Corridor Magazine
Dec. '08-Jan. '09
by Mary Wade Burnside
[The following section of the article is about Jamie Corton, Managing Partner-Genesis Partners. The four other people featured in the article were Milan Puskar, Ike Morris, Jim Estep and Tom Jones.]
On a large field where the buffalo – and beefalo – once roamed, Jamie Corton had a vision.
He saw homes, all wired for high-speed Internet. He saw office buildings where people could work and an 80,000-square-foot fitness center where they could work out. He saw restaurants where they could congregate for dinner and stores where they could shop for everyday items.
And he also saw green space – plenty of green space, in a development unfettered by above-ground utility poles and wires – where adults could hike and children could play.
Other states already have mixed-use residential-retail areas, and now, because of Corton, who heads up Genesis Partners in Bridgeport, 500 acres of buffalo and beefalo pasture owned by his father-in-law off Interstate 79 has expanded into 1,700 acres that eventually will be filled with even more of the amenities a family needs to work, eat, play and live.
“It’s a true master-planned community,” said Corton, a Pittsburgh-area native who landed in Morgantown for a job where he met his wife, Jennifer, and eventually gravitated to her native Harrison County.
“People live, work and play in Charles Pointe. They will not have to go more than half a mile and there are all kinds of things you can do. It’s not your typical suburban sprawl. We’re integrating homeowners, businesses, retail, all of that.”
So far, town homes and condos pepper the land off W.Va. 279, as well as office buildings, a hotel and conference center, a doctor’s office and a Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg, Corton said, who expects development to continue for the next 15 to 18 years in the $1.4 billion community.
“We think there is a need for it,” Corton said. “We have to sell that a little better in West Virginia. Ours is more the middle- to upper-end and not the typical retail strips. This will be more of a market center, with the tailor, the ice cream shop, the pharmacy – things people do. We’re looking at having higher-end grocery stores.”
One of eight children from Carnegie, Pa., Corton grew up attending public and Catholic schools and then majored in computer science and electrical engineering on a track scholarship at the University of Pittsburgh.
“With a degree in computer science and a background in strategic planning, I have a passion for putting the processes together,” he said. “It’s like working a puzzle to solve problems.”
And a series of events prompted Corton to bring the future to Harrison County. He began working for aluminum company Alcoa in Pittsburgh after college; then he moved to Morgantown because he liked the area.
“I could go to Coopers Rock and run,” he said. “It was a great place and it wasn’t too far.”
While living in Morgantown, he met Jennifer Compton, the daughter of Harrison County entrepreneur Charles E. “Jim” Compton, the inventor of the coal auger also known for other endeavors.
After the two married, the Cortons were preparing to move to Atlanta, where Jamie was going to work for a start-up company.
“Then Jennifer’s father asked me to stay and run his businesses,” Corton said. “It was hard to do – I’d always walked in my own shoes. I never thought of running a family business. There were a dozen or so businesses he wanted me to run.
“But I grew up in a big family and I saw this as a family issue. So I came in, and I guess the rest is history.”
Well, there is still that part where Corton decided to create Charles Pointe, named for his father-in-law, which was conceived in 1998 and formally introduced in 2000.
“I love West Virginia and I love to work here,” he said. “I felt other people – specifically, high-tech people – would also want to be here. I’d run into them, running or biking or hiking, coming from northern Virginia. So I was thinking of the kind of model that would bring people here who were used to it in the high-tech world that could complement the things that the congressman and the senators are doing.
“I’d think, ‘They need a great place to stay, with homes – high-tech homes. The same things they have in northern Virginia and California we need to do in West Virginia.’ Our model is the new economic model for the future.”
Charleston developer Brooks McCabe of McCabe-Henley and McCabe Land Co., and also a Democratic state senator who chairs the Senate’s economic development committee, called Charles Pointe “user friendly” and “the wave of the future.”
“I think Jamie is further along than anyone else in the state with a significant project of this kind, using the creative tools that he brought to the table,” McCabe said. “Everyone assumes that developers just fall off a log and you are successful, but the fact of the matter is, real estate development in West Virginia is extremely challenging and hard to do.
“He has put together a high-quality, sustainable project, and for that, I take my hat off to him.”
Community, county and state government officials will be putting up a percentage of the funds in a public/private partnership.
“It takes a lot of disciplined planning when working on a project of this magnitude,” Corton said. “There are processes and procedures that must be adhered to when you are involved in public/private partnerships; it’s not just you running your own business. We’ve been fortunate, especially with the amount of infrastructure we have, to work with some great people at the local, state and federal level.”
Vince Cava, vice president of First Community Bank in Bridgeport, also appreciates Corton for the family values that Charles Pointe will help to preserve.
“I think what it will do for the community is give families a place where they can live and work and play and worship, and I think that makes the core family stronger,” Cava said. “Hopefully, we won’t have to see our kids and grandkids leave for those types of opportunities.
Corton agreed.
“There are people in West Virginia who want their kids to stay in West Virginia, and we’re creating a place where you can do that.”