Virginia Tech recently released an outside study of the university’s economic impact. It included a regional breakdown across the state, which revealed this nugget: Tech’s Roanoke operations, primarily the medical school and related biomedical research institute, now has an economic impact of $456 million a year, more than double what it was eight years ago.
Health care is now the largest economic sector in the Roanoke Valley and the second-fastest growing (the other is the much smaller employment sector classified as “management”). The Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and Fralin Biomedical Research Institute aren’t responsible for all of that (health care is growing everywhere), but they are certainly now the crown jewels of the Roanoke Valley’s economy — and their rapid growth suggests that the predictions that they could someday lead to the development of a Blue Ridge version of North Carolina’s Research Triangle are not far-fetched.
It’s important to remember how they came about: through a substantial amount of state (as well as private) investment, which clearly seems to be paying off…