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byline: Beth JoJack

100 People to Meet in 2022: Hosts

 These are Virginians who feed and delight us, nourishing body and soul through arts and entertainment, media, food, hospitality and tourism.

 

Bouie
Bouie

Jamelle Bouie

Opinion columnist, The New York Times

Charlottesville

Growing up in Virginia Beach, Jamelle Bouie didn’t dream of being the next Carl Bernstein. “I came very late to this,” explains Bouie, who writes about politics, history and culture for The New York Times’ opinion pages. About a year after Bouie’s 2009 graduation from the University of Virginia, he was considering applying to law school but instead won a fellowship at The American Prospect magazine, launching his journalism career. Bouie went on to cover politics for The Daily Beast and Slate before joining the Times in 2019. For fun, Bouie also reviews cereal for foodie website Serious Eats, but he’s quick to stress that Lucky Charms aren’t a mainstay of his diet. “It really is exclusively for these little fun videos,” he says.

 

 

Bugg
Bugg

Sylvia Bugg

Chief programming executive and general manager for general audience programming, PBS

Arlington

The pandemic underscored the importance of being able to adapt to current circumstances, as PBS — and everyone else — faced COVID-19 and other challenges, including widespread racial reckoning and cultural shifts, Sylvia Bugg says. With a lot of people marooned at home, the network pulled tape from its archives and produced new content to “to help our audiences navigate these challenging times,” Bugg says. A Virginia native who enjoys traveling and reading, Bugg was promoted to her current role in October 2020, after returning to PBS as vice president of general audience programming last February. The Old Dominion University alum previously served as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s vice president of diversity and TV content, as well as working in programming for Discovery Communications.

 

 

Henderson
Henderson

Wayne Henderson

Musician and luthier

Rugby

Wayne Henderson started building guitars and other instruments as a kid in Southwest Virginia out of necessity. Now, he’s made more than 800, some of which have been played by guitar royalty, including Eric Clapton, who asked for one years ago. Henderson worked as a mail carrier for
37 years but has played Carnegie Hall, was named a National Endowment of Arts fellow, and his audiences have included President Bill Clinton and Queen Elizabeth II. An annual music festival in Grayson County that bears his name raises scholarship money, and the Wayne C. Henderson School of Appalachian Arts in Marion offers a guitar-making workshop, a class Henderson says he could have benefited from: “Boy, I wish something had been going when I was a kid.”

 

 

Kamara
Kamara

Rabia Kamara

Founder and owner, Ruby Scoops Ice Cream & Sweets; co-owner, Suzy Sno

Richmond

Rabia Kamara crafted an ice cream with brownies, salted caramel and blondies to win Ben & Jerry’s “Clash of the Cones,” a contest aired on Food Network in September. It’s a mixture that she says reflects her own family’s racial diversity. The Virginia Commonwealth University alum is pursuing a dream of building a frozen desserts empire. She started Ruby Scoops as a pop-up ice cream shop six years ago and opened a brick-and-mortar parlor in Richmond’s North Side in November 2020. Kamara opened Suzy Sno, a shop featuring New Orleans-style “sno-balls” in November, and plans to have a truck or trailer in 2022. In five years, she hopes to have at least three storefronts. Having returned to Virginia from Maryland, Kamara says, “Richmond is supportive of Black-owned businesses.”

 

 

Lewis
Lewis

Cathy Lewis

Host, “The Cathy Lewis Show”

Norfolk

In May, Cathy Lewis left “HearSay,” the daily talk show she hosted for 25 years on Hampton Roads public radio station WHRO FM. The pandemic gave her time to reflect, and she decided it was time to make room for new on-air voices. In January, she’ll launch “The Cathy Lewis Show,” a subscription-based weekly podcast, after a delay of a few months. A former WAVY-TV anchor and reporter, Lewis says she hopes the show will help people connect and discuss political issues that have caused deep divisions. “I’m hoping to connect people who feel strongly about these issues so that we can create a little community that might be able to evaluate ideas or evaluate opportunities.” She’s also a community liaison for Old Dominion University.

 

 

McLendon
McLendon

Matthew McLendon

Director and chief curator, Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia

Charlottesville

At the University of Virginia’s art museum, no two days look the same, director Matthew McLendon will tell you. One afternoon, he’ll deliver a talk; the next day, he’ll take a key supporter to lunch. The variety, he says, “really keeps me on my toes and keeps me energized and motivated.” Nearly five years have passed since the Florida State University and University of London alum arrived in Charlottesville from Florida, where he worked as curator of modern and contemporary art at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, but he still gets a thrill strolling through the exhibits. “When I see people in the galleries, especially young people, that reminds me how lucky I am to have this job,” he says.

 

 

Robinson
Robinson

Elliott Robinson

News director, VPM

Richmond

Elliott Robinson joined Richmond-based VPM, Central Virginia’s NPR and PBS affiliate, in September. A Hampton native and Christopher Newport University alum, Robinson was previously news editor of nonprofit journalism site Charlottesville Tomorrow. Robinson sees his role at VPM’s TV, radio and digital platform as “filling gaps” left by the shrinking number of news reporters and editors in today’s media landscape. “The pandemic made people appreciate the news even more,” he says. “People really do appreciate stories that take a step back and look at what things mean.” Early in 2022, he will oversee the launch of “VPM News Focal Point,” a weekly regional news show. In his spare time, Robinson travels and writes fiction. He also takes care of his 15-year-old dog, Missy, and serves as a board member of Virginia’s Society of Professional Journalists chapter.

 

 

Ross
Ross

Leah Ross

Executive director,
Birthplace of Country Music Museum

Bristol

Known as the “Big Bang” of country music, the 1927 Bristol Sessions recordings featuring the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers put the twin cities on the map and launched a new art form. As executive director of the Birthplace of Country Music Museum, which opened in 2014, Leah Ross is guardian of that historic legacy. Ross, whose first concert was Three Dog Night, became executive director of the Bristol Rhythm and Roots Reunion music festival in 2006, which merged with the museum in 2012. The festival and museum draw tens of thousands of visitors to Bristol annually. Boarded-up storefronts have turned into restaurants, women’s clothing shops, boutique hotels and comedy clubs. “You can come downtown to Bristol anytime, any day of the week or night and there’s people everywhere,” says Ross.

 

 

Ryan
Ryan

Gary Ryan

CEO and director, Virginia Museum
of Contemporary Art

Virginia Beach

Gary Ryan joined Virginia MOCA three years ago as its executive director and was promoted to CEO in April, a move she likens to winning the lottery. In April 2022, the museum will open an exhibit featuring the works of Maya Lin, the architect and artist best known for designing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Titled “Maya Lin: A Study of Water,” the solo show will focus on the artist’s representation of water — also highlighting a locally relevant issue. “The artworks presented will provide thematic connections to the complex beauty and challenges of the waterways of Hampton Roads,” says Ryan, who previously held executive roles at New York’s Katonah Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Opera.

 

 

Spadoni
Spadoni

Mark Spadoni

Managing director, Omni Homestead Resort

Hot Springs

After 20 years of running the Westin Savannah Harbor Golf Resort & Spa in Georgia, Mark Spadoni moved to Bath County in April to serve as the Omni Homestead Resort’s managing director, just as the historic 1766 resort embarks on an extensive $120 million restoration. Spadoni enjoyed his first summer in the Allegheny Mountains, noting his appreciation of Hot Springs’ clean air and dedication to Southern hospitality. “From a standpoint of being able to be at an iconic property like this, particularly with all of the repeat guests and generations of family members who have come to visit here, it was pretty exciting,” he says. “Obviously, our goal is that the property is there for the next hundred years.”

 

 

Twiggs
Twiggs

Cliff Twiggs

Director of operations, TopGolf

Henrico County

Cliff Twiggs points to his 3-year-old dreadlocks as an example of Dallas-based TopGolf’s culture of care for employees: “In the past, I just never did anything like that, but … once I joined TopGolf, I started seeing how freely this company supported you being who you are.” The sports entertainment company, which employs about 1,300 people across its three Virginia locations, values “fun, excellence, edgy spirit, one team and caring,” he says.
On top of guiding the Henrico location’s September 2019 opening and June 2020 pandemic reopening, Twiggs chairs TopGolf’s Black Associate Network Group, which supports the recruitment, advancement and retention of Black employees. TopGolf recently rewarded his leadership with a trip
to Ohio’s Pro Football Hall of Fame.

 

 

Yancey
Yancey

Dwayne Yancey

Editor, Cardinal News

Fincastle

Dwayne Yancey could have just retired from journalism, having logged nearly 40 years as an award-winning journalist at The Roanoke Times before leaving as its editorial page editor this year. Instead, in September, he launched Cardinal News, a nonprofit, digital news service covering Southwest and Southern Virginia. “We’re finally at the journalism part,” he says, laughing. “Getting the thing started was educational,” especially finding funding sources. Yancey leads a staff of two full-time reporters and a few freelance writers and also oversees a weekday newsletter. With fewer reporters covering the region — part of a national trend — “we see ourselves as filling a void,” says Yancey, who’s also a playwright and is staging shows in Toronto and the United Kingdom in coming months.

 

 

Amazon HQ2 budget, square footage are growing

Nearly three years after Amazon.com Inc. tapped Arlington as the home for its multibillion-dollar East Coast headquarters, construction is well underway, with the global e-tailer already hiring more than 3,000 Amazon HQ2 employees.

Since the project was announced, three numbers have stood out: 25,000 jobs, 4 million square feet of office space and a price tag of $2.5 billion.

However, the latter two figures have grown recently.

An Amazon spokesperson says the company now expects to invest more than $2.5 billion on the massive project, and the campus will include 4.9 million square feet if HQ2’s second phase is approved as-is by the Arlington County Board.

Known as PenPlace, the East Coast headquarters’ second phase is planned to include 2.8 million square feet. HQ2’s first phase — now under construction and nicknamed Metropolitan Park — includes 2.1 million square feet.

Amazon won’t divulge specifics of HQ2’s budget increase, but Telly Tucker, director of Arlington Economic Development, says, “If they’re building more square footage, I would say, naturally, they’re going to have a higher price tag than what they initially anticipated.”

Set to be completed by 2023, HQ2’s first phase will include two 22-story towers, 65,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space, and an expansion of an adjacent park. By early October, concrete crews working for Bethesda, Maryland-based Clark Construction Group LLC had finished the 12th floor of the two office buildings, according to Jeff King, the company’s vice president. Clark Construction expects to complete the concrete work on both Metropolitan Park office towers by spring 2022.

For the PenPlace development, Amazon proposes constructing three 22-story buildings, along with a much-discussed signature spiral structure called the Helix. Aaron Shriber, planning manager for Arlington County, expects that the county board will vote on Amazon’s plan for PenPlace during the first quarter of 2022.

In September, Amazon officials announced they’d already hired 3,000 employees, or 12% of the 25,000-employee minimum the company pledged to sign on by 2030. They hope to soon hire an additional 2,500 employees for HQ2. Not all of those jobs require doctorates in robotics, points out Brian Kenner, Amazon’s head of HQ2 policy.

“We’re one of those sort-of-unique companies that has a variety of different jobs along the educational spectrum,” he says. “I feel like we’ve got job opportunities for everybody.”  

Va. Tech complex to house biz programs

Fall visitors to Virginia Tech are likely to spot laborers hard at work on the university’s Data and Decision Sciences building, the first of four buildings that will make up the university’s Global Business and Analytics Complex (GBAC) — classroom and living spaces centered around using data to address problems facing businesses and society.

“We’ve been working on this project for years, so to be at the point where the first of the four buildings is coming out of the ground feels great,” says Robert Sumichrast, dean of Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business.

To woo Amazon.com Inc. to bring its HQ2 East Coast headquarters to Northern Virginia, state leaders in 2018 created the Tech Talent Investment Program, a workforce pipeline initiative. As part of it, the General Assembly allocated $69 million for the Data and Decision Sciences building, and Virginia Tech officials agreed to add at least 2,000 additional students in computer science, computer engineering and related disciplines.

Scheduled to open in 2023, the 115,000-square-foot Data and Decision Sciences building will serve multiple colleges, including the College of Engineering, the College of Science and the Pamplin College of Business. The building will include specialized labs, data visualization classrooms and team rooms for interdisciplinary student collaboration.

The second academic building to be built as part of the GBAC will house the Pamplin College of Business. Currently, faculty members from the business college’s real estate and hospitality and tourism management departments have offices scattered across campus due to a lack of room in Pamplin Hall, the college’s current home. “Being able to bring them together will really allow more synergy within the business college,” Sumichrast says.

Additionally, the GBAC complex will include two “living-learning residential communities” with housing for 700 undergraduates studying business, science and engineering. It will also have entrepreneurship laboratories and faculty-in-residence apartments.

As of late September, Virginia Tech had put together all but a little under $8 million for the $250 million GBAC through state and private funding, according to Sumichrast.

The Deloitte Foundation, in partnership with Virginia Tech alumni who work at Deloitte, are contributing $3 million to build the GBAC. Virginia Tech also received $2.5 million from the KPMG Foundation and former KPMG Chairman and CEO Lynne Doughtie and her husband, Ben; a $2.1 million grant from the J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation; and $1.6 million raised to date by Virginia Tech alumni working at Ernst & Young.

“I’m confident that by next summer we’ll have the money raised,” Sumichrast says.  

Damascus sees hike in trail tourism

On a September afternoon, Stuart Wright was trying to persuade a tourist to bring her son back to visit the town of Damascus in Washington County.

“Bring that little boy down here and he can play in the river, he can hike, he can bike the trail,” Wright coaxed. “Bring him where he’s got something to do.”

Wright, who owns a number of vacation cabins in the area, along with a lodge, an inn and an RV park, serves as the unofficial cheerleader for tourism in Damascus, his hometown.

Back in the 1970s when Washington County leaders first started talking about converting an abandoned 35-mile Norfolk and Western Railway corridor into the Virginia Creeper Trail, a hiking and biking destination running from Abingdon through Damascus to the Virginia-North Carolina line, Wright wasn’t on board.

“I fought to keep the train here,” he recalls. “I thought we needed the train but, boy, I was wrong.”

Even amid a pandemic, Wright says, tourism thrives in Damascus, a town once known for its now-departed timber and furniture industries. As proof, he points to Brinkwaters, the downtown boutique hotel that began welcoming guests in August. It sits near the Appalachian Heritage Distillery, which will open a tasting room and store in October not far from the new Appalachian Trail Center scheduled to open during Damascus’ Trail Days celebration in May 2022.

“Damascus is the poster child for what tourism can do for a community,” Wright says.

Trey Waters had listened to his buddy Wright kvetch so much about having to turn away potential guests because his properties were always booked that Waters, a pharmacist and real estate developer, decided to transform a downtown building he owned into the Brinkwaters hotel, which he says is more accurately described as “a big box of Airbnbs.”

Waters, who splits his time between Montana, North Carolina and Damascus, partnered on the project with his friends Eric and Emily Brinker, who own a Raleigh-based construction company. Brinkwaters is a combination of the partners’ last names.

In addition to sleek modern furnishings, some of the hotel’s 13 suites include full kitchens and sleeping lofts. A bike rack sits in front of the building for guests who come to pedal the Virginia Creeper Trail.

Word about the hotel seems to be out. “We’ve been at capacity for the last several weekends,” Waters says. “That’s tremendous.”  

Building up

Over the next several years, the Hampton Roads area will need about 8,000 more people ready to take skilled jobs in the maritime industry, officials at the Maritime Industrial Base Ecosystem estimate.

Leaders from higher education and other organizations across the Hampton Roads area are stepping up to make sure those positions don’t go unfilled.

“We talk about it on a daily basis,” says Tamara Williams, vice president of workforce solutions for Tidewater Community College. “We are in deep collaboration with our industry partners on their needs.”

In April, Gov. Ralph Northam announced that TCC’s maritime trades programs had received a $100,000 grant from the state’s GO Virginia economic development initiative. TCC administrators are using the money to expand the school’s welding program by 33%, which means accommodating an additional 40 students per year. Some of the grant money also will go toward helping TCC relocate its marine coating program from Suffolk to the school’s Skilled Trades Academy in Portsmouth. The program, which trains students how to prep, treat and paint ship surfaces to protect vessels from corrosion, will expand to accommodate an additional 84 students per year.

In August, TCC staffers were busy installing 12 new welding booths at the Skilled Trades Academy. Once completed, the school will offer 22 welding booths, making it one of the area’s largest welding labs, according to Williams.

TCC, which was named a Center of Excellence for Domestic Maritime Workforce Training and Education by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s maritime administration in May, also is developing mobile welding and electrician-training labs, Williams says. She hopes to have both on the road by early 2022.

In Franklin, Paul D. Camp Community College recently purchased a mobile welding lab for students enrolled in intensive, noncredit training. Camp, Tidewater and Thomas Nelson are part of the Community College Workforce Cooperative, an initiative launched this year to create a single point of contact for workforce training at the schools, led by executive director Todd Estes.

The goal of putting programs already offered by the community colleges on the road, Williams explains, is to make sure people in low-income neighborhoods who don’t have reliable transportation have the opportunity to take part. “That’s why we want to take training to the community,” she says.

Leaders at Hampton Roads’ community colleges also are considering expansion of the Virginia Ship Repair Association’s pre-hire training program, Estes says. The program involves short, intensive regimens that introduce students to the skills necessary to enter ship repair trades, including coating, marine electrical and welding.

Since 2017, about 2,000 students have completed the pre-hire program, and 90% have been hired directly into one of six trades in the shipbuilding and ship repair industry, he says.

“We hope to build upon the success of this program and great partnership by adding program content to address advanced skills, by expanding offerings to new in-demand trades and by increasing overall program capacity so we can serve more students,” Estes says.

The three schools also are preparing to train workers for positions outside traditional shipbuilding and repair positions — particularly in the offshore wind sector. Hampton Roads economic development officials are working to establish the region as a supply chain hub for the development of offshore wind farms along the East Coast, such as Dominion Energy Inc.’s $7.8 billion Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, which aims to erect about 180 massive wind turbines
27 miles off the Virginia Beach coast, beginning in 2024.

“We know that that’s going to mean even a larger increase [in the number of] workers that are needed,” Williams says.

TCC recently used a $1 million allocation from Virginia Beach City Council to purchase equipment for offshore wind career training, including augmented reality stations and sea survival equipment. Tidewater hopes to launch offshore wind-related training classes in late 2022 or early 2023, Williams says.

Also, Virginia Beach-based Centura College, a private, for-profit institution, started its one-year turbine technician program in February in collaboration with the Mid-Atlantic Maritime Academy, a private vocational center in Norfolk.

Higher education leaders aren’t the only ones working to address the maritime labor shortage. “That’s what we’re here to do — try to make sure we fill these jobs down here,” says Shawn Avery, Hampton Roads Workforce Council president and CEO.

With $663,696 in GO Virginia grant funding, the workforce council’s employees are working closely with maritime employers to identify staffing and training gaps that need to be filled, collecting labor market information and business intelligence along the way. “Then we take that information and give it to the educational partners,” Avery explains.

Hampton Roads workforce development leaders also hope to tap individuals transitioning out of the military to fill some of the estimated 8,000 jobs needed in the maritime industry.

The Department of Defense’s SkillBridge program allows service members to complete industry training, apprenticeships or internships during their last 180 days of service. One option for SkillBridge participants in the Hampton Roads area is to enroll in the Marine Trade Training program offered by the Virginia Ship Repair Association. There, they learn about assembly, installation and maintenance of mechanical piping systems as well as various welding techniques used in the maritime industry.

“It kind of gives them an introduction to those skill sets and then they’re picked up by one of our local companies,” explains Steve Cook, chief innovation officer for the Hampton Roads Workforce Council.  

 

 

Larger shovel-ready sites key to success

Workers with Franklin County-based Bowman Excavating Inc. have hauled off 250,000 cubic yards of dirt since beginning work last November on Wood Haven Technology Park in Roanoke County, according to Devin Bowman, company vice president.

With 30 acres of trees cleared and load after load of dirt scooped away from the berm next to Interstate 81, the park is highly visible to drivers traveling along the highway near Exit 143.

By mid-September, construction was expected to be completed on a 20-acre graded pad, the first phase of the park’s development.

In 2016, the Western Virginia Regional Industrial Facility Authority (WVRIFA) acquired 106 acres on Wood Haven Road in Roanoke County for about $5.3 million to develop the park. Currently, the authority is going through the process of having the Virginia Economic Development Partnership designate the parcel as a Tier 5 site. That’s the highest level in VEDP’s Virginia Business Ready Sites Program’s tier system, which is used to indicate a property’s readiness for industrial development.

“It’s ready to go,” says John Hull, executive director of WVRIFA and the Roanoke Regional Partnership.

Local government and economic development leaders from the cities of Roanoke and Salem, the counties of Roanoke, Botetourt and Franklin and the town of Vinton formed WVRIFA in 2013 to share both expenses and tax revenues from big development projects.

They decided to create the authority after seeing a competitive need for offering prospective businesses shovel-ready sites spanning 100 or more contiguous acres.

“What we determined is that … our competitors all throughout the Southeast had much larger prepared sites,” Hull says, adding that larger projects on that scale “are more impactful from a jobs and investment standpoint.”

Leaders in Botetourt, Franklin and Vinton opted not to participate in the Wood Haven project. Roanoke city and Roanoke County each own 44.2% of the park, while Salem owns an 11.6% share.

Hull feels optimistic that WVRIFA’s investment will pay off. Since the localities began marketing the park in 2020, Hull says, they’ve seen a 300% increase in leads on prospective businesses searching for 50-acre or larger sites.

“There aren’t many sites like this on the Interstate 81 corridor,” Hull says. “I don’t know that there are really any that are available like this with this level of preparedness and this level of visibility.”  

Long Bridge expansion to speed up D.C.-Va. rail traffic

Plans for constructing a $1.9 billion, two-track railroad bridge connecting Virginia to Washington, D.C. — doubling the number of tracks going across the Potomac River from the U.S. capital to the commonwealth — are chugging right along.

“We’re now moving forward to advance the engineering design and that should be completed by 2023,” says Jennifer Mitchell, director of the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation (DRPT).

Massachusetts-based civil engineering firm Vanasse Hangen Brustlin Inc. won the $21 million contract to complete preliminary engineering on the Long Bridge project. Construction is expected to begin in 2024 with completion expected by 2030, according to DRPT spokesperson Haley Glynn.

That day can’t come soon enough for riders on commuter and regional passenger rail.

The current Long Bridge, which is 117 years old, is the sole rail connection between Virginia and D.C. Owned and operated by CSX Transportation, the bridge often functions at 98% capacity. When more than two trains need to use the bridge, any additional trains must wait until the tracks are clear, according to Glynn.

The new two-track bridge will be owned by DRPT and will run parallel to the existing bridge, which will be used solely for freight trains. “Separating passenger and freight traffic will help alleviate the rail congestion,” Glynn said in a statement.

Mitchell estimates that with the addition of the new tracks, the corridor will serve 18,000 new freight and passenger train crossings annually — which could take 1 million trucks and 5 million cars off highways each year.

The project will be funded via a mix of state and federal funds as well as through partnerships with Virginia Railway Express (VRE) and Amtrak, according to DRPT spokesperson Haley Glynn.

Amtrak has pledged $944 million to the Transforming Rail in Virginia plan, a $3.9 billion initiative designed to expand passenger, commuter and freight rail in Virginia through agreements between the state government, CSX, VRE and Amtrak. Completion of the Long Bridge Project is a cornerstone of the plan, which also includes goals such as doubling Amtrak service in the state.

The federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which passed the U.S. Senate in August but had an uncertain future in the House as of mid-September, included $66 billion for passenger rail — money that could help fund the Long Bridge project, according to U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine’s office. “Federal funding is still critically needed for this project to move forward,” Kaine says.  

Valley Health tells workers to get vaccinated

Nicole Clark wants the nurses she supervises to do everything they can to keep themselves, their patients and co-workers safe from COVID-19.

That means wearing personal protective equipment, social distancing, frequent hand washing — and getting vaccinated against the disease.

Valley Health, a nonprofit health system that includes Winchester Medical Center and five other hospitals, as well as urgent care facilities and physician practices, announced in July that all employees, medical providers and contractors will be required to get the COVID-19 vaccine. 

“This was just one more thing we could add to our toolkit to protect our patients and our staff,” says Clark, a nursing director at Winchester Medical Center.

Valley Health has about 6,300 employees, and about 72% have received a COVID-19 vaccine, according to Valley Health President and CEO Mark Nantz.

In Virginia, Inova Health System, Mary Washington Healthcare and VCU Health System also require staff to receive COVID-19 immunizations. UVA Health requires all new employees to be vaccinated before beginning work. Current employees must either be vaccinated, have had COVID-19 in the last 150 days, or be working remotely to avoid weekly COVID-19 tests.

More than 55 medical groups, including the American Medical Association, issued a statement in July supporting mandatory COVID-19 vaccines for health care workers.

“I think you’ll see more and more [health systems] require it as the days go by,” says Nantz.

That’s not to say everyone was happy with Valley Health’s new policy.

On July 26, the Front Royal Town Council heard from more than 50 residents over a proposed ordinance to prohibit town employers from terminating workers who refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine. The council rejected the measure by 3-2.

Brittany Watson, a registered nurse at Winchester Medical Center, and her girlfriend, Katherine Hart, a nurse practitioner at nearby Valley Health Urgent Care in Martinsburg, West Virginia, planned to lead protests over the mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy in early August.

Watson and Hart both fell ill with COVID-19 in 2020. Neither woman plans to get a vaccine. “I believe in natural immunity,” Watson says.

Nantz expects some employees will leave Valley Health over the requirement. Watson and Hart are considering opening an independent practice together.

It’s a price Valley Health System is willing to pay. “I need a vaccinated workforce that’s well-protected,” Nantz says.

Theater project aims to put Wytheville in limelight 

Soon after Todd Wolford became executive director of community revitalization nonprofit Downtown Wytheville Inc. in 2015, he began seeking pictures of the Soda Shop, the Main Street hotspot his grandfather owned in the late ’50s and ’60s.

After locating a couple photos of his grandfather’s packed establishment, Wolford had an epiphany: His job was to bring back that vibrant downtown community his grandfather had once helped to create. “I got really motivated about doing it for the family,” he says.

Wolford went on to oversee a $4.2 million streetscape improvement initiative that has brought improved lighting and sidewalks, new street furniture and a sound system to the downtown area. “That really got things ready for business,” Wolford says.

Since then, two craft breweries and a bakery opened, and an art school expanded. “It really changed the landscape of downtown,” he says. “Then things started to pop up around it.”

The next step for downtown Wytheville’s revitalization is reopening The Millwald Theatre on Main Street, a project essential to downtown Wytheville’s future, Wolford says.

In July, board members of the nonprofit Millwald Theatre Inc. announced they’d closed on a federal New Market Tax Credit allocation provided by national asset management firm Enhanced Capital, as well as a bridge loan to allow construction to begin on the $4.5 million theater renovation, according to Mark Bloomfield, chairman of the group’s board of directors. If construction goes smoothly, the theater could reopen by September 2022.

Once the town’s “cultural and social center,” the 1928 theater hosted vaudeville performances, movies, pageants and town debates, according to its website, before it closed in 2006.

Wytheville’s town government started the ball rolling on the renovation in 2018, allocating $600,000 to purchase the theater. Organizers assembled the rest of the funding via historic tax credits, private donations and grants, including $500,000 from the Appalachian Regional Commission.

When completed, the Millwald will offer seating for 500 patrons, with updated sound and lighting, classrooms and administrative space.

About 2,000 hotel rooms sit near the intersection of Interstates 77 and 81, minutes away from the Millwald, Bloomfield points out. He wants the theater to offer movies, concerts and performances six days a week to draw visitors downtown.

“It’s going to make all the difference in the world in terms of future sustainability for the downtown business district,” he says.  ν

State pushes broadband expansion into overdrive

Early in his administration, Gov. Ralph Northam proposed an ambitious goal: achieving universal broadband connectivity statewide by 2028.

In May and July, Northam and General Assembly leaders announced plans to speed up that timeline; instead, they aim to deliver broadband to most of Virginia in 18 months using $700 million from the $4.3 billion the state expects to receive through the federal American Rescue Plan, relief funds approved by Congress in March geared to help localities recover from the pandemic.

“We were very excited to hear about that,” says Jonathan Belcher, executive director of the Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority. “That’s obviously a very important issue to Southwest Virginia.”

About 11% of rural Virginians have no access to any internet service, according to the 2019 Virginia Commonwealth Connect broadband report.

When employees at the Blacksburg and Abingdon offices of the 1901 Group began working from home in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 crisis, some didn’t have access to broadband connections or had inadequate or intermittent bandwidth, says Sonu Singh, founder and CEO of the Reston-based IT services company owned by Reston-based Fortune 500 government contractor Leidos Holdings Inc. 1901 Group’s IT department had to set 10 employees up with mobile hot spots, which use a cellular network to connect to the internet.

“We had to kind of scramble to get them wireless access,” Singh says.

Last fall, the General Assembly allocated nearly $50 million to fund the Virginia Telecommunication Initiative (VATI), which funds broadband extension to unserved areas.

A sizable chunk of that money seems to be flowing to Southwest Virginia. In January, VATI awarded $1.23 million to the LENOWISCO Planning District Commission to extend 73 miles of fiber in Lee County and $16 million to the Cumberland Plateau Planning District Commission to construct 1,312 miles of fiber in Buchanan, Dickenson, Russell and Tazewell counties.

In March, VATI announced an award of $7.87 million to the Mount Rogers Planning District Commission to extend the broadband network in Smyth, Washington and Wythe counties and in the town of Damascus.

Expanding the availability of broadband is critical to economic development in Southwest Virginia, according to Belcher.

“Certainly, it’ll make it easier to recruit and also to expand industries that rely heavily on it,” Belcher says.

Singh agrees. “The reality is that if you don’t have broadband, it’s going to be hard to drive technology jobs.”