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Tag: project intersection

Defense/public safety tech manufacturer moving to SWVA

Wrap Technologies, an Arizona-based public safety and defense technology company, is locating its manufacturing and distribution base in Norton’s Project Intersection industrial park, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Friday.

The company will occupy a new, 20,000-square-foot building at Project Intersection, where U.S. Route 23 and Highway 58 meet. In August, a $10.4 million EarthLink call center became the industrial park’s first tenant. Project Intersection is a development project of the Lonesome Pine Regional Industrial Facilities Authority, a multijurisdictional cooperative authority encompassing Dickenson, Lee, Scott and Wise counties and the City of Norton.

Wrap Technologies CEO Scot Cohen said in an interview Friday that the new plant will be ready by late 2025, but Wrap will be starting production in early 2025 in a temporary local facility. He added that the company, which will remain headquartered in Arizona, expects to invest $4.1 million in hiring new employees. Many of the new jobs will involve manufacturing, engineering and logistics, Cohen said, and the company will also be hiring people to train police officers and other first responders on how to use equipment produced by Wrap.

Scot Cohen. Photo courtesy Wrap Technologies

The company produces tools for law enforcement officers, including BolaWrap, a lasso-like restraint device made from Kevlar that police can use to de-escalate conflicts in the field, and Wrap is building training platforms using virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “On the VR side, there’s a lot of conversation with two local universities” — the University of Virginia’s College at Wise and Emory & Henry University — Cohen said. The company, which has 1,000 police departments worldwide as customers, also has plans for integrated body camera systems and drone technologies for safer and more efficient law enforcement, according to the governor’s news release.

Though Wrap primarily provides public safety technology to police departments across the country, it also is involved in producing defense technology, although there’s a fair amount of overlap between the two sectors, Cohen said.

The reason Wrap is setting up in Virginia is multifold. First, the company supplies products and training to more than 40 police departments in Virginia, including in Richmond and Fairfax County, Cohen said, and the state has skilled workers and strong political leadership. Although Wrap has received offers to move its manufacturing to other countries, “there wasn’t even anybody close” to Virginia’s bid, he added. “The state has everything we want.”

The Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority (VCEDA) approved a $3.16 million loan for the Norton Industrial Development Authority to build the new facility at Project Intersection, and the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission awarded regional economic development groups an $800,000 grant through its Southwest Economic Development program to assist with this project. Youngkin approved a $425,000 Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund grant as well, and the Virginia Jobs Investment Program will support employee training activities at no cost to Wrap.

“As Wrap Technologies brings its operations to Virginia and creates more than 120 jobs, we are reaffirming the commonwealth’s leadership in technology and innovation,” Youngkin said in a statement. “This expansion further accelerates our efforts to develop key technology hubs in the region.”

SWVA projects recommended for $10M in federal grants

Four Southwest Virginia economic development projects have been recommended to receive a cumulative $10 million in federal Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization (AMLER) grants, Gov. Glenn Youngkin and U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, announced Monday.

The projects are on sites where coal was mined prior to 1977, the year the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act was passed. This federal law, among other things, requires the land to be adequately reclaimed when mining ends.

Funding for the AMLER program comes through the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, which approves the grants, and the Virginia Department of Energy administers funding for projects in the state. 

“The AMLER program supports high impact projects that align with federal, state and local priorities to improve communities and foster economic development,” state Sen. Todd Pillion, R-Washington County, stated in a release. “This round of funding will provide necessary investments to bolster infrastructure and enhance recreational and commercial opportunities to ensure SWVA continues to be successful.” 

Virginia’s recommended projects are:

  • Project Intersection, Wise County, $4.75 million
  • Richlands Electric Diversification Project, Tazewell County, $2 million
  • Cumberland Outdoor Recreation, Dickenson and Buchanan counties, $2.75 million
  • Project Wildcat, Wise County, $500,000

The funding for Project Intersection will go to build a second entryway into the industrial park, which has four remaining pads totaling about 70 acres available for development, according to Duane Miller, executive director for the LENOWISCO Planning District Commission.

The industrial park is owned by the Lonesome Pine Regional Industrial Facilities Authority, or LPRIFA, which was created through legislation in 2019, and includes representatives from the counties of Dickenson, Lee, Scott and Wise and the City of Norton. Project Intersection is certified as a Tier 5 site, the highest level in the Virginia Economic Development Partnership’s Virginia Business Ready Sites Program tier system.

AMLER has previously provided more than $12 million to develop the industrial park, according to Tarah Kesterson, a spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Energy. 

EarthLink, the Atlanta-based internet service provider owned by Trive Capital, celebrated the opening of a 30,000-square-foot facility at Project Intersection earlier this month.

“It’s going to be a premiere site,” Will Payne, managing partner of Coalfield Strategies, an economic development consulting firm focused on Southwest Virginia, said of Project Intersection. 

Officials in the town of Richlands, which has provided electricity to businesses and citizens since 1922, requested AMLER funding after facing rate increases, according to a Aug. 15 news release from the Virginia Department of Energy. The money will go toward the construction of a natural gas-fired turbine and generator, a micro power plant capable of generating 5 megawatts of electricity — enough to serve the town’s 2,500 utility customers. 

The Cumberland Outdoor Recreation project is the purchase by the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources of “an easement of 12,900 acres on Nature Conservancy property in Buchanan and Dickenson counties,” according to the Virginia Department of Energy. The land will be used for recreation, including a new ATV trail and road improvements.

The funding for Project Wildcat will pay for a retaining wall around an abandoned mine site in Pound, according to Kesterson.

Virginia began receiving federal grant dollars for the AMLER program in 2017 and has recommended nearly 50 projects since then, including five projects announced in January. Six states and three tribes receive the federal funding. 

Last week, the Appalachian Community Capital community development financial institution announced it had received a $500 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to start the Green Bank for Rural America, which plans to finance $1.6 billion in energy projects in the Appalachian region and other rural areas across the country.

EarthLink to create 285 jobs in Norton

Atlanta-based internet service provider EarthLink is spending $5.4 million to build a customer support center in Norton, a project expected to create 285 jobs, InvestSWVA and Gov. Ralph Northam announced Tuesday.

As part of moving its customer service operations from overseas to the U.S., EarthLink will build a 30,000-square-foot facility on a site in the 200-acre Project Intersection development, owned by Lonesome Pine Regional Industrial Facilities Authority, near the northeast junction of U.S. Route 23 and U.S. Highway 58. Wise County is providing temporary office space during construction of the building. EarthLink will be the first tenant at Project Intersection.

“EarthLink’s new support center in Norton will play a major role in bringing the company’s customer service operations to the United States, creating economic opportunity and new jobs for Virginians,” Northam said in a statement. “The rural regions of the commonwealth successfully compete for and attract projects due to their infrastructure, business-friendly operating costs and dedicated and highly-skilled workforce.”

Founded in 1994, EarthLink is a U.S. internet service provider focused on small businesses and homes. The company went public on Nasdaq in 1997.

EarthLink CEO Glenn Goad. Photo by Earl Neikirk/Neikirk Image.

“Having grown up in this area, it gives me great pride to further EarthLink’s efforts to provide award-winning customer experiences through our new sales and service center in Norton,” EarthLink CEO Glenn Goad said in a statement. “We look forward to a long partnership with this community and the employees who will become part of EarthLink.”

Called “Project Homecoming,” the effort to recruit this project began in November 2019. InvestSWVA marketing campaign team members and Virginia legislators Del. Terry Kilgore, Sen. Ben Chafin (prior to his death on Jan. 1, 2021), Sen. Todd Pillion and Del. Israel O’Quinn, along with Duane Miller, the executive director of the LENOWISCO Planning District Commission, and Will Payne, the lead consultant for InvestSWVA, led the process. The team flew to Atlanta to pitch to the EarthLink team and held more than 100 in-person, Zoom and phone meetings over 22 months, according to a news release.

“This announcement is the culmination of a lot of hard work and effort by local and state leaders, the EarthLink team, and many others,” Miller said in a statement. “We are all excited to have a company with an iconic name like EarthLink, who has been consistently honored with the coveted Great Place to Work Certification, locate to Southwest Virginia.”

The Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with the city of Norton, LENOWISCO Planning District Commission, InvestSWVA, the Lonesome Pine Regional Industrial Facilities Authority, and the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission to secure the project.

Northam approved a New Company Incentive Program grant of $686,500 from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund. The Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission approved a $62,500 Tobacco Region Opportunity Fund grant. EarthLink is eligible to receive benefits from the Virginia Enterprise Zone Program, administered by the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development, and from the Major Business Facility Job Tax Credit for full-time jobs created. The company will also receive funding and services from the the VEDP’s Virginia Jobs Investment Program, which provides state funding to support employee recruitment and training to companies creating jobs.