Topgolf slated to create 450 jobs in Virginia Beach

Virginia Beach will serve as the first Hampton Roads lo­­­cation for Dallas-based Topgolf International Inc. The golf entertainment company plans to open a 65,000-square-foot facility off Greenwich Road that’s slated to create 450 jobs. It also says it will invest almost $30 million in the city during the next three years.

The announcement “generated an incredible amount of excitement out there in the community,” says Scott Hall, business development coordinator for the Virginia Beach Department of Economic Development.

Topgolf has 13 locations serving more than 2.7 million guests per year. The Virginia Beach facility, expected to open this fall, will include 102 climate-controlled hitting bays, a food-and-beverage menu and up to 3,000 square feet of private event space.

“A lot of people will try to describe us as a high-tech driving range, but in, my opinion, we are so much more than that,” says Zach Shor, Topgolf’s director of real estate.

One notable high-tech feature are Topgolf’s balls, which are embedded with microchips that track each shot’s distance and accuracy while awarding points for hitting targets on the range.

Virginia is no stranger to Topgolf. The company, which began in England in 2000, opened its first U.S. location in Alexandria five years later. It also plans to open a facility in Loudoun County in the spring.

Shor says he can’t disclose average salaries and wages for the jobs at the Virginia Beach facility but says 125 positions will be full time.

To locate in Virginia Beach, Topgolf received a $300,000 grant from the Virginia Beach Development Authority, based on its capital investments in the city. As a new company, Topgolf also is eligible for the Business License Incentive Program, which caps the company’s business license fee at $50 for the first two years of operation as long as it generates more than $100,000 in gross receipts.

Hall says one of the major draws for Topgolf’s Virginia Beach site will be its location near the intersection of interstates 64 and 264, making it accessible for local customers and tourists. “It’s really, though, a facility that is not tourism dependent,” but a year-round operation, he says.