Alexandria-based Burke & Herbert Financial Services has completed a merger with West Virginia’s Summit Financial Group, the company announced May 3.
The $371.5 million deal, first announced in August 2024, created a bank holding company with more than $8 billion in assets. The combined company will have more than 75 branches across Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and Kentucky and more than 800 employees.
Operating as Burke & Herbert Financial Services, the combined company will be headquartered in Alexandria, the companies announced in August.
David Boyle, CEO of Burke & Herbert, will continue in that role, while Charlie Maddy, Summit’s president and CEO, will serve as president and as a director of the combined company.
The combined company’s board will have 16 directors with eight directors from Burke & Herbert and eight from Summit.
“This combination brings together organizations that are unified by a shared vision, values and a forward-thinking approach to banking,” Maddy said in a statement. “Our synergistic cultures strategically position us for future growth and lay the foundation for cultivating richer relationships in order to become the most sought-after community bank in our markets.”
In the August announcement, Burke & Herbert said the merger would likely close during the first quarter of 2024. A request for comment about the delay was not immediately returned Tuesday.
Burke & Herbert and Summit announced the companies had received necessary approvals from regulators on April 19.
ESS Technologies, which specializes in packaging line design, equipment manufacturing and integration for the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, cosmetic and consumer packaging goods industries, will invest $1.6 million to increase capacity at a new facility in Montgomery County, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Wednesday.
The new facility will be located in the former Jeld-Wen building on Scattergood Drive in Christiansburg, according to Katie Boswell, executive director of Onward New River Valley, a regional economic development organization.
A subsidiary of New York-based Pacteon Group, ESS Technologies will close operations in Pembroke and Blacksburg and consolidate them at the Christiansburg facility, which will be 40,000 square feet, according to a news release. The project is expected to create 27 jobs.
“Pacteon is proud of the growth trajectory of ESS Technologies,” Pacteon Group CEO Mike Odom said in the release.
In 2021, EES Technologies opened a satellite facility in Pembroke, which offered additional office and manufacturing space, according to a company press release. In 2023, EES Technologies held a ribbon cutting to celebrate a 12,000-square-feet expansion of the Pembroke facility.
Founded in 1993 in Blacksburg, ESS Technologies designs, builds and integrates automatic cartoners, case packers, robotic palletizers, and robotic systems.
“As a business with a long history in Virginia’s New River Valley, we are pleased they have chosen to retain and increase jobs in the region,” Boswell said in a statement released by the governor’s office.
Pacteon acquired ESS Technologies in 2021. Requests for comment to Pacteon Group, ESS Technologies and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership were not immediately returned Wednesday.
McLean-based satellite services provider Intelsat announced Tuesday that it has made a deal to be acquired by SES, a Luxembourg-based competitor, for $3.1 billion in cash.
The deal is expected to close during the second half of 2025, depending on regulatory clearances and other factors, according to a news release.
Intelsat CEO David Wajsgras will stay on at Intelsat until the close of the transaction “He does not plan to remain with the combined company,” Clay McConnell, a spokesperson for Intelsat, said in an email.
The combined SES will be headquartered in Luxembourg, but will have a “significant presence” in the U.S., according to the release. In March, SES held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for their new U.S. technology and operations hub facility in Prince William County.
Intelsat and SES previously discussed a merger, but talks fell apart in June 2023.
Once the companies combine, SES will offer a fleet of more than 100 Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) and 26 Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites. Previously, SES had boasted a global fleet of more than 70 GEO and MEO satellites.
The additional satellites will allow SES to provide enhanced coverage, greater network resiliency and improved service delivery, according to the release.
Wajsgras joined Intelsat as CEO in April 2022 soon after the satellite operator’s emergence from Chapter 11 bankruptcy and financial restructuring.
In March, Intelsat announced it had committed to secure low-Earth orbit service for six years for $250 million from Paris-based Eutelsat Group’s OneWeb low-Earth orbit (LEO) constellation service, with an option for another $250 million.
“Over the past two years, the Intelsat team has executed a remarkable strategic reset,” Wajsgras said in a statement. “We have reversed a 10-year negative trend to return to growth, established a new and game-changing technology roadmap and focused on productivity and execution to deliver competitive capabilities.”
The global shipping industry is currently juggling crises taking place more than 7,000 miles apart: Houthi rebels’ attacks on ships in the Red Sea, and a drought that has slashed ship crossings in the Panama Canal. And those came before the East Coast was hit with additional supply chain stresses following the collapse of Baltimore’s Key Bridge.
For the most part, the Houthis’ attacks, which started in October 2023, are mainly impacting ships traveling between Far East Asia and Northern Europe, not the Port of Virginia, says Ricardo Ungo, director of Old Dominion University’s Maritime, Ports and Logistics Institute. “We are not in the … line of impact.”
Port officials agree with that assessment.
“Outside of a very small handful of delayed vessels in early January, we haven’t had any negative effects,” Port of Virginia spokesperson Joe Harris says, and Aubrey Layne Jr., board chair for the Virginia Port Authority, notes that the Houthi-related local slowdown “sort of adjusted itself out” by March.
The Panama Canal drought, which has prompted a 30% decrease in the number of ships passing through the canal as of late last year, is also causing minimal disruption at the Port of Virginia.
“Really, it’s bulk carriers that have been really restricted in the Panama Canal,” Layne says. “We don’t do much of that in our terminal.”
But Virginia’s cargo volumes are likely to increase considerably this year because of vessels and cargo redirected from the Port of Baltimore, which was disrupted in late March after a deadly container ship collision destroyed Baltimore’s Key Bridge.
Meanwhile, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who are backed by Iran’s government, have been launching drones and missiles at Israel, in response to the Middle East nation’s war on Gaza that began in October 2023. According to news reports, the group said it was attacking ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden that were connected to Israel.
However, as months have passed, and the U.S. and United Kingdom have launched airstrikes on Houthi positions beginning in January, rebels have attacked more ships tied to the U.S. and the U.K., and now have launched weapons at civilian and military vessels at least 50 times, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.
The situation became grimmer in early March, when a missile hit a bulk carrier in the Gulf of Aden, killing three crew members and injuring others.
That leaves ships a difficult choice.
About half of the carriers that previously traveled the Red Sea have rerouted around Africa, causing significant delays, Ungo says, and the other half “are risking it.”
Meanwhile, reports emerged this year that Somali pirates have begun hijacking ships in the western Indian Ocean again, about a decade after a string of Somali pirate attacks on ships that ran from 2008 to 2014.
The Panama Canal drought, meanwhile, forced authorities to cut the number of vessels allowed to pass per day in December 2023, but conditions have improved in 2024, following higher rainfall. Reuters reported in February that the canal did not expect to place further limits on transit until at least April, and the region’s rainy season is expected to arrive in May.
Although the Red Sea and Panama crises’ impact on the Port of Virginia appears to be minimal, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine’s office is watching both situations, especially as they “could cause uncertainty and increase costs to consumers,” Kaine said in a statement to Virginia Business in March.
In January, Kaine signed a bipartisan letter pressing the Biden administration on its plans for responding to the Houthi attacks, advocating for “smart steps” to hold the Houthis accountable while encouraging the administration to develop a strategy to reduce escalation of the crisis.
“It’s crucial that the steps we take to address the threats posed by the Houthis are multinational — because other countries are impacted, too — and part of a larger strategy that protects commerce in Virginia and helps de-escalate tensions in the region,” Kaine says.
Ungo and Rafael Diaz, director of ODU’s Maritime Research Cluster, say that consumers buying overseas goods will likely be hit with higher costs as a result of the two shipping disruptions, and the compounded effect of the drought and rebel attacks is larger than the individual disruptions, Diaz says.
Also, economists at J.P. Morgan Research estimated in February that shipping disruptions could increase overall core inflation by 0.3 percentage points during the first half of 2024.
Still, Harris says that the shipping industry is making necessary adjustments, “to ensure ample capacity and reduce delays in service. … The industry is settling into a new pattern that is keeping the cargo flowing.”
It would be valuable for Port of Virginia leaders to carefully study the impact of the shipping crises, Ungo and Diaz agree, since there are bound to be more challenges facing the industry in the future.
“Probably the most important question going forward,” Ungo says, “is how we can improve the management of the disruptions.”
Editor’s note:The print version of this story in the May 2024 issue of Virginia Business incorrectly reported the amount of Virginia Commonwealth University’s purchase of the Creative Circus. VCU acquired Creative Circus’ branding and intellectual assets from Texas-based Ancora Education for $75,000.
The potential bottom line wasn’t the sole motivator behind Virginia Commonwealth University’s purchase in December 2023 of the Creative Circus, a well-known Atlanta advertising portfolio school.
“I want to be very careful that the intention is not seen as a purely business acquisition,” says Vann Graves, executive director of the Brandcenter, VCU’s graduate program for advertising, branding and marketing. “Really, it was a way to ensure that there are different levels and different pipelines and opportunities for students into the industry.”
Founded in 1995, the Creative Circus shut its doors at the end of 2022, due to declining enrollment. At one time, however, the school served as a “vital part of the pipeline into the industry,” Graves says. “And we think it’s important to keep it alive.”
Joe Maglio, CEO of McKinney, a Durham, North Carolina-based national advertising agency, agrees. McKinney provided financial support to VCU to help the school relaunch the Creative Circus. VCU purchased the Creative Circus’ branding and intellectual assets from Texas-based Ancora Education for $75,000. (McKinney and VCU declined to disclose the amount of the ad agency’s donation.)
“We’re working closely with the university to advise on the rollout of the curriculum as this new iteration of the Creative Circus is developed,” Maglio said in a statement to Virginia Business.
In late March, VCU named Berwyn Hung as director of the revived Creative Circus at VCU. Hung, who has taught at the Brandcenter since 2011, was director of program development at the Creative Circus, where he also taught, from 1998 to 2011.
He remembers feeling disappointed when he heard the school was closing. “It was hard not to be sad, because I helped build so much of what it was,” Hung says. “It was really nice finding out we had bought [the Creative] Circus, and that we’re going to be bringing it back.”
Numerous graduates from Atlanta’s Creative Circus hold top roles at advertising agencies nationwide. The school filled a niche for students who earned bachelor’s degrees in advertising but who often graduated without having worked in the creative side of the business — think copywriting, photography or design — according to David Haan, executive director of the Creative Circus from 2009 to 2022.
“If you came out with an advertising degree, it was pretty easy to [get hired] as an account executive or a media person or even a research person, but creative was kind of a different animal,” Haan says. “I don’t just show up at the Atlanta Falcons and say, ‘Hey, I’m a pretty good football player. Do you want to hire me?’”
While most students at the Creative Circus had undergraduate degrees, Hung remembers teaching some students there who weren’t yet old enough to drink and others who had a year or two of college under their belts but had decided to work on their advertising portfolios instead of chasing a diploma.
During his tenure at Atlanta’s Creative Circus, Hung developed about two new classes a year. “We were able to do a lot of crazy things that you probably couldn’t do today without getting fired,” he recalls.
For instance, Hung would write the names of the students who were the losers of different challenges on posters, which were publicly displayed. And in one particularly tough class, called Design Deathmatch, the student who got the worst grade on a project — even if that grade was a B — failed the assignment.
“It was kind of like the Wild West,” Hung says.
Several years before the Creative Circus announced it was closing, Haan could see the market shifting. Some state schools, which had previously fed students to Atlanta’s Creative Circus, began offering creative tracks, and some ad agencies began training newcomers who demonstrated talent on the job, according to Haan.
Like its previous Atlanta-based incarnation, VCU’s Creative Circus will employ industry leaders to teach classes.
Initially, the Creative Circus at VCU will offer virtual classes, but eventually Graves would like to offer hybrid instruction. Classes could begin as soon as spring 2025, according to Graves.
The first courses will focus on copywriting, art direction, design and content creation. “The goal is for it to be focused on foundational learning,” Graves says.
He hopes to keep the cost of each course between $1,200 and $1,800.
VCU’s Creative Circus will be a certificate program, but the university hopes to ultimately offer stackable credentials, which could be applied toward an undergraduate degree.
Maglio believes it’s important to offer a path for people who don’t have the inclination, time or money to attend graduate school to get a foothold in the advertising industry.
“It’s all about unleashing the untapped potential and the creativity that exists in so many people, regardless of their starting point,” he said. “Ultimately, the Creative Circus will fuel our industry by graduating a new generation of talent with diverse backgrounds and unique points of view, ready to roll on day one.”
In 2019, a state study forecast that if the General Assembly allowed five casinos to operate in five economically disadvantaged Virginia cities — Bristol, Danville, Norfolk, Portsmouth and Richmond — that one-third of the revenue generated would stem from out-of-state visitors.
In other words, if you build it, casino backers sang out to the commonwealth’s legislators, they will come.
In 2020, local voters overwhelmingly voted to bring casinos to Bristol, Danville, Portsmouth and Norfolk. Richmond referendum voters twice rejected bringing a casino to their city, and now it looks like that casino opportunity may go to Petersburg. Meanwhile, a proposed Norfolk casino has been delayed and may wind up with the city choosing a different operator. However, the three casinos open so far are doing brisk business in Bristol, Danville and Portsmouth.
Bristol’s casino opened in a temporary location in July 2022, and made $157 million in net gaming revenues in its first year of operation. Its replacement, a permanent, $500 million-plus Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, is slated to open its casino floor in July, with the 303-room hotel and indoor entertainment venue following in the fall, according to Allie Evangelista, president of Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Bristol.
Danville’s Caesars Virginia casino followed, opening a temporary location in May 2023, racking up about $145 million during its first six months. Its permanent location, which will cost more than $650 million, is slated to open late this year and will include a 320-room hotel and over 50,000 square feet of meeting and convention space.
Virginia’s first permanent casino, the $340 million Rivers Casino Portsmouth, opened in January 2023 and made almost $250 million in gaming revenue during its first year. In addition to gaming, it offers restaurants, bars and more than 25,000 square feet of event space.
So, the question is, have the casinos delivered on their tourism promises? Are crowds of gamblers traveling from other towns and states to delight in the thrill of roulette, the rush of slots?
The short answer is, you bet. The longer answer is that tracking Virginia’s casino tourism traffic isn’t the easiest endeavor and remains a work in progress.
Rivers Casino Portsmouth General Manager Roby Corby says the casino has drawn visitors from across the country. Photo by Mark Rhodes
‘Pretty accurate’
The Virginia Tourism Corp., which promotes the state’s tourism industry, purchases “data insights” on casino visitation from Arrivalist, a Colorado-based location intelligence platform for the travel industry that collects location data from millions of mobile devices like smartphones.
It’s a helpful tool, but it’s also still “a little bit early” to build a full picture of casino visitation trends in the commonwealth, says Dan Roberts, VTC’s vice president of research and strategy.
To be identified as tourists, casino visitors must have traveled with their devices at least 40 miles to their destinations, explains Balakumar Raghuraman, vice president of analytics for Arrivalist’s parent company, AirDNA. Devices associated with commuter travel trends were excluded from consideration.
At Rivers Casino Portsmouth, most visitors’ devices (15.8%), as expected, originated from the Hampton Roads region last year. But the top 10 markets of origin last year also included tourists traveling from Raleigh and Durham, North Carolina (13%); Washington, D.C. (9.8%); Richmond and Petersburg (9%); and even areas as far away as Baltimore (3.2%) and New York (5.2%).
For Bristol’s temporary Hard Rock casino, visitors from the Roanoke and Lynchburg regions accounted for 26% of devices in 2023, followed by Knoxville, Tennessee (15%), and the Tri-Cities region (10%). Visitors also hailed from areas in southern West Virginia like the Bluefield region (5%), but Atlanta (3%) also made the top 10 list of places from which tourists traveled to the Bristol casino.
Of the tourists tracked at Danville’s temporary Caesars Virginia casino last year, most visitors (33.4%) came from North Carolina’s Research Triangle area, encompassing Raleigh and Durham, followed by tourists from Roanoke and Lynchburg (15.4%); and North Carolina’s Piedmont Triad region of Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point (14.2%). Devices originating from Los Angeles (2.6%) and West Palm Beach/Fort Pierce, Florida (1.9%), also made the list.
Mobile location insights, like those from Arrivalist, are commonly used by tourism officials to ensure they are delivering the most successful marketing messages to reach certain audiences, according to Candace Fitch, the Howard Feiertag Endowed Professor of Practice at Virginia Tech’s Pamplin School of Business, “They want to target those really precious marketing dollars to a very specific target market [to] make sure they’re reaching the right people,” she says.
As far as the accuracy of mobile device tracking data, “it’s hard to evaluate the reliability of it,” says Michael Maness, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of South Florida and an affiliated faculty member with the university’s Center for Urban Transportation Research. He added that he hasn’t seen any studies comparing data compiled from mobile locations with traditional sources like casino-tracked visitor data.
Nevertheless, spokesman Raghuraman says, Arrivalist’s data is “pretty accurate.” He points out that Arrivalist compares its lodging data information to numbers compiled by Smith Travel Research, which processes performance data from hotels. “We usually see more than 95% or 96% correlation, which is big when you’re talking about two completely different datasets.”
Rules of attraction
Casinos are “amazing” for attracting tourists, Fitch says. After all, visitors are coming to gamble, she says, and “that’s a big draw for people because you can’t have access to that everywhere in the United States.”
About two dozen states offer commercial casino facilities, according to the American Gaming Association’s 2023 State of the States report. Among Virginia’s bordering neighbors, casinos are legal in Maryland, North Carolina and West Virginia, but not in Tennessee, Kentucky or Washington, D.C.
Casinos, Fitch points out, also bring in big-name entertainers and tend to attract development of other tourist-appealing attractions like restaurants and retail opportunities that wouldn’t normally open in smaller markets. “Big chefs like to be in casinos,” she says.
Bob McNab, chair of the economics department at Old Dominion University and director of ODU’s Dragas Center for Economic Analysis and Policy, has a less rosy view of how casinos will impact tourism in Virginia.
“Is this really an inflection point for Virginia tourism?” he says. “One would probably argue it’s not at this point in time.”
McNab speculates that most individuals who visit the state’s casinos are day visitors.
“They’re not destination casinos, right?” McNab says of the commonwealth’s three operating casinos. “They’re not a Macau. They’re not a Las Vegas. They’re not an Atlantic City.”
Evangelista with Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Bristol says casinos usually track visitor data with loyalty rewards programs like Hard Rock’s Unity, Caesars Rewards, or the Rush Rewards program at Rivers Casino Portsmouth.
While Bristol’s temporary casino isn’t an official Hard Rock property, visitors can still use and earn Unity rewards there, according to Evangelista. “And so, when people come to the building, and they actually sign up for a card or they use their card to play, we know how much they [gambled], and we know where they did it from,” she explains.
Bristol’s temporary casino welcomed visitors from all 50 U.S. states during its first six months of operation in 2022, according to Evangelista. Hard Rock would not release specific visitation data for its Bristol casino patrons, but Evangelista says that typically its guests travel from no further than three hours away, with the majority of out-of-state guests hailing from Tennessee and North Carolina.
However, the number of North Carolina visitors fell after Danville’s casino opened in May 2023, Evangelista observes. “Now we see them maybe sharing, you know, coming to visit us a little bit [and] going to visit there as well,” she says. (Caesars Virginia representatives would not comment on tourism trends at the casino.)
As for Rivers Casino in Portsmouth, Roy Corby, the casino’s general manager, provided a statement to Virginia Business magazine noting that more than 2 million guests visited the casino during its first year in business. “Rivers Casino Portsmouth has welcomed guests from all 50 states,” Corby says. “We are pleased with the growing number of out-of-area guests in our first year and expect that trend to continue.”
Madison Eades, general manager of Danville’s Bee and Holbrook hotels, says that even after the Caesars Virginia resort casino opens, plenty of guests will still seek a boutique hotel experience. Photo by Hannah King
Busy as a Bee
Danville, Portsmouth and Bristol have all seen an increase in local lodging taxes since their respective casinos opened. Lodging taxes in Bristol jumped from about $1.28 million in fiscal 2021 to more than $2.08 million in fiscal 2023, while Danville saw a similar increase during the same time period, rising from around $1.59 million to over $2.71 million. Meanwhile, Portsmouth saw a more modest increase, from $897,134 in fiscal 2022 to more than $1 million in fiscal 2023.
Danville City Manager Ken Larking is careful, however, to note that increases in hotel stays in his city may also have been impacted by construction workers coming to work on the permanent Caesars casino and other projects like the White Mill redevelopment.
Caesars frequently puts up Danville guests at local hotels, according to Corrie Bobe, Danville’s economic development and tourism director. “Currently, they’re averaging between 25 to 40 room nights per week when hosting guests,” she says. “So, our assumption is that these are out-of-town guests coming to visit the temporary facility.”
Two Danville boutique hotels are certainly seeing business from visitors to the temporary casino, according to Madison Eades, dual general manager of the Bee Hotel and the Holbrook Hotel, which opened in late 2023. “Holbrook is gaining traction for sure and getting busier,” she says. “The Bee has been busy.”
Eades doesn’t expect traffic at the hotels to slow after Caesars opens its permanent casino and hotel in Danville. After all, Caesars may sell out its own hotel rooms sometimes, Eades points out, and some visitors may also want to visit a boutique hotel instead. “We will still see a lot of guests coming in [who] want a different type of experience,” she says.
Initially, Caesars planned to build 500 hotels rooms in the permanent hotel, but now the facility has downsized the project to 320 rooms. Rising construction costs were likely behind the change, according to Larking. “Just like every business, they need to stay within some kind of a budget,” he says.
The City of Danville hired Alexandria-based RevPAR International, a hospitality industry advisory firm, to prepare a hospitality market study, which will cost about $21,900, according to Larking. The study, which should be completed over the summer, will allow Danville “to better analyze the current demand for hotel rooms as well as the type of hotel rooms that are needed within the market, and then forecast over the next 10 years what additional rooms need to be attracted or constructed,” Bobe says.
Larking hopes the study will draw developers of high-end hotels to the area. “They just don’t build it because you ask,” he says. “You have to actually show them there’s demand.”
Meanwhile, in Portsmouth, Keith Toler, the city’s assistant director for the department of museums and tourism, feels confident Rivers Casino Portsmouth is drawing big numbers of out-of-state and out-of-town tourists.
“We’re seeing people come from the Outer Banks,” he says. “We’re seeing people come from Virginia Beach. They’re doing their weeklong stay, but they’ll take a night and come up to the casino.”
From October to December 2023, more than 20% of Rivers Casino Portsmouth guests were from out-of-state, according to a presentation made at the Virginia Lottery Board’s January meeting.
That percentage stuck with Brian Donahue, Portsmouth’s director of economic development. “I was pleasantly surprised by the visitors that we’ve got coming from outside of Virginia,” he says. “We think it’s been a really impactful and transformative project for the city of Portsmouth and, really, the Hampton Roads region.”
While working as an occupational therapist, Stewart Bossman injured his back attempting to help a falling patient.
That happened almost 25 years ago, but Bossman continues to deal with back pain. “I’ve had four back surgeries and one neck surgery,” he said, “so sometimes it’s just hard to take.”
Bossman, 69, buys CBD drops, which are made from the active ingredient in cannabis that is derived from the hemp plant. He described the drops as being “better than nothing” as far as helping his pain. He has a prescription for Hydrocodone, but he holds off taking that medication unless he’s really suffering. “I like something more natural than a prescription,” he said.
A licensed practitioner provided a written certification for Bossman to buy medical cannabis. The only problem: The Shenandoah Valley doesn’t have a state-licensed medical marijuana provider.
In September 2018, months after then-Gov. Ralph Northam signed legislation allowing doctors to prescribe cannabis oil to patients, the Virginia Board of Pharmacy issued five regional pharmaceutical processor licenses for medical cannabis dispensaries.
Virginia is divided into five health service areas, or HSAs, for regulating medical marijuana. The state currently has four licensed pharmaceutical processing firms.
The processor initially given a conditional permit for HSA 1, which includes the Shenandoah Valley, as well as the cities of Charlottesville and Fredericksburg and the counties of Spotsylvania and Stafford, was PharmaCann Virginia, originally a subsidiary of Illinois-based PharmaCann. However, that permit was revoked in 2020 after the company failed to build a facility by the December 2019 deadline.
PharmaCann Virginia filed suit against the Virginia Board of Pharmacy in Henrico County Circuit Court in September 2020. The Board of Pharmacy’s second requests for applications for conditional permits for pharmaceutical processors in HSA 1 was put on hold during the litigation. In April 2023, Virginia’s Court of Appeals agreed with the circuit court, which rejected PharmaCann Virginia’s argument that the Board of Pharmacy treated it differently than the four other pharmaceutical processors in the state.
In late February 2024, Virginia’s Cannabis Control Authority, which began overseeing the state’s medical marijuana program at the beginning of the year, announced it was accepting applications for pharmaceutical providers for HSA 1. They’re due 5 p.m. Tuesday, April 30, with an application fee of $18,000.
Jeremy Preiss, the state Cannabis Control Authority’s acting head and chief officer, said that opening applications for HSA 1 was one of his top priorities when he joined the authority as its second employee in January 2022.
Not having a provider to dispense medical marijuana in the Shenandoah Valley, he said, is a disservice to the people who live there. For instance, people who have cancer or chronic illnesses may have a hard time driving from the Shenandoah Valley to Richmond or Northern Virginia to obtain medical marijuana.
“I do think some people discount the inconvenience, and it is a hardship,” he said. “People should have easy access to a product that a medical professional has deemed worthy of receiving, that they would get benefits from having access to it, and they shouldn’t have to travel great distances just to access it.”
Preiss said he did not know how many applications had been turned in as of Monday. “We’re not reviewing them as we receive them,” he said. “We will review them all at once.”
Jean E. Gonnell, a partner at Troutman Pepper who works with clients in the cannabis industry, said she expects there could be more than 10 applicants for the conditional permit to be the state-licensed pharmaceutical provider for HSA 1. There were nine applicants for that area in 2018.
A review committee will score the applications and present the results to CCA board members on June 26.
Tanner Johnson, CEO of Elkton-based Pure Shenandoah, a CBD and hemp products business he runs with his three brothers, will be among those submitting licenses. The seed-to-sale company has invested more than $500,000 preparing applications to be the pharmaceutical provider for HSA 1 in 2020 and for this round in 2024, according to Johnson.
The state’s four licensed medical marijuana dispensers fall under the ownership of three out-of-state companies. Johnson would like to see a Virginia company win this conditional permit.
For his family-owned company, the idea of growing medical marijuana products to help patients is “very near and dear,” he said. Johnson thinks they’ll provide better service to medical marijuana patients than companies that dispense across multiple states.
Johnson estimates it will cost Pure Shenandoah about $50 million to build a vertically integrated facility that cultivates cannabis plants, produces cannabis products and dispenses cannabis to qualified patients, as well as to establish five satellite dispensaries.
Johnson is concerned that under the CCA’s rules, the review committee can use a lottery to pick which company earns the conditional permit if more than one applicant has a highest ranked score. “It’s not who’s the best company; it’s who’s the best company that’s lucky,” he said.
Preiss questioned how likely it will be that multiple applicants will tie, however.
And even if one applicant faces off against another in a lottery, that still offers a 50/50 chance of winning, Gonnell pointed out.
“It’s a lot of money to put these applications together,” she said. “It’s not cheap obviously. That makes people always worry.”
MedMen Enterprises, a multistate cannabis operator based in California, acquired PharmaCann Virginia in 2019, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
A request for comment to MedMen was not immediately returned on Monday. The company filed for bankruptcy under Canada’s Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act on April 24.
Virginia currently has four pharmaceutical processors of medical marijuana owned by three out-of-state companies:
Maryland-based Green Leaf Medical was selected to serve patients in HSA IV, which includes Richmond, while New York-based Columbia Care was tapped to serve HSA V, which includes the Hampton Roads area. In 2021, Columbia Care bought Green Leaf Medical for $240 million. Columbia Care, which rebranded as the Cannabist Company in September 2023, has operations in 15 states. It had more than $511 million in revenue in 2023 and reported that Virginia operations made up $16.5% of that number.
Abingdon-based Dharma Pharmaceuticals received the processing license for HSA III, which encompasses Southwest Virginia. Chicago-based Green Thumb Industries purchased Dharma Pharmaceuticals in 2021, reportedly paying about $80 million in cash and stocks. With operations in 14 states, Green Thumb Industries reported a revenue of $1.05 billion in 2023.
Alexandria-based Dalitso received the permit to operate in Health Service Area II, which includes Northern Virginia. In December 2020, Florida-based Jushi Holdings announced it had acquired the 100% of the issued and outstanding equity of Dalitso. In 2019, it reported having paid about $16 million for 62% of the company. Jushi reported total revenue of $269.4 million in 2023.
Messages to Green Thumb Industries and Jushi were not immediately returned.
A warehouse leased by the Fredericksburg Regional Food Bank has sold for nearly $3 million.
Nellis, a Maryland-based private investment company, purchased the 24,000-square-foot industrial warehouse on 2.89 acres from Fredericksburg-based entity MDC 480 Central for $2.925 million, according to an April 25 news release from Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer.
The Fredericksburg Regional Food Bank has leased the property since 2021 and uses it for additional office space, to store food supplies, operate a grocery pickup program and conduct volunteer assembly line activities, according to Dan Maher, the food bank’s president and CEO. The food bank’s lease on the property runs through the fall of 2026, he wrote in an e-mail.
The property, which is located at 480 Central Road, includes 19,700 square feet of open warehouse space, 4,300 square feet of finished office space and 4,300 square feet of mezzanine space, according to Fredericksburg-based Johnson Realty Advisors. Its offerings include six offices, one conference room, one large lunchroom and an elevator.
Previously, the property was owned by Rappahannock Goodwill Industries, which used it as a commercial laundry, according to Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer.
Jamie A. Scully of Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer handled sale negotiations on behalf of the purchaser.
On April 19, Virginia Tech Property Management Advisory Board members elected Renee Pulliam, vice president of operations for Thalhimer Multifamily as its 2024 vice chair and 2025-26 chair, according to Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer.
Pulliam, who has been an advisory member since 2001, will serve a one-year term as vice chair followed by a two-year term as chair, according to an April 25 news release from the Glen Allen-based commercial real estate company.
The advisory board’s current chair is Wendy Austin, vice president of property management at Charlottesville-based Management Services Corp., according to a spokesperson at Virginia Tech.
The board, which includes representatives from about 36 real estate companies, provides feedback on curriculum and professional development and has given more than $1.3 million in scholarships to property management students, according to Virginia Tech.
The property management program and its advisory board were created in 1984.
Pulliam, who joined Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer in 2019 as director of operations and was promoted to vice president in January 2023, has over 23 years of multifamily experience. She’s actively involved with the Virginia Apartment Management Association, which represents the rental housing industry, and is based in Richmond.
The pace of sales in Virginia’s housing market slowed in March, declining 7.3% over March 2023, according to data released by Virginia Realtors Tuesday.
In March, there were 8,075 home sales in the commonwealth, 634 fewer sales than this time last year. At the end of the month, there were 14,950 homes on the market, up by about 1,400 additional listings from a year ago — a 10.3% increase.
“This is the fourth consecutive month that the overall inventory of active listings has expanded in Virginia, which is welcome news for buyers in this competitive market,” Tom Campbell, Virginia Realtors’ 2024 president, said in a statement.
New listings decreased in March, totaling 11,470, which is 35 fewer than in March 2023. There were about 17.9% more new listings in March compared to February. However, this increase is lower than the typical February-to-March spring inventory bump.
“This pivot to a slowdown we’re seeing could signal hesitation with sellers who are watching interest rates just as closely as buyers,” Virginia Realtors CEO Terrie Suit said in a statement.
About 65% of cities and counties around Virginia had more listings on the market in March than during that time last year. The Harrisonburg and Lynchburg regions had the sharpest increase in active listings in March. The biggest drop in active listings occurred in the Northern Virginia and Williamsburg areas.
Homes in Virginia were on the market for a median of 10 days last month, the same time frame as during March 2023.
Home prices continue to rise even though sales volume has slowed. The statewide median sales price in March was $397,000, up more than $27,000 or 7.3%, from last year.
The Virginia housing market had 8,981 pending sales last month, up by 444 pending sales from last year, a 5.2% increase.
Mortgage rates have risen above the 7% mark for the first time since December 2023. For the week ending April 18, the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 7.1%, up from 6.88% the previous week and up from 6.62% at the start of 2024, according to Freddie Mac data.
“If these upward trends continue, the spring market will likely be slower than last year, and last year was the slowest spring we’ve seen in a decade,” Ryan Price, Virginia Realtors’ chief economist, said in a statement.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept All”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
Sign In
Free Newsletter
