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Tag: Virginia Commonwealth University

COVID-19 death toll underreported, study finds

A joint Virginia Commonwealth University and Yale University study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that the COVID-19 death counts reported to the U.S. public underestimate the true death toll of the pandemic in the country. 

“There are several potential reasons for this under-count,” lead author Dr. Steven Woolf, director emeritus of VCU’s Center on Society and Health, said in a statement. “Some of it may reflect under-reporting; it takes a while for some of these data to come in. Some cases might involve patients with COVID-19 who died from related complications, such as heart disease, and those complications may have been listed as the cause of death rather than COVID-19.”

And although the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S. has increased death rates in recent months, deaths attributed to COVID-19 account for only about two-thirds of the death rate increase in March and April, according to the study. 

From March 1 to April 25, there were 87,001 excess deaths (deaths above the expected number, based on averages from the past five years), but only 65% of those deaths were attributed to COVID-19, according to “Excess Deaths from COVID-19 and Other Causes, March-April 2020.” And in 14 states, including California and Texas, more than 50% of excess deaths were tied to underlying causes not related to coronavirus.

“[A] possibility, the one we’re quite concerned about, is indirect mortality — deaths caused by the response to the pandemic,” Woolf said in a statement. “People who never had the virus may have died from other causes because of the spillover effects of the pandemic, such as delayed medical care, economic hardship or emotional distress.”

The study also shows that deaths from causes unrelated to COVID-19 rose more sharply in states that saw the most coronavirus deaths in March and April, including Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. Diabetes deaths in those states rose 96% above the expected number when compared to weekly averages in January and February this year. Heart disease deaths rose 89%, Alzheimer’s deaths rose 64% and stroke deaths rose 35%.

But the most staggering of all was a 398% heart disease death rate increase in New York City and a 356% diabetes death rate increase.

The study suggests that some of these deaths occurred during acute emergencies (such as heart attack or stroke) in people who were too afraid to go to the hospital during the pandemic.

“We can’t forget about mental health,” Woolf said in a statement. “A number of people struggling with depression, addiction and very difficult economic conditions caused by lockdowns may have become increasingly desperate, and some may have died by suicide. People addicted to opioids and other drugs may have overdosed.

“All told, what we’re seeing is a death count well beyond what we would normally expect for this time of year, and it’s only partially explained by COVID-19.”

Further studies are needed to determine the number of COVID-19 deaths versus indirect deaths “caused by disruptions in society that diminished or delayed access to health care and the social determinants of health (e.g., jobs, income, food security),” Woolf and co-authors Derek Chapman, Roy Sabo and Latoya Hill of VCU and Daniel M. Weinberger of Yale wrote in the study.

“The findings from our VCU researchers’ study confirm an alarming trend across the U.S., where community members experiencing a health emergency are staying home — a decision that can have long-term, and sometimes fatal, consequences,” Dr. Peter Buckley, interim CEO of VCU Health System and interim senior vice president of VCU Health Sciences, said in a statement. “Health systems nationwide need to let patients know it is safe and important to seek care in a health emergency, whether it’s through telehealth or in person.”

The VCU/Yale joint research was funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

“Public officials need to be thinking about behavioral health care and ramping up their services for those patients in need,” Woolf said in a statement. “The absence of systems to deal with these kinds of other health issues will only increase this number of excess deaths.”

 

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VCU, UCLA research could lead to better computer memory storage

Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), released research findings Tuesday that could lead to more energy efficient memory storage for computers and other electronic devices.

Magnets are used for computer memory due to their “up” or “down” polarity. The magnetic state can be flipped to write or encode data and store information. This magnetic memory requires a lot of energy, however. But the skyrmion state that VCU and UCLA have discovered does not have “up-down” polarity, but rather is flower-shaped. Researchers say this allows for stronger and more energy-efficient storage for computers and smart devices. 

“Our finding demonstrates the possibility of controlling skyrmion states using electric fields, which could ultimately lead to more compact, energy efficient nanomagnetic devices,” Dhritiman Bhattacharya, the VCU Engineering doctoral candidate working on the research, said in a statement.

The finding outlined in the paper, “Creation and annihilation of non-volatile fixed magnetic skyrmions using voltage control of magnetic anisotropy,” is “a stepping stone toward ultimately developing commercially viable magnetic memory based on this paradigm,” VCU engineering professor Jayasimha Atulasimha said in a statement. The paper authored by Bhattacharya, along with UCLA researchers Seyed Armin Razavi, Hao Wu, Bingqian Dai and Kang L. Wang was published in the journal Nature Electronics on Monday.

VCU researchers have been studying this concept for several years, and have shown that the skyrmion state could reduce errors in writing information to memory and make devices stronger against material defects and thermal noise. The VCU researchers hold a patent on this idea.

The joint VCU/UCLA research is funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Energy, VCU, UCLA and VCU’s C. Kenneth and Dianne Harris Wright Virginia Microelectronics Center.

 

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Opinion: How we can avoid the next health care supply shortage — essential generic medicines

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, America is witnessing something many of us once thought impossible: critical shortages of health care supplies. Doctors are devising ways to make one ventilator serve two patients, and citizens are sewing protective masks for donation to local hospitals. While this kind of American resourcefulness is uplifting, it is a situation that is completely precarious and avoidable.

Despite the fact that the U.S. is the largest consumer of pharmaceuticals in the world, another, possibly more dramatic, health care shortage is looming: essential generic medications. Many of these drugs were already in short supply prior to the pandemic, and the problem is worsening by the week. But here’s the good news: It’s not too late for America to head off this crisis.

Of the more than 4 billion prescription medicines dispensed in the United States last year, only 20% were produced in America. Over the past few decades, America has lost a key domestic manufacturing industrial base, essential generic medicine ingredient manufacturing. We import the bulk of our most important generic medicine ingredients from foreign countries, especially China and India, who also have health care systems that have been overtaxed by the COVID-19 pandemic. This is an unsustainable and dangerous supply chain vulnerability.

Are we prepared for a scenario in which the vast majority of our essential generic medicines are unavailable because overseas manufacturers cannot — or will not — supply them? Now is the time to come together and bring back generic pharmaceutical manufacturing back to American soil.

We have abundant technology, knowledge and infrastructure to accomplish this here at home. What would it take to mobilize our forces and create a robust, sustainable supply chain of essential generic medications in our country? We need visionary public-private partnerships.

Engineering researchers in universities including MIT, Rutgers and Virginia Commonwealth University are creating advanced manufacturing methods which dramatically reduce the financial and environmental cost of producing pharmaceuticals. These include advances in continuous flow processing, which produces active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in an uninterrupted stream — instead of batch-by-batch processes, as they are commonly produced today. Continuous flow processing is much more cost effective than batch processing and generates less waste. More importantly, APIs produced in this way are more consistent and tend to be of higher quality.

Much of the research to create these methods is currently funded by nonprofit organization grants to universities seeking to make life-saving medications more accessible to the developing world. If we are to re-secure this critical industrial base, government, private corporations and nonprofits must act quickly to tap into these advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing breakthroughs for the benefit of the U.S. population as well.

Coming together to manufacture critical generic medicines and their ingredients in the U.S. is essential to ensuring the health care of Americans and is a matter of national public health security.

This is urgently needed for the treatment of COVID-19. Essential generic medicines include sedatives and other drugs to help patients who require ventilators, medicines to support blood pressure control, and antibiotics to help fight infections common in these patients. It is equally necessary for the post-pandemic world. A commitment to domestic manufacturing of essential generic medicines will bring significant benefit to society. It will also boost the U.S. economy by providing a highly skilled workforce for the future. In other words, it will save — and improve the quality of — millions of lives.

We stand in a transformative moment in American history and have the advantage of awareness. The actions we take today will have a significant impact on the future. In the midst of this devastating COVID-19 there can be a silver lining. Let us seize this rare opportunity by bringing the public and private sectors together to build a safer, healthier and more hopeful American future for generations to come. We can do it, here and now.

Barbara D. Boyan is the Alice T. and William H. Goodwin Jr. Dean of Virginia Commonwealth University’s College of Engineering. Dr. Eric S. Edwards is co-founder, president and CEO of pharmaceutical startup Phlow Corp., as well as the chair of VCU’s School of Pharmacy Graduate Advisory Board. B. Frank Gupton, also a co-founder of Phlow Corp., is chair of the VCU College of Engineering’s Department of Chemical and Life Science Engineering, as well as director of the Medicines for All Institute. 

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Trump administration chooses RVA pharma startup for $354M COVID-19 contract

Richmond-based drug manufacturing company Phlow Corp., which incorporated this year, announced Tuesday that the Trump administration has awarded it a $354 million, four-year contract to manufacture in the U.S. generic medicines and pharmaceutical ingredients needed to treat COVID-19, creating an American supply chain for medical products that are now made mostly in China and India. 

The award from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, could be extended to be worth $812 million over 10 years. A May 18 New York Times article about the award noted that it was unclear why the Trump administration had chosen such a new company for the contract, which is one of the largest ever awarded by the authority.

“Years from now, historians will see this innovative project as a defining moment and inflection point for protecting American families — and our country — from current and future public health threats,” Peter Navarro, director of the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, said in a statement. 

Although Phlow incorporated in January, co-founder and CEO Dr. Eric Edwards says his company had been working on a domestic drug supply chain project for more than a year. Edwards and his twin brother, Evan, co-founded Richmond-based pharmaceutical company Kaléo, which sells the Auvi-Q injectable pen they developed for emergency allergy treatment. Both brothers left Kaléo in 2019.

“Phlow assembled the right partners at the right time, focused on a critical infrastructure lost over decades, and have been working on it for over a year,” Edwards says.

Phlow, which prides itself on using U.S. manufactured medicines and ingredients, will work with Civica Rx (a nonprofit that works to secure generic drug supply chains), Virginia Commonwealth University’s Medicines for All Institute and AMPAC Fine Chemicals (a California-based manufacturer with a plant in Petersburg), to produce chemical ingredients, active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and finished dosage forms, including vials and syringes, for more than a dozen essential medicines needed to treat hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

Phlow Co-Founder Dr. Frank Gupton. Photo courtesy VCU College of Engineering

A year ago, Dr. Frank Gupton of VCU’s Medicines for All Institute called on Edwards and his team for help with creating a domestic supply chain for higher-yielding drug ingredients with a smaller environmental footprint and lower cost. At the time, Gupton and his team were developing drugs to treat HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, but Gupton wanted to expand the project to address a major issue in the U.S. — drug shortages, Edwards says. Together, they started developing pediatric medicines and treatments for rare diseases, leading Edwards and Gupton to co-found Phlow.

Then COVID-19 hit.

“We immediately knew that all these drugs and essential ingredients that were already in shortage before COVID-19, that it was going to be a major, major issue,” Edwards says. “We were one of the first corporations in the country to reach out to the [Trump] administration and say, ‘These are the 30 to 40 critical medicines that are going to run out and are going to be pulled from the supply chain by hospitals. We need to have the U.S. secure a supply immediately.’” Approximately 80% of active drug ingredients are produced overseas, Edwards says.

After approaching the federal government with their plan to secure the U.S. supply chain with generic drugs to treat COVID-19 patients, BARDA awarded the team the contract.

Phlow and its partners have a two-pronged strategy planned to implement the contract, Edwards says. The first part concerns forming a “rapid surge response” to deliver as many essential medicines as fast as possible to the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile (SNS). To do this, Civica turned on its manufacturing network to make as many medicines as possible. The second phase, Edwards says, will be to create a massive infrastructure project to build an industrial base for end-to-end pharmaceutical manufacturing in the U.S.

“BARDA has long focused on expanding pharmaceutical manufacturing infrastructure in the United States, not only to develop and produce vaccines, but also for essential medicines, and their key ingredients used to make these drugs,” BARDA Acting Director Dr. Gary Disbrow said in a statement. “Collaborating with Phlow and its partners is an important step in expanding our manufacturing of strategic APIs and critical medicines at-risk of shortage.”

Phlow will acquire a parcel of land next to the AMPAC facility in Petersburg and build out infrastructure from there. Civica will also build a facility on the same site, although an exact timeline isn’t yet in place. The new joint facility will create approximately 350 jobs, Edwards says. There, the partners will develop the U.S.’s first Strategic Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients Reserve (SAPIR), which Edwards says will help to secure key ingredients needed to manufacture essential medicines in the U.S. 

“Instead of the federal government securing a supply of vials and syringes that often have an expiration date — even sometimes only 12 months — we’re actually going to be protecting the most essential medicine ingredients for those finished dosage forms,” Edwards says. 

Although Phlow’s project focuses on developing U.S. supply chains, Edwards says it’s important to know that this isn’t intended to eliminate all international supply chains for pharmaceuticals.

“Phlow is not trying to say 100% of all medicines should be made in the United States,” Edwards says. “Phlow believes that a global supply chain is important. What we’re saying is that the United States must secure a national, end-to-end supply chain of its most essential and critical medicines to the health and well-being of Americans in the case of supply chain disruption.”

 

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Developers propose $350M tower to replace Richmond Public Safety Building

The development team that created plans for the failed $1.5 billion Navy Hill proposal in downtown Richmond has returned to the scene, this time with a lower-stakes proposal that would not require funding by the city, a sticking point in the earlier plan.

Capital City Partners LLC, the partnership between Michael Hallmark of Los Angeles-based Future Cities LLC and Susan Eastridge of Fairfax-based Concord Eastridge Inc., submitted an unsolicited proposal May 1 to purchase the city’s Public Safety Building at 500 N. 10th St. for $3.175 million in the next 90 days. If the plan moves forward, the building would be demolished. In its place the developers would erect an office tower with 150,000 square feet dedicated to VCU Health System administrators and physicians, plus 150,000 square feet of Class A office space and 20,000 square feet of ground-level retail space that would include a pharmacy. The VCU Health project was originally proposed as an added incentive in conjunction with the Navy Hill project. 

The project also would include new locations for The Doorways and Ronald McDonald House Charities, nonprofit organizations that provide space and hospitality for families of patients, and space for VCU Child Care. The entire deal would be funded through private investors — at an expected cost of more than $350 million, according to the developers — and would not rely on city funding or a tax-increment financing (or TIF) model, according to the developers. They predict that the development, on a property which currently brings in no tax revenue, would bring in $60 million in local taxes over the next 20 years. 

Richmond-based architecture firm SMBW would design the project, according to the proposal, which comes with letters of support from officials with VCU Health System, Ronald McDonald House Charities, The Doorways and the VA Bio+Tech Park, which is adjacent to the site. CBRE’s Richmond office appraised the property, a 2.92-acre site. 

The developers also propose rebuilding East Clay Street between 9th and 10th streets. East Clay Street is currently interrupted by the public safety building.

Missing from the proposal is any direct reference to NH District Corp., the group founded by Dominion Energy Inc. President and CEO Thomas F. Farrell II with other Richmond business leaders to redevelop the 10-block area dubbed Navy Hill. The group’s $1.5 billion development plan, which was rejected in February by Richmond City Council, included a partly publicly funded $235 million replacement for the Richmond Coliseum, along with office space, residences, retail and a luxury hotel. Virginia Commonwealth University’s Center for Urban and Regional Analysis estimated that the project, which would have taken four to five years to complete, would have created 9,300 permanent jobs and 12,500 temporary construction jobs.

The aborted Navy Hill project was championed by Mayor Levar Stoney but met with city residents’ objections to secrecy surrounding early negotiations, high rents and a proposed special tax district to direct local taxes to pay for part of the new arena, among other concerns. Proponents, however, saw the project as a necessity to bring jobs and growth to Richmond’s downtown.

“There is sincere urgency to this offer, and time is of the essence for this land sale,” Eastridge and Hallmark wrote in their May 1 letter to interim city Chief Administrative Officer Lenora G. Reid. “The key tenants proposed for the development, VCU Health System, The Doorways, Ronald McDonald House Charities, and VCU Child Care need these new facilities now. As they were originally intended to benefit from expanded facilities in the proposed Navy Hill development, their plans have been stalled, creating uncertainty for their leadership, for essential workers and staff, and for their philanthropic supporters.”

The Doorways currently operates in a 117-room former hotel and typically lodges 150 children and adults, and Ronald McDonald House Charities currently has nine guest rooms at its facility on Monument Avenue. Capital City Partners says it expects to complete the project by the third quarter of 2023.  

 

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VCU Wilder School names new dean

Virginia Commonwealth University announced Wednesday that Susan T. Gooden is now dean of the university’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs.

Gooden has been the interim dean of the school since May 2018 and has been with VCU since 2004, when she started as an associate professor in the Wilder School. She has also served as director of graduate programs, the founder and director of the Wilder Graduate Scholars Fellowship program and executive director of the Grace E. Harris Leadership Institute.

Before her time at VCU, Gooden taught at Virginia Tech’s Center for Public Administration and Policy and was the founding director of the Race and Social Policy Research Center there. 

Gooden earned her associate’s degree in natural science from Patrick Henry Community College, her bachelor’s degree in English and master’s in political science from Tech, and her master’s and doctorate in political science from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

Wilder became an independent school at VCU in 2013 and currently has approximately 1,000 undergraduate students and 400 graduate students. 

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VCU College of Humanities and Sciences appoints dean

Jennifer Malat will be dean of the Virginia Commonwealth University College of Humanities and Sciences effective July 1, the university announced Tuesday.

Malat is currently the divisional dean for social sciences at the University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Arts and Sciences and oversees academic affairs, faculty affairs and research. Before serving as dean, she was the director of the university’s Kunz Center for Social Research. She also co-founded and co-directed The Cincinnati Project, a research initiative that connects arts and sciences researchers with organizations to conduct research for community benefit.

She has been with UC since 2000 and started as an associate professor of sociology. Malat focuses her research on how racial inequality affects the health of people in the U.S. She earned her bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of Minnesota and her master’s and doctorate degrees in sociology from the University of Michigan.

Don Young is currently serving as the interim dean of VCU College of Humanities and Sciences. The college enrolls approximately 14,000 students divided among two schools —the Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture and the School of World Studies — and 17 departments including hard sciences, english, sociology, history, psychology and others.

VCU Honors College names new dean

Virginia Commonwealth University has tapped Scott C. Breuninger as dean of its honors college, VCU announced Friday. Breuninger starts on July 1.

Breuninger currently works with the University of South Dakota (USD) as the director of its honors program and as an associate professor of history. He has been with USD since 2011 and grew the honors program at the university by 48% during his tenure. Breuninger previously taught at Temple University in Philadelphia and Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota.

“His leadership at USD has resulted in significant progress and I’m confident that he and the dynamic team of faculty, staff and students of the VCU Honors College will work together to achieve even greater success,”  Gail Hackett, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, at VCU said in a statement.

Breuninger earned his bachelor’s degree in European history and psychology from Bucknell University. He also has master’s and doctorate degrees in European history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Jacqueline Smith-Mason will serve as interim dean until Breuninger begins his position.

VCU receives $2.5M grant to extend battery life development

Virginia Commonwealth University researchers will receive a $2.5 million research grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to develop long-lasting rechargeable batteries, the university announced Thursday.

VCU researchers believe they can significantly extend battery life, drive down costs and reduce safety risks by redesigning materials found in lithium-ion batteries, which are commonly used to power smartphones and other electronic devices.

The project will be run by Ram B. Gupta, associate dean for faculty research development and a professor of chemical and life science engineering at VCU’s College of Engineering. Gupta and his team will test an approach for synthesizing material for the battery’s cathode.

“Our goal is to improve the batteries so that they can last longer, be more durable and safer,” Gupta said in a statement. He will work with Mo Jiang, a VCU assistant professor, and Parans Paranthaman, a corporate fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

When a battery is providing an electric current, lithium ions travel from the negatively-charged anode to the positively-charged cathode. And then when it’s being charged, the lithium ions move toward the anode from the cathode. 

“By the time you run 300 to 500 cycles, you have lost enough that you would say, ‘I need a new battery.’ We have an idea about how to make this cathode sturdy enough so that the losses are minimized,” Gupta said in a statement.

If the research study is successful, it could result in innovations that could lower the cost of lithium-ion batteries and reduce degradation in the batteries, lowering the risk of explosions and fires caused by the batteries.

Jiang and Gupta have previously received more than $500,000 from the National Science Foundation to work on the subject. They are seeking a patent for the technology.

The VCU College of Engineering opened in 1996 and in fall 2019 enrolled 1,782 students. In the chemical and life science engineering department there are approximately 200 students.

This is one of 55 projects — with a total budget of $187 million — that the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Advanced Manufacturing Office is supporting for advanced manufacturing research and development. 

VCU Health proposes medical complex as part of Navy Hill project

The $1.5 billion Navy Hill project — as proposed — may be killed next Monday by Richmond City Council, but that hasn’t stopped Virginia Commonwealth University and other heavy hitters from making economic development announcements in an effort to salvage the controversial project.

VCU Health System announced Tuesday that it would build a complex in the proposed Navy Hill development between 9th and 10th streets featuring 250 medical offices, child care services, a new Ronald McDonald House for families of young patients, a replacement facility for The Doorways hospitality house on East Marshall Street, plus retail space and 1,500 parking spaces. The facility would be in the space now occupied by the Richmond Public Services offices, and the city would sell the property to a private developer so it would be taxable, according to a VCU news release.

“There is tremendous potential to develop this section of Richmond into a thriving urban center that will generate much-needed tax revenue for the city,” said Michael Rao, president of VCU and VCU Health System. “Over the past few years, VCU has invested more than $1 billion to improve one of the mid-Atlantic’s most important academic medical centers with the hope that the neighborhood surrounding it will share in the city’s renaissance.”

With its announcement Tuesday, VCU Health joins other institutions that have made Navy Hill-related development proposals, including CoStar Group, the Washington, D.C.-based commercial real estate analysis company that already has 1,000 employees in Richmond. CoStar said in January it would build a 400,000-square-foot building in Navy Hill and double its employees — if the project goes forward.

Last week, Navy Hill developers were joined by prospective minor-league hockey team owner Fred Festa to announce the arena would be home to an ECHL team, also contingent on city approval.

Asked if VCU Health System would move forward with its plans if City Council didn’t approve the Navy Hill development, VCU Health Chief Administrative and Financial Officer Melinda Hancock said in a statement, “We have no ability to move forward with our urgent plans to address the needs of our patients, their families and our employees without the joint cooperation of both City Council and the mayor. We look forward to working with them in the mutual best interest of those we serve.”

The past week has seen other developments related to the Navy Hill project, including:

  • At Monday night’s City Council meeting, a consultant hired by the council to review the Navy Hill plan presented a mostly favorable view of the deal, which Mayor Levar Stoney, an ardent supporter of the project, counted as a win. Nevertheless, council members voted 5-4 recommending striking the item from next week’s docket and said they want Stoney to release a new request for proposals for the Navy Hill project.
  • Last week Del. Jeff Bourne, D-Richmond, asked a General Assembly subcommittee to table his proposed bill that would have shrunk the Navy Hill special tax district from the originally proposed 85 blocks to 11 blocks. His bill would have used state sales taxes from the district to pay back $600 million in debt service for Navy Hill project’s proposed 17,500-seat arena to replace the now-closed Richmond Coliseum. Bourne took the action after several City Council members encouraged Mayor Levar Stoney to remove the proposal from consideration this month. After some clerical confusion, Bourne’s bill was tabled Monday morning, effectively killing it.

The $1.5 billion Navy Hill project is a public-private partnership proposed by a group of Richmond business leaders led by Dominion Energy CEO Thomas F. Farrell II to redevelop the area around the 48-year-old Richmond Coliseum, which would be replaced with a $235 million arena — the state’s largest entertainment venue.

The Navy Hill plans also include 260,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space; a 541-room luxury hotel within walking distance of the Greater Richmond Convention Center; 1 million square feet of commercial and office space; more than 2,500 apartments; a $10 million renovation of the Blues Armory; and a GRTC Transit System bus transfer station. VCU’s Center for Urban and Regional Analysis has estimated that the project, which is expected to take four to five years to complete, would create 9,300 permanent jobs and 12,500 construction jobs.