- May 7th, 2006, 3:11 pm
#14633
maybe HMO, can fill us in on the highlighted portion of this read.
It's called 'Falwell Country'
The growth of Liberty University has forced Lynchburg to change; now the school is ready to grow again.
By Pamela J. Podger
981-3131
As jackhammers pounded outside his office, Jerry Falwell Jr. spoke over the din and pointed to some Liberty University blueprints, signs of ambitious growth that portend more change for Lynchburg.
Already known as "Falwell Country," this former textile town along the James River has been shaped by his father, televangelist Jerry Falwell Sr.
More than one Main Street shopkeeper has framed pictures of Falwell beaming down on customers. His Thomas Road Baptist Church, started in 1956 with 35 charter members, celebrates its 50th anniversary July 2 in a new 6,000-seat sanctuary. Lynchburg has reaped national and international recognition thanks to the outspokenness of the former Moral Majority leader.
"It's known as 'Falwell Country,' whether or not you're a follower," said Wayne Dahlgren, former planning commission chairman. "It all goes back to the Falwell enterprise. It is like Greek mythology's Hydra with the many heads. Many people look at the Falwell enterprise as the Lynchburg Hydra -- and I say that positively."
This city of 65,000 is girding itself as Liberty University embarks on $82.5 million in construction projects, builds a $1 billion endowment and attempts to grow to 25,000 students in the next decade or so. Since 2000, the school has doubled its enrollment to an expected 9,600 students this fall and has tripled revenues to about $150 million.
Founded in 1971, the campus sprawls on the flatlands below what is officially called Candler Mountain and the university has rechristened Liberty Mountain. Just 400 of the Falwells' 4,400 acres are developed.
Falwell Jr. said the university will reserve an unspecified portion of Liberty Mountain for expansion and nature trails. They'll sell off the higher portions -- possibly to a residential developer -- to augment Liberty's current $20 million endowment.
The relationship between Lynchburg officials and Jerry Falwell's ministries and his Liberty University, which has been strained at times, is improving. Liberty's aggressive growth leaves an indelible stamp on the city.
"In terms of Liberty, beauty is not the operative word. Quantity is the operative word," said Rachel Flynn, Lynchburg's former director of community planning and development. "Their job is, like any business, to grow the business. Our job is to protect the public interest."
From cellphone plant to university
Two weeks ago, Falwell Jr. elaborated on the university's projects from the stately Carter Glass Mansion, where lore has it the former senator crafted the 1913-era Federal Reserve Act from one of the porches. Today, the manse is Liberty's nerve center and houses the offices of Falwell Jr., who is the general counsel and vice chancellor of the university.
The campus expanded quickly after benefactor Hobby Lobby, the Oklahoma-based craft store chain, donated $10.5 million for the Falwells to acquire the former Ericsson cellphone plant. The 1 million-square-foot property fueled Liberty's ambitions, easing the burden of building both classrooms and dorms to accommodate more students. Estimates for building that space today are about $100 million.
"What that gift did was put us about 10 years ahead of where we would have been in our growth. That was the big boost," Falwell Jr. said. "We've spent $24 million on the Ericsson property to convert it. We're still not done. It is slowly looking less like a factory and more like a college. There is still some of what we call 'deindustrialization.' "
Increasing the student body to 25,000 will build a broad alumni base, helping the Falwells reach their goal of educating conservative Christians in a similar way to Notre Dame University serving Catholics and Brigham Young University reaching Mormons.
"We don't think it could be too big. We're fulfilling a unique need in the country. We're providing conservative Christian students with all the trappings of a major university with NCAA Division I sports, all the academic quality that they would find at a state university, all the facilities that you would normally associate with a big college -- not a Bible school," he said.
Ron Godwin, executive associate to the chancellor, said Liberty needs to grow to "serve its national and international constituency."
"Liberty University is not a local school," he said. "In fact, you could say it's grown in spite of Lynchburg."
'Good growth'
Critics complained that rezoning the Ericsson property resulted in the city's losing about $265,000 in taxes that the company had paid, as well as the potential for a new, tax-paying business. Wards Road, which flanks the campus, has erupted into a big-box strip to serve the students and locals.
"Anything they've forfeited they've more than gained back through different types of taxes," said Falwell Jr.
He said they've populated the region, and recently identified about 10,000 Liberty graduates who live in a 35-mile radius of Lynchburg.
"I think that we've more than replaced any taxes," he continued. "If you want to look at it as a business, it is clean. We don't have smokestacks and we're not burning something to make something, there is no landfill out back. It is good growth for the community. About 300 acres of our properties are tax-exempt, but all the monies our people spend in town are taxed."
Contacted city officials said expanding Liberty's campus was the logical choice for the former Ericsson parcel.
Former Lynchburg Mayor Carl B. Hutcherson Jr., who voted for the rezoning, was found guilty of bank, mail and Social Security fraud in a federal trial that wrapped up Tuesday in Roanoke. He stepped down as mayor Wednesday.
Government officials began their investigation after a local bank alerted them to a "suspicious" transaction in which Jerry Falwell Ministries donated $32,500 to Hutcherson's charity and Hutcherson used most of it to pay back taxes. Investigators initially feared public corruption but say they uncovered none.
With Liberty's growth, city officials are now faced with easing the bottlenecks of students, faculty and others moving from elsewhere in Lynchburg to the campus, as well as around the spread-out campus.
City Manager Kimball Payne said the former Ericsson plant gave Liberty "enormous capacity" because the campus was hemmed between Wards Road and U.S. 460.
He added that some of the development along Wards Road might not have occurred without Liberty's growth.
"Wards Road is one of those strips that people love to hate and that every city has. It developed in the 1980s and 1990s," Payne said. "People don't like it for the congestion, but they keep going down there for the stores, and the stores are there because of the traffic."
The former Ericsson property, now renamed Campus North, has been converted into a student center, law school, seminary, Thomas Road Baptist Church and affiliated offices, Liberty Christian Academy, an indoor track and other amenities.
Benefactors Tim LaHaye, who authored the Left Behind fiction series, and his wife, Beverly, donated $4.5 million for a 60,000-square-foot student center and partially financed the ice rink, which is open to Lynchburg residents. Falwell Jr. said new dorms are under construction on the east side of campus, with the eventual goal of increasing student housing from 20 to 60 dorms. Last week, the walls went up on a new football operations center thanks to a $4.5 million gift from life insurance tycoon Art Williams.
In 1990, Falwell Sr. stepped out of the spotlight of his now-defunct Moral Majority, staggering under about $80 million in debt at Liberty and his ministry. News accounts say the debt was caused partially by Falwell Sr.'s overextended building and a drop-off in donations during the fallout from televangelist scandals in the late 1980s. He was also hurt financially in the aftermath of his briefly taking over Jim Bakker's PTL Ministry. In 1998, Williams gave Liberty University a $70 million gift to erase a decade of debt.
Future endeavors
Falwell Sr. dreams big, drawing from the entrepreneurial spirit of his father, who smuggled bootleg liquor in the bumpers and empty panels of his delivery trucks during Prohibition.
And he's willing to help other businesses. In 2004, when Virginia car dealers wanted to escape an inventory tax in Amherst County, he rented out parking space on Liberty University for undisclosed remuneration.
Private donations from his Old Time Gospel Hour Ministry program, which is broadcast from Thomas Road Baptist Church, helped build the university.
His son, who wears a blue blazer, khakis and trendy Crocs sandal-clogs, is continuing the vision. Falwell Jr. is weighing calls for launching an engineering program, a graduate business school and even enticing an IMAX theater. A huge tower, a former Ericsson facility for testing cellphones with simulated lightning, has the right dimensions to be adapted into an IMAX amphitheater. Currently it's used as a warehouse, storing such items as Spanish workbooks and several boxes of CDs, such as "Remembering Reagan" and "Senator Helms at Liberty University's Convocation."
Godwin said Liberty attracts students from roughly a 300-mile radius of mid-Atlantic states. While students might opt for religious schools like Pensacola Christian College, Bob Jones University or Regent University, Godwin said Liberty's biggest competition is from state schools. Liberty students pay about $21,000 a year, and many receive scholarships. Liberty students do community service, which helps Lynchburg's schoolchildren, elderly and others.
"Liberty University has a huge impact on the cash flow and economy of this area," Godwin said.
Fine with Falwell Country
Pat and Billy Sweeney have run their Main Street furniture store in downtown Lynchburg for 16 years, and sent their children to Falwell's Lynchburg Christian Academy. They've seen Lynchburg's economic cycles, fueled by Thomas Road Baptist Church, Liberty University and other big employers, including General Electric in the past and currently telecom and nuclear power. A large picture of Falwell Sr. hangs in their store.
"He's just added a lot to Lynchburg; he's made his mark on the city," Pat Sweeney said. "The Liberty students and their parents buy furniture, and their parents come shopping, too."
A few blocks away, barber Alvin Womack said downtown is starting to boom, thanks in part to Falwell Sr.'s bearing on the city.
"He has a big influence on the city -- a lot of the things he wants done, they give to him," Womack said. "It creates resentment from some people, but I can't agree with some of the talk. I think he's a fine man and has done a lot for the city."
It's called 'Falwell Country'
The growth of Liberty University has forced Lynchburg to change; now the school is ready to grow again.
By Pamela J. Podger
981-3131
As jackhammers pounded outside his office, Jerry Falwell Jr. spoke over the din and pointed to some Liberty University blueprints, signs of ambitious growth that portend more change for Lynchburg.
Already known as "Falwell Country," this former textile town along the James River has been shaped by his father, televangelist Jerry Falwell Sr.
More than one Main Street shopkeeper has framed pictures of Falwell beaming down on customers. His Thomas Road Baptist Church, started in 1956 with 35 charter members, celebrates its 50th anniversary July 2 in a new 6,000-seat sanctuary. Lynchburg has reaped national and international recognition thanks to the outspokenness of the former Moral Majority leader.
"It's known as 'Falwell Country,' whether or not you're a follower," said Wayne Dahlgren, former planning commission chairman. "It all goes back to the Falwell enterprise. It is like Greek mythology's Hydra with the many heads. Many people look at the Falwell enterprise as the Lynchburg Hydra -- and I say that positively."
This city of 65,000 is girding itself as Liberty University embarks on $82.5 million in construction projects, builds a $1 billion endowment and attempts to grow to 25,000 students in the next decade or so. Since 2000, the school has doubled its enrollment to an expected 9,600 students this fall and has tripled revenues to about $150 million.
Founded in 1971, the campus sprawls on the flatlands below what is officially called Candler Mountain and the university has rechristened Liberty Mountain. Just 400 of the Falwells' 4,400 acres are developed.
Falwell Jr. said the university will reserve an unspecified portion of Liberty Mountain for expansion and nature trails. They'll sell off the higher portions -- possibly to a residential developer -- to augment Liberty's current $20 million endowment.
The relationship between Lynchburg officials and Jerry Falwell's ministries and his Liberty University, which has been strained at times, is improving. Liberty's aggressive growth leaves an indelible stamp on the city.
"In terms of Liberty, beauty is not the operative word. Quantity is the operative word," said Rachel Flynn, Lynchburg's former director of community planning and development. "Their job is, like any business, to grow the business. Our job is to protect the public interest."
From cellphone plant to university
Two weeks ago, Falwell Jr. elaborated on the university's projects from the stately Carter Glass Mansion, where lore has it the former senator crafted the 1913-era Federal Reserve Act from one of the porches. Today, the manse is Liberty's nerve center and houses the offices of Falwell Jr., who is the general counsel and vice chancellor of the university.
The campus expanded quickly after benefactor Hobby Lobby, the Oklahoma-based craft store chain, donated $10.5 million for the Falwells to acquire the former Ericsson cellphone plant. The 1 million-square-foot property fueled Liberty's ambitions, easing the burden of building both classrooms and dorms to accommodate more students. Estimates for building that space today are about $100 million.
"What that gift did was put us about 10 years ahead of where we would have been in our growth. That was the big boost," Falwell Jr. said. "We've spent $24 million on the Ericsson property to convert it. We're still not done. It is slowly looking less like a factory and more like a college. There is still some of what we call 'deindustrialization.' "
Increasing the student body to 25,000 will build a broad alumni base, helping the Falwells reach their goal of educating conservative Christians in a similar way to Notre Dame University serving Catholics and Brigham Young University reaching Mormons.
"We don't think it could be too big. We're fulfilling a unique need in the country. We're providing conservative Christian students with all the trappings of a major university with NCAA Division I sports, all the academic quality that they would find at a state university, all the facilities that you would normally associate with a big college -- not a Bible school," he said.
Ron Godwin, executive associate to the chancellor, said Liberty needs to grow to "serve its national and international constituency."
"Liberty University is not a local school," he said. "In fact, you could say it's grown in spite of Lynchburg."
'Good growth'
Critics complained that rezoning the Ericsson property resulted in the city's losing about $265,000 in taxes that the company had paid, as well as the potential for a new, tax-paying business. Wards Road, which flanks the campus, has erupted into a big-box strip to serve the students and locals.
"Anything they've forfeited they've more than gained back through different types of taxes," said Falwell Jr.
He said they've populated the region, and recently identified about 10,000 Liberty graduates who live in a 35-mile radius of Lynchburg.
"I think that we've more than replaced any taxes," he continued. "If you want to look at it as a business, it is clean. We don't have smokestacks and we're not burning something to make something, there is no landfill out back. It is good growth for the community. About 300 acres of our properties are tax-exempt, but all the monies our people spend in town are taxed."
Contacted city officials said expanding Liberty's campus was the logical choice for the former Ericsson parcel.
Former Lynchburg Mayor Carl B. Hutcherson Jr., who voted for the rezoning, was found guilty of bank, mail and Social Security fraud in a federal trial that wrapped up Tuesday in Roanoke. He stepped down as mayor Wednesday.
Government officials began their investigation after a local bank alerted them to a "suspicious" transaction in which Jerry Falwell Ministries donated $32,500 to Hutcherson's charity and Hutcherson used most of it to pay back taxes. Investigators initially feared public corruption but say they uncovered none.
With Liberty's growth, city officials are now faced with easing the bottlenecks of students, faculty and others moving from elsewhere in Lynchburg to the campus, as well as around the spread-out campus.
City Manager Kimball Payne said the former Ericsson plant gave Liberty "enormous capacity" because the campus was hemmed between Wards Road and U.S. 460.
He added that some of the development along Wards Road might not have occurred without Liberty's growth.
"Wards Road is one of those strips that people love to hate and that every city has. It developed in the 1980s and 1990s," Payne said. "People don't like it for the congestion, but they keep going down there for the stores, and the stores are there because of the traffic."
The former Ericsson property, now renamed Campus North, has been converted into a student center, law school, seminary, Thomas Road Baptist Church and affiliated offices, Liberty Christian Academy, an indoor track and other amenities.
Benefactors Tim LaHaye, who authored the Left Behind fiction series, and his wife, Beverly, donated $4.5 million for a 60,000-square-foot student center and partially financed the ice rink, which is open to Lynchburg residents. Falwell Jr. said new dorms are under construction on the east side of campus, with the eventual goal of increasing student housing from 20 to 60 dorms. Last week, the walls went up on a new football operations center thanks to a $4.5 million gift from life insurance tycoon Art Williams.
In 1990, Falwell Sr. stepped out of the spotlight of his now-defunct Moral Majority, staggering under about $80 million in debt at Liberty and his ministry. News accounts say the debt was caused partially by Falwell Sr.'s overextended building and a drop-off in donations during the fallout from televangelist scandals in the late 1980s. He was also hurt financially in the aftermath of his briefly taking over Jim Bakker's PTL Ministry. In 1998, Williams gave Liberty University a $70 million gift to erase a decade of debt.
Future endeavors
Falwell Sr. dreams big, drawing from the entrepreneurial spirit of his father, who smuggled bootleg liquor in the bumpers and empty panels of his delivery trucks during Prohibition.
And he's willing to help other businesses. In 2004, when Virginia car dealers wanted to escape an inventory tax in Amherst County, he rented out parking space on Liberty University for undisclosed remuneration.
Private donations from his Old Time Gospel Hour Ministry program, which is broadcast from Thomas Road Baptist Church, helped build the university.
His son, who wears a blue blazer, khakis and trendy Crocs sandal-clogs, is continuing the vision. Falwell Jr. is weighing calls for launching an engineering program, a graduate business school and even enticing an IMAX theater. A huge tower, a former Ericsson facility for testing cellphones with simulated lightning, has the right dimensions to be adapted into an IMAX amphitheater. Currently it's used as a warehouse, storing such items as Spanish workbooks and several boxes of CDs, such as "Remembering Reagan" and "Senator Helms at Liberty University's Convocation."
Godwin said Liberty attracts students from roughly a 300-mile radius of mid-Atlantic states. While students might opt for religious schools like Pensacola Christian College, Bob Jones University or Regent University, Godwin said Liberty's biggest competition is from state schools. Liberty students pay about $21,000 a year, and many receive scholarships. Liberty students do community service, which helps Lynchburg's schoolchildren, elderly and others.
"Liberty University has a huge impact on the cash flow and economy of this area," Godwin said.
Fine with Falwell Country
Pat and Billy Sweeney have run their Main Street furniture store in downtown Lynchburg for 16 years, and sent their children to Falwell's Lynchburg Christian Academy. They've seen Lynchburg's economic cycles, fueled by Thomas Road Baptist Church, Liberty University and other big employers, including General Electric in the past and currently telecom and nuclear power. A large picture of Falwell Sr. hangs in their store.
"He's just added a lot to Lynchburg; he's made his mark on the city," Pat Sweeney said. "The Liberty students and their parents buy furniture, and their parents come shopping, too."
A few blocks away, barber Alvin Womack said downtown is starting to boom, thanks in part to Falwell Sr.'s bearing on the city.
"He has a big influence on the city -- a lot of the things he wants done, they give to him," Womack said. "It creates resentment from some people, but I can't agree with some of the talk. I think he's a fine man and has done a lot for the city."
- By ECC29
- By Purple Haize