Alt-Dominion

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Virginia's Piedmont
Charming rural communities in Virginia's Piedmont region, roughly between Middleburg and Charlottesville, are filling up with formerly big city residents, with high-paying jobs, who can now work wherever they can stay connected.

For endless history, whenever people have visited someplace nice they've sighed, "Why are we going back?"

Now, however, they have a new question:

"Why are we going back?"

PEC head Chris Miller says that in the rural areas, weekend-getaway places account for as much as 30 to 40 percent of all homes. These weekenders soon discover they can start leaving the office a day early, staying in touch via e-mail. Then they begin staying away a day later. Pretty soon, although their legal addresses may be in the District, their bodies are increasingly in the Piedmont.

The rise of an urbane Piedmont does not yet even show up in some counties' census numbers. Far more houses are being built than are reflected in population increase, and still there are housing shortages.

The reason, says Stephen Fuller, is that a lot of the people who are driving this Santa Fe-ing are being counted somewhere else -- at least for now. Fuller is the director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University's School of Public Policy, the premier analysts of the Washington area's economic, housing and employment trends.

"It's a new world. They have to be able to do the work that is tech-intensive -- which is only about 11 1/2 percent in the Washington area. Workers in the retail section can't do it unless they're the chief financial officer. But a lot of professions can -- lawyers, financial analysts. They only need to be in the office once a week."

Eventually, GMU's Fuller expects these Piedmont part-timers to sell their homes in the metropolis and retire entirely to their Piedmont places. "This kind of lifestyle does not appeal to everybody," Fuller cautions. "It's a long way to the shopping center, a long way to their children. But the people who move out to the mountaintop are a more footloose group, more individualistic. They are often self-employed."

The Culpeper Lifestyle

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Of all the counties in the Piedmont, Culpeper has historically been seen as one of the least prepossessing. The main drag leading to the county seat still looks like the kind of place Britney Spears grew up in. Landmarks include the Atomik 3 Auction and Flea Market, the feed mill that looks like an obsolete oil refinery, and the Outlaw Truck and Performance Center.

Nonetheless, on Davis Street you can now find a three-star restaurant, Foti's, created by veterans of Rappahannock County's Inn at Little Washington, the most celebrated country beanery in America. Paella is available at Foti's for $33.95.

This is the neighborhood of Elena and James Clements and their infant son, Max. Until two years ago, they lived in a 600-square-foot apartment in Rosslyn. Now they live in the historic district in a 99-year-old place that used to be the Baptist parsonage.

Elena, 30, is an event planner for Vsquared.biz Inc., an organization that produces elaborate meetings for legal associations, in venues from Munich to Maui. "My bosses and I correspond through e-mail, instant messaging," she says. "The organizations that we work with, as well as the hotels and other businesses, everything is done via e-mail. We could not have done this 10 years ago."

James, 31, manages the Web sites for the Democratic Leadership Council and the Progressive Policy Institute. He could do this from anywhere, but he chooses to go in to Capitol Hill a couple of days a week. "I don't know that we are at a point in society where we've gotten beyond the idea that if you don't see people every day, they're not working." But, he says, this gives him "the Culpeper lifestyle five days a week. I have a very good life."

This is not to say that you can't find some sharp divides in this new Piedmont. Monroe Baisden, owner of a wine and gourmet shop called Chateau du Reaux, describes the divides as "rednecks versus sophisticates. I don't know any other way to put it." He remembers some non-sophisticates who came into the shop. "Some people won a gift certificate for $50 worth of stuff -- they came in and had no idea what to do with it. You forget that there are those folks out there."

Nonetheless, there is a lot that the newcomers share with those who go back generations. At Food for Thought, a shop in Culpeper that features chevon -- goat meat -- the proprietor, Julie Simpson, says, "Here people are friendlier, more patient. If you go to the store and discover you've forgotten your wallet, they'll say, 'Take your groceries home and come back and pay us.' Try that in Fairfax."

The Down-Home Net

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When you start investigating the highly developed tastes of the newly urbane Piedmont and start asking people like the Clementses, the Duvalls and the D'Albenzios about the paths they're taking in shaping this new world, you start seeing a pattern.

Kim Pinello, who started the Galloping Grape?

She used to work in Tysons for MicroStrategy, the data-mining software company that makes it possible to find crucial needles in haystacks of information. "I was a numbers nerd," she says.

And Mike Riley, who helped start up the Madison Inn Restaurant? He still works full time from Madison as a Web site developer for Advanced Solutions International in Alexandria. "I still get in once every six weeks or so," he says.

There is no question in Riley's mind that the popularity of the Madison Inn among people in the county has something to do with the Internet. He can see it in his parking lot.

When he and his wife started the restaurant, for their own convenience they made sure that the place had broadband and a WiFi connection.

Now they see the word has gotten out.

In the evening, they can look out their window and see people gathering in their cars, not even coming into the restaurant.

Their faces are bathed in an eerie blue light.

Their laptops are propped on their steering wheels.

They're using the restaurant's WiFi hot spot to check their e-mail.