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byline: Cathy Jett

Nurse training partnership to help with instructor shortages

Shenandoah University, Valley Health and the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association have teamed up to tackle the Shenandoah Valley region’s nursing shortage by creating a program that can be replicated statewide.

Called NextGen Nurses, the program will use semi-retired and retiring nurses as preceptors — experienced licensed clinicians who serve as teachers and coaches — to supervise SU’s Eleanor Wade Custer School of Nursing students during their clinical rotations.

“There is an extreme nursing shortage in the Shenandoah Valley and across the country, and all schools of nursing are affected by their inability to achieve the required clinical hours due to the shortage of preceptors,” says Lisa Levinson, the school’s acting dean.

About 100,000 registered nurses left the nationwide workforce over the past two years due to stress, burnout and retirements, according to a National Council of State Boards of Nursing study. Nonprofit health system Valley Health needs 100 to 150 nurses annually to fill vacancies at its hospitals, practices and urgent care systems in the northern Shenandoah Valley and parts of West Virginia, says the health system’s chief nursing executive, Theresa Trivette.

“What we heard from our frontline teams is, ‘We want more nurses, but we’re really struggling with the time commitment it takes to train them,’” Trivette says, so she and Levinson sought a solution. They discovered that semi-retired and retiring nurses are used as preceptors in several states. So, with VHHA’s help, they received a matching $496,000 grant to create NextGen Nurses from the state’s GO Virginia economic development initiative.

SU also collaborated with Valley Health to develop free online training modules for nurses who want to become preceptors. It also added equipment to its simulation lab, where students can complete a quarter of their 500 required clinical hours. This helps reduce the need for preceptors and clinical training sites.

Valley Health’s goal is to hire 35 nurses who’ve completed the modules as part-time preceptors at $40 an hour. It’s already hired two. Each preceptor will support two students at a time but will work with multiple two-student groups throughout the year.

“We assign them students that they are then married to, if you will, for the entirety of their clinical rotation with us,” Trivette says, “so they get the value of their experience as well as the mentorship of the same person and not whoever might be working that day.” 

Shenandoah Valley Partnership launches capital campaign

Shenandoah Valley Partnership (SVP) is raising $1.7 million through its first capital campaign, Forward2028, to fund a five-year plan aimed at business and workforce attraction and retention.

The region’s manufacturing sector alone has 3,100 job openings due to older workers retiring and companies ramping up production, says Jay Langston, executive director of the economic development marketing organization, which covers 12 localities from Rockbridge County to Shenandoah County. “Businesses can’t grow unless they have people to put in those positions,” he says. 

The partnership’s five-year plan calls for building relationships with commercial real estate brokers and site selection firms to attract new businesses, as well as creating an SVP web portal listing job openings and where to get relevant education or training, says Langston.

The region’s community colleges and universities produce about 9,500 graduates per year, he says: “If we were to capture just 900, or 10% of that number, think about the impact that would have on our economy.”

Chris Ellis, a senior vice president at Truist Financial Corp. in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County who serves on the campaign committee, says, “Growth and retention are so important. Not only do we need the workforce, but obviously the healthier the economy, the better it is for [Truist] and the services we’re able to provide.”

Currently, 120 companies and individuals invest in SVP to help fund its business and marketing activities. The partnership launched the quiet phase of its capital campaign in October 2022, says campaign chair Greg Godsey, a commercial market executive at Atlantic Union Bank in Harrisonburg.

Besides attraction and retention, the plan’s priorities include performing due diligence on undeveloped industrial sites and helping match them with developers; improved marketing of the region’s sites and infrastructure; and exploring the creation of a regional industrial development authority.

“That’s resonated well,” he says. “A lot of [investors] doubled … what they’d given in the past.” The campaign, which officially kicked off Jan. 31, raised a little over $1.5 million by mid-April through donations from hospitals, financial institutions and other businesses. Godsey expected to reach the campaign’s $1.7 million goal before June 1.

“It’s been gratifying,” he says. “The partnership is well-known and respected. We want to take it to the next level to compete with others in Virginia and surrounding states.”  

Rural leadership institute aims to build local capacity

Virginia Rural Center Executive Director Kristie Proctor has long heard that the state’s rural areas were losing population and having difficulty cultivating local community leaders.

To address the gap in local leadership, VRC, a Richmond-based nonprofit focused on fostering economic growth in rural areas, last year launched the Virginia Rural Leadership Institute (VRLI), an annual leadership and economic development training program for up to 30 leaders each year.

“The overarching goal,” says Chandler Vaughan, VRLI’s policy and leadership adviser, “is to build capacity locally and retain local leaders who want to take the next step in their career but also stay local.”

This year’s program will kick off May 18-19 in Danville. The 2023 cohort’s program includes touring Danville’s River District to learn about its redevelopment and resurgence firsthand, as well as hearing about the nearby Southern Virginia Megasite at Berry Hill industrial park.

“Danville was selected because it truly is a comeback city,” Proctor says. “We knew Danville has a great story to tell, and that’s part of what the Virginia Rural Leadership Institute is about.”

Part of that comeback is the $600 million Caesars Virginia resort casino under construction in Danville. A temporary casino is expected to open this summer.

The 2023 VRLI cohort will also attend training sessions in Tappahannock, St. Paul and Staunton.

VRLI’s advisory committee selects participants based on applications and interviews. Participants pay $3,500 to attend and must design and complete a community impact project for their localities in the year after graduation.

“We want to make sure these folks are making an impact in rural communities and our investment in them through the leadership institute is going to be reinvested in the rural communities they serve,” says Vaughan.

Last year’s cohort included economic development and tourism directors, an agricultural cooperative business analyst and leaders in banking, health care and higher education. Among them was John Matthews, deputy director of Wythe County’s Joint Industrial Development Authority. His project was organizing his region’s first housing summit. He networked with cohort members, who told him about an upcoming Danville housing summit and connected him with resources.

“The ongoing benefit [from VRLI] is having those partners to be able to reach out to,” says Matthews. “They’re facing similar challenges to what we do down here in Southwest Virginia.”  

Old Town Business league to upgrade or dissolve

Carla Clarke credits Old Town Business (OTB) league with arranging events that bring new faces into Today’s Cargo, the jewelry and gift shop she co-owns on Alexandria’s King Street.

“It’s bringing new people through your door,” says Clarke.

The 40-year-old nonprofit business league champions Old Town’s business community through events like an annual cookie crawl. It has served as a liaison between local businesses — mostly small busineses — and the city. During the pandemic, it arranged vaccine clinics for local businesses.

Membership in OTB has grown from about 40 businesses in 2019 to about 160 today. Given its recent successes, OTB is seeking to become a business improvement service district (BISD).

The Old Town Business-Business Improvement Service District (OTB-BISD) would represent about 500 businesses along King Street, from the King Street Metro station to the Potomac River. Funded by a $0.10 service district tax levied per $100 of assessed valuation, the OTB-BISD would have a budget of nearly $1 million and be overseen by three employees and a board of directors. OTB currently has a board and CEO and a budget of about $150,000 but depends on volunteers, dues and donations.

“That’s not sustainable because we can’t count on those dollars,” says OTB board member Amy Rutherford, owner of two Old Town businesses, The Red Barn Mercantile and Penny Post.

In addition to taking over more than 20 annual events run by OTB, the district would create a unified brand, develop ambassador and business mentorship and networking opportunities, and advocate for district businesses.

To meet Alexandria City Council’s guidelines for establishing a BISD, which were enacted last year, OTB must get 60% of commercial property owners to approve a petition for the proposed designation, as well as City Council’s approval.

OTB has campaigned for support, holding listening tours and public hearings. By March 31, nearly two-thirds of the 60% of required property owners in the proposed district indicated approval of the petition, which is due to the City Council by May 31. If the OTB-BISD is not approved, OTB will be dissolved, Rutherford says, citing sustainability concerns.

Visit Alexandria, the city’s nonprofit tourism organization, supports OTB’s efforts. In a statement to Virginia Business, Visit Alexandria President and CEO Patricia Washington says the BISD “is critical for Alexandria to retain its current level of visitation that supports our local restaurants, shops and hotels.” 

Chesterfield’s new tech park already generating buzz

Chesterfield County Economic Director Garrett Hart received an inquiry about Upper Magnolia Green a week after the county announced in 2020 that it had purchased the property with the intent to develop a portion of it as a technology park.

Intel Corp. hadn’t been able to find a site in Virginia for a $20 billion semiconductor facility that would generate 5,000 jobs, Stephen Moret, then president and CEO of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, told Hart. Could Hart submit Upper Magnolia Green?

“I agreed, and we sent Stephen and VEDP all the information we had on the site at that time,” Hart says.

Intel requested additional information and visited Chesterfield’s proposed 1,728-acre technology park twice before settling on a site in Ohio.

“We were one of the top three selections for Intel,” Hart says, “so that tells us … [it] was a good site for a fab plant.”

The county’s other large tech park, Meadowville, in eastern Chesterfield, was running out of space long before Lego Group announced plans last year to build a $1 billion manufacturing plant there, Hart says. To remain in contention for future megaprojects, Chesterfield’s economic development authority began negotiating to acquire Upper Magnolia Green in western Chesterfield in 2018.

Chesterfield is using a $25 million Virginia Business Ready Sites Program grant to design road and utilities infrastructure at Upper Magnolia Green and to perform other preliminary engineering work to demonstrate it could be site-ready within
18 to 36 months, Hart says.

Upper Magnolia Green is being built to attract megaprojects. That could be a chip manufacturer that would invest up to $25 billion and create thousands of jobs, Hart says, or a pharmaceutical manufacturer constructing a $10 billion plant.

“We’re building towards those determinations, because we have been working with companies like that on projects like that,” Hart says, though he declined to offer more detail.

Hart says he’s already receiving calls from site consultants about Upper Magnolia Green. The Greater Richmond Partnership is also promoting the site through newsletters to consultants and interested parties, says Michael Ivey, the regional economic development organization’s vice president of marketing and communications.

A property of Upper Magnolia Green’s size near a major metropolitan area is “hard to come by,” Ivey says. “We don’t have to scream from the rooftops that Upper Magnolia Green is available.”  

Virginia Business Associate Editor Courtney Mabeus-Brown contributed to this story.

Spearhead Trails aims for recreational shooting boost

The Southwest Regional Recreation Authority (SRRA) will use a $750,000 federal grant to further develop its Spearhead Trails Sportsman Adventures Complex in Dickenson County.

A ribbon-cutting for the 150-acre complex in Clintwood was held in August 2022, when the complex had two archery ranges, plus shooting ranges for pistols, rifles, skeet and trap, and a clay shooting course with nine stations.

The SRRA, which was established by the General Assembly in 2008 to develop and manage Spearhead Trails as an adventure tourism destination, is using the grant to complete a barn and construct a 120-foot-by-250-foot multipurpose building for indoor archery classes and tournaments. It will also add three to six stations to its clay shooting course, erect fishing piers on two ponds, build a maintenance and store facility and buy 10 golf carts patrons can rent, says Melissa Rose, the authority’s executive director.

The funds will also be used to meet a condition set by a property owner who granted the complex a permanent easement to two acres on the condition that the SRRA disassemble a hand-hewn log cabin and relocate it off the complex’s land. “We will have it put back together as close as we can and will utilize it in some manner,” Rose says.

She expects all grant-funded work to be completed in about two years, depending on availability of materials. Future projects will include building a breezeway connecting the barn and multipurpose building.

A 2019 study on the potential economic impact of a Spearhead Trails shooting and archery range complex said it could capture residents’ spending at ranges outside the area and attract current and new Spearhead Trails users. It estimated that 50 to 147 people would use the range noncompetitively daily, while statewide or larger competitive events could draw 400 to 600 people per day.

The study also estimated the total annual economic impact could range from $1.5 million to $4.6 million and that it could support 32 full-time-equivalent jobs in the region. It added that Spearhead Trails users might also use the shooting complex and vice versa.

The complex is already drawing locals and people from other states, including North Carolina, Tennessee, Ohio and Kentucky, says Rita Surratt, Dickenson County’s tourism director.

“It’s given us a new market to target,” she says. “We’re really happy to see it happening.”

Danville lacks housing options for workforce

Danville is having a “Field of Dreams” dilemma.

The famous movie quote, “If you build it, they will come,” rings all too true in the former mill town, which is attracting companies to its industrial parks and old
Dan River Mills properties, along with a $650 million casino. It’s good news on paper, but where will “they” live?

“If they come, how many will be here?” Kenneth Danter asked. The president of national real estate market research firm The Danter Co., Danter presented a report on Danville’s housing market last August at the first Southern Virginia Regional Housing Summit.

Much of the activity is spurred by the forthcoming $650 million Caesars casino expected to open in 2024, as well as a temporary casino set to open by midyear. Caesars Entertainment Inc. expects to create 900 construction jobs and 1,300 casino jobs.

Other companies coming to town are expected to add 2,300 jobs in 2023. Danville doesn’t have enough housing to meet current demand, much less for incoming workers at the casino and six to eight other businesses. “We’ve not had a lot of construction; in some years, we’ve had zero construction,” Danter said.

Currently, there is a need for 606 houses and 760 apartments, and with more than 3,000 new jobs, the city will need 138 single-family houses and 921 apartments, he added.

The city has already identified properties for residential construction or rehabilitation and showed design concepts. These include Danville Mall, which has lost three of its five anchors and could be renovated as a mixed-use property, and the 60-acre Monument-Berryman Redevelopment Area, city-controlled land where more housing could be built.

Andrew Clark, vice president of government affairs for the Home Builders Association of Virginia, says the summit caught residential builders’ and developers’ attention, and between 10 to 15 said they’re interested in exploring potential projects in Danville.

Also, the city is receiving proposals for the Monument-Berry properties, says City Manager Ken Larking. The deadline is Feb. 17, and a selection will be made March 31.

The Danville Redevelopment and Housing Authority is also seeing an influx of developers interested in partnering on affordable housing for those making 30% to 80% of the city’s median income of $37,147.

“For the most part, that’s your workforce,” says Larissa Deedrich, its CEO and executive director. 

MGCC workforce center to offer trades training

The Mountain Gateway Community College Real Estate Foundation will renovate a downtown Buena Vista building into the Wilson Workforce Development Center, likely starting early this year.

It’s named for Buena Vista philanthropist Joe Wilson, who purchased the 8,750-square-foot former car dealership at 2019 Forest Ave. for $370,000 and sold it to the foundation for $270,000.

The center will offer trainings in a variety of trades, says MGCC President John Rainone, initially including heating, ventilation and air conditioning; electrical and plumbing; diesel mechanic; machine tool; welding; building trades; and commercial driving classes.

“The whole area — Rockbridge and the Shenandoah Valley — has a lot of manufacturing,” Rainone says. “We want to be able to train not only the unemployed, but also the underemployed. Once they start working, this could be a customized training center where local businesses could send their employees to get upskilled.”

Renovating the building is expected to cost more than $5.3 million, and more than $4.5 million in federal, state and private dollars had been raised by early November 2022, Rainone says. The U.S. Economic Development Administration awarded the foundation a $3 million grant in September 2022.

Several local businesses wrote letters to the EDA supporting the workforce center grant, including heating and air conditioning manufacturer Modine Manufacturing Co., signmaker Everbrite LLC and truck stop Lee Hi Travel Plaza, now Lee Hi Travel Centers of America. Modine is expanding, Everbrite needs electricians, and Lee Hi “desperately” needs diesel mechanics, says Rainone.

Tom Roberts, Buena Vista’s director of community and economic development, says the center not only will provide training for existing businesses, but also for those at the Virginia Innovation Accelerator, a local business incubator. It will also help with ongoing downtown revitalization.

Mountain Gateway’s real estate foundation estimates the Wilson Workforce Development Center will help create or retain 110 jobs and generate $2 million in private investment.

Construction and renovation of the building is expected to take 10 months. Rainone says he hopes that classes can begin in spring 2024.

“We’ll start out slow and then be able to ramp up,” he says. “We’ll be able to serve, at any given time, probably 150 students. We’re hopeful that we’ll have 400 to 500 on an annual basis.”

Center aims to grow manufacturing

In 2015, the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research in Danville was attracting manufacturers at a faster pace than it could handle.

The IALR was providing work-ready incubation space where companies could launch their businesses while waiting to build, upgrade or occupy facilities while also helping build a pipeline of workers with the advanced manufacturing skills they’d need. “The institute hosted about eight companies and was filling space as fast as available. It was providing a real growth spurt in the area,” says Linda Green, IALR’s vice president for economic development.

Among those companies was Kyocera SGS Tech Hub, a manufacturer of custom cutting tools such as industrial drills. It hired students who’d gone through the IALR capstone training program, built a network of suppliers in the region, and completed ISO (Internal Organization for Standardization) certification before opening a manufacturing and research hub in Danville’s Cyber Park in 2018.

Kyocera and other manufacturers kept saying what a huge difference IALR’s help made, and IALR’s board and the Danville Regional Foundation decided to do more, Green says. They asked manufacturers what their needs are and what other offerings would be beneficial. They also studied what other places were doing.

The result is the $28.8 million Center for Advanced Manufacturing, which opened Oct. 5 on IALR’s campus. The 51,250-square-foot building provides manufacturing companies looking to move to or expand in the region with space to collaborate and enhance processes, improve quality, and integrate emerging technology and research capabilities. It also has an ISO-certified inspection lab to validate product quality, which can help reduce a new company’s startup phase by eight to 10 months.

“Think of things like additive manufacturing or 3D printing — it’s still relatively new technology that hasn’t been implemented widely. How do companies take advantage of it? That’s a gap the center will fill,” says IALR President Telly Tucker.

The CMA hopes to attract up to 20 new businesses to the region over 10 years, aiming for the creation of 3,600 to 4,200 jobs. The U.S. Navy has already announced it will launch its Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence (AM CoE) within the center.

“By providing manufacturers with everything they need to launch and grow, the center will be an important economic development tool. It will grow the portfolio of companies that decide to call our community home, and provide new job opportunities for our citizens,” says Danville Mayor Alonzo Jones.  

The Highlander nearly complete in Radford

The Highlander, a $40 million boutique hotel and conference center, is expected to open next to Radford University soon.

University officials and their partners in the project broke ground in April 2021 and expect it to be completed in January 2023.

The conference hotel will have 124 rooms, including four suites, and a 4,000-square-foot conference space that will allow the university to host large-scale events it couldn’t accommodate previously. There will also be a 2,750-square-foot indoor rooftop bar and restaurant and a 1,650-square-foot rooftop terrace.

“We just think it’s going to draw a lot more people to the community,” says John F. Cox Jr., Radford University Foundation’s CEO. “We are excited about the opportunities to use the hotel for conferences, events on campus and events throughout the New River Valley. That would include events such as homecoming, commencement and, of course, sporting events. We are optimistic that large companies in the area will use the hotel, and some have started to … [inquire] about booking rooms and/or events.”

The foundation’s board, Radford University Real Estate Management LLC, which manages the foundation’s real estate assets, and the university’s leadership began discussing the vision for a hotel in 2019.

“They’re real happy with the progression of the university as an institution — they just added a college of nursing — and their athletics program is great,” says Tony Peterman, executive vice president of hotel development advisory at real estate firm JLL, one of the partners in the project. “But they’ve always seen the hotel as a challenge because they have a lot of parents, visiting professors and alumni coming, and the hotel experience in Radford didn’t match what they were trying to do with the university.”

JLL, which specializes in structuring public-private partnerships, helped guide the project and lined up stakeholders including Virginia Beach-based S.B. Ballard Construction Co. as general contractor and BLUR Workshop as architect. The Highlander will be owned and operated by a special-purpose entity created for the project for the benefit of Radford University and its foundation. Preston Hollow Community Capital helped secure financing, and Provident Resources Group acted as the borrower and owner. Aimbridge Hospitality LLC will manage the property.

“Not only is it going to be the nicest hotel in Radford, but the nicest hotel in the region,” Peterman says.