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byline: JW Caterine

Innovation center could be boost for life sciences

Kipton Currier envisions Virginia joining other mid-Atlantic states to form a super region for the life sciences industry.

Before that happens, the state must secure some key ingredients missing from the ecosystem, namely sufficient lab space for biotech startups. Activation Capital, the brand name of the Virginia Biotechnology Research Partnership Authority — which promotes the growth of life sciences and advanced technology in the Richmond region — is helping to meet that need through the addition of a $53 million innovation center at the 34-acre VA Bio+Tech Park it manages adjacent to Virginia Commonwealth University in downtown Richmond.

“There are companies in the region that are at a very early stage that need space,” says Currier, Activation Capital’s vice president of operations. “What they’re really seeking is community. We will be able to provide [that] community in the new innovation space.”

Three decades in the making, the 107,000-square-foot innovation center, announced in early June, will feature incubator and lab space for startups doing biotech research in fields such as drug discovery, surgical instrumentation and respiratory drug delivery. Plans for the rest of the building include a community café and a 44,500-square-foot space for an anchor tenant, though Currier says the building’s overall size could still change.

“We would love to go higher than four stories for the right anchor tenant,” Currier says.

In a September webinar, Activation Capital President and CEO Chandra Briggman said the anchor tenant, which the organization is actively seeking, could be a life sciences company, advanced pharmaceutical manufacturer or a state entity.

Funded through a $15.75 million federal Build Back Better Regional Challenge award, $10 million in state appropriations, and other sources, the project is set to break ground between April and September 2024 and is scheduled to be completed by 2025.

Jennifer Wakefield, president and CEO of the Greater Richmond Partnership, says the center’s lab and incubator space will fill a gap in the regional life sciences pipeline that starts with intellectual property developed at VCU and ends with pharmaceutical manufacturing in places like Petersburg and Chesterfield County.

“We want it all,” Wakefield says. “I don’t think that executives in the life sciences industry were necessarily taking note of what was happening in the Richmond, Virginia, market, and now they’re starting to sit up and perk up a little bit about what is happening, and [asking], ‘Why was Richmond not on my radar?’”   

Amazon plans Spotsylvania data centers

A game changer. That’s how Spotsylvania Board of Supervisors Chair David Ross describes the annual tax revenue the county could see from data centers, including a slate of proposed Amazon.com facilities that could generate $120 million per year.

“You could get rid of personal property tax on cars,” Ross says. “You could put more money towards the schools; you could relieve some of the tax burden on the citizens.”

In July, the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors voted to amend the county’s comprehensive plan to make data centers a targeted industry and allow them to be developed in almost every land use category, provided the centers meet parameters such as being near existing transmission lines and within 1 mile of the county’s designated “primary development boundary,” a 72.9-square-mile area stretching south and west of Fredericksburg. 

“We are seeing major data center companies wanting to move to our area,” Ross says. “If they are coming, we want to get prepared.”

Data centers have always been permitted in the county, but none have materialized so far, says Spotsylvania Director of Community Engagement Michelle McGinnis. 

Other Northern Virginia counties have courted data centers for decades. Data centers are projected to generate $570 million in local property taxes next year in Loudoun County, home to Data Center Alley, the world’s largest concentration of data centers. However, data centers also are subject to criticisms for being loud, unsightly and large consumers of electricity. Prince William Board Chair Ann Wheeler lost her primary bid in June over backlash to the controversial proposed Digital Gateway campus, which she supported.

Between 2011 and 2021, Amazon invested $52 billion building data centers in Virginia, and the e-commerce giant plans to spend $35 billion more on data centers in the commonwealth by 2040. 

Since Spotsylvania passed its amendments, Amazon subsidiary Amazon Web Services has filed four rezoning requests, three of which would include data centers within the county, McGinnis says. The fourth would provide infrastructure for a data center campus in neighboring Caroline County. Charlie Payne, an attorney representing Amazon, says the projects, all east of Interstate 95, would total 6.7 million square feet of data center development and could generate $107.2 million to $120.6 million annually in local tax revenue.

Spotsylvania is “not as dense as Northern Virginia,” Payne says. “We have the infrastructure that data centers are looking for, both public utilities and also electric infrastructure.” 

Winchester shopping center sale could revitalize area

During his time on Winchester City Council, Jeff Buettner recalls, plans to revitalize Ward Plaza shopping center were a frequent topic of conversation at every council retreat, going back as far as 1998. Now, as interim executive director of the Winchester Economic Development Authority, he believes that vision is coming close to fruition.

“It is a project that is near and dear to my heart,” Buettner says. “It’s just been floating out there for so long, and this is as close to having something happen as I’ve seen in my time involved with city government.”

The 19.6-acre property, originally opened as a shopping center in the 1960s, finally sold on June 1 after decades on the market. H. Paige Manuel, who represented the former owners, Walter Enterprises, in the sale, says the buyer, McLean investor John W. Gray Jr., intends to demolish the existing structures in November, with plans to replace Ward Plaza with a mixed-use development, including residential units and a smaller shopping center that the new owners — Winchester Acquisition Partners, the company name Gray purchased the shopping center under — hope will be anchored by a supermarket. Manuel says the area is currently a food desert, an area with limited options to purchase healthy, affordable food.

“If we get your typical footprint of a 40,000-square-foot supermarket, you’re probably looking at a 50,000- to 60,000-square-foot shopping center,” Manuel says.

Gray declined to comment on his plans before October, but Buettner says that Gray is finalizing details on potential tenants at the new shopping center.

Winchester City Manager Dan Hoffman, who was also involved in talks regarding the property, said in a statement that Ward Plaza has been a priority for many years in the city’s comprehensive plan, named as one of five “catalyst” sites which are intended to bring walkability, mixed-use development and improved street connections to the area.

“This project will bring vital housing and retail opportunities to the Winchester community and spur economic development in the heart of Winchester’s commercial district,” Hoffman said in the statement.

Buettner knows that even with the sale of the property, the developer will still have to apply for rezoning and present a site plan before the city can approve it and redevelopment can begin: “It’s up to the developer to take it across the finish line, but we have confidence based on everything we’ve seen.”

MBU program makes college more affordable

Entering her senior year at Waynesboro High School last fall, Emma Clark did not know whether higher education was in her future. The youngest of eight children, she was mindful that her father’s mechanic business had to provide for all her siblings. “I don’t have the access to money like other people would,” she says.

That all changed when Clark’s college adviser told her about Mary Baldwin University’s new Access MBU program, which cuts tuition costs for eligible incoming freshmen starting this fall. With the extra assistance from Access MBU, Clark will be leaving her family’s 10-acre farm in Waynesboro, Virginia, to pursue a major in social work at the private liberal arts university in Staunton. “I love working with kids,” she says.

Funded through alumni and corporate donations, Access MBU covers the remainder of tuition costs after Pell and Virginia Tuition Assistance grants are applied.

“Mary Baldwin has traditionally been an institution that’s focused on serving our low-income population and underserved students,” Matt Munsey, MBU’s vice president of enrollment management says. “[This program] was another way to make it very clear to those students that we’re out there for them as a choice and as an option.”

To be eligible, students must come from Virginia families making less than $60,000 in adjusted gross annual income. On average, students will receive about $3,500 through Access MBU for the 2023-2024 school year. Of the roughly 350 new students arriving in the fall, Munsey expects 130 will qualify.

MBU staff declined to specify the total amount allocated for the program, but Associate Vice President for University Communication and Editorial Direction Liesel Crosier says MBU will continue the program as long as it can.

Lawayne Ames, another incoming MBU freshman, also found out about Access MBU through an adviser last fall. He’s coming from Northampton High School in Eastville on the Eastern Shore and is looking forward to a change in scenery. “Where I live, there’s not really much to look at. [MBU] is up in the mountains, so it’s better,” says Ames, who hails from the rural community of Birdsnest.

Planning on studying pre-medicine, Ames is also enrolled in MBU’s PERSIST program, designed to connect incoming African American male students with mentoring and networking opportunities.  “It’s empowering Black men to graduate and succeed,” he says.  

Parking repeal gives developers space

Opening a small business is never easy, but for many Richmond entrepreneurs, the city’s previous minimum parking requirements added extra hassle.

Two years ago, when restaurant Africanne on Main relocated from its longtime downtown location to a spot near Virginia Commonwealth University’s Monroe Park Campus, city parking regulations stalled the move for weeks, recalls co-owner and chef Ida MaMusu. She had to scramble to find two additional parking spaces to rent to meet the city’s then-minimum requirement of five spaces for her business.

“Now things [are] slow, prices [are] going up in food, and we still got this huge parking bill,” MaMusu says.

Stories like this from local businesses are part of the reason City Council repealed the requirements on April 24.

The parking minimums had mostly restricted small businesses and developers, rather than larger operations with bank financing that typically require a certain amount of parking regardless of local regulations, says Richmond Association of Realtors Vice President of Government Affairs Joh Gehlbach. “Our hope is that this will add units to the market because we are in a housing crisis right now,” Gehlbach says.

Councilman Andreas Addison, who introduced the repeal, says the former requirements represented an outdated, car-centric mindset that complicated the city’s goals to develop a more walkable and accessible urban landscape.

“When you put parking as a requirement in a spot located for a development, that doesn’t mean it’s the best place for parking to be in general for public use,” Addison says.

Given that half of Richmond’s buildings were constructed before 1947 (city parking requirements were first instituted in 1943), the repeal impacts a wide range of properties, says Kevin Vonck, director of the city’s Department of Planning and Development Review. He hopes it will give developers options to share existing parking spaces and opportunities to repurpose unused lots. 

Brian Revere, president of Breeden Construction LLC, says that the flexibility the repeal will grant developers is a net positive, but it still won’t remove the need for parking altogether.

“Most of us still see this market as requiring some level of regular commuting outside of the city limits,” Revere says, “and the public transportation infrastructure is not here to support not having a vehicle.”  

Bristol makes tourism marketing switch

After 38 years, Bristol, Virginia, has switched destination marketing organizations.

On June 13, City Council passed a resolution designating Bristol Regional Tourism Marketing Corp., better known as Explore Bristol, as its new DMO, the agency responsible for promoting the area to tourists. The former DMO, Discover Bristol, operated by the Bristol Chamber of Commerce, will lose $35,000 in annual state grants from Virginia Tourism Corp. due to the change.

Mayor Neal Osborne says that Explore Bristol, which has served as the DMO for neighboring Bristol, Tennessee, since 2021, is “fighting above its weight class,” already surpassing Discover Bristol in key social media metrics, such as Facebook likes. “To be producing those kinds of results over that short of a time frame … that’s impressive,” Osborne says.

Tourism is a linchpin for the Bristol region, which is known for its NASCAR speedway, the Rhythm & Roots music festival, a new Hard Rock casino and the Virginia city’s history as the birthplace of country music. It’s not uncommon to see visitors snapping photos of themselves in the middle of Bristol’s famous State Street, straddling the Virginia-Tennessee state border dividing the twin Bristols.

Explore Bristol Executive Director Matt Bolas says his group’s strategies have led to record lodging tax collections in Bristol, Tennessee, and he’s “hoping we can also have those successes … in the future for Bristol, Virginia.”

Despite its tourism draws, Bristol, Virginia, is strapped for cash, says Osborne, due to ongoing maintenance of a local landfill following a May 2022 lawsuit by Bristol, Tennessee, regarding the landfill’s environmental impact. In its budget last year, Bristol, Virginia, appropriated more than $7.7 million to its solid waste disposal enterprise fund, and the expense climbed to over $37.2 million for the city’s 2023-2024 budget.

Explore Bristol presented a more affordable option for the city, which will pay $100,000 for a voting seat on Explore Bristol’s board, compared with the $200,000 that Discover Bristol was requesting for the coming fiscal year.

Beth Rhinehart, the chamber’s president and CEO, says Discover Bristol will continue to support area tourism, leveraging partnerships it has developed over the past few decades.

“Because of the dire financial, economic situation for Bristol, Virginia,” she says, “regardless of the results, it’s easy to make a decision … to go with the cheaper alternative.

Virginia accelerators vie for SBA award

During a virtual meeting of Virginia energy stakeholders in late June, Dominion Energy Innovation Center Executive Director Adam Sledd posed a question: How can Virginia become a leader in climate technology innovation?

That’s the kind of ambitious vision that Sledd hopes will carry DEIC to victory in the second and final stage of the U.S. Small Business Administration’s 2023 Growth Accelerator Fund Competition, which is aimed at building strategic partnerships in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, particularly in underserved communities.

In June, DEIC — an Ashland-based entrepreneurship support organization for energy-related startups — and the Virginia Small Business Development Center’s International Business Development program at George Mason University — an initiative helping startups and small businesses reach international markets — were among 40 accelerators nationwide to make it past the SBA competition’s first stage, which came with a $50,000 prize. This summer, both organizations are in the running for awards of up to $150,000 in the second stage. Winners are expected to be announced by Oct. 1.

“We won that first phase because we have a great group of partners,” Sledd says, “and we have this clear goal about how we want to support entrepreneurs decarbonizing the economy.”

A nonprofit spinoff of Activation Capital, DEIC’s partners also include Dominion Energy Inc., Virginia Bio, Hanover County and Ashland. DEIC previously won the stage one award in the 2021 competition. This time, Program Director Braden Croy says, DEIC is focusing its proposal on a spring 2024 statewide summit on entrepreneurship in the energy industry.

At George Mason, Virginia SBDC’s IBD program is centering its competition proposal around efforts to help STEM-related small businesses expand into international markets.

“We’re looking to work with more companies and underserved communities, particularly Black-owned businesses, with this funding,” says Aaron Miller, Virginia SBDC’s director of international business development. “We want to create a model and approach that we can share with other SBDCs around the country.”

While Virginia ranks 13th among states for GDP, it’s ranked 24th for exports of trade goods. The IBD program aims to boost Virginia exports by teaching startups how to navigate international markets, Miller says.

“We bring that technical assistance directly to them, whether it’s developing an international business plan [or] making sure that they’re focused on the right markets,” Miller says. “It all comes down to resource allocation for a small business, making sure that you’re investing in international expansion [at] the right time.”