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byline: Beth JoJack

A healthy outlook

Even as the COVID-19 pandemic stresses Virginia hospitals, Hampton Roads’ health care sector continues to grow.

Richmond-based VCU Health System is making inroads in the region through partnerships with Riverside Health System and Sentara Healthcare.

In March, VCU Health System announced a formal affiliation with Newport News-based Riverside. The two organizations have identified areas “of mutual commitment and interest,” likely to spawn clinical, research and education projects, including a plan to increase existing medical education programs to address the growing shortage of physicians within the region.

One sign of the strengthened relationship: VCU Health System announced in March its plans to buy the 67-bed Riverside Tappahannock Hospital and related services, as well as physicians’ practices located in the region. The two health systems say the move will give patients access to a broader range of medical specialists, clinical trials and state-of-the-art technology. Financial terms of the deal were not released.

In April, VCU Health System announced that it had finalized the sale of a majority stake in the Virginia Premier health plan to Norfolk-based Sentara Healthcare. VCU has retained a 20% owner-ship in Virginia Premier, which it founded in 1995. Virginia Premier offers Medicare, Medicaid and health insurance exchange plans to more than 280,000 members.

Virginia Premier and Optima Health Plan, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sentara Healthcare, will operate as separate companies with different administrators and separate boards of directors. The Optima Health Plan provides coverage to more than 550,000 people, and according to a statement from Sentara, members shouldn’t see changes to their benefits or approved doctors.

On June 1, the $93.5 million, 253,000-square-foot Sentara Brock Cancer Center opened in Norfolk after two years of construction. The center will allow expert care teams, community organizations and holistic treatment providers to operate under one roof on the Sentara Leigh Hospital campus. Eastern Virginia Medical School and Virginia Oncology Associates also are partners in the facility.

In August, Sentara announced that it had signed a letter of intent to combine organizations with Greensboro, North Carolina-based Cone Health. Financial details were not disclosed, but the two health systems have combined revenues of $11.5 billion. Their headquarters will remain separate, according to Sentara, and the merger is subject to state and federal regulatory review. Sentara President and CEO Howard Kern will lead the combined organization from Norfolk.

The deal is set to close in mid-2021, and it will take up to two years for the systems to fully integrate.

Bon Secours also has plans to grow in the region, where it operates five hospitals and medical centers. The Cincinnati-based health system announced in July it had filed a certificate of public need (COPN) to expand the Bon Secours Health Center at Harbour View in Suffolk by 67,000 square feet and add up to 36 beds in a $115.7 million project. The state will need to approve the expansion.

“This expansion would help us meet the growing demand for inpatient services and allow for more flexibility in patient placement, bring much-needed obstetrical services to the area and ensure that we are prepared to handle any potential surge in patient volume well into the future,” said Kate Brinn, president of Bon Secours Maryview Medical Center and Bon Secours Harbour View Medical Campus.

 

 

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Coal country sets its focus on absentee landowners

When farmers notice one of their cows has made a run for it, their first step will often be to alert the neighbors. That can be hard to do with an out-of-town owner, though.

“If the farmer can knock on a door, that’s one thing,” explains Phil Meeks, Wise County’s agriculture and natural resources extension agent. “But if he or she has to track down a property owner, that can sometimes present a challenge.”

In August, the environmental and economic advocacy organization Appalachian Voices, based in Boone, North Carolina, is partnering with the New Economy Network of Southwest Virginia to host a series of virtual community forums through October to learn what residents of Buchanan, Dickenson, Lee, Russell, Scott, Tazewell and Wise counties think about absentee landownership and what can be done to increase local tax revenue as well as land access for neighbors, farmers and hunters.

In parts of Virginia’s coalfield region, it’s not unusual for the owners of the neighboring tracts to be absentee landowners — individuals or entities that own a piece of property but do not actively manage it. Doug Mullins Jr., Wise County’s revenue commissioner, estimates that between 60% and 70% of the land in his county is owned by corporations, a relic of the region’s mining and lumber days, going as far back as the 1800s.

Mullins’ office is mandated by Virginia statute to assess land at its fair market value. With large tracts, the cost per acre tends to run about $500, he says. Meanwhile, individuals purchasing a smaller parcel typically pay between $800 and $1,000 an acre.
“As a result, 60% to 70% of the total real estate value in Wise County is being assessed at a lesser rate and thus generating 50% less tax dollars for the services that we could be extending to our citizens,” Mullins says.

Last year, members of Mullins’ staff worked with other county employees to draft sample language for state legislation that would allow the county to consider real estate parcels larger than 1,000 acres a separate class that would be charged at a higher tax rate of $1.40 per $100 of assessed value, instead of the current rate of 69 cents per $100.

Mullins is optimistic a state legislator may adopt the bill for sponsorship during the 2021 General Assembly session. “At the end of the day, this region is going to have to start helping itself.”

 

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Parking lot hot spots succeed at PHCC

Administrators at Patrick Henry Community College hustled to install Wi-Fi hot spots in its parking lots in March when the college closed due to the coronavirus.

Since many of the college’s students live in rural areas without access to broadband, creating these hot spots became an immediate need when the pandemic crisis hit, explains PHCC President Angeline Godwin. “If you look at our entire service area in Henry County and Patrick County, we have large swaths of areas that may not have internet access at all, may even have cellular coverage issues. Even if they have internet access, it does not necessarily mean it’s robust enough to handle a full online educational program.”

Rachel Brown, 20, has high-speed internet at her Collinsville home, but she’s found it less than reliable. “It goes up and down,” she says. “It’s been out for a couple of days.”

During the summer session, Brown used the parking lot hot spot a few times when her home internet was on the fritz. “It’s easy for me to be in the comfort of my car and chill out, listen to my music and do my homework there,” she says.

As students in colleges and public K-12 schools across the state return to a mix of virtual and in-person learning, more institutions are considering how to make online education broadly accessible.

Patrick Henry’s process was inexpensive and relatively easy, the college says. Employees in the information technology department partnered with campus maintenance workers to get the hot spots up and running at a cost of a little over $7,000.

In July, the information technology department logged 75 connections made from the main campus lot, 100 at the Patrick County location and 10 at the Manufacturing, Engineering and Technology Complex, says David Deal, PHCC’s dean of technology. This fall, students will be able to choose from a menu of remote courses, hybrids that combine in-person classes with an online component, and classes held entirely in-person.

Earlier in the year, the Virginia Community College System opened a portal that lists all 10,000 of its classes offered online.

If the development of a COVID-19 vaccine means that PHCC can return to normal operations later, Godwin says the school still will benefit from having expanded Wi-Fi. “We think that’s a positive and a benefit for students and faculty and staff long-term.”

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Pandemic delays Virginia Business College opening

The new Virginia Business College in Bristol won’t open as planned for its first semester this August due to the coronavirus crisis.

VBC President Gene Couch issued a statement June 25 announcing the nonprofit private college’s plans to “defer the initial [academic] offerings until a later date” due to the pandemic. Couch did not respond to requests for comment.

VBC will be located on the campus that formerly belonged to Virginia Intermont College, which closed in 2014 due to lost accreditation and financial struggles. U.S. Magis International Education Center, a company headed by Chinese entrepreneur Zhiting Zang, purchased the campus at auction in 2016.

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia issued a provisional certificate to VBC in October 2019. That certificate expires in October 2020 and VBC administrators had not applied for full certification as of June 26, according to Laura Osberger, spokeswoman for SCHEV.

“The impact of coronavirus has slowed the work needed for our full SCHEV approval and preparations for our initial fall semester,” VBC’s board chairman Dale Cook explained in a news release. Cook declined to comment further. 

“Obviously, we’re very anxiously awaiting its opening,” says Beth Rhinehart, president and CEO of the Bristol Chamber of Commerce. “But we certainly understand under the circumstances why they won’t be accepting students this fall. It’s challenging times for everyone.”

VBC plans to offer bachelor’s degrees in business administration with seven concentrations: accounting, business analytics, entrepreneurship, human resource management, information technology, management/leadership and marketing.

The idea that the vacant Virginia Intermont campus will be revived thrills Bristol Virginia City Council member Neal Osborne.

“It was really unfortunate when Intermont closed, because it was a fairly successful college for a long time,” Osborne says. “It sits in a low-income neighborhood, so that was one of the things that first interested me with Virginia Business College establishing there, because there are other places that they could establish obviously. It interested me because they’re taking this fairly large campus with a whole bunch of buildings and revitalizing it, kind of bringing it back to life in a very low-income area.”

He remains optimistic that VBC will open its doors eventually.

“They put a lot of work into the infrastructure already, so I am very hopeful that they will be able to open,” Osborne says.

 

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Radford faces budget cuts, tough decisions

Due to the pandemic, Radford University is faced with an unprecedented strain on its budget, which is likely to cause faculty and staff layoffs.

Because of state budget cuts, the university is faced with an $8.1 million decrease in funding over the next two fiscal years.

And at the same time, Radford administrators predict the school will face $7 million in additional expenses related to COVID-19, which, according to Caitlyn Scaggs, associate vice president for university relations, includes the costs of personal protective equipment for students, faculty and staff, as well as purchasing and installing Plexiglas protective barriers.

Radford President Brian Hemphill is expected to deliver cost-cutting recommendations to the school’s board of visitors during a September meeting.

The board voted in June to grant Hemphill broad authority to plan for sweeping budget cuts, likely to include faculty and staff eliminations, in response to the crisis. More controversially, the board voted to allow Hemphill to make financial cuts without including faculty in the decision-making process.

Critics quickly stepped up to voice their grievances. The presidents of the Virginia Conference of the American Association of University Professors and the Faculty Senate of Virginia emailed a letter to Rector Robert Archer on June 15 condemning the resolution they call a “fundamental violation of the principles of academic freedom protected by tenure and shared governance.”

Hemphill is considering two possible strategies for budget cuts, according to a memo he circulated to campus offices dated June 18. Across-the-board reductions would include salary reductions for all employees, while strategic reductions could include eliminating academic departments. Criteria for making strategic reductions would be developed in partnership with the Faculty Senate Executive Council, Administrative and Professional Faculty Executive Committee, the Staff Senate Executive Committee and the Leadership Council, according to the memo.

No matter which strategy is chosen, Hemphill, who makes $622,460 annually, will take a salary cut, as will other members of the senior leadership team, according to Scaggs.

Meanwhile, Radford has committed not to raise tuition for the 2020-2021 year. For in-state undergraduates, tuition remains at $7,922 and out-of-state undergraduates pay $19,557.

“During a time in which many of our new and returning students and their families are experiencing financial challenges due to the global health pandemic and related economic downturn, Radford University is fully maintaining its steadfast commitment to the accessibility and affordability of higher education,” Hemphill said in a statement.

 

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From Donkey Kong to online tips – raising funds for restaurant workers

After restaurants and bars in the Harrisonburg-Waynesboro-Staunton region closed or cut back to skeleton crews due to the coronavirus earlier this year, area residents rallied to help service industry workers.

One of the more unconventional fundraisers was Nevin Zehr, who hosted a livestream event in March as he attempted, over seven days, to beat Nintendo’s “Donkey Kong Country” video game trilogy in a bid to bring attention to his GoFundMe for Harrisonburg culinary district workers.

Laid off from his job as a dishwasher and cook at Bella Luna Wood-Fired Pizza, Zehr, 31, knew many of his friends in the service industry were facing significant financial struggles.

Through his video game fundraiser, Zehr raised more than $8,000, which he distributed as emergency aid to about a dozen service-industry workers, about half of whom are undocumented workers who did not receive coronavirus stimulus checks or qualify for unemployment insurance payments. “There were definitely some people who were in very, very difficult situations,” he says.

Another fundraiser, Staunton retiree Deborah Kushner, heard about folks in other communities creating virtual tip jars to help restaurant industry workers. Not being particularly tech-savvy, Kushner connected with Derrick Gerstmann, the co-founder and chief marketing officer at Staunton-based tech support firm FlossTech, to put together a similar site to help local workers.

Kushner and Gerstmann say they have no way of knowing how much money they’ve raised through their virtual tip jar. “[Workers] put in their information and people can tip them directly,” Gerstmann says. “We don’t have any access.”

More than 35 servers, cooks and industry workers have posted on the site, giving information about their struggles and listing their preferred payment apps.

Gypsy Torgerson, 23, signed up on the virtual tip jar site after being laid off from her job at Buffalo Wild Wings in Harrisonburg, but so far she hasn’t received any funds. “I wasn’t disappointed,” she says, however. “It was nice to be thought of.”

Torgerson, who lives in Staunton, didn’t apply for unemployment until three weeks after being laid off because she didn’t think the shutdown would last.

“It was a big change,” she says of the restaurant shutdowns. “I think it made a lot of people stop trusting the service industry, like I know a lot of us are looking at other jobs now. We’re not looking to serve anymore because it’s not reliable.”

 

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Tech support

Cybersecurity may not be the first idea that springs to mind when thinking about the maritime industry, but it is an increasingly important field. And the new Coastal Virginia Center for Cyber Innovation (COVA CCI) at Old Dominion University is proof enough. 

The center’s $2.5 million, two-year budget supports its mission to close the cybersecurity workforce gap and to spur innovation and the commercialization of cybersecurity research, with a particular focus on the maritime industry.

Launched in July 2019, the center is one of four regional cybersecurity nodes across the state led by the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative hub, which is based at the Virginia Tech Research Center in Arlington.

Established with $25 million in state funding, CCI’s goal is to leverage the brain power at Virginia’s higher education institutions, along with representatives from government and the private sector, to transform the commonwealth into a cybersecurity world leader.

The Virginia Research Investment Committee (VRIC), which manages the Virginia Research Investment Fund established by the General Assembly as part of the GO Virginia economic development initiative, certified the four regional nodes in June 2019 and allocated two years of funding to the nodes last December.

Researchers at the ODU center are particularly interested in examining new cybersecurity technology that could transform the maritime shipping industry, explains Brian Payne, the center’s director as well as ODU’s vice provost for academic affairs.

“We have one project right now where one of our researchers is working with the Port of Virginia and folks at Virginia Tech also to develop a 5G [wireless] test bed that would look at sensors on containers,” he says, “using sensors … to monitor how much [cargo] is in the containers and where the containers are going and how to do it in a way that is cost-efficient, as well as minimizing the environmental impact.”

Researchers will also consider how to protect sensors and containers from tampering. “We need to make sure they’re safe,” Payne adds.

Even amid the COVID-19 global pandemic, work on the project has been able to continue. “Researchers are able to work remotely,” he says. “From the beginning, our research connections were virtual in nature, and this will continue. Our reliance on cybertechnology went through the roof in the past week. The need for our efforts, as a result, only increased.”

The coastal center will use its $2.5 million in funding for product and business development, hiring research scientists, supporting research by graduate students and promoting learning opportunities for the region’s cybersecurity students. VRIC allocated the center an additional $500,000 to aid with construction costs for the Cyber Innovation Park, an ODU campus building that will include classrooms as well as research and office space. (ODU is providing the extra $1.5 million needed to construct the building.)

Although ODU serves as its coordinator, the center’s partners include William & Mary, Norfolk State University, Christopher Newport University, Regent University, ECPI and area community colleges. The wider CCI network includes more than 300 faculty members from 39 higher-education institutions — who are all encouraged to collaborate. “The willingness of folks from these different areas and institutions to work together has been pretty remarkable,” Payne says, and the leadership team has been communicating to make sure they maintain momentum during the pandemic.

With more work and study moving online during the pandemic, the demand for cybersecurity workers is only increasing, Payne adds. “I’d expect this demand to be even higher than it was.”

Debt-free education

During an age when many Americans are drowning in a sea of college debt, The Apprentice School in Newport News stands out for offering paid, tuition-free, four-to-eight-year apprenticeships, training students to become shipbuilders.

Operated by Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding, the school pays apprentices for both work and time spent in class.

Latitia D. McCane, director of education at The Apprentice School in Newport News.

“You have a job Day One, with benefits,” explains Latitia McCane, the school’s director of education.

Many students at The Apprentice School, which has a student body of around 850, already have a degree in another discipline. Others have taken college credits but have not graduated from college.

“When you talk to these populations of students, the majority of them do have college debt,” McCane says. “They do not want to continue to acquire college debt.”

The school offers training in 19 trades, including heating and air conditioning, pipefitting and rigging. The school also offers eight advanced programs, including the option of earning a degree in electrical or mechanical engineering from ODU — once again, tuition-free.

Like other educational institutions, The Apprentice School has made adjustments to protect students and staff against the coronavirus pandemic, including shifting to online classes for pre-advance and advance students. The second term of World Class Shipbuilding, which requires in-person training, was postponed, according to a spokesperson.

Not surprisingly, a lot of people are interested in being paid to learn valuable job skills without a tuition fee. The Apprentice School gets about 3,000 applicants for 250 openings each year.

Admissions staffers look for students who performed well in science and math classes and who came out of career and technical education (CTE) programs, according to McCane. “A lot of times that’s hard to get in the same package, but more of your high schools are doing a better job in ensuring that although those people are in CTE, they’re still getting the academics,” she says.

Since The Apprentice School opened in 1919, it has graduated 10,800 students. Like their predecessors, today’s graduates are likely to spend their careers building ships for the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard. But their skills are much more advanced than shipbuilders of past decades, encompassing 21st century innovations.

“We’ve gone to a more technological age, and The Apprentice School has had to evolve to be able to keep up with that,” McCane says. “Now students bring their own laptops to school, whereas a year or so ago, that was unheard of.”

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Women on board

In early March, 18 women gathered for the first week of a pre-apprenticeship program designed to catapult them into in-demand careers in the ship repair industry.

Run by the Hampton Roads Workforce Council, the 12-week, intensive Women in Skilled Careers (WISC) program offers training tracks in welding, marine coating, marine electrical, outside machinist, sheet metal fabrication and pipefitting.

Then the COVID-19 outbreak intervened, forcing the program to postpone classes until it’s safe to gather again.

In the meantime, says Virginia Career Works Deputy Director Latonya English, her team is fine-tuning the program and taking applications for future courses. They’re also staying in touch with the eight women who were part of the first class, seven of whom are currently employed in the ship repair industry in Hampton Roads. Most came from the restaurant and hospitality industries, which have laid off tens of thousands of local workers. “One of the things that made us sit back and think is how important this is for women,” especially in terms of job security, English says.

The workforce council prioritizes admissions for veterans, women living in poverty and women who’ve experienced homelessness, domestic violence or human trafficking. Organizers provide child care, transportation and a weekly stipend.

“What we’re doing is total wraparound services,” says Karen Miller, program coordinator of the Apprenticeship Institute at Tidewater Community College, where the program is based.

Last June, Miller attended a seminar about labor shortages in Hampton Roads, where the topic du jour was the lack of skilled workers to fill jobs in the ship repair industry.

“I’m sitting there, looking around the room, thinking, ‘How come nobody’s talking about women?’” says Miller, who soon applied for a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor. WISC received a $500,000 grant, allowing the group to launch the program in January.

Bill Crow, president of the Virginia Ship Repair Association, met with executives in the industry to see whether they’d help with training and later consider the program’s graduates for jobs. “They were all champing at the bit to do that,” he says.

Women who learn a skilled trade, Crow stresses, will have little trouble finding employment in the ship repair industry. “It’s a very rewarding industry,” he says. “It’s something that they will be able to take enormous pride in and, in the process, make darn good wages.”

The first cohort of eight students included Nikki Ruffin, a 33-year-old mother of four daughters. In the early weeks of WISC, Ruffin learned about topics such as financial literacy, while brushing up on her writing and math skills. She earned a certification in Emergency First Response and took Occupational Safety and Health Administration training. Later, classes moved to TCC, where Ruffin learned to weld.

The stipends allowed Ruffin to quit her job as a medical assistant and certified nursing assistant, since her work conflicted with the classes.

For Ruffin — who spent years trying to evade her abuser, now behind bars — the emotional support she received from WISC’s organizers and her fellow students was every bit as essential as the financial assistance. “We all helped each other out,” she says.

Since finishing WISC, Ruffin has received multiple job offers and she will likely start as a welder’s helper until welding apprenticeship classes start. Her dream is to be an underwater welder. First, though, Ruffin needs to learn how to swim. “Hopefully when the Y opens up, I can work on it,” she says, laughing.

Her daughters, like the women in her class, have been supportive of her career change and are rooting for her and her fellow WISC students, Ruffin says. “We all pitch in together and give each other encouraging words. … They’re really good women.”

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Regional group forms to bring in manufacturing jobs

Like many rural communities, Mecklenburg County relies on regional cooperation to boost its economy. A newly formed partnership — Virginia’s Manufacturing Region — is a regional coalition to market Southern Virginia as a top destination for manufacturing jobs.

It’s a bit like a supergroup, with Virginia’s Growth Alliance in Keysville, Virginia Gateway Region in Colonial Heights and the Lynchburg Regional Business Alliance pooling their resources.

“We just don’t have the funds to travel all over the country and promote our area,” says Angie Kellett, director of economic development for Mecklenburg, which belongs to the VGA. “This is kind of icing on the cake. Now we have an entity who is marketing three different regional areas and helping to sell our communities in the manufacturing world.”

Southern Virginia has seen a lot of progress in recent months in luring manufacturing jobs to the area — notably, Morgan Olson LLC’s incoming van assembly plant in Danville and Canadian lumber company Teal-Jones Group’s purchase of Henry County’s Pine Products Inc.

A lot of the connections among the localities in VMR already exist informally.

Keith Boswell, the Gateway Region’s CEO, knows leaders from the other two alliances from working for the Virginia Economic Development Partnership for more than two decades. Since each region was working to attract manufacturing companies, Boswell says, it only made sense for the three to collaborate.

“We were able to leverage our dollars and cover much more ground than we would individually,” he says.

The group’s goal is that each year, leaders from the three organizations will represent VMR on six domestic and four international trips, where they will conduct dozens of business development meetings. That’s many more trips than Jeff Reed, executive director of the VGA, could make on his own.

“I’m a staff of one,” he says. “By having this coalition, we’re exponentially spreading awareness to a whole other segment of people that I [normally] wouldn’t reach because there aren’t enough hours in the day.”

According to Reed, the VGA’s cost was about $25,000, which he paid with funds from the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission, and Boswell says the three organizations split the costs equally, although he declined to say how much the VGR was contributing.

Already, the new collaboration has generated several leads, according to Boswell. “We’re not sure if these are going to land or not, but there are three opportunities that we know that we would not have found if we had not started this.”

Roanoke city real estate made a rebound. What now?

The city of Roanoke’s real estate values increased by 4.74% last year, the biggest property value increase for the Star City since 2007. Commercial properties’ assessed value jumped by 4.55%.

But with the U.S. stock market plummeting to 1987 record lows in March as the coronavirus pandemic disrupted life across the nation, many in the commercial real estate industry are trying to figure out what’s next.

“In terms of what could happen, anybody could guess. It’s too early to say,” says Frank Martin, senior associate broker with Hall Associates, a commercial firm in Roanoke. “Closings and leasings are still happening. Nobody is stopping them now.”

Brokers are “nurturing their deals they have in the pipeline, staying in touch with people,” Martin adds. “The smart ones I know are trying to get a handle on how it will shake out. In commercial, you can’t just wait to see what happens.”

“It’s too early to know what all of the impacts will be,” says Matt Huff, president at Poe & Cronk Real Estate Group, another commercial real estate agency in Roanoke. “I will say that I think it has been helpful that other countries are coming out of this, like China, so we can see around the curve.” Huff expects to have plenty of work over the next 60 to 90 days because of the industry’s long time between starting and finishing projects.

As of mid-March, he notes, the construction supply chain was holding up, and construction managers were figuring out how to keep their employees working while maintaining social distancing.

In the first quarter of 2020, Roanoke’s commercial real estate outlook was rosy.

New construction in the city increased by more than 1% for fiscal year 2019-2020, the first such increase since 2010, Susan Lower, the city’s director of real estate valuation, told City Council in January. The average annual wage for construction workers in the third quarter of 2019 in the Roanoke metropolitan area was $46,864, according to JobsEQ/Chmura Economics & Analytics. Ten years ago, the average wage was $35,440.

Huff and Martin say the outlook in Roanoke has changed from even a few weeks ago, but they’re hopeful that the industry will not see the cataclysmic disruption happening now at restaurants and small retail businesses.

“The best thing we can do is advise,” Huff says, noting that a lot of his customers are calling him for recommendations. After all, adds Martin, “in the commercial world, we’re used to assessing risk all the time.”