A Hanover property that will become the new Peebles Golf Cars headquarters sold for $2.9 million, Colliers | Virginia announced Monday.
Located at 10441 Washington Highway, the facility sits on 5.3 acres. Peebles Golf Cars will move its headquarters from Glen Allen to the 31,815-square-foot property.
Old Washington Highway LLC bought the property from G & G Motorcycles Inc. Colliers’ senior vice presidents Peter Vick and Harrison Hall represented the buyer.
Kings Dominion opens for its 46th summer season Saturday, a year after the COVID-19 pandemic shut the annual tradition down. Although the Hanover County amusement park will require masks worn by anyone who is not vaccinated (if they are age five or older), more than 60 rides, live entertainment and the redesigned water park will all be open, the park announced.
“The wait is finally over, and we are so very excited to welcome our guests back to the park,” Bridgette Bywater, Kings Dominion vice president and general manager, said in a statement. “This has been a difficult year-and-a-half for many, so it feels good knowing that Kings Dominion is a fun place where people can finally get out in a safe environment, have an amazing experience, and make some new lifelong memories with their family and friends.”
Following state orders, reservations are required for both Kings Dominion and Soak City, the water park, but fully vaccinated visitors will not need to wear masks. Grand Carnivale, an international music and food celebration, is set to take place July 17 through Aug. 1.
Last year, the Cedar Fair Entertainment Co. park was closed until December, when it reopened for a limited number of visitors who had to wear masks and maintain physical distance. Another change at the park this year is a significant pay raise, with seasonal positions starting at $13 an hour (up from $9.25) and lifeguard roles starting at $15 an hour.
For more information on safety precautions at Kings Dominion, visit the park’s website.
A $60 million, five-building industrial development is set to begin construction next month in Hanover County.
Northlake II will include approximately 655,000 square feet of Class A industrial space. Construction on the first three buildings will commence in May, with an anticipated completion of spring 2022. The project is being developed by Maryland-based Matan Cos.; industrial leasing will be overseen by JLL.
JLL’s Gareth Jones, Chris Avellana and Charlie Polk will handle the leasing efforts for Matan at Northlake.
Kings Dominion, the Doswell amusement park, has set its minimum wage for seasonal employees at $13 per hour, it announced Thursday. Previously, the base wage was $9.25.
The park, owned by Cedar Fair Entertainment Co., expects to hire 2,100 seasonal workers before reopening May 22, and it also is hiring 80 new full-time positions with benefits and wages starting at $16 an hour in culinary and operations roles.
Last year, Kings Dominion did not open for its regular season for the first time in its 45-year history, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It began hosting small, physically distanced events late last year, though. The park plans to host an in-person, distanced hiring event on April 17 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., but applicants can apply online as well.
This will be Bridgette Bywater’s first season as vice president and general manager of Kings Dominion. In a statement, Bywater said, “A seasonal job at our park can offer so much more. You can gain valuable experience in a safe environment, develop marketable skills for the future, and make new friends while being part of something truly special. And, just as I started out in a seasonal role, our seasonal associates have the opportunity to be rehired for jobs all the way through college and beyond.”
Chantilly-based tech systems integrator Corbett Technology Solutions Inc. (CTSI) announced last week it has acquired the integrated security solutions division of Mechanicsville-based electrical contractor Electrical Controls & Maintenance (EC&M).
Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
EC&M was founded in 1996 and in 2001 launched its security systems integrator division, which serves health care, government and education customers. The acquisition will allow CTSI to install additional security systems. CTSI provides design, installation, integration and managed and subscription services.
“Their expertise, track record of excellence and commitment to service are perfectly aligned with our core values, and this is a move that certainly expands the benefits we can bring to the customers of each company,” CTSI President and CEO Gino Ruta said in a statement.
Now part of the state’s Small Business Development Center (SBDC) network, the Capital Region SBDC opened this month to assist Richmond-area small business owners, Virginia Community Capital announced Monday.
Funded by the U.S. Small Business Administration with $192,000 in CARES Act money, plus matching grant funds from regional sources, the center will provide COVID-19 assistance, business counseling, development workshops, challenge programs and digital resources. It will serve businesses in Chesterfield, Goochland, Hanover, Henrico, New Kent and Powhatan counties, as well as the city of Richmond and the town of Ashland.
Local governments, as well as Atlantic Union Bank and Region 4 of GO Virginia, are supporting the center, which is seeking members for a regional advisory board.
The opening is a reboot of ChamberRVA’s Greater Richmond Small Business Development Center, which operated from 1998 to 2018, assisting more than 20,000 businesses and facilitating $334.1 million in capital investment, according to VCC, a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) with offices in Christiansburg, Norfolk and Richmond. The new center, unlike its previous incarnation, will be connected to the statewide SBDC network, which has 26 centers.
Ryann Lofchie, former CEO of Richmond-based consulting firm The Frontier Project, was recently named director of the Capital Region SBDC, which will be located in Henrico County.
“This is an exciting starting point,” she said in a statement. “Richmond is such a vibrant place to live, and we owe so much of our region’s growth and evolution to our local small businesses. During this time of economic uncertainty and disruption, many business owners are in need extra support and resources. The SBDC and its extensive network of partners are well-poised to be responsive to the needs of our entrepreneurial and small business community to ensure our region continues to thrive.”
Making a brief comeback before the end of 2020, Kings Dominion will reopen in December for a limited-time, limited-capacity holiday event after being closed for an entire summer season for the first time in its 45-year history, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Owned and operated by Cedar Fair Entertainment Co., the amusement park in Hanover County’s Doswell area will be open on select dates between Dec. 5 through Dec. 27 for its Taste of the Season: An Outdoor Holiday Experience, which will include food tastings, themed areas, live shows and 16 park rides.
The park announced in early August that it would remain closed this year due to Gov. Ralph Northam’s order that limits its capacity to 1,000 guests. Kings Dominion will maintain that capacity requirement and will require guests to make reservations prior to attending the park. Other COVID-19 precautions include a health screening 24 hours prior to the visit, a touchless temperature screening upon arrival and a requirement to wear face masks and maintain social distancing. Guests will also notice enhanced cleaning procedures and hand sanitizer stations at the park.
“This has been a challenging year for everyone, which is why we are ready and excited to welcome guests back to the park for some holiday cheer,” Kings Dominion Vice President and General Manager Tony Johnson said in a statement. “Kings Dominion has a comprehensive safety plan in place that has proven to be effective in all of our sister parks that were allowed to safely operate earlier this year. We can’t wait for families to return to the park and make treasured holiday memories safely.” Johnson, who started his career at the park in 1974, announced his 2021 retirement in late October.
Kings Dominion has long been a major economic driver for Hanover, with 2018 reports showing that visitors to the park spent $258 million in the county on tourism, generating more than $5 million in tax revenue. The park typically hires approximately 4,000 seasonal workers for its summer season.
Kings Dominion is currently in the process of contacting employees who had been hired for the spring season to check for their availability to work in December, says Kings Dominion spokesperson Maggie Sellers.
“The number of staff required to operate Taste of the Season will be lower than the typical spring and summer season,” says Sellers, who declined to provide an estimated number of hires for the December opening. “We have hundreds of associates who have been waiting to work at Kings Dominion since the spring and we’re in the process of connecting with them. Once they’ve had a chance to confirm their availability, any remaining positions will be posted on our website.”
Growing up on a tobacco farm outside of Raleigh, North Carolina, Tony Johnson learned the meaning of hard work early on. At a time when his local school system had a later start to the academic year to allow for the picking season, Johnson would get up at 4 a.m. to work the fields.
“It was how we made a living, and it was hard work,” says the 70-year-old. “It made me want to get a college education, I’ll tell you that.”
It also led to Johnson climbing the career ladder at Kings Dominion. The amusement park’s vice president and general manager will be retiring on Jan. 3, 2021, nearly half a century after he began his national career in amusement parks working summers at the longtime tourist attraction in Hanover County.
Johnson became Kings Dominion’s seventh vice president and general manager in February 2018, working for Ohio-based Cedar Fair Entertainment Co., which acquired the park in 2006.
Under his tenure, the park launched its first hybrid roller coaster, Twisted Timbers, its holiday immersive entertainment experience WinterFest, and family festivals such as Grand Carnivale.
Johnson started his career at Kings Dominion in 1974 atop the guard tower at Lion Country Safari, a drive-thru preview attraction that launched a year prior to the park’s official opening in 1975. It was up to Johnson and another tower guard to pull ropes that operated the gates keeping the lions from dining on their fellow attractions.
“Our job was to be sure that the cars cleared before the lions got to the ‘hoofstock,’” he says, referring to the safari’s antelope and wildebeests.
Johnson took the job to supplement his income during the summers in between his full-time job as a teacher, coach and athletic director for Hanover County Public Schools. In 1975, he transferred over to Kings Dominion’s security department and special police department, which included conservators of the peace who had been deputized by the sheriff to make arrests.
In his 10th year as a teacher, Johnson decided his heart was no longer in education, and took a full-time job with the amusement park’s loss prevention unit in 1984; he was promoted to vice president of operations in 1992. After Paramount Parks acquired Kings Dominion in 1993, Johnson joined Cedar Fair, working at amusement parks such as California’s Great America in Santa Clara, California, and Carowinds in Charlotte, North Carolina. Johnson was named Cedar Fair’s corporate vice president of operations in 2012.
“It is a great business, and I tell people I’m certainly going to miss the business, but I’m not going to miss [working] the weekends and nights,” says Johnson of retiring. “There’s never a dull moment.”
Johnson will be succeeded by Bridgette Bywater, Cedar Fair’s corporate director of operations. Bywater got her start with the company as a seasonal associate for Cedar Fair in 1992 at the Worlds of Fun amusement park in Kansas City, Missouri. Since then, she has held numerous roles in many departments with the company, and currently oversees and coordinates efforts that include strategic planning, new attraction planning and development, best practices and standardization.
Johnson speaks highly of Bywater, who also succeeded him in his previous role as Cedar Fair’s corporate director of operations.
“She brings the passion and the knowledge, and we’ve got good bones,” he says.
The management change comes after a tough year for Kings Dominion, which didn’t open to the public this year for the first time in the amusement park’s 45-year history. In early August, the park announced it would remain closed this year due to pandemic-driven state health orders that limited its capacity to 1,000 guests, as well as the “diminishing number of calendar days left in the 2020 operating season.” Kings Dominion had expected to debut an expanded, refreshed Soak City water park, with a multilevel play structure and children’s wave pool, during its 2020 season.
In August, Linwood Thomas IV, director of economic development for Hanover County, told Virginia Business that the economic impact of keeping the Doswell-based amusement park closed was “huge,” as it has traditionally been one of the county’s top five taxpayers. Visitors to the park spent $258 million in the county on tourism in 2018, generating more than $5 million in tax revenue.
“We’d rather be open,” Johnson says. “When we open up next year, whenever that is, we’ll be ready to go.”
Together, Kings Dominion and Soak City offer more than 60 rides, shows and attractions, including 12 roller coasters.
Cedar Fair is a publicly traded partnership that owns and operates 11 amusement parks, four outdoor water parks, an indoor water park and resort accommodations totaling more than 2,300 rooms and more than 600 luxury RV sites.
Starting Oct. 1, the sales and use tax rate in Central Virginia will go up by 0.7% to a total of 6%, Virginia Tax announced Tuesday.
The change approved by the 2020 Virginia General Assembly affects the 4.3% state tax, the 0.7% regional state tax and the 1% local option tax. Affected localities include Richmond and the counties of Charles City, Chesterfield, Goochland, Hanover (including the town of Ashland), Henrico, New Kent and Powhatan.
The adjusted sales and use tax rate does not apply to groceries and essential personal hygiene products, which are taxed at a reduced rate.
For most locations in Virginia, the sales tax rate is 5.3%, but in Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia it’s 6%, in Halifax County it’s 6.3% and in the Historic Triangle region (Jamestown, Williamsburg and Yorktown) it’s 7%.
Updated 2:45 p.m.
A Hanover County seafood restaurant was ordered closed by a Hanover County Circuit Court judge Tuesday after the restaurant continued to operate with a suspended license due to COVID-19 safety violations.
Judge Patricia Kelly issued a temporary restraining order effective as of 10 a.m. Tuesday, temporarily shutting down Mechanicsville’s Calabash Seafood, which stayed open after its license was suspended by state health inspectors July 27 and after a second notice Aug. 13.
State Health Commissioner Dr. Norman Oliver and the Virginia Board of Health, represented by the attorney general’s office, filed a motion in August asking for an injunction against the restaurant, which disregarded public health orders issued by Norman and Gov. Ralph Northam in June, requiring employees and customers to wear face coverings inside restaurants except when eating or drinking, and closing bars and other areas where people congregate.
According to the motion, the Hanover Health Department received “numerous complaints” about the restaurant’s practices, including that the manager of the restaurant “did not take the threat of COVID seriously, saying that the ‘health department could not tell him what to do,’ that ‘the servers did not need to wear face coverings,’ and that he ‘did not see the need for face coverings, claiming that COVID-19 was pretty much over.’”
The restaurant’s website posted a message that it would be closed until further notice and included a link to its GoFundMe page, where owner Dennis W. Smith is trying to raise $100,000 for legal fees. As of Tuesday afternoon, the page, set up Aug. 16, had raised $1,833. An employee who answered the restaurant’s phone Tuesday afternoon said it was closed.
“The battle has just begun,” Smith wrote in the statement on the website. “Governor Northam has done a great injustice to the Commonwealth of Virginia. He had no justification for the executive orders he signed. The numbers on the [Virginia Department of Health] website clearly show this data. The governor believes he is in control of the state as its new dictator. We the people are in charge. We will show him that we the people rule. This GoFundMe page is to hire an army of the best lawyers across the state to crush Governor Northam.”
In a video posted by Republican gubernatorial candidate Amanda Chase on Facebook in August, Smith said, “It’s going to take a court order” to close the restaurant. Chase was criticized for refusing to wear a mask at a Harrisonburg restaurant and threatening to sue its owners after they enforced their mask policy. Smith and the restaurant’s cook, Richard A. Shearin, were named as plaintiffs, along with the business entity.
The state asked for the restaurant’s closing while its license is suspended, “until the matter is decided on the merits.”
Smith’s attorney declined to make a statement Tuesday.
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