April 12, 2018
Can a boutique hotel and restaurant in a former downtown department store spark an economic revival in and around St. Paul, a coalfields town located on the Clinch River in southwestern Virginia? The newly opened Western Front Hotel and Milton’s Restaurant grew from community-wide efforts begun over 15 years ago to plan the place residents wanted to be part of, and then to work the plan. WMMT’s Rich Kirby reports on this partnership between local, state, and federal agencies with a private developer that hopes to be a catalyst for growing tourism and related businesses in the tri-state region.