Danville and Pittsylvania County spent decades losing jobs as tobacco and textiles faded. Now the problem is the opposite: the jobs are coming faster than the houses.
That was the message at the fifth annual Southern Virginia Regional Housing Summit in Danville on Thursday, Oct. 8, according to Cardinal News. Developers, builders, bankers, real estate agents and economic development officials gathered to talk about how to house the workers who are on the way.
The jobs driving it
The Berry Hill megasite, the largest industrial site in Virginia, will soon be home to Microporous, a maker of lithium-ion battery separators. The company has promised about 2,000 new jobs.
A second tenant is expected. Data center developer Stack Infrastructure plans an AI data center campus on nearly 3,000 acres at the site. Cardinal News reported that a local performance agreement for the project outlines Stack's promise of $100 billion in investment and more than 2,000 permanent jobs. (An earlier passage in the same story put the figure at about 2,500 jobs and noted there has been no formal announcement.)
According to the Danville Housing Navigator, close to 1,000 new housing units are needed to support the Microporous project alone.
"The housing implication is clear," said Linda Green, executive director of the Southern Virginia Regional Alliance. "We must prepare for both permanent employment growth and the workforce needed to construct and equip these growing facilities."
A 2022 study found pent-up demand in Danville for about 600 single-family homes and 700 apartments. Since then, the city has built 112 rental units and 16 for-sale homes, with 233 more units under construction.
That hasn't been enough. Susan McCulloch, Danville's director of housing and development, said a 2025 update to the study puts pent-up demand at nearly 4,000 rental units and 1,300 owned homes.
"Housing has been built, new projects have been announced and our economic development pipeline has changed substantially," Green said. "But the projections for tomorrow change even faster and more drastically."
Green said companies now ask about housing before they decide where to locate. "They're going to ask the housing question, and if you don't have a solution for it, you can't win the project," she said.
Sugar Tree Living
One local group has been planning for this for years. Southside Investing is developing Sugar Tree Living, a 590-acre master-planned community in Axton, about nine miles from the megasite.
Tony Salah of Southside Investing said the plan calls for more than 1,800 homes of all types: single-family houses, apartments, townhomes and senior living. The community will also include health care, childcare, retail, dining, hospitality and recreation, along with services such as on-site fire and rescue.
The Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors approved Sugar Tree Living in 2023, more than a year before Microporous announced its plans. At the time, some residents raised concerns about traffic, the loss of farmland and the county's natural beauty. In a 2024 interview after the Microporous announcement, Salah said the company's decision "validated our time and energy and dollars into this area." He added: "We want to be the supply solution for a portion of the housing demand."
Salah called the housing shortage "the overwhelming regional refrain of need." After the summit, he said Southside Investing is feeling "more and more confident that an abundant wave of well-paying, good jobs are closer than ever."
Why it matters for Contractors
Two huge industrial projects in Southside Virginia will need construction crews, and the people who end up working there will need places to live.
Green made a point that matters for builders. The region has to house not only permanent employees but also "the workforce needed to construct and equip these growing facilities." In other words, the construction crews themselves will need housing while the plants and data center are built.
The numbers show the scale of the gap. Danville finished 128 homes since the 2022 study and has 233 under construction, while the latest estimate calls for nearly 5,300 more. Sugar Tree Living's 1,800-plus units would cover part of that, but it is only one project.
Contractors who work in the Danville region, or who are willing to travel there, should take note. Local officials keep track of projects and available sites on the Danville Housing Navigator website, a good place to start for anyone looking for work.