The novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 has upended life across the globe, but it also has spurred innovation and invention.
At Virginia Commonwealth University, two researchers have been working on projects that, if successful, might have far-reaching applications for preventing and detecting COVID-19.
A vaccine patch the size of a fingernail has the attention of Guizhi “Julian” Zhu, an assistant professor in the Department of Pharmaceutics at the VCU School of Pharmacy.
His research is focused on finding a way to embed tiny needles in a patch that could be self-applied to deliver a successful COVID-19 vaccine, once it has been developed and approved.
As of mid-December, Virginia was beginning to dole out the initial tens of thousands of doses of Pfizer Inc.’s COVID-19 vaccine to health care workers.
“Our effort,” Zhu says, “is to make [COVID-19 vaccines] more accessible for the general public for mass vaccination” via a patch that can be mailed in an envelope. “Instead of injecting this vaccine with needles in the hospital or clinic or a physician’s office, we can inject ourselves at home.”
Zhu says more than 100 polymer needles, each thinner than a human hair and virtually painless, would deliver the vaccine through the skin. Tests of the patch on animals are currently underway, and human tests await if sufficient funding is available.
VCU provides some funding, but Zhu says grants are needed to advance the project to human studies. In November 2020, Zhu filmed a TED Talk about the vaccine patch, which likely will raise the profile of the project.
Over at the VCU College of Engineering, another researcher, assistant professor Christina Tang, is working with the U.S. Army on another coronavirus-focused project to spin liquid crystals into nanofibers — each 1/1,000 the width of a human hair— that change colors at different temperatures.
Applications might range from being used in camouflage clothing or adapted to detect viruses such as the coronavirus.
“The liquid crystals act like special mirrors that can reflect one color at a time. The color that the fabric appears to be depends on the size of the liquid crystal, which changes with temperature,” Tang says.
For example, if a face mask contained nanofibers that could detect COVID-19 and changed colors, Tang says, you would immediately know that you needed to change your mask.
The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted business models.
It has forced employees to seek new office sites in their kitchens, bedrooms and basements. It has ushered in hybrid educational models involving in-person and virtual learning, and imperiled funding for colleges and universities. And nobody really knows what’s coming next or when.
Meanwhile, who’s minding the store?
Usually those duties fall on the shoulders of the chief financial officer, whose responsibilities include keeping businesses and institutions on a level financial keel — or as close as possible to that — amid the chaos.
During the COVID-19 era, the CFO role has become even more crucial, says an executive at a global staffing agency with subsidiaries in Virginia.
Fannin
“We have seen a change in the dynamics between the CFO and the CEO relationship almost where they are co-piloting certain initiatives,” says Heather Fannin, senior regional vice president of professional recruitment at Switzerland-based Adecco Group, the parent company of Accounting Principals, an accounting and finance staffing agency with offices throughout Virginia.
“The CFO is seen as a strategic adviser, utilizing data in looking at the various scenarios for the best course of action,” Fannin says.
Decisions about what actions to take are more important than ever, she says, and, to navigate executive teams through one of the most trying times in history, CFOs have had to make those choices quickly and decisively.
Because the CFO oversees the budget and revenues of an entire organization, Fannin, who is based in Dallas-Fort Worth and oversees operations in Southern and Southeastern states, says her staffing agency has seen more and more departments being placed under the CFO on company org charts.
During the pandemic’s early stages, CFOs were integral to C-suite efforts to ensure employee safety and transition operations to teleworking.
However, Fannin adds, “after we had gotten past that point, we’re seeing CFOs increasingly focusing on companies’ liquidity and cash reserves.”
CFOs have to be certain that their forecasting and modeling encompass various scenarios — everything from a quick return to business as usual to more pandemic problems — so that whatever comes, there’ll be a pathway forward, she adds.
Dodge
“Adaptability and accountability are key today and we are seeing increased demand for proven experience in creating, leading and executing cost management initiatives,” says Jen Dodge, managing director at Accounting Principals in Glen Allen.
Time for a change
One of the most tension-filled places for a CFO to be these days is on a college or university campus, where sudden COVID-19 outbreaks can send students home — events that could cause students to seek partial refunds or credits for tuition or room and board payments.
Don Aungst, who in April became CFO at Averett University — a private institution of nearly 1,500 students in Danville — says he’s still adjusting to the upheaval the pandemic has created at colleges and universities.
“Being part of the COVID-19 Core Team during the last six months has been an experience like none other during my career,” says Aungst, who also served as CFO for Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania and has worked in numerous other financial and consulting roles for a variety of higher-ed institutions in Pennsylvania, Iowa and Ohio.
Aungst thought about retiring after recently turning 65 but decided to stay in the game due to this crucial turning point in higher education.
“Prior to the pandemic, I was sure that higher education was in need of transformative change and that private and public partnerships and mergers, acquisitions and business combinations in higher education were needed,” Aungst says. “I am now convinced that most of America is sure that these things must happen. CFOs around the world have been asked to do this in the banking industry, in the manufacturing [and] retail [industries] and many other[s] … and we CFOs in higher education need to learn to do it as well.”
The new realities brought by the pandemic have changed the perceptions of students, parents, alumni, trustees and the general public about higher education, he adds.
College and university CFOs must be change agents willing to work with other leaders and guide institutions through transformation, change and the reinvention and reimagining that has to take place to ensure the survival of higher education, Aungst says.
There have been warnings for years that many colleges are in danger of closing because they overbuilt or have insufficient financial strength or cannot attract enough students in a highly competitive environment.
“Too many institutions — not Averett — have overleveraged themselves to stay up with the Joneses: build a new science center, build a new recreation center, even if there’s one just down the street,” Aungst declares. “They have a lot of debt on their balance sheet. The pandemic makes our business model change, and those that are highly leveraged are not going to be as agile.”
No more business as usual
Adam Omar, CFO of McLean-based Altamira Technologies, says the pandemic has added more risk to CFOs’ jobs.
Adam Omar, CFO of McLean-based Altamira Technologies, which provides engineering and analytics services to the U.S. national security community, says the pandemic has also added more risk to CFOs’ jobs.
“It’s one more element to worry about,” Omar says. “We have to go to explain to our lenders and our investors that if there is an impact from the pandemic, how are we going to manage that? It’s what keeps me awake at night.”
The unpredictable side of the pandemic also has Omar worrying about what his company would do if there’s an infection in one of its offices. Altamira’s offices are now operating at about 50% to 60% of in-person capacity, he says.
Managing customer expectations — such as when a particular job will be completed — also has become more of a priority, Omar says. Underlying uncertainties regarding the nature of the pandemic and its possible effects on the workforce and deadlines for deliverables have ramped up those concerns.
“We always joke that a good CFO is needed when the company is struggling through financial performance, and a good sales guy is needed when the company is doing extremely well,” Omar says with a laugh.
He foresees that the pandemic will reshape behaviors and work patterns.
“Businesses should learn from this and become more agile. To fully support our customers, but most importantly, their missions [and] to be able to do that from more locations and remote locations,” Omar says.
Business as usual, Omar says, has gone away.
“We basically had to change our whole business model,” he says, including “how we deliver services to the government and making sure that we can do that on a timely basis in the right places and, of course, we have to do it securely.”
Because the work Altamira does for the U.S. intelligence community is largely classified, it cannot be performed from home because home networks can’t be guaranteed to be secure, Omar says.
The company had to restructure how it did business, in some cases dividing employees who were required to work from the office or at remote locations for security reasons into different shifts to achieve social distancing. Employees working on non-classified jobs were shifted to teleworking.
Puckett
Stacy K. Puckett, CFO of the Virginia Bankers Association, says that because her association is so small, she’s always worn a lot of hats, which includes being responsible for everything from technology to building management.
But the pandemic has also highlighted how the roles of CFOs have expanded in recent decades to become key leadership positions in their organizations.
“If you look over the last 20 years, there are more CFOs going into higher management, even taking over as bank presidents,” when CFOs previously may not have been considered for such positions, Puckett says.
During the pandemic, Puckett’s responsibilities have included overseeing the migration of the association’s employees to telework.
The work-from-home trend, Puckett says, has opened the eyes of smaller companies to the productivity potential and advantages such working arrangements bring.
“They’re now seeing that [work from home] can work,” says Puckett, who believes that “everybody’s job is going to change” as the possibilities of teleworking become clearer.
Remote working also has expanded the talent pool for companies in rural areas where it may previously have been difficult to attract top talent.
“For the smaller or more remote companies, banks [and] associations, now all of sudden it’s opened up more of a talent pool if we can hire somebody that was in another state or a different part of the state,” Puckett says.
Due to changes such as teleworking, Fannin of the Adecco Group says organizations are now seeking CFOs with strong technology skills who can keep up with the fast pace of IT changes.
“The quicker you can automate something, the faster you can make decisions, and those decisions are critical at this point,” she says.
Three-term incumbent Fredericksburg Mayor Mary Katherine Greenlaw recalls when her city moved at a slower pace, as did surrounding Spotsylvania and Stafford counties.
All that has changed, profoundly.
Fredericksburg’s population has jumped by more than 50% during the past 20 years, from 19,279 in 2000 to an estimated 29,036 in 2019, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Spotsylvania’s population has increased at a similar pace, rising from 90,395 in 2000 to an estimated 137,110 today. Meanwhile, Stafford ‘s population has skyrocketed by nearly 70% over the last 20 years, shooting up from 92,446 to an estimated 156,300.
Altogether, the past two decades have been a period of growth and transition for the Fredericksburg region.
Greenlaw, who grew up in the city, has been part of that change.
For 27 years, she and her husband ran a cattle farm and butcher shop in Stafford County before Greenlaw turned to a timelier career in real estate. She retired in 2015 after working 15 years as a commercial real estate broker for Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer.
Fredericksburg’s real estate market is sizzling, Greenlaw says. “Everything is selling as soon as it’s put on the market.”
Over the past several years, the private sector has funneled $250 million into the city, the mayor adds, and an additional $250 million of economic development investment is in the pipeline.
Ties to Washington
A historic community, the Fredericksburg region is home to four major Civil War battlefields, including Chancellorsville and The Battle of the Wilderness site, and tourism is an important part of its economy.
For most of his childhood, George Washington lived in Stafford at Ferry Farm, where today visitors can see a replica of his boyhood home. His mother, Mary Ball Washington, spent much of her life in Fredericksburg, and Preservation Virginia maintains her final home on Charles Street as a period museum. Washington often visited his mother in Fredericksburg, as did luminaries such as John Marshall, Thomas Jefferson and Lafayette.
With its 4,400 students, the University of Mary Washington is named for her and infuses the city with a youthful vibe.
The nation’s capital, named for Mary Ball Washington’s son, is only about 50 miles away. And locals say Fredericksburg has always benefited from that proximity.
It’s well within commuting distance by car or train. Amtrak and the Virginia Railway Express (VRE) provide daily commuter rail service from Fredericksburg to Northern Virginia and downtown Washington, D.C.
“The number of people who moved to Fredericksburg to get affordable housing over the last 40 years has been tremendous,” says Jud Honaker, president of the Silver Cos.’ commercial development division. Photo by Will Schermerhorn
Jud Honaker is president of the commercial development division of Silver Cos., a Florida-based real estate investment and development firm with a regional office in Fredericksburg. A lifelong Fredericksburg resident, he’s had a ringside seat to the city’s growth and transformation, which he says has been driven by its status as a D.C. bedroom community.
“The number of people who moved to Fredericksburg to get affordable housing over the last 40 years has been tremendous,” Honaker says. “Basically, what people have been doing is moving further south to get the house they wanted for the price they could afford. Houses in Fairfax and Prince William (counties) kept going through the roof.”
Silver Cos. has been a principal developer in the Fredericksburg region for decades. “We’ve been a tremendous tax revenue generator for the three jurisdictions,” he says, pointing to one of the big turning points in the area’s economy.
“The city of Fredericksburg in the ’90s was financially strapped. They were considering reverting to a town and they had annexed this property called Central Park and they asked us to develop it.”
Development of Central Park began in 1995, and over the next 10 years, Silver Cos. built it into a huge shopping venue near the intersection of Interstate 95 and state Route 3. In its heyday, Central Park was ranked as the largest unenclosed mall (and second-largest mall) on the East Coast, and as the seventh-largest mall in the United States.
“At one time, it was generating over 20% of the city’s entire budget,” Honaker says. “If you take all of the projects the Silver Cos. have developed here in Fredericksburg, those developments are probably generating 30% of the city’s annual budget.”
Silver Cos. has since sold part of Central Park to a shopping center management company, but the firm is still actively developing properties in the community.
Carl Silver, the company’s founder, made his home in Fredericksburg, and the city is dotted with housing projects, shopping venues and scores of other properties that the company either owns or has developed.
Batter up
One of the company’s latest projects is Celebrate Virginia South, a 540-acre, mixed-use development just north of Central Park. It’s anchored by a Wegmans grocery store, three hotels and the Fredericksburg Expo Center, which attracts more than 250 events.
It also contains the 5,000-seat baseball stadium that is the new home of the Fredericksburg Nationals — FredNats, for short.
The FredNats are a Minor League Baseball team in the Carolina League and a Class A-Advanced affiliate of the Washington Nationals, which last year won the World Series.
Seth Silber, the team’s treasurer and the son of the team’s chairman/CEO, Art Silber, says his father and other investors bought the team in 1990, but eventually the Silber family took full ownership. His sister, Lani Weiss, is team president and lives in Fredericksburg.
Seth Silber’s family chose to locate their Fredericksburg Nationals Minor League Baseball team in the city partly because the Fredericksburg area is well-populated, economically strong and has its own identity. Photo by Will Schermerhorn
The Silber family had been trying to build a new stadium in Prince William County, where the team had been located since 1984, for more than a decade but the effort was unsuccessful. Fredericksburg officials reached out to the family two and a half years ago and invited them down for a visit.
Silber says they were “blown away” by the strong sense of community expressed during the visit, the strong interest in baseball and the immediate support from the business community.
“Minor League Baseball kind of thrives in smaller communities that have their own identity and Fredericksburg has its own identity. It’s in a fairly populous and economically strong area between Washington and Richmond,” says Silber, who also works as an attorney in Washington. “It’s kind of the perfect match for Minor League Baseball and that’s kind of what we hoped would happen when we came in and reached an agreement with the city on how to proceed and we got financing in place.”
Under a special financing arrangement, the stadium’s cost is being privately funded and Fredericksburg pays $1.05 million a year for 30 years to help service the debt on the stadium.
The city expects to recoup the money through tax revenue and other revenue-sharing opportunities with the owners of the FredNats.
“We think this might be a model for cities and counties wanting to do this in the future,” Silber says.
The pandemic washed out this baseball season for the FredNats, but Silber says the team is looking forward to a 140-game schedule beginning in April 2021, with 70 home games scheduled.
The team’s owners also are hoping to stage 10 to 15 concerts each year, and the city government also will be scheduling events at the new ballpark.
Relax, it’s Fred Ex
The FredNats are just one example of businesses that have recently moved into the area.
Bill Freehling, Fredericksburg’s economic development director, says that while a lot of workers live in Fredericksburg and commute to work elsewhere, more companies are locating in the city and creating jobs. Some of those companies are servicing the region’s growing population, while others, such as defense contractors, are relocating from Washington and from Northern Virginia in search of talent and lower business costs.
In February, the Virginia Economic Development Corp. released a study showing that the Fredericksburg region was adding jobs at a faster pace than anywhere else in Virginia.
One company that’s been particularly active is IST Research Corp., an engineering and technology firm that in January was awarded a $99.7 million contract to support the U.S. Department of State. In July, it received a five-year, $66 million contract from the General Services Administration (GSA).
Fredericksburg also is a center for health care in the region, with Mary Washington Healthcare employing more than 4,000 workers across a not-for-profit regional system with two hospitals and three emergency departments.
The city is also a bustling center of commerce for the region, with Central Park and other surrounding destination venues for shopping and dining. Spotsylvania Towne Center, directly across from Central Park, offers more than 150 specialty stores and restaurants.
Freehling also points out that the former downtown headquarters of the Free Lance-Star newspaper is undergoing a $90 million redevelopment into offices, restaurants, apartments and a hotel. The project is being handled by companies affiliated withlocal developers Tom and Cathy Wack and Vakos Cos.
While Fredericksburg has prospered through its proximity to Northern Virginia, that bond will likely grow stronger in the years to come, thanks to about $1 billion in public and private transportation projects in the Fredericksburg region that will unfold over the next several years.
But one of the most anticipated projects in the area will take on one of its greatest struggles — high traffic volumes.
The I-95 commuter corridor between Washington, D.C., and U.S. 17 in Stafford was dubbed the “worst single traffic hotspot” in the country a few years ago by INRIX Roadway Analytics, a global transportation data company.
“It was nothing new to us,” says Fredericksburg District Engineer Marcie Parker. “We already knew that.”
Expected to open in 2022, the Fredericksburg Extension (Fred Ex) will offer traffic relief via a $565 million, 10-mile extension of area Interstate 95 express lanes south to Exit 133. The lengthened lanes will connect with the I-395 Express Lanes to create a connected corridor spanning nearly 50 miles from Fredericksburg to the D.C. line.
Transurban, an Australia-based toll-road operation company with its U.S. headquarters in Alexandria, is funding the construction through a public private partnership with state government. Transurban will operate and maintain the express lanes and charge variable toll rates for using the lane in a contract that extends until 2087.
Developers say the extension will provide 66% more capacity on Interstate 95 during peak periods and move 30% more people and 23% more vehicles compared with existing conditions.
Other major area highway projects include two new bridges, each costing an estimated $132 million: the I-95 Northbound and Southbound Rappahannock River Crossings. The two new bridges will be built between existing I-95 bridges over the Rappahannock, providing for improved traffic movement through the region. The northbound crossing is being funded through a $277 million payment from Transurban to the state government to advance transportation projects along the I-95 corridor.
Parker says the new express lanes, bridges and other transportation work in the Fredericksburg region represent the largest body of highway improvements since I-95 was built and later widened.
“I feel these projects are going to be transformational for the area. It’s going to help the traffic move better than it has in the last 20 to 30 years,” Parker says.
The projects almost surely will bring new growth to the Fredericksburg region: more people, more jobs, more tourists, more change.
“It’s become so urban,” Greenlaw says, “but it pleases me that, despite the fact the city is twice the size it was when I finished high school, it’s still managed to maintain its character. I walk down the street and open my eyes and close my eyes, and it looks like my hometown. It feels like my hometown.”
At colleges across Virginia and the nation, this will be a fall semester like no other.
The coronavirus is turning campuses into petri dishes for experimentation.
One of the state’s largest public colleges with an enrollment of about 30,000 students in the heart of Richmond, Virginia Commonwealth University is also pivoting to confront the unprecedented challenges of creating a healthful learning environment amid a pandemic, with no rule book to follow.
And in many ways, VCU provides a microcosm of how universities are responding statewide.
For one VCU student, it’s unfolding like a scary movie.
“Personally, I feel it’s not going to be good at the end of the day, simply because cases are still going up and when everyone gets back to campus, it’s almost certainly going to explode,” says Udhanth Mallasani, interim president of the VCU Student Government Association.
“I can guarantee you students are going to interact with each other, even if it’s outside the classroom,” Mallasani says. “Campus is going to be a breeding ground for the disease.”
The 19-year-old biology major from Loudoun County is not only worried about his own health but that of his family, if he contracts COVID-19.
“I basically will not be able to go back home till there is a vaccine and a treatment and a level of normalcy because my mom has had a relapse from chemotherapy [and] her immunity is compromised,” Mallasani explains.
His grandparents are also at his home, he adds, and they’re at higher risk of death or hospitalization because of their age.
On the first day of classes in August, about 100 students protested VCU’s reopening during the pandemic. Within the first four days, VCU reported that 25 students and 11 employees tested positive.
Despite some of her fellow students’ misgivings, 20-year-old Laith Samamreh, a student representative on VCU’s COVID-19 response team, believes that universities could be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
“My demographic is running amok, spreading it more than anybody else,” says Samamreh, a Vienna resident, alluding to gatherings referred to as “super spreader” events.
But she notes, “With increased testing, increased precautions, increased contact tracing, universities can help prevent the spread of the disease.”
In Virginia, Gov. Ralph Northam has said that people between the ages of 20 and 29 are now the most likely demographic to get COVID-19, due to not wearing masks or practicing distancing.
Historic deficit
Aside from creating widespread health problems, the coronavirus also has created financial hardships for some VCU students, Mallasani says, because the pandemic has wiped out the part- and full-time jobs many of them depend on to help pay for college. Restaurants, retail shops and other student workplaces are now less likely to have job openings.
“Some of my peers, they still haven’t been able to pay off their spring tuition because they don’t have a job anymore,” he says.
VCU says about 30% of its students qualify for federal Pell Grants, a subsidy for low-income students. To help students financially, VCU, for the second year in a row, did not raise tuition.
The university has also stepped up to assist students who didn’t have the necessary technology and connectivity to join the rapidly emerging digital community on campus as online classes expand.
“For this fall, we have allocated $1 millionfor students who have technology needs. We’ve received applications from over 300 students who say they need a computer or a laptop or funding to provide internet access,” says Tomikia P. LeGrande, vice provost for strategic enrollment management.
Additionally, VCU received $10 million in federal CARES Act funding to assist students suffering financial hardship during the pandemic. “Thus far, we have funded over 6,000 students,” LeGrande says.
The enrollment chief acknowledges that students and their families are more worried than ever about the costs of starting or continuing college in the throes of widespread unemployment.
While it was initially feared that student enrollment would drop by as much as 10%, LeGrande says that the university has made extensive efforts to keep in touch with students and families about protective measures and financial aid, which gives administrators hope the dip won’t be quite as deep.
When students returned in August, enrollment was down by 1.17%, or 331 students fewer than in 2019. The university’s 2020-21 budget projected a potential revenue hit of $41.4 million due to enrollment losses.
“Our projected budget deficit is of historic proportions,” VCU President Michael Rao wrote in a May message to the university community. “The costs associated with COVID-19 are enormous. In mid-April they eclipsed $50 million, including $13 million in lost revenue principally due to refunds and credits to students. These costs are mounting every day.”
The refunds and credits were prompted when VCU, like universities across the state, closed its dormitories last spring because of the coronavirus pandemic and moved to online instruction.
Budget roller coaster
To stem revenue losses, VCU is circling its wagons.
The university has instituted a hiring and salary freeze and made targeted reductions universitywide to balance its budget.
The measures are expected to yield $11 million in savings; strategic school and administrative reductions will yield an additional $18.1 million; reallocating auxiliary fund balances, $10.1 million; and, a one-time use of contingency funds, $15.6 million.
In total, those measures are expected to create savings of $55 million, according to the university’s budget.
Other measures could be taken as the school year continues and conditions warrant. In July, VCU suggested that, if it becomes necessary, the university may furlough employees, including President Rao, who earned $741,073 in 2019. So far, none of the university’s executives have taken pay cuts as William & Mary’s administration has done.
As of press time for this issue, it was not clear whether VCU and other state universities might receive additional state funding or see further cuts. The General Assembly convened its Aug. 18 special session to adopt a budget based on revised state revenue forecasts in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Gray
Karol Kain Gray, senior vice president and CFO at VCU, has only one way to describe the preparation of this year’s budget.
“Do you like roller coasters?” she asks with a laugh.
More seriously, Gray says, “I think we all have concerns. Nobody wants to deal with a budget that you’re not sure where it will land in six months.”
If a worse coronavirus scenario occurs and the university has to move 100% online — as Harvard and other universities already have done — Gray says VCU has the infrastructure to sustain itself for the current academic year.
However, she adds, “We do have a lot of angst in the 2021-22 fiscal year,” citing all the unknowns that lay ahead.
Battling coronavirus
Although there is not yet a vaccine for the coronavirus, the weapons needed to fight it on the home front and in the halls of academia are familiar. VCU intends to use all of them.
As part of the university’s COVID-19 toolkit, students and university employees will have to learn new rituals, such as responding to daily self-reported online health checks and participating in an intense level of cleaning previously unfamiliar on a typical college campus.
Supply kits including a washable cloth face covering, hand sanitizer and disinfectant spray are being distributed across campus to students and employees.
Hands-free temperature screening stations have been installed, social distancing is required and no large gatherings are allowed. Dining halls have eliminated self-serve stations, masks are mandatory and mobile food ordering will be available.
Students planning to return to residence halls were sent a mail-in COVID-19 test kit. Anyone who tests positive will not be permitted to live on campus until they have quarantined for a mandatory period and are symptom-free. VCU is also providing free testing for symptomatic students and employees, as well as voluntary prevalence testing for 5% of residential students and 2% of off-campus students.
If residential students test positive, the VCU public health response team will move affected students to isolation housing at the university’s Gladding Residence Center III for no less than 10 days. In the event of clusters of infections, VCU could take actions ranging from closing a portion of a single residence to closing down the university for in-person classes.
Students who test positive for coronavirus but don’t require hospital care will be moved to temporary isolation housing at VCU’s Gladding Residence Center III. Photo by Allen Jones, VCU Marketing
Some classes this semester will be held in person, others will be online and some will be taught via a hybrid of online and in-person attendance.
Other large state universities such as Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia and George Mason University, as well as numerous other private and state universities, also are bringing students back to campus for in-person and online classes with extraordinary health measures in place.
‘Uncharted territory’
Aside from students, the pandemic also has altered life for VCU’s 2,600 full-time instructional staff.
“This has probably been the most challenging time of my life going through a pandemic, being quarantined and all the things related to that,” says Valerie Robnolt, vice president of the VCU Faculty Senate and an associate professor in the School of Education.
Robnolt
“I don’t want to be too political, but we need more money for education to do this safely,” she says.
Rao, along with the presidents of Virginia Tech and U.Va., publicly asked the state to set aside $200 million to increase coronavirus testing on college campuses and elsewhere.
Robnolt says many faculty members at VCU have been working without pay this summer — they work nine-month contracts — in order to prepare for the fall semester.
Like many other colleges, VCU will offer an abundance of online classes this fall. The college administration decided early on that all classes with more than 50 students will be taught remotely.
Aside from the coronavirus, VCU saw another new development this summer: nightly Black Lives Matter protests around its campus and the surrounding neighborhoods. In July, the university sustained approximately $100,000 in damage to its Monroe Park Campus, including smashed windows and graffiti. Many students have taken part part in the largely peaceful protests. In several instances, police have used nonlethal weapons, including tear gas and pepper spray to dispel protesters.
In a message to the university, Rao wrote, “VCU supports free speech and stands in solidarity with those peacefully expressing messages of social justice and equity for all people. VCU does not condone — under any circumstance — acts of violence or vandalism, regardless of the purported cause. Violence against people and deliberate destruction of property are contrary to the values of our community and will not be tolerated.”
Rao
In August, Richmond police arrested a nonstudent, 20-year-old Lucas Couturier, who is facing multiple felony charges in connection with rioting at VCU.
Taylor Maloney, a VCU senior and the incoming president of the student government association, is a party in an ACLU lawsuit filed against the city of Richmond, the Richmond Police Department and the Virginia State Police. Filed in Richmond Circuit Court, the lawsuit alleges that on June 22 Richmond police wrongfully issued a declaration of unlawful assembly against a peaceful teach-in by university students held in front of Richmond City Hall to discuss issues such as police brutality and racial inequality. Police used tear gas, rubber bullets and flash grenades to disrupt the gathering.
In an affidavit filed as part of the lawsuit, Maloney says, “This suit is important because it’s taking an even bigger stand against the unchecked violent and outright malicious behavior exhibited by the Richmond Police.”
In a statement to Virginia Business, Rao notes that amid social change and the coronavirus, he expects life at VCU will be intense this academic year. “The pace of change has been relentless, and we are in an uncharted territory where everyone — all of us — need to adapt quickly and purposefully to information that changes constantly.”
Photo by Allen Jones, VCU Marketing
VCU at a glance
Founded: With roots stretching back to 1838, VCU was created in 1968 from the merger of the Medical College of Virginia and Richmond Professional Institute.
Campus: Encompassing 169 acres, VCU is divided into two downtown Richmond campuses: Monroe Park and MCV. It also has the VCUarts Qatar campus in the Middle East and various satellite sites across Virginia.
Enrollment: 28,060 students
Student profile: Full time: 83%; Virginia residents: 86%; Minority: 45%; Enrolled in STEM majors: 23%; International students: 1,170 from 101 nations. Top four: China, India, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait
Arlington County encompasses an area of just 26 square miles, making it geographically the smallest self-governing county in America.
But in many ways, it is the mouse that roars.
In November 2018, Arlington snagged the biggest economic prize in Virginia — and possibly U.S. — history when Amazon.com Inc. announced it would build its $2.5 billion East Coast headquarters, HQ2, in what is now known as the National Landing area of Arlington, with plans to hire 25,000-plus employees over the next decade or so at an average annual salary of $150,000.
But landing Amazon was not a slam dunk.
More than 200 cities nationwide vied to win the tech giant. And, another planned headquarters expansion in New York was derailed as a result of local opposition.
As the chosen one, the eyes of the business world have been on Arlington ever since, with expectations that Amazon will drive even more economic growth in the county and the region.
Telly Tucker, Arlington’s director of economic development, says that a lot of the county’s economic prospects following Amazon’s HQ2 announcement “are in the tech sector, especially those that employ the same types of talent as Amazon.” He declines to elaborate on which companies are looking at locating in Arlington.
“We’re not going to give away our secrets,” Tucker says with a laugh.
However, he adds, “talent continues to be the greatest asset for most of these companies and this region. Fortunately, we are known for having a rich supply of highly qualified talent in the tech space.”
Geographically, Arlington is the smallest self-governing county in America, but it’s an economic powerhouse that is home to five Fortune 1000 companies. Photo by Stephen Gosling
Arlington is one of the nation’s most highly educated localities: 74% of residents hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, and 39% of all adults have a graduate or professional degree.
Moreover, nearly a quarter of the population is in the highly desirable working age bracket of 25 to 34. It’s the highest concentration of young workers in that age category in the nation, according to the county.
Arlington was already doing pretty well before Amazon came along, positioned as the fifth-richest county in the U.S., with a median family income of $112,238, according to the most recent Census data.
This year Arlington and its 235,000 residents — the population tops more than 300,000 during workdays — are celebrating the 100th anniversary of its naming.
But celebratory events have been put aside for the time being.
A commitment to equity
Like most of the nation, Arlington is trying to claw its way out of the economic downturn and widespread illness brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.
In years past, the county has consistently topped all other Virginia localities for domestic tourism spending, but its hotel occupancy and revenues have suffered due to pandemic shutdowns and people sheltering at home.
Libby Garvey, chair of the Arlington County Board of Supervisors, laid out the impact on the tourism industry in recent remarks to the local chamber of commerce.
“April’s hotel occupancy and revenue were down around 90% compared to last year,” Garvey says.
“The pandemic has resulted in layoffs or furloughs for many of the 27,000 hard-working people employed in Arlington’s hotels, restaurants and businesses. Many of them are turning to Arlington County for help with food and rent.”
The drop in tourism has meant that Amazon won’t receive the first of 15 planned incentive payments from the county because the payments are funded from a 15% share of the county’s lodging tax.
Garvey also emphasizes what might now be regarded as a prescient decision made well before this summer’s Black Lives Matter protests — Arlington’s commitment to racial, gender and socioeconomic equity.
The Board of Supervisors passed a September 2019 resolution pledging support for equity and recognizing that some county residents are likely to experience poorer outcomes and other disparities. These include people of color, women, people living in poverty, immigrants and refugees, LGBTQ+ community members and people with disabilities, in addition to residents living in certain neighborhoods.
“We need to change a paradigm,” Garvey says. “The paradigm is that the most vulnerable in a society are the first to suffer from change and the last to gain from it — if they ever gain at all. Economic change tends not to be equitable. That’s the old paradigm. We want a new one.”
A vocal advocate of the county’s goals to achieve equity, she positions the county’s pledge not only as a humanitarian issue but an economic one.
“As a nation, we’re starting to realize that the most vulnerable workers among us are also our most essential workers,” she says. “We depend on them for our food. We depend on them for our health care services, for our personal services, for our child care. Frankly, we can’t function without our most vulnerable workers. And if they get sick, we get sick.”
Tucker, who became Arlington’s economic development director in January 2020 after moving from Danville, says the county’s commitment to racial equity was one of the reasons he, as an African American male, applied for the job.
He says the county’s commitment is summed up in an acronym — RACE — which stands for Realizing Arlington’s Commitment to Equity.
RACE challenges the county’s various departments and employees to ask four questions as part of every decision that’s made and every program and new policy that’s implemented: Who benefits? Who’s burdened? Who’s missing? And how do we know?
Amazon’s decision to locate its East Coast HQ2 headquarters in Arlington is luring other tech business prospects, says Arlington Economic Development Director Telly Tucker. Photo by Stephen Gosling
Tucker says Arlington’s commitment to equity resonates far beyond an acronym, however, and plays well in the economic development community.
“What we’ve learned and continue to hear from our prospective companies and existing companies, particularly in the tech sector, is many of these companies are much more social conscious than they’ve ever been,” Tucker says.
“They recognize how visible they are globally. They are conscious about equity and diversity. For many of them, particularly in the millennial generation, it’s a point of emphasis for them to be active and engaged in a community, beyond what they do 8 to 5.”
“The diversity of our community is an asset,” adds Kate Bates, president & CEO of the Arlington Chamber of Commerce. “We like to think of Arlington as a place where everyone can be accepted.”
Top dog in the making
Bates says that Arlington was known for decades as a “government town,” because of its proximity to Washington and because the Pentagon is a top employer. But Amazon is helping to diversify the county’s economy, she says.
However, Arlington was on “an exciting trajectory even before Amazon came,” she adds, because Nestlé, the largest food company in the world by revenues, and Lidl, a German international discount supermarket chain with thousands of stores across Europe, both established their U.S. headquarters in Arlington over the past several years.
The Pentagon and the defense contracting industry continue to be mainstays of Arlington’s economy, with 21% of all workers tied to a government paycheck in one way or another, according to the county.
But federal budget cuts and the military’s realignment and closures of military bases in the 2000s, followed by the Great Recession and the exodus of large employers such as the Fish & Wildlife Service, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and Northrop Grumman Corp., wounded Arlington’s economy, especially on the federal side.
From 2006 to 2015, the number of non-enlisted federal employees working in Arlington County dropped by almost 25% to 27,644, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Ever since, the county has stepped up its push for a more diverse economy, so it wouldn’t be so dependent on government.
The pipeline for tech workers that Virginia’s colleges and universities are providing for Amazon’s massive buildup to staff HQ2 will accelerate the push.
George Mason University’s $250 million Institute for Digital InnovAtion (IDIA), to be built on its Arlington campus, and Virginia Tech’s nearby $1 billion Innovation Campus are expected to assist in this transition to a more tech-heavy workforce.
Yet, while Amazon will be the big dog among local employers after its hiring matures, its current employment paw print remains small, though fast-growing. The e-tail behemoth announced in late June that it had hired its 1,000th HQ2 employee.
According to the county’s most recent comprehensive financial report, Deloitte, one of the Big Four accounting firms and the largest professional services network in the world, ranks No. 1 among private employers in the county with 9,400 employees.
Accenture plc, another multinational professional services company, is second on the list of county employers, with about 5,000 employees.
Forging a new path
Even amid a nationwide slowdown, development continues apace in the county.
“We have more than 2 million square feet of office space under construction, eclipsing the 1.4 million square foot mark set in 2012,” says Garvey.
To put that in perspective, the county’s Department of Community Planning, Housing and Development proudly proclaims that Arlington, with 41.9 million square feet of rentable building area, “has more private office space than the downtowns of Los Angeles, Denver and Atlanta, as well as the Central Business Districts of Dallas and Seattle.”
With Amazon cutting a new path for Arlington’s future, some have suggested that the county could become — as a prior economic development director once suggested — a “Silicon Valley on the Potomac.”
But Garvey says that Arlington wants to do it better.
“Silicon Valley has been great,” she says. “But what they did, it’s the low-hanging fruit — making a fortune by letting people hit a few buttons and [having] pizza arriving at the door or swiping left and you get a better date.
“The new generation that’s coming up,” Garvey says, “wants more to their name than to make a neat app that makes them a fortune and makes the world miserable.”
She says those are among the individuals Arlington hopes to attract.
“Smart people around the world who want to make the world a better place to live,” Garvey says, “… will come here to work.”
As a single mother, Megan Yeager began working as a pizza delivery driver. Over the years, she rose to regional manager of a small pizza chain in the Richmond area.
But the pizza chain couldn’t offer her what she wanted in a career: vision and dental care, retirement benefits, career advancement opportunities and, most importantly, a secure future for herself and her 13-year-old daughter.
“She is my everything,” Yeager, 34, says.
While scrolling through Facebook exploring various career paths, Yeager found a reference to an 11-week power line worker training program offered through Southside Virginia Community College, and she grabbed it, hoping to land a good-paying job with benefits working for a utility company.
“I knew that the power line industry was male-dominated, but that didn’t worry me because I know I have the determination and passion to accomplish any goal I set for myself,” Yeager says. (The Associated Press reported in September that Dominion Energy Inc.’s 1,300 power line workers across three states include just eight women. And Charlotte, North Carolina-based Duke Energy tallied just five women among its roughly 2,500 power line workers.)
Yeager is part of a movement sweeping the commonwealth to build a talent pipeline for middle-skill jobs that don’t necessarily require four-year degrees.
Such jobs are increasingly more important, says Randall Stamper, assistant vice chancellor for grants and federal workforce programs for the Virginia Community College System (VCCS).
“There’s this formula in the workforce that’s been true for decades. It boils down to 1, 2, 7,” Stamper says. “For every one advanced degree that business needs, they need two people with a bachelor’s degree and they need seven people who have these middle-skill jobs.”
FastForward training
Providing Virginians with the opportunity and training for middle-skill jobs is the foundation of VCCS’ FastForward credential training program offered through Virginia’s community colleges.
Training is available for a variety of high-demand jobs in health care, information technology, logistics, transportation and education, as well as skilled trades such as welders and machinists.
For any business thinking about relocating to Virginia or considering a major expansion here, the paramount question is whether there will be workers who can do the job.
The Virginia Community College’s System’s FastForward program is filling an urgent need for mid-skilled workers who need training but not advanced degrees, says VCCS Vice Chancellor Randall Stamper. Photo by Shandell Taylor
FastForward is often part of the conversation at the local level when those decisions are being made, Stamper says.
“One of the unique strengths of community colleges,” he says, is “to quickly stand up programs and customize them to industry needs.”
A well-publicized aspect of FastForward is that participants are expected to put “skin in the game”; in other words, put up some of their own money to get a chance at a good career and a better life.
Most credentialing programs take between six and 12 weeks and are structured so that students can earn their education credentials while they work.
FastForward operates under a unique pay-for-performance model for funding noncredit workforce training programs in high-demand fields.
“The cost of education is divided into thirds,” explains Lori Dwyer, vice chancellor of programs for the community college system.
“When a FastForward student enrolls, [he or she] pays one-third of the cost of tuition. When [he or she] completes the training, the college receives the second third of the funding from the state; when [he or she] earns that third-party-validated industry credential, the college is made whole again by the state by payment of the third [installment.]”
According to the Virginia Employment Commission, by 2026, there will be a need for 2.6 million middle-skilled workers in Virginia.
FastForward is one of the ways Virginia is trying to bridge this skills gap.
Since the program’s inception in 2016, about 20,000 credentials have been earned and one in four graduates saw an 85% increase in their salary after earning their credentials, community college officials say.
A single student can earn more than one credential in FastForward programs, and frequently does.
“The good news is that we have a completion rate of around 90%. These are short programs that have a direct employment outcome, so these students are very motivated to compete,” Dwyer says.
Dwyer says the program has been extremely effective in reaching the populations that the legislature intended when approving the program.
“At this point, 70% of students have dependents, and over half of them [are] minorities and about 40% of our credentials are distributed in rural areas that represent about 25% of Virginia’s population. So, it’s … really helping rural Virginia,” Dwyer says.
FastForward students are generally less economically advantaged than other community college students, Dwyer says, and are more than twice as likely to need government assistance and supplemental nutrition assistance.
Community colleges also have benefited from FastForward, she says.
“It is our fastest-growing area of enrollment,” Dwyer says. “It is a point of access for a number of Virginians who are looking for short-term training to reenter the workforce.”
Success stories
That’s what Allen Miller wanted, although his training turned out to be not so short-term.
Miller graduated from high school in Lynchburg and then enrolled in Radford University in 2004, intent on studying information technology.
But he soon dropped out of college, after realizing that working in IT was not how he wanted to spend his life. He began a nearly 15-year odyssey that included odd jobs, construction work in California and finally employment at a small-town restaurant in Virginia.
Then, on a recommendation from an uncle, he contacted Chemung Contracting Corp. in Gainesville. The company’s portfolio encompasses work on major highways, bridges, airports and other projects.
At the time, the company was initiating an asphalt apprenticeship program with Germanna Community College in Orange County.
“They were looking for people who could pick up on multiple things, had the ability to work a lot of hours and go to school — all without burning out,” Miller says.
For almost four years, Miller, now 34, took two classes per semester under the FastForward program, working his day job from 6 a.m. till 4 p.m. and then heading off to class, where he took general education courses as well as job-specific instruction on electric motors, hydraulics, safety procedures and, of course, asphalt.
He earned certifications in a variety of fields as well as an associate degree in industrial maintenance.
“The program is set up for people to succeed,” says Miller, who lives in Barboursville with his wife and infant daughter and oversees a Chemung Contracting asphalt plant serving Culpeper.
He has a real sense of accomplishment in finishing the apprenticeship program at Germanna Community College and finding a job with a future, he says.
“It’s very calming and a big relief,” Miller adds. “Life is not always going to be perfect. But there are always paths to make yourself better and happier.”
One of the lesser known programs under the FastForward umbrella is the EducateVA/VCCS Career Switchers program, aimed at producing teachers.
This year a Career Switcher graduate — Andrea Johnson, chair of the English department at Salem High School in Roanoke — was honored as the 2020 Virginia Teacher of the Year.
Before deciding to become a teacher, Johnson worked at a Sussex County 4-H camp for several years. Taking a combination of online and in-person classes through Tidewater Community College, she was able to do coursework and still look after her two children.
If she had been required to return to college to earn her teacher’s licensure — she already held a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia in government and a master’s from Virginia Commonwealth University in youth development and education — Johnson says she wouldn’t have done it.
“This way it was affordable, and I could still be a mom,” Johnson says.
“Across the country there are teacher shortages, especially in math and science,” she says, noting that EducateVA/Career Switchers helps close the gaps in those disciplines and others.
As for Yeager, she was offered a job by Dominion Energy soon after her graduation from the power line training program in May 2019.
She started as a groundman working with linemen in the construction department with Dominion Energy in July 2019. A month later, she was promoted to a job in the operations department as a service helper — a largely outdoor “heavy labor” job focused on providing tools to workers and driving utility trucks. (Yeager earned a commercial driving license in her power line worker training program — and learned to operate various types of heavy equipment such as excavators, backhoes, diggers and aerial lifts.)
Yeager, who seems to revel in the work, describes a typical event in her new job: “Tree fell down on the transformer,” she recalls. “The power was out to a neighborhood and operations responds to the calls and makes the necessary repairs to restore power back to customers quickly and safely.”
Only a few months ago, the economies of the historic port city of Norfolk and the greater Hampton Roads region, with which it is inextricably intertwined, were continuing to rebound after emerging from what Old Dominion University’s 2019 State of the Region report has called “the lost decade.”
During the period from 2007 to 2016, Hampton Roads added only one job for every three added in Virginia and every four in the United States.
The region’s economy was constrained by the twin blows of the Great Recession and a severe cutback in defense spending beginning in 2011, commonly known as sequestration.
Then things began turning around.
Economic activity in Hampton Roads grew 2% from 2017 to 2018, more than doubling the previous year’s growth, and growth was expected to jump to 2.4% in 2019, the ODU report says.
More good news came in February when Standard & Poor’s Global Ratings raised Norfolk’s credit rating to AAA on its general obligation bonds, the first time in history that the city — the second-most populous in the state, with approximately 244,000 residents — had earned the highest possible credit rating.
But just when the days ahead seemed brighter, the coronavirus struck, once again threatening Norfolk and the region’s economic growth.
It has caused those in charge of economic development in Norfolk to rethink their mission, at least for the time being, with a hope that the city’s fortunes will quickly resume their upward climb.
Jared Chalk, Norfolk’s director of economic development, was blunt in describing what lies ahead, as long as the effects of the coronavirus linger.
“I’ve told my staff that we’re going to be moving over probably the next several weeks to months into business retention mode and business survival mode,” he says.
“We’re really kind of retooling everything that we’ve done, so that small businesses, restaurants, retail, companies that import [and/or] export goods that have had supply chain issues, all of those things I think will now really be at the forefront of what we’re doing.”
Previously, Chalk says, the city was in a war for talent, a war that he expects will resume once the pandemic runs its course.
New approaches
To better compete regionally and nationally, Chalk says that prior to the COVID-19 upheaval, he took a different approach in Norfolk’s economic development department.
“I’ve really made a shift in the office to focus on companies that export goods and services and bring back money to the region, leveraging the port, leveraging offshore wind,” Chalk says. “The offshore wind industry is new to the state, so we’re all taking a look to see how we can participate.”
Last September, Richmond-based Dominion Energy Inc. revealed its plans for the largest offshore wind development in the country, 27 miles off the coast of nearby Virginia Beach. If approved, 220 wind turbines would provide power for 650,000 homes by generating 2,650 megawatts of zero-carbon electricity.
Chalk also is hoping that Norfolk will benefit from the Navy’s $21 billion effort to upgrade its three public shipyards. A $200 million renovation currently underway at Dry Dock 4 at the Norfolk Navy Naval Shipyard, located in nearby Portsmouth, is part of that upgrade.
When defense spending is strong, Norfolk thrives and is a job creator for the region.
It hosts the world’s largest naval base, Naval Station Norfolk, headquarters of the Navy’s Atlantic Fleet, along with one of NATO’s two Strategic Command headquarters.
Defense spending also drives shipbuilding, and Huntington Ingalls Industries, headquartered in nearby Newport News, is the world’s largest military shipbuilding company, drawing workers from Norfolk and other parts of Hampton Roads and the state.
The Port of Virginia, an economic engine for the region and state, has enjoyed a renaissance over the past several years and Norfolk International Terminals is the port’s largest terminal, lying on 567 acres along the Elizabeth and Lafayette rivers. It has become a magnet for international commerce.
The Pamunkey Indian Tribe plans to build a $700 million casino and resort on the Elizabeth River. Rendering courtesy Pamunkey Indian Tribe
Perhaps the biggest attention-grabber in Norfolk in recent years has been the $700 million resort-style casino being planned by the Pamunkey Indian Tribe.
The General Assembly recently passed legislation allowing commercial casino gambling in Virginia. Aside from Norfolk, the legislation would permit casinos in four other cities: Portsmouth, Richmond, Danville and Bristol.
Before it can proceed, the Pamunkey casino also would require public approval through a local referendum planned for the November ballot.
As initially outlined by the tribe, which is partnering with Tennessee investor Jon Yarbrough, the casino complex would be built on 13 acres east of the Norfolk Tides Harbor Park Stadium and would include a 500-room hotel and five to seven onsite restaurants.
The annual direct economic impact for Norfolk was projected to be $787 million, with about 6.7 million visitors annually.
But Jay Smith, a spokesman for the Pamunkey Tribe, says those projections and the scale of the project might be affected if a proposed casino is built in neighboring Portsmouth.
In any event, Smith says the Pamunkey casino-resort would be a “high-end destination facility” like similar operations in Las Vegas and would be an important piece of Norfolk’s efforts to boost tourism.
Chalk says that although a casino would not be “a silver bullet” for any economic development strategy, it fits in with Norfolk’s efforts to push for an economy that imports dollars.
“So, how do we bring more people to Norfolk?” Chalk asks rhetorically. “Carnival Cruise Line just did a five-year commitment to Norfolk, to do cruises out of Norfolk. We’ve been doing airlines upgrades. We want to change Norfolk into a place people really want to come spend a few days, and I think the casino really complements that.” (Carnival canceled sailings through June 26, cutting nine Norfolk embarkations.)
Another economic initiative Norfolk is undertaking focuses on an effort to become a laboratory for dealing with sea-level rise, Chalk says. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Hampton Roads is second only to New Orleans in terms of the largest U.S. population centers at risk of flooding from climate change.
“Look at what the Dutch have done,” Chalk says. “They have created an industry around how to live with water, how to live with seawater rise. That’s what we’re looking to do here. What technologies can help? What kinds of tools are out there for not only seawater rise, but large downfalls of rain?”
He says Norfolk is inviting companies to test new technologies in the city, which also has created an Office of Resiliency and was one of the first cities in the country to name a chief resiliency officer.
Kurt Krause, president and CEO of VisitNorfolk, a nonprofit booster organization, is bullish on Norfolk’s future, especially its ability to attract young people to the city and build a talent pool.
Norfolk is home to the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Ballet Virginia, the Virginia Opera and the Chrysler Museum of Art. Photo courtesy Virginia Symphony
“We’ve been recognized as one of the top five cities for millennials to move to, we’re not expensive, the weather is typically pretty good and there’s a lot of water,” Krause says.
VisitNorfolk and the five higher-ed institutions in the city — Old Dominion, Norfolk State, Hampton and Virginia Wesleyan universities and Tidewater Community College — also are bonding in an effort called Campus 757 to brand Norfolk as a college town.
“So, it’s the intent of collaborating with the five education institutions within Norfolk to attract high school students to come to our universities, get jobs, get internships, become engaged in the community and get a job,” Krause says.
He adds that Norfolk has a lot to offer young people and those young of heart with an abundance of festivals: two wine festivals, Harborfest and the Norfolk Waterfront Jazz Festival, to name a few.
“Arguably, we’re also the capital of the arts,” Krause adds. “The Virginia Symphony is here, Ballet Virginia is headquartered here, the Virginia Opera is here, the Virginia Arts Festival is here.”
Scheduled for Aug. 21 and 22, the 38th annual Norfolk Waterside Jazz Festival is slated to feature performers such as guitarist George Benson and saxophonist David Sanborn. Photo courtesy Norfolk Festevents Ltd.
Norfolk is the only city in Virginia with a Triple-A baseball team, the Norfolk Tides, and it also has a professional hockey team, the Norfolk Admirals.
Changing course
Today, Norfolk’s poverty rate is 22% for individuals and 16% for families. Virginia’s overall poverty rate was 10.7% for 2018, the latest year for which figures have been released.
In an ambitious effort to break the pattern of intergenerational poverty in public housing, Norfolk is working to redevelop the St. Paul’s neighborhood, a 200-acre swath with 1,700 units in three public housing communities, representing the highest concentration of public housing in the region. The goal is to transform the area from low-income housing to mixed-income housing.
Ronald Jackson, recently named executive director of the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority, says the transformation also involves helping residents to become more self-sufficient through training and education and helping them make the best housing decision for their families.
Norfolk’s efforts in the St. Paul’s neighborhood are supported by a $30 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), along with investments and pledges from the city and its partners for $158 million.
While cautioning that COVID-19 makes any forecast uncertain, ODU economist Robert M. McNab, director of the Dragas Center for Economic Analysis and Policy, says Norfolk’s prospects for the future “are better than they have been in a decade.”
The scheduled 2020 arrival in Henrico County of a third connection to ultra-high-speed internet subsea cables should give the Richmond region bragging rights as a destination for data centers.
In other words, it makes Central Virginia an alternative to Loudoun County, where 70% of all internet traffic flows but lacks a direct line to the subsea internet cables that run from Virginia Beach to Europe and South America. The speed at which Henrico has turned itself into a high-speed data hub also was quick, considering that the county accounted for only 6% of announced statewide investment in data centers from 2008 to 2016. However, by 2018, the county represented 53% of statewide investments in data centers, according to an analysis by Mangum Economics of Glen Allen.
White Oak Technology Park, a publicly owned 2,270-acre industrial park at the eastern intersection of interstates 64 and 295, is the focal point of Henrico’s efforts to attract data centers and internet companies.
It is there that Facebook Inc. is investing $1.75 billion in a data center complex, and Kansas-based QTS Realty Trust has a 1.3 million-square-foot data center catering to the federal market, with plans to expand it by 1.2 million square feet on an additional 210 acres.
Henrico’s marketing firepower arrived in 2018 in the form of two subsea cables, MAREA and BRUSA, linking Virginia Beach to Spain and Brazil respectively and connecting at a network access point (NAP) in White Oak created by QTS. Telxius, based in Spain, operates MAREA and BRUSA, which bring European, Latin and South American markets to Henrico’s doorstep, with the highest capacity cables ever deployed between the continents.
“The subsea cables that terminate in Richmond have opened an amazing opportunity for Henrico County to become a locus for both domestic and international applications,” said Vint Cerf, chief evangelist for Google and one of the co-inventors of the internet, before attending a summit in Henrico last May during which officials from several tech companies discussed the QTS Richmond Network Access Point.
In the next two years, two more Telxius-run subsea cables — Dunant from France, set to be finished this fall, and SAEx-1 from South Africa — are on their way to converge in Henrico at QTS.
Anthony J. Romanello, Henrico’s economic development chief, is bullish on White Oak’s future.
“I think it’s probably one of the prime opportunities on the Eastern seaboard because the infrastructure is in place: roads, water, sewer, power,” he says. Also, speed. MAREA is the highest capacity transatlantic cable ever constructed, running at a capacity of 200 terabits per second.
“Two hundred terabits is taking every movie that was ever made in the history of movie-making — from ‘The Jazz Singer’ to the ‘Avengers: Endgame’ — and you could take those movies in high definition and send them across the Atlantic in 42 seconds. That’s the power of these cables,” Romanello says.
He and his colleagues at the Henrico economic development office have been working hard to promote White Oak as an alternative to data center hubs in Loudoun.
But Henrico doesn’t hold a local monopoly on the tech industry. The Greater Richmond Partnership reports that the Richmond region is home to 2,400 information technology firms operating data centers. And Richmond-region tech firms employ more 21,300 people.
Henrico dropped its data center tax rate in 2017 from $3.50 to 40 cents per $100, and, more recently, Chesterfield County reduced its rate to the lowest in the state, from $1.80 to 24 cents per $100.
But even with lower tax rates, data centers spin off waves of annual tax revenue. In Henrico, for example, that revenue totaled $3.8 million for the most recent fiscal year reported.
“Of course, Facebook is just coming online, so this number will increase significantly over the next few years,” Romanello says. Facebook is expected to soon become the county’s largest taxpayer.
Chesterfield
Chesterfield County recently announced plans for a solar farm and data center on a 1,600-acre megasite in Chester. Torch Clean Energy, a Colorado-based energy company, plans to build a $100 million solar farm providing up to 150 megawatts of power alongside a data center covering up to 1 million square feet on the megasite.
Early estimates show that the data center could create investments up to $3 billion, according to a county synopsis of the project. The data center’s tenant has not been finalized, and the proposal still requires some state approvals.
In Chesterfield, however, one of 2019’s biggest economic development announcements came not from data centers, but the travel and hospitality industry. Chester-based Shamin Hotels Inc., the Richmond region’s largest hotelier, announced plans to invest approximately $125 million in Chesterfield County through multiple projects, including a hotel and conference center at Stonebridge, capping off a successful revitalization of the former Cloverleaf Mall site.
In January, Shamin announced it was purchasing the Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper building to establish a corporate headquarters in downtown Richmond, while leasing out parts of the building to the newspaper and others.
Chesterfield also welcomed a $25 million investment from Carvana, one of the nation’s largest used car companies, which will build an inspection and reconditioning center, creating 400 jobs. Altogether, Chesterfield tallied $248 million in new investments and nearly 2,000 new jobs last year.
Hanover
In Hanover County, 2019 brought a flood of jobs and capital investment. And the outlook for the coming year is bright, says Linwood Thomas, Hanover’s economic development director.
“Our fiscal year 2019 was one of the most successful on record from an economic development perspective,” he says.“We announced over $350 million in new capital investment and added over 2,253 net new jobs, both of which are the largest since tracking began over 15 years ago.
“Wegmans’ commitment to build a $175 million regional headquarters and distribution facility over the next three years will create 700 new jobs [that are] almost 20% above our median-average wages,” Thomas adds, calling the announcement “a prime example of the continuing momentum.”
Richmond
Meanwhile, in Richmond, a big debate over the proposed $1.5 billion Navy Hill downtown redevelopment project ended in defeat for developers and Mayor Levar Stoney in early February after City Council killed the proposal, which would have included a 17,500-seat arena to replace the shuttered Richmond Coliseum. Council passed a resolution keeping the door open to future redevelopment proposals for the area, however. (Read story here.)
Albemarle
On the western edge of the Central Virginia region, for the second year in a row Albemarle County led the way in new jobs created in the region encompassed by the Central Virginia Partnership.
Charlottesville tech firm Willow Tree Inc. will complete a $25 million relocation to Albemarle County’s historic Woolen Mills area this year, retaining 200 jobs and creating 200 more positions paying an average salary of $80,000.
And Castle Hill Gaming, a software developer that provides gaming software for slot games and tribal casinos across the country, announced it will invest $1.3 million to expand its corporate headquarters in Albemarle to support the hiring and training of 106 new employees, according to Helen Cauthen, president of the Central Virginia Partnership for Economic Development.
Lynchburg
In Lynchburg, the economic engine of the community continues to be Liberty University, which during the past dozen years or so has poured $1.6 billion in improvements into its 7,000-acre campus, while accumulating an endowment nest egg of more than $2 billion. With a thriving online enrollment, the private Christian institution now has 111,000 students per year, the most in the state.
The city also has a strong nuclear industry cluster with France-based Framatome, a designer and supplier of nuclear equipment, services and fuel, as well as BWX Technologies, a publicly traded nuclear energy company with about 2,500 employees in the city.
The bad news has been the closing of the LSC Communications printing plant and the loss of about 390 jobs, according to Megan Lucas, CEO of the Lynchburg Regional Business Alliance.
However, she says 90% of those who lost their jobs were subsequently hired by other regional employers
A historic vote on the biggest economic development proposal in the city of Richmond’s history — the potentially transformative $1.5 billion Navy Hill downtown redevelopment plan that would have included the state’s largest entertainment venue — collapsed in mid-February amid sound and fury as seven of Richmond City Council’s nine members refused to approve the plan.
Council members instead asked Mayor Levar Stoney to issue a new request for proposals for the Navy Hill project, this time including more citizen input on the arena issue and a full appraisal and assessment of the existing Richmond Coliseum.
The failed Navy Hill proposal, revealed to the public and City Council last August, included a $300 million, 17,500-seat arena to replace the now-closed Richmond Coliseum, as well as a luxury hotel, 1 million square feet of commercial and office space, more than 2,500 apartments and 260,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space.
CoStar Group, a commercial real estate analysis company based in Washington, D.C., announced in January it would double its Richmond workforce to 2,000 and move to a 400,000-square-foot building in Navy Hill if City Council approved the project. And VCU Health System upped the ante, saying it would add an office building and hospitality space to the proposed project.
Ultimately, a majority of city councilors, who had heard from hundreds of supporters and opponents over six months, said they were not prepared to support the deal proposed by NH District Corp., a public-private partnership of area business leaders and philanthropists led by Dominion Energy Inc. Chairman, President and CEO Thomas F. Farrell II. The councilors cited financial worries as well as concerns about the project’s lack of transparency.
Had the Navy Hill project been approved, the city would have taken out $350 million in nonrecourse bonds to fund the arena, with a special tax district diverting future sales-tax revenue from the state to pay back $600 million to bondholders over the next 30 years. Navy Hill developers promised to source $900 million in private funds for the first phase of the arena’s construction.
Proponents painted a picture of future prosperity at no risk to city taxpayers. But some city residents questioned the need for the arena and the project’s funding mechanism. In December, the nine-member Navy Hill Development Advisory Commission appointed by City Council to review the proposal concluded that “the Navy Hill project poses a risk to [the] city General Fund and school funding,” and a majority “did not find the publicly financed $300 million arena a sound and reasonable public investment in the redevelopment of downtown.”
Richmond’s own history also played a role; the name Navy Hill comes from what once was a prosperous African American neighborhood in the same location as the proposed development. In the 1950s and ’60s, highway construction obliterated more than 500 homes in Navy Hill, displacing about 1,000 families.
The Rev. Ben Campbell, a Richmond spiritual leader and expert on poverty and race, says he’s heard many community members question whether the wealthy business leaders who touted the Navy Hill redevelopment — particularly Farrell — “are benevolent or have ulterior motives.”
“I tend to view them as benevolent,” Campbell says. “I know these people personally. But it is definitely a paternalist action by a very few wealthy people that feel, in some sense, that they would save the city. What seems not to have been learned over the past 50 years is the futility of this kind of salvation.”
S. Waite Rawls II, a former banker and recently the president of the American Civil War Museum Foundation, has a far different view.
“One thing that strikes me is that there is no one else who could pull off a project this big — not the city, not any one current developer. It takes a group of community-spirited people with the means and know-how to do it,” Rawls says.
Stoney was a solid champion of the Navy Hill proposal.
Navy Hill, he says, would have produced 21,000 jobs, including 9,000 permanent positions, and would have produced needed revenues for city schools and minority businesses while creating “a catalyst to increase funding for education, housing, transit and other core services.”
With such a full-throated endorsement, “Stoney and the Stoney administration have risked a lot of political capital,” endangering Stoney’s re-election campaign this fall as well as his aspirations for higher office, says Richard J. Meagher, a political science professor at Randolph-Macon College who writes the blog RVA Politics.
Despite the outcome, however, the Navy Hill project was Central Virginia’s biggest project announced in 2019 — and is likely to influence the city’s future.
If colleges and universities have a golden age, then this may be Liberty University’s.
Finished in 2018, Liberty’s 275-foot-tall Freedom Tower rises above the Rawlings School of Divinity and is the tallest building in Lynchburg. Photo courtesy Liberty University
Founded in 1971 by televangelist Jerry Falwell Sr., the Lynchburg-based institution will mark its 49th year in 2020.
For decades, the school battled debt — at one point in the triple-digit millions — and was threatened with losing its accreditation.
Today, Liberty University — a 7,000-acre evangelical Christian institution often held up as one of the most conservative bastions of higher education in America — is the largest college in Virginia and one of the world’s largest Christian universities by enrollment.
The turnaround, especially in recent years, has been remarkable.
After years of counting pennies and sometimes coming up short, Liberty now is financially strong — with an endowment valued at more than $2 billion, according to university officials following a recent audit of finances. In September, the university also reported total assets of $3.13 billion.
And combined with the clout wielded by Jerry Falwell Jr., the university’s high-profile, well-connected and controversial president, Liberty has been able to attract a long line of political luminaries, sports stars and celebrities as speakers.
Recent commencement speakers include President Donald Trump, former President Jimmy Carter and Vice President Mike Pence. Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, NFL stars Brett Favre and Michael Vick and actors Gary Sinise and Dean Cain have been featured guest speakers at the university’s weekly convocations.
Looming large
During the past 12 years, the university has raised its cash and assets while pouring $1.6 billion into changing itself from a little-known outpost of higher education into a showcase for the transformational power of money, proper positioning, aggressive marketing and — it has to be said, prayer — on a college campus.
When Lynchburg Regional Business Alliance CEO Megan Lucas goes out of town to court economic prospects, she jokes that the region’s official bird is the construction crane.
Liberty is Lynchburg’s “economic engine,” says Lynchburg Regional Business Alliance CEO Megan Lucas. Photo by Meridith De Avila Khan
During the past several years, “every crane west of Richmond has been in Lynchburg on the campus of Liberty University. It’s our economic engine,” Lucas says.
The fevered pace of building and campus development has been breathtaking at times, she says. It’s perhaps best evidenced by the university’s 275-foot-tall Freedom Tower. Opened in 2018, it rises above the Rawlings School of Divinity, which bills itself as the world’s largest school for religious studies and ministerial training.
“The buildings are significant,” Lucas adds. “You think about a state-of-the-art indoor track, a state-of-the-art natatorium. Since I’ve been here, they’ve built those two buildings. They finished a baseball stadium and a softball stadium. They expanded the football stadium. They added a school of business.”
A momentous spike in enrollment occurred between 2007 and 2016, when the university saw a compounded annual student growth rate of 13.94%.
Today, Liberty is one of the nation’s largest private nonprofit educators, with a total enrollment of more than 111,000, including 15,500 on campus and a huge online student body.
Once a pioneer in online education, Liberty is now a powerhouse in the field.
Heeding the call
Jerry Falwell Jr. took on the presidency of Liberty University after the 2007 death of his father, the university’s founder. The elder Falwell wrote that his son was “more responsible, humanly speaking, for [Liberty’s] miraculous financial survival … than any other person.” Photo by Meridith De Avila Khan“It was just another one of these entrepreneurial things Dad did,” says Falwell Jr., 57, in explaining the growth of online education at Liberty and the development of its business model, which began with videotaped lectures and tests delivered by mail.
“It started in 1976 with nonaccredited courses for adults. In 1985, we started with accredited courses. It didn’t make any money for about 20 years. It was just a way for people who couldn’t move and leave their jobs and mortgages to get a degree,” he says.
“But during that 20 years, between 1985 and 2005, we perfected [online education] and got the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to bless it, as far as being comparable in academic quality to residential instruction.
“In 2005 … everyone started getting high-speed internet in their homes, and we were the only nonprofit school in the country poised to serve that huge adult market of people who didn’t finish college or [who] needed a master’s degree to get a promotion,” Falwell says.
Between 2004 and 2014, Liberty’s online enrollment surged by 740% from around 11,000 online students to more than 95,000, according to a report by the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Falwell’s father left a life insurance policy that paid out $29 million to Liberty University at his death in 2007. The university’s debts were paid, but it had no significant endowment funds.
The younger Falwell made it his mission to raise an endowment that would secure the university’s future and immunize it from making choices that would compromise its Christian principles.
“If online went away tomorrow, we would have enough income from our [$2 billion] endowment to subsidize our resident program for perpetuity,” Falwell says. “And we’re adding to it about $250 million a year right now.”
He adds, “We just had our best year ever,” with a billion dollars in revenue. That’s up from an annual revenue of $860 million five years ago.
Liberty’s total assets grew by $317.5 million in just the last year, and its operating revenue earned last year grew by $92.7 million, while operating expenses grew by only half that rate, according to the Liberty Journal, an official publication of the university.
One driver of that revenue growth, according to Falwell, has been increasing margins — revenues over expenses — in the online program while also keeping an eye on residential program expenses, often trimming programs where demand is diminishing.
The Liberty president says he thought “we’d have more competition” online from other colleges than there is now, “and the reason we don’t is that tenured faculty [at other institutions] don’t think [online teaching is] prestigious enough.”
Liberty does not offer tenure to its faculty members.
Speaking at his office, Falwell, whose pastor father favored dark suits and a red tie, appeared in a checkered button-up shirt, jeans, loafers and a Burberry jacket with an embroidered LU logo. He wears suits, of course, but casual dress is part of his personality.
Falwell, a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, never sought Liberty’s presidency, he says.
“When I took over [in 2007], I was 44. I had been an attorney, and I had been a commercial real estate developer, and I hated public speaking. So, I didn’t want to be [president] … but I had to be.” he says.
Falwell explains that he knew the business side of the college from his long tenure as the university’s general counsel. He also served as a member of the Liberty’s board of trustees before his father’s death.
“My job as general counsel was to … restructure debt, negotiate with creditors, talk them into not foreclosing and finding money to make payroll. You talk about a high-stress job, and I was the only one who he [Jerry Falwell Sr.] would tell how bad things were.”
In his autobiography, Falwell Sr. praised the younger Falwell’s business acumen.
“He is more responsible, humanly speaking, for the miraculous financial survival of this ministry than any other person,” the elder Falwell wrote.
In time, Falwell Jr. says he warmed to the role of president and has poured himself into the job.
“I finally did become comfortable with the public side of it. They say I was so shy before, but now I won’t shut up — that’s what my family says. So, I’m doing what I always thought I would hate,” Falwell says, laughing.
Casting stones
Much like his father, who founded the political organization Moral Majority in 1979, Falwell Jr. is also a lightning rod for controversy.
When Falwell urged students to obtain concealed weapons permits in 2015, it set off a firestorm, but that didn’t slow down Liberty’s move toward making firearms a part of the campus environment.
Liberty’s $3.2 million gun range, which opened in 2018, includes classroom space for courses in firearms safety and best practices for carrying a concealed weapon. Photo by Meridith De Avila Khan
In 2018, in response to what Liberty officials have portrayed as a student interest, an athletic opportunity and a commitment to the Second Amendment, the university opened its $3.2 million Liberty Mountain Gun Club shooting range.
Falwell has also been very public with his support for Republican candidates and political figures, notably recently naming former GOP Rep. Dave Brat as dean of Liberty’s business school.
Last month, the university announced the establishment of its new Falkirk Center for Faith and Liberty, a conservative think tank co-founded by Falwell and Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk, a prominent supporter of President Trump. The organization is “dedicated to renewing and defending God-given freedoms in America and restoring Judeo-Christian-based principles in our national policies, institutions and culture,” according to a university news release.
Ryan Helfenbein was tapped in December as executive director of Liberty’s new Falkirk Center for Faith and Liberty, a conservative think tank co-founded by Falwell. Photo by Meridith De Avila Khan
Falwell’s enthusiastic endorsement of Trump’s 2016 presidential bid drew criticism from a Liberty student group that argued that Trump did not reflect Liberty’s Christian values. Falwell has said his endorsement was personal and not on behalf of the school. Nonetheless, the nonprofit, tax-exempt university later drew criticism for selling Liberty-branded Trump hats and T-shirts featuring Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan when he spoke at the university in 2017.
More commotion was raised this year after Politico Magazine and Reuters issued reports — based on interviews with anonymous critics and leaked emails — questioning whether the university’s resources were being used for the financial benefit of Falwell friends or family members.
For example, the university sold an 18-acre sports facility with a fitness center and tennis courts to Falwell’s personal trainer in 2016. Reuters reported that the university sold the property to the trainer for $1.2 million after Liberty paid the trainer $650,000 in advance to lease back tennis courts over the next nine years. The university financed the transaction’s remaining $576,000 with a 3% interest rate loan to the trainer, who wasn’t required to put any money down, Reuters reported.
The university issued a detailed response to the Reuters story, describing the sale as beneficial to the university. A Liberty trustee had donated the athletic center to the university in 2011 and it had become “a drain on university resources,” Falwell said in the statement. The trainer, who had been leasing space to run his business in the facility’s fitness center since 2013, was “the most viable purchaser,” according to the university.
Falwell explained in the statement that the facility’s reduced price reflected the fact that Liberty retained rights to use the tennis courts, disrupting the ability of the new owner or any successor to fully utilize the facility, thus diminishing its value.
Reuters also reported this year that former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who is serving a three-year federal prison sentence for fraud, lying to Congress and campaign finance violations, was recorded by actor Tom Arnold saying Cohen had helped Falwell prevent the release of personal photos. In a statement from his lawyer, Falwell has denied the existence of any such photos or seeking legal assistance from Cohen, whom he described as a longstanding friend.
In January 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported that Cohen paid a company owned by Liberty’s chief information officer to attempt to rig two online news polls in favor of Trump in 2015.
Falwell and Liberty have issued lengthy rebuttals to the various allegations and news reports. At one point, Falwell accused disgruntled former university employees and board members of “an attempted coup” in making highly critical anonymous comments in the Politico article. He told other media outlets in September that he had contacted the FBI over emails leaked to the press that he said amounted to stolen university property.
Falwell says he “thrives” on controversy.
“If the right people are upset with you, it means you’re doing something right,” he adds.
Yesterday, today and forever
Falwell believes that Liberty’s current residential population — topping out at 15,500 — is the proper size for the university’s Lynchburg campus, and he doesn’t plan for it to grow.
His father had hoped that Liberty would grow to 50,000 students, and might have found it miraculous that online degree-seekers would catapult Liberty’s enrollment over the 100,000 mark.
The elder Falwell also would have undoubtedly been pleased by the endowment his son has built, which Falwell Jr. says will provide a future stream of resources that will ensure Liberty’s stability.
It will, he says, allow the university to move forward “into infinity … with 3%, 4%, 5% returns every year.”
Meanwhile, the money from the school’s online students — average age 37 — continues to pour in, as do students and conservative parents who are attracted to Liberty’s strict moral code governing residential students — no premarital sex, no alcohol, no tobacco, no social dancing.
Rob Jenkins, a professor for Georgia State University and a columnist for the Chronicle of Higher Education, says that 2019 was the eighth straight year that higher education enrollment has declined, and it will fall further, forcing numerous colleges to close.
But he believes that Liberty and other institutions with large endowments and a pipeline of ready students will survive the enrollment decline.
But even though the university’s doing well now, Falwell says, it must be prepared for anything.
“You don’t know what the next president’s policies will be toward religious institutions, you don’t know what the climate is going to be for a student loan program,” he says. “Nobody has a crystal ball.”
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