The business climate in Vinton continues to stress the traditional small-town values.
Libby Patterson has quite literally grown up haunting the businesses in downtown Vinton. Now, at 26, she owns one of them: The Hemp Mill.
Patterson is the daughter of Annette Patterson, who founded the Advancement Foundation, which helped kick off the recent Renaissance of the Vinton business community. Libby recently took over the business from Debbie Custer, who retains the food portion of the business, Buffies Kitchen, as she nears retirement.
“I started working here in 2018 while I was working on my master’s degree,” she says. “I fell in love with the resiliency of our customers and the deep connections I was able to build with them.”
After receiving her master’s degree, Patterson went to work in mental health as an outpatient trauma counselor. After two years in the field, fighting uphill battles with insurance companies, “it burnt me out,” Patterson says. Then, in September of last year, with intentional serendipity — the way the Universe often works — “Debbie Custer reached out and said she was looking to retire and asked if I would be willing to take over The Hemp Mill.”
Overjoyed with the offer, the two created a program they coined “mentorship to ownership” where Patterson will learn the tricks of the trade under Custer’s guidance before making the full transition of ownership.
That opened the door to “the kind of connection you get in Vinton,” says Patterson. “It is a powerful thing to have grown up here in Vinton, experiencing the camaraderie of local business passively through the lens of a child, only to return as an adult and find myself in the heart of it all… This town has grown up just about as much as I did over the last 15 years, but it’s comforting to see the love and support from the community here remain the same. Vinton has something special.”
Mayor Brad Grose has owned Dominion Electronics for 46 years and says, “I travel a lot, but this is my home base.” He says there’s “always a family atmosphere here” and in recent years, “there has been an across-the-board change in image. It is more than physical. It is about how we feel about ourselves.”
Mark Frye moved into the Vinton business culture by buying Creative Occasions from Francis Obenchain. She had operated the flower shop for more than 40 years and Frye found “that small-town America feel, as cheesy as that sounds. I love walking to work on the mornings when the flags are out. The community has been very supportive.”
Vinton recently suffered a large fire on the corner of Lee Avenue and Pollard Street and there was some question if the businesses adjacent to the center of the fire could resume. “With the fire, I can’t tell you how many people reached out, genuinely concerned. … We were threatened [by the fire] and I told friends that we would move somewhere for a year or so and rebuild—I own the building.”
That outpouring convinced Frye (when he didn’t need convincing) that Creative Occasions was staying in Vinton, regardless of the damage.
Frye’s reputation is national (he has provided flowers twice for White House Christmases), but he remains Vinton-centered. “Customers come from all over,” he says. “Initially, a majority were Vinton-based, but the longer we are here, the more wide-spread they are.”
The source of the new look of Vinton, says Frye, is Town Manager Pete Peters. “When he came, there were positive changes immediately,” says Frye. “He went outside to invite people in.”
Frye points to Twin Creeks Brewery as “doing a great job pulling people into town. Roland Cook and Billy Byrd [converted school buildings for living space] are important, giving us a contemporary look. There’s been this really nice momentum that people are picking up. Pok-E-Joe’s BBQ opened in the old Vinton Motors and there’s just a lot that’s happening.”
Peters says the demographics—if not the population of 8,000—are changing, bringing in more young people.
Dawn Sullivan, whose Rustic Creations shop features primitive home décor, experienced the “family effect” of the Vinton business community following the downtown fire. Her shop was in close proximity to the major damage and was threatened. “Everybody helped,” she says, “and Chasity Barbour (Town of Vinton) and Angie Chewning [of the Vinton Chamber of Commerce—to which Sullivan did not belong] put the word out for us.”
When the building seemed lost, “we had offers from several other buildings [outside Vinton], but we didn’t want to leave. The support was great, the customers very loyal.”
“The people in Vinton are partners,” says Pete Peters. “There are resources, and if a business is struggling, we find them.”
Which leads to this, says Peters: “We are on the map now. When we go places, people notice what is happening here.”
