government. His particular beef was with what he calls the overly restrictive provisions of the Smart Code regulating building construction in Ranson. He feels that the code unnecessarily forces builders to add bells and whistles that jack up the costs for potential homeowners and businesses. He mentioned, for instance, that the massive Presidents Pointe development in Ranson (1,100 town homes and 200 detached homes) with prices starting at $260,000 and marketed as affordable is a case in point.
That base price point is still beyond the range of many Ranson citizens. Ranson’s poverty rate as reported by the Census Bureau is almost 18 percent overall and 30 percent for children under 18. Only about 16 percent of the population currently live in homes valued at more than $300,000, so the $260,00 price of a so-called affordable home is quite a bit beyond the realities of the great majority of current residents. That means that filling up those homes is going to have to be done by people moving in, something of course which is happening. Ranson saw a population surge of 18 percent between the last two census years. It was only 7 percent for the county as a whole.
Colandrea sees ultimately that between Ranson and Charles Town the population will reach a magic number of 30,000. (Currently, the combined populations of these two neighboring cities is just over 12,000, so there is still some way to go.) At that 30,000-person level, he says, “businesses will come to us.” Ranson won’t have to hustle to get them, one reason being that Ranson has a lot of vacant land.
Between now and then, though, the city government will have to hustle, not just to build the tax base but to reduce the poverty rate, to get Ranson Elementary out of last place in the rankings of county schools, and to actually restore and protect its natural environment. People, particularly those with children, are drawn to good schools and good clean surroundings. The city’s comprehensive plan addresses these concerns, but they face the same dilemma growing communities face. Address first the issues that attract new residents or build the economic base by attracting new businesses? Both, of course, need to be done and in tandem.
I can’t help rooting for Ranson, because it’s in the best position to build the kind of neighborhoods the county as a whole needs to maintain its diversity and to counter the gentrification taking hold in the other municipalities.
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