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Recent Articles from Emily Freehling
On cloud nine
In 2007 — the same year that Apple unveiled the iPhone and Netflix introduced the idea of “streaming” movies — Buddy Rizer started aggressively targeting an industry that many of the people he worked for in Loudoun County didn’t yet fully comprehend. “It was not an easy story to tell at first,” Rizer recalls of […]
Data centers’ job impact is spread out
The Lego Group’s July 2022 announcement that it would build a $1 billion Chesterfield County manufacturing plant came with the promise of 1,760 new jobs. Meanwhile, Amazon.com Inc.’s 20-year, $35 billion investment to expand its data center footprint across Virginia is projected to generate only 1,000 direct jobs. The data center industry’s jobs-to-investment ratio is […]
Compound growth
As U.S. stocks hit bear market territory last year, Virginia’s largest publicly traded companies weathered rising interest rates, inflation and continued supply chain and labor challenges. Rising home mortgage rates drove a slowdown in new business at McLean-based Freddie Mac. Plunging prices for used cars caused Goochland County-based CarMax to focus on controlling costs. As […]
Vantage point
Norfolk leaders have high hopes for redevelopment projects that will reposition older properties — from an aging mall to an underused marine terminal — to better match modern market demands. “We are always asking, ‘What can we do that allows for some sort of creative transformation to actually happen?’” says Sean Washington, the city’s acting […]
Two HBCUs eye region for satellite campus
Northern Virginia economic development officials are working with Virginia’s two public historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to establish a joint satellite campus in the region that officials say would fill a gap in higher-ed offerings in Virginia’s largest population center. The presidents of Virginia State University and Norfolk State University have been talking with [&helli[...]
Bathhouses at Homestead to reopen soon
A painstaking restoration of the Warm Springs Pools will wrap up in time for The Omni Homestead Resort in Bath County to reopen one of America’s oldest spas by 2022’s end. Formerly called the Jefferson Pools, the spring-fed public baths have been closed since 2017. The resort had hoped to start work on the $3 […]
Cyberwar zone
Earlier this year, Kwabena Konadu received a call from one of the small businesses he advises on IT and cybersecurity. The company’s chief financial officer had received an email from a purported ethical hacker — cyberspeak for “good guy” — who had found the official’s username and password for accessing company data on the dark […]
Primed for affordable housing
Virginia Housing CEO Susan Dewey says Amazon.com Inc.’s $2.5 billion-plus HQ2 East Coast headquarters under construction in Arlington created a “launching pad” for awareness of the link between adequate, affordable workforce housing and economic development. Although Amazon expects to pay its 25,000 HQ2 employees generously, the e-tailer was concerned about the availability of affordable hou[...]
Hitting a brick wall
Casey Renner has worked in four states over the course of her teaching career, and she’s never liked a school more than Arlington County’s Wakefield High School, where she teaches science and special education. But she has also never had as much difficulty finding housing near work as she has during her 17 years teaching […]
Thinking big
At Virginia’s largest publicly traded companies, the past year has been a constant exercise in challenging the status quo. Some major changes could be seen at the consumer level, as Dollar Tree Inc. raised its namesake base price point to $1.25, and Capital One Financial Corp. eliminated overdraft fees for its banking customers. And the […]
