By Taylor Boyd
As he approaches his second year working in Martinsville, Eric Payne reflects on his successes and changing roles — first as the Interim Director of Development and City Attorney Designee and now at the helm of the Martinsville Economic Development Authority.
Payne said he ended up in Martinsville after a friend was granted the opportunity to develop a hotel on Commonwealth Boulevard. “The developer asked me to attend a meeting here in Martinsville on his behalf, so I came as his senior advisor” accompanying his general counsel, he said.
While he’d never heard of or been to Martinsville, Payne said the drive from Northern Virginia was incredible.
“I don’t want to say I fell in love as I drove along it, but it became more and more attractive just coming through. There’s just something about having a slower pace and getting the chance to focus on the family and not getting caught up in the rat race,” he said.
At the meeting, Payne said he met every then member of Martinsville city council, local officials and then City Manager Aretha Ferrell-Benavides.
“At the lunch she whispers to me, ‘Hey, are you interested in coming here to be our city attorney?’ I thought she was just making polite conversation, and I said to her, ‘Well, always happy to have a conversation,’” he said.
Two weeks later in August 2024, Payne was interviewed by Martinsville officials before being offered the position of city attorney designee.
“During the course of the interview, I said to all five members of council, ‘If you want someone who’s going to come to Martinsville, work hard each and every day on behalf of Martinsville, and call balls and strikes and be an honest guy, I’m your man. If you want someone who’s going to come here and choose sides and be partisan, do not hire me,’” he said.
Payne started in this role September 1, 2024.
As Interim Director of Development, Payne said the city received $1.5 million in opioid abatement authority grants. Payne also looked at the city’s commercial corridors for inspections and hired an outside company to look for potential property code violations.
“Code enforcement is a big deal. It’s hard to attract investment dollars if you say to a developer, ‘Come to Martinsville’ and they drive along any commercial (corridor and) see dilapidated structures or items that are obvious code violations,” he said.
Instead of fining the property owners, Payne gave them an opportunity to address the code violations, and explained the effort was designed to improve the way the city looked.
Payne also served as the coordinator for internal legal affairs. By working with outside counsel, he was able to assist in getting Martinsville dismissed as a defendant in a wrongful termination suit filed by a former Martinsville Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney.
“We had the PSA (Public Service Authority) case which resulted in a victory in excess of $10 million for Martinsville. I spent many a night preparing our witnesses for that case and coordinating with our outside law firm,” he said.
After the case, Payne said the outside law firm sent an email stating in part, “We never would have prevailed in this case but for your internal coordinating role.’ There are other things that we did in the legal realm as well that I’m happy of and proud of. I was involved with coordinating with the opioid litigation against the pharmacy benefit managers. Martinsville’s going to be the first in the county to go to trial and Judge Greer’s going to be a presiding judge in that matter,” he said.
While he’s not licensed to practice law in Virginia, because of his background in housing and economic development Payne was asked if he’d be willing to serve in his current position — the executive director of Martinsville’s EDA.
Payne said the role change came during Ferrell-Benavides’ tenure.
“She made the determination as the city manager that shifting to this EDA role may be more appropriate,” Payne said.
He assumed the EDA role on July 1.
In his current post, Payne said he believes the EDA, community supporters, and other local stakeholders, fight for the City of Martinsville each day.
“We want to improve the economic situation for Martinsville and the surrounding area. We want to create jobs, we want to retain jobs, we want to build housing. Every day, we wake up and think about how can we improve the plight of folks that live in Martinsville-Henry County, and we’ve done tremendously well,” he said.
Shortly after taking the role, Payne’s grandmother passed away.
“I lost my grandma and I was asked to eulogize her at her funeral in Chicago. I also got notice that the Tobacco Commission (Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission) wanted us to apply for a grant, so I’m literally preparing my grandmother’s eulogy while writing a grant application to the Tobacco Commission” with the support of the Harvest Foundation “on behalf of the Martinsville EDA,” he said.
Within 90 days of Payne becoming the executive director, the EDA was awarded a $1 million grant from the commission to support housing initiatives. Payne noted it was the largest grant in Tobacco Commission history for housing in Southside Virginia.
“That was a tremendous victory on behalf of the Martinsville EDA. It allowed us take Plant #10. It allowed us to utilize these funds to stabilize that project, to do predevelopment, and to attract a developer to create much needed housing and commercial activity on that site that had been dormant since 2010,” he said.
Around this time, Payne said he received a call from Virginia Housing about a surprise round of Workforce Housing Improvement Program (WHIP) grants.
“I’m saying, ‘We don’t even have a developer for Plant #10, how can we apply?’” The person on the other end of the call said, “‘get you a developer if you can and apply for this. Even if you don’t win, you’ll learn some things through this application process,’” he said.
Payne said the EDA then scrambled to get a developer and put together a grant application.
While the EDA did not receive that grant, “Virginia Housing came to Martinsville and met with us in person, and met with business leaders and community leaders. I invited Henry County Administrator Dale Wagoner to the meeting. We had discussions about how to utilize our EDA to serve as a catalyst for economic development in the area,” he said.
During a debriefing with Virginia Housing, Payne asked about the scoring system for awarding the grant funds. The highest number of points any applicant could receive is 50. Payne was told the most an applicant received was 44. The EDA’s score was 39.
“The only reason we didn’t get this grant award for $4 million was because we did not have architectural drawings for the site, which we couldn’t get in nine days, and we did not submit the evidence of the capital financing for the project, which again, you need to have time to do that with your developer, but we had just hired our developer,” he said.
Except for those two things, Payne believes the EDA’s proposal would have been among the higher scoring proposals.
Even though it wasn’t, “we’re developing incredible new relationships, not only in Martinsville with business owners and others, but we’re also developing relationships with philanthropic organizations, members of the community, residents, and our neighbors — and those are tremendous victories,” Payne said.
Payne said Virginia Housing told him that no one else had ever invited members to the community in all of its years of meeting with other economic development agencies.
“The reason that we wanted to invite other people to the meeting is this is not just about Eric Phillips, the chairman of our board, it’s not about Lee Prillaman, the vice-chairman of our board, or Eric Payne, the executive director; it’s about all of us and fighting for resources for all of us collectively. You don’t have to lose in order for us to win. We all can benefit,” he said.
With this philosophy in mind, Payne said the region is trying to develop a collaborative approach for Southside Virginia.
“The Danville Regional Foundation and the Harvest Foundation had a conference last May called the Home of Future Thinking, and they invited 100 leaders from the area to have a discussion about how we might collaborate in a regional way for economic development and for housing,” he said.
Payne said this conversation has evolved into what’s being called, ‘The Coalition of the Willing.’
“Hopefully what’s going to come out of this is an organization that’s going to fight on behalf of Southside Virginia where housing is the sole focus,” he said.
While he’s unsure of when it might be finalized, Payne believes the organization will be announced sometime in the spring.
He also expects significant additional funding will be coming to Martinsville’s EDA soon.
“Every dollar that gets invested in Martinsville that are new dollars for economic development is a victory. You don’t build a house overnight, it’s done brick by brick, and so slowly we are building an economic development machine that is advocating, fighting, and winning on behalf of Martinsville-Henry County,” he said.
While the EDA’s had several victories, Payne noted it’s also been challenging.
“There have been a number of challenges, but I think the more that we show people that are legitimately fighting to improve the area and fighting on their behalf, the more some of the naysayers will go away or lessen their public outcry,” he said.
Payne was recently asked to serve as the keynote speaker for the Boys and Girls Club of the Blue Ridge where he talked about his background.
“My father was incarcerated for 25 years, six months, and 10 days. He robbed banks all over the country and was a member of the Black Panther Family, escaped from prison and jail multiple times, and because of that, we struggled as a family. My mother struggled as a single parent,” he said.
At the age of six, Payne decided he wanted to be an attorney. Payne also decided he would never do anything to jeopardize his freedom or family.
“To the best of my ability I wanted to be a man of character and of integrity, and I’ve lived my life that way. Even though it is costly, I have continued to live my life that way,” Payne said, adding that his door is always open.
“Engage with me directly. Hold me accountable for what I say or what I do. Please don’t jump to conclusions about what a truth may be,” he said.
Payne said any loss in the community — of industry or even of self-belief — causes some wounds.
“It can lead some folks to wanting to focus on what’s wrong and what’s not right, and to view everything through a negative prism,” he said. “I would encourage folks to look at the end result and then determine whether this is right, because there’s far more that’s right with Martinsville-Henry County than what’s wrong with Martinsville-Henry County.”
