Center Located Inside Innovation Accelerator
Visitors to Buena Vista can now learn about the area at a new visitor center inside the city’s Virginia Innovation Accelerator.
The visitor center, which is overseen by the Rockbridge Regional Tourism office, opened to the public on June 3. A ribbon-cutting ceremony on Monday allowed area residents to take a closer look.
The new center occupies a single room in the VIA. Its walls are lined with panels educating visitors about the history, culture and environment of Buena Vista. A window overlooks the nearby mountains and includes markers indicating which peak is which. And the floor is a decorative map of Rockbridge County.
Patty Williams, marketing director for Rockbridge Regional Tourism, said her organization turned to the design agency Journey Group to create the visitor center.
Journey Group took about six months to finish the project. It cost the tourism office more than $45,000.
“It’s been long,” said Sheryl Wagner, director Rockbridge Regional Tourism, at the ribbon cutting. “It’s been a labor of love.”
The old Buena Vista visitor center was along U.S. 60 in a building owned by Buena Vista city, Williams said. It opened sometime near the turn of the century. But over time, she said the building had experienced some “wear and tear,” which sparked the move.
“Rather than investing substantial resources into a facility with long-term physical constraints,” Williams said in an email to The News-Gazette, “we believe relocating to the Virginia Innovation Accelerator provides a more sustainable, strategic, and visitor-focused solution.”
The VIA, which itself only opened in 2025, is operated by the Advancement Foundation. The foundation uses the facility to provide assistance to local start-ups and other small businesses. Its location at 245 W 21st St. used to be a factory for the cigarette paper maker Mundet-Hermetite.
“The location … reflects Buena Vista’s identity,” Williams said in an email to The News-Gazette. “By housing the visitor center within a former industrial facility that has been adaptively reused, it showcases both the city’s industrial heritage and its future-focused approach to economic development and entrepreneurship.”
The tourism office also wanted to move the visitor center downtown in order to put it closer to the restaurants, storefronts and other attractions where visitors are already going, she said.
Williams said she’s not worried about moving the center farther from the highway. She said Buena Vista will be putting up signs to help increase traffic at the site.
“That will give us directions, funnel people down here to us,” she said.
The new center is open to visitors on Wednesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
A VISITOR EXAMINES an exhibit about the flooding caused by Hurricane Camille in 1969. The visitor center features information about the history, culture and natural environment of Buena Vista. (Aiden Kelsey photo)
