Christiansburg Spends $4 Million on Drains and Sidewalks, Recklessly Funds Non-monetizable Things Residents Can Actually Use

CHRISTIANSBURG, VA — Christiansburg Town Council unanimously approved more than $4 million in construction contracts for drainage and pedestrian improvements this month, temporarily abandoning the glamorous modern economic-development strategy of putting an enormous computer warehouse somewhere and instead investing in the exotic municipal concepts of not flooding and being able to walk down the street.

Jones Road & Bridge won both construction bids.

The larger contract, approximately $2.9 million, will complete phase two of the College Street Drainage Improvement project. Work includes a new storm-drainage pipe network and inlets, a stormwater storage basin, relocations and adjustments to sanitary and water lines, new sidewalk, curb and gutter work and asphalt milling and resurfacing in flood-prone portions of College Street.

This is infrastructure in the traditional sense.

Water falls from sky.

Water needs somewhere to go.

Town builds thing.

Not every public-policy problem requires blockchain.

The second contract, approximately $1.2 million, covers two Roanoke Street pedestrian and sidewalk projects involving new sidewalk, improved curb ramps, drainage, traffic and pedestrian signals, pavement markings and related road work. Engineering and inspection contracts for the two projects add more than $306,000.

Christiansburg itself describes its stormwater capital program as addressing both flooding and water quality, while transportation projects are intended to improve congestion, safety, pedestrian routes and connectivity.

These are not exciting sentences.

That is precisely why somebody has to say them.

Good government is frequently boring as shit.

A culvert functioning correctly produces no ribbon-cutting footage because the principal visual effect is nothing terrible happening.

Nobody becomes locally famous because sewage stayed in the pipe.

Nobody stands beside a drainage inlet during a thunderstorm yelling:

“BRUH, LOOK AT THAT MOTHERFUCKER DRAIN!”

But perhaps they should.

Christiansburg's investment lands amid a much larger argument over what kind of infrastructure Southwest Virginia actually wants to build next.

Only weeks earlier, Town Council had begun discussing how Christiansburg should regulate potential data centers. Current zoning allows them by right in the town's I-2 industrial district. Planning staff recommended moving toward a conditional-use-permit process so the town could review individual proposals for noise, water usage, utility demands, generator testing, traffic, buffers and compatibility with neighboring land.

The discussion was not merely hypothetical technophobia.

Virginia's own legislative watchdog, JLARC, found that data centers can generate substantial local tax revenue and support major construction employment, but their long-term employment is comparatively modest. A typical 250,000-square-foot facility may employ about 50 full-time workers, while as many as 1,500 workers can be present during the temporary construction peak.

That is a real economic benefit.

So are taxes.

Cornelius is not opposed to computers being placed inside buildings.

There are several in the studio right now behaving suspiciously, courtesy of Windows, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Adobe. But all things in moderation, especially vices and poisons.

The question is whether communities should bend their future around an industry whose most substantial benefits can arrive during construction while many of its infrastructure demands remain afterward.

JLARC projects that unconstrained Virginia electricity demand could double within ten years, principally because of data-center growth. Meeting even half that demand would require substantial new generation and transmission infrastructure, with system costs potentially spilling onto other customers.

During Christiansburg's own July discussion, town staff cited those findings and noted estimates that residential customers could eventually face another $14 to $37 per month in generation and transmission costs by 2040 under high-demand scenarios. Staff also discussed low-frequency noise, water consumption and backup diesel generators.

Councilwoman Johana Hicks expressed outright opposition to potential data-center development in Christiansburg, while supporting a proactive conditional-use review if proposals do arrive.

There is therefore a useful contrast between the two conversations.

A data center may create tax revenue and economic activity.

A sidewalk creates a sidewalk.

The latter has a difficult time preparing a PowerPoint presentation explaining its NFT coin and storing it remotely before distributing it to every cuh in an Excel spreadsheet at the speed of light. Deadass.

It merely lets an elderly person, a child, a student, a disabled resident or some stoned asshole from Snide Studios travel several blocks without wandering into traffic. No cap.

Likewise, a stormwater basin does not promise to revolutionize artificial intelligence.

It takes the rain.

This is not an argument that municipalities should reject every large private industrial investment and spend the entire budget installing tasteful benches.

It is an argument about priority.

Economic development means considerably less when the town being developed is unpleasant or unsafe to inhabit.

Christiansburg sits in the middle of a New River Valley trying simultaneously to absorb growth, retain graduates, attract employers, build housing and create something resembling a durable regional culture.

That means the unsexy shit matters.

Sidewalks connect neighborhoods to businesses.

Drainage protects homes and property.

Water and sewer systems make further housing possible.

Transit reduces dependence on cars.

Parks create public life.

Broadband connects people.

Emergency services keep the people connected by broadband from dying when somebody microwaves aluminum foil.

Those things do not merely support economic development.

Those things are economic development.

The irony is that communities sometimes become so preoccupied with attracting the next gigantic investment that they neglect the mundane public systems which make a company, worker or graduate want to locate there in the first place.

Nobody moves to a town because its storm drain fucking rules.

People absolutely leave one because their basement floods every year.

So Christiansburg can take the win.

More than $4 million is going toward pipes, drainage, sidewalks, crossings and signals residents will actually encounter in ordinary life.

No server farm required.

The rain will continue generating its own streams and cloud storage systems.

What are we to do?