Optimum Technologies, a Sterling space flight hardware designer and manufacturer, plans to expand its Loudoun County satellite manufacturing plant, a project expected to create 40 jobs, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Monday.
Known as OpTech, the company will invest $999,000 in the expansion, according to the governor’s office. OpTech was founded in Virginia in 2015 and specializes in aerospace products related to satellite, ground and missions systems engineering and includes the U.S. Department of Defense among its customers. The company also holds civil and commercial contracts.
“OpTech continues to expand due to high growth in the space sector,” Timothy Rumford, OpTech’s executive vice president, said in a statement. “We have seen great demand for our hardware and services and have outgrown our original [satellite manufacturing facility] that was opened in 2022. Our new facility will give us approximately five times the capacity and help continue our growth plans and, in turn, help support our nation’s needs for rapid and low-cost access to space.”
OpTech was founded by CEO Jeffrey Gick and Chief Operating Officer John Hildebrand, who both were employed at Orbital Sciences Corp., while Gick worked previously at Hughes Space & Communications, and Hildebrand was at Lockheed Martin and United Space Alliance earlier in his career.
“Optimum Technologies’ decision to expand its manufacturing facility in Loudoun County demonstrates the trust manufacturers have in Virginia,” Youngkin said. “The company is a key component of the Northern Virginia aerospace industry, and we are gratified to see this investment.”
According to the governor’s office, the Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with Loudoun County to secure the project, and the Virginia Jobs Investment Program will support recruitment and training of the new employees at no cost to OpTech.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed a proposed order Thursday to permanently ban Herndon-based Navient, formerly the nation’s largest student loan servicer, from servicing federal student loans and fine the company $120 million.
“These bans would largely remove Navient from a market where it, among other illegal actions, steered numerous student loan borrowers into costly repayment options,” the CFPB said in its settlement announcement. “Navient also illegally deprived student borrowers of opportunities to enroll in more affordable income-driven repayment plans and forced them to pay much more than they should have.”
If approved by the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, where the CFPB filed a lawsuit against Navient in 2017, the company would be permanently prohibited from servicing federal direct loans and directly servicing or acquiring most loans under the Federal Family Education Loan Program. Under the order, Navient would have to pay a $20 million penalty into the CFPB’s victims relief fund and provide $100 million in redress for harmed borrowers.
“For years, Navient’s top executives profited handsomely by exploiting students and taxpayers,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a statement. “By banning the notorious student loan giant from federal student loan servicing and ensuring the winddown of these operations, the CFPB will finally put an end to the years of abuse.”
In 2017, Navient serviced the student loans of more than 12 million borrowers, including more than 6 million under its contract with the U.S. Department of Education, totaling more than $300 billion in federal and private student loans. It was part of Sallie Mae — the nickname for the Student Loan Marketing Association — until 2014, when the student loan giant created by Congress split into two entities: Sallie Mae Bank and Navient. Led by CEO David L. Yowen, who was appointed to his post last year, Navient was listed No. 657 on the 2024 Fortune 1,000 list.
In a statement Thursday, Navient said, “This agreement puts these decade-old issues behind us. While we do not agree with the CFPB’s allegations, this resolution is consistent with our go-forward activities and is an important positive milestone in our transformation of the company.”
Navient, the statement continued, “is no longer a servicer or purchaser of federal student loans. In 2021, with the approval of the Department of Education, Navient transferred its contract to service government student loans to a third party, and earlier this year, Navient reached an agreement to outsource student loan servicing of its legacy FFELP student loan portfolios, which began on July 1, 2024. Navient will oversee its third-party servicing provider to meet all operational terms of the agreement.”
According to the CFPB, its investigation leading to the 2017 lawsuit “kicked off a series of efforts by state and federal agencies to examine forbearance steering and other breakdowns in the income-driven repayment program. Those efforts have resulted in more than $50 billion in debt relief for more than 1 million borrowers who were wrongly steered into forbearance, as well as those who had payments miscounted. Today’s order complements actions already taken by the Department of Education and state attorneys general to provide redress to borrowers harmed by Navient.”
In 2014, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) ordered Navient and Sallie Mae to pay almost $100 million for illegally overcharging nearly 78,000 military members, according to the CFPB, and in 2022, 39 state attorneys general — including in Virginia — announced a $1.85 billion settlement with Navient for “originating predatory student loans in addition to its forbearance steering practices.”
In 2021, Navient’s DOE loan servicing contract ended, and in May, Navient announced it would transfer its remaining 2.7 million private student loans to a third-party company, Mohela, where nearly 900 Navient employees were expected to transfer by July. Nicknamed Mohela, the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority itself has been sued for overcharging student loan borrowers, including in a lawsuit filed in July by the American Federation of Teachers.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Thursday that American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) plans to expand its bioresource center campus in Prince William County, investing $54.7 million and creating an expected 75 jobs. The project will include a new biomanufacturing facility focused on global health.
“ATCC is a world-class resource for scientists performing vital research to solve important health issues,” Youngkin said in a statement. “They are a crucial component to Virginia’s thriving life sciences industry, and I am thrilled to see them invest in Virginia again.”
Founded in 1925, ATCC built its headquarters in Prince William’s Innovation Park in 1998. The nonprofit organization supports the sciences by maintaining the world’s largest and most diverse collection of human and animal cell products, as well as molecular genomic tools, microbe products and biological materials, according to the governor’s announcement.
Among its clients are the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Agriculture and the World Health Organization. The Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with the county to secure the project, and Youngkin approved $800,000 from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund. The Virginia Talent Accelerator Program, created by VEDP, will provide training and recruitment services at no cost to ATCC.
“For almost 100 years, ATCC has played an important role in delivering credible biological materials that advance scientific research and address the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and spread of disease,” said ATCC Chairman and CEO Raymond H. Cypess. “This new state-of-the-art biomanufacturing facility will enable ATCC to expand its resources to meet current and future global health and national security needs, and we are grateful to have received this grant to continue expanding our presence in Virginia as a top-rated life science employer.”
ATCC’s new facility will be dedicated to “the acquisition, manufacture, characterization, authentication, storage and distribution of key reagents,” which will give government agencies more capacity to address “emerging and endemic pathogens” in the event of another pandemic, the organization said in its own announcement.
“Currently, biomanufacturing facilities similar to our new suite are primarily focused on research rather than supply chain logistics and the operational infrastructure needed to launch an immediate response to a potential threat,” Cypess said. “As we continue to play a critical role in the federal government’s pandemic preparedness and readiness, this facility will allow us to scale production of biomaterials quickly and because of its location, distribute them both nationally and globally during a health crisis.”
Norfolk will have a temporary casino open by next November and a permanent resort in 2027 if all goes to plan, as the Pamunkey Indian Tribe and casino giant Boyd Gaming, its new corporate partner, received a fresh start on the long-delayed project from Norfolk City Council on Tuesday.
City Council members and the mayor voted 7-1 Tuesday to approve a development agreement between the city, the Pamunkey Indian Tribe and Boyd Gaming, which replaces Tennessee investor Jon Yarbrough as the King William County tribe’s corporate partner. In paperwork filed with the city, the partners have scrapped the casino’s old name, HeadWaters Resort & Casino, and provided a timeline to start construction of a temporary casino and a permanent structure within a few weeks of each other in early 2025.
Council member Andria McClellan was the sole no-voter Tuesday. She said that the larger casino proposed in 2020 was now smaller, and that some of her concerns, including public safety costs, had not yet been addressed.
The temporary casino is expected to meet the state’s deadline of November 2025, by which time a casino must be built and licensed by the Virginia Lottery under state law. According to paperwork filed with the city, construction of the “transitional casino” would begin in late February 2025 and be complete by mid-October 2025, with an opening date targeted for Nov. 5, 2025. The permanent casino’s construction would start in mid-January 2025 and be complete in August 2027, with its opening taking place the following month.
The budgets for both the temporary and permanent casinos are “still under review,” Boyd Gaming’s general counsel and corporate secretary, Uri Clinton, said in an interview Tuesday before the vote. However, he noted that the focus is on building the permanent casino, as opposed to the construction of the temporary space. “Just to be very direct, the transitional casino is not a big item relative to the overall project,” Clinton said. “So right now, we’re still going through that, but it is very specific to its purpose [of meeting state lottery requirements]. It’s transitional by nature.”
According to a pitchbook provided to Virginia Business by the company, the permanent casino resort will include a 200-room hotel, 13,000 square feet of meeting space, a casino with 1,500 slot machines and 50 table games, eight restaurants and bars, and 4,000 square feet of spa and gym space. The HeadWaters Resort & Casino name is no longer in effect, and Boyd is working now on a new name and brand for the casino.
Under the agreement, Boyd Gaming is now majority owner of Golden Eagle Consulting II, a limited liability company formed by the Pamunkey Indian Tribal Gaming Authority and Yarbrough, which won the city’s approval as operator of the Norfolk casino in 2020. The resort was approved by voters via referendum in November 2020, the first year commercial casinos were allowed to be brought to referendums in Virginia. Originally, the tribe partnered with Yarbrough, a billionaire who founded casino game producer Video Gaming Technologies, which he sold for $1.28 billion in 2014.
Pamunkey Indian Tribe Chief Robert Gray said Tuesday that the end of the tribe’s partnership with Yarbrough was “very amicable. We’re moving in this direction. It’s just a fantastic opportunity.”
The tribe and Yarbrough promised to build the $500 million HeadWaters Resort & Casino on the Elizabeth River, but disputes between the city and the developers over design and proposed two-phase construction delayed the project multiple times — and now developers face a November 2025 state deadline, during which at least a temporary casino must be built and licensed by the Virginia State Lottery for the developers to retain the right to build a casino under the 2020 referendum vote.
Three other casinos approved by voters in Danville, Bristol and Portsmouth in 2020 have already opened, and in November, Petersburg voters will weigh in on their own casino referendum. Richmond voters twice rejected casino referendums, and the state legislature voted to provide Petersburg the opportunity earlier this year.
Clinton said his company has finished other casinos quickly, including a $500 million Sacramento, California, resort completed ahead of schedule and under budget, and an extension of a Louisiana casino that was “a ground-up construction.”
Gray began working toward building a casino in Norfolk even before the state allowed commercial casinos to be built; in 2019, the city approved a land deal that allowed the casino to be built on the waterfront. On Tuesday, he said the tribe spoke with several casino developers earlier in the year before landing on Boyd Gaming, a publicly traded, 49-year-old company that still has Boyd family members in some leadership roles. The tribe and the company began working together about six months ago, Gray said.
“[We’re] very excited, because I believe Boyd is the group that can bring us across the finish line in time and build and create a great opportunity here in the region,” he said. As for the tribe’s members, “they say it’s beneficial to tribal citizens in the way of education, health care, housing and various other needs.”
He said that the tribe decided to partner with Boyd over other companies because they “shared our commitment to the community, shared values, family values, commitment to even the workers,” including hiring local veterans, who are in ample supply in Hampton Roads.
Rendering of Norfolk casino
Based in Las Vegas, Boyd Gaming operates 28 casinos in 10 states, including some with tribal partners, but this is its first venture in Virginia. The company reported $3.75 billion in revenue in 2023.
Boyd estimates that the permanent casino’s construction phase will produce $510 million in local economic impact, as well as 2,850 temporary construction jobs and $173 million in salaries and wages. In the operating phase, the company predicts $2.9 billion in economic impact, $583 million in salaries and wages, and 850 permanent jobs. Under the partnership, the tribe retains no less than 20% equity in the casino project, the same as it did in the partnership with Yarbrough.
The permanent project must cost at least $300 million, a requirement under state law.
Tuesday’s City Council vote gives Golden Eagle Consulting — now including Boyd Gaming — an amended and restated option to purchase an additional acre, in addition to 8.35 acres already planned for the casino and parking facilities, and authorizing the city manager to execute the development agreement and enter into site plan agreements and easements.
“I am excited to recognize this significant milestone in our journey to bring a world-class casino and hotel resort to the Harbor Park Entertainment District,” Norfolk Mayor Kenny Alexander said in a statement. “Boyd Gaming Corp., in partnership with the Pamunkey Indian Tribe, is set to deliver a premier destination that will generate millions of dollars in tax revenues, create numerous jobs and revitalize our waterfront. This project will not only enhance our tourism efforts but also enable us to invest in key priorities that will benefit our community for years to come.”
Keith Smith, Boyd Gaming’s CEO and president, added, “We are pleased to take this important step forward in helping the Pamunkey Indian Tribe realize its vision of a best-in-class gaming resort. The greater Norfolk area is one of the largest underserved gaming markets in the mid-Atlantic region, and represents a compelling opportunity to further expand and diversify our company’s nationwide presence. We appreciate the Norfolk City Council’s support and confidence in our development plans, and we look forward to partnering with the city and the tribe as we continue the process of developing a transformational gaming entertainment experience on the Norfolk waterfront.”
Editor’s note: This story has been corrected since publication.
The University of Virginia’s president and two UVA Health board members defended UVA Health CEO Dr. Craig Kent and U.Va. School of Medicine Dean Dr. Melina R. Kibbe on Monday, after 128 UVA Physicians Group-employed faculty signed a letter demanding their immediate removal late last week.
The letter, which expresses “no confidence” in Kent and Kibbe, was sent Friday to the rector and U.Va.’s board of visitors, which is set to meet for its quarterly meeting in Charlottesville later this week.
The signers, whose names were not made public but were offered for four board of visitors members to view privately, accuse the two U.Va. executives of “foster[ing] a negative environment that is contributing to an ongoing exodus of experience and expertise at all levels that contravenes our mission to provide excellent — and safe — patient care.”
Specifically, the letter outlines “egregious acts” such as hiring doctors “despite concerns regarding integrity and quality,” and “pressuring physicians, nurses and other staff to abstain from using the Be Safe process to report patient safety concerns.” The letter further says that the two executives have used “explicit and implicit threats and retaliation — often relayed to faculty via their chairs and chiefs” against employees who have “raised concerns about patient safety, capacity constraints and moral distress.” Other accusations include “excessive spending” on C-suite executives and “failure to be forthcoming” on audit performance and other financial matters, as well as “subjecting [medical] residents to bullying and harassment” and withholding recommendations for promotion and tenure in the case of faculty members who raise concerns.
In an email sent to approximately 1,400 U.Va. medical school faculty members this weekend, President Jim Ryan wrote, “The letter itself is daunting. There are many accusations. There are few details. Some of these accusations are fairly evident references to specific matters that we have already addressed or are actively working on. Others are new to us, but we will do our best to run them to the ground and get to the bottom of them. Even though it is difficult to investigate generalized and anonymous claims of wrongdoing, without specific details or names to follow up with, we will do our best to investigate.”
Ryan also notes that only four people are allowed to see the signatures — a group that did not include him. The faculty letter says that board of visitors members Rachel Sheridan and Porter Wilkinson, “in their capacity as chair and vice chair of the audit, compliance and risk committee,” and Drs. Stephen Long and David Okonkwo “because they have both worked at academic medical centers and can understand the rank and specialties of those signing,” would be allowed to “view and verify the signatures, should this be requested by the board of visitors.”
The president continues in his letter, which was provided to Virginia Business on Monday, that the university will conduct a “thorough review,” investigating the letter’s allegations, but says that he finds it “difficult to believe that the right answer here is to force yet another change in leadership … [that] will inevitably fail to satisfy 1,400 faculty members and thousands more health system team members.”
Ryan added that he views the faculty letter, which was published Friday by the Cavalier Daily, as an “unfortunate” decision by the signers. “They have besmirched the reputations of not just Melina and Craig. Instead, through some of their allegations, they have unfairly — and I trust unwittingly — cast a shadow over the great work of the entire health system and medical school.” Ryan wrote that his email inbox was “overflowing with testimonials” from other faculty members “who attest that the health system today is in the best shape it has ever been in.”
Kent and Kibbe released a response Monday, which includes: “Our leadership team respects and takes seriously this feedback and we are committed to learning more. We are also deeply grateful for the support and affirmation we have received from so many across UVA Health and the leadership of the University of Virginia.” Their statement also mentions “consistently high ratings” from third-party evaluators, as well as a 30% increase in total scheduled patient appointments and a 6% improvement in the number of new patients who are seen within 14 days.
Thomas A. Scully, a member of U.Va.’s Health System Board and a U.Va. alum, said in an interview Monday that he views the faculty no-confidence letter as a backlash fueled by a new merit pay system going into effect soon.
“I am 100% convinced that there’s a 99% correlation between 128 anonymous people and where they are in the pay scale, because [U.Va. is] just about to undertake this pay reform,” said Scully, a general partner in New York-based law firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe’s health care group who served as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President George W. Bush and is also a past president and CEO of the Federation of American Hospitals. “I think the reaction here is 100% people who are very likely to be on the lower performing end of the [pay] scale, who are going crazy before this happens.”
Kent has “done a lot of good stuff” since joining U.Va. in 2020, Scully says, including reaching agreements with other health systems so U.Va. can expand its medical care to other parts of the state. Kent also played a significant role in establishing the $350 million Paul and Diane Manning Institute of Biotechnology, which broke ground in late 2023.
Late last year, Kent’s contract was renewed through 2030.
Kibbe, meanwhile, was hired in 2021 as the medical school’s dean and chief health affairs officer for UVA Health.
According to Scully, Kibbe instituted a pay system revamp. “When she got the job a couple years ago, she said, ‘We have a pay problem here. We have people spread all over the place, and there’s no connection between what the physicians are getting paid and what their performance is and what the patient quality is and what the patient happiness is.'”
The payment reform process took a couple of years, said Scully, adding that he thinks it was bound to stir up controversy. “As soon as they did it, I thought, ‘Holy cow, you’re sticking your head in a bees’ nest.'”
Crutchfield Corp. founder and chairman Bill Crutchfield, another member of the Health System Board and also a U.Va. graduate, wrote a letter to the editor Monday defending Kibbe and Kent, writing that the 128 signers represent “less than 1/10 of 1%” of the health system’s 18,000 employees. Crutchfield cited high safety rankings by Vizient and other third-party auditors of UVA Health’s four hospitals. He concluded, “These anonymous writers are doing harm to UVA Health and, in turn, to our patients. If a small cabal of people hiding behind anonymity can force outstanding leaders out of U.Va., it will make it extremely difficult to recruit outstanding new physicians, nurses, technicians, and administrators.”
Scully said that he hopes the Health System Board will “come out with a strong statement supporting the current leadership and saying we have total confidence. … I’m sure we’ll talk about it. And I’ve talked to a number of people on the board so far, and I think my view is widely shared.”
Henrico County’s LL Flooring, which declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month, has signed an agreement to sell 219 stores and other assets to F9 Investments, the company announced Sept. 6. LL Flooring plans to close 211 other stores nationwide, up from 94 stores previously announced.
With this agreement, F9 Brands owner Tom Sullivan, the founder and former CEO of Lumber Liquidators and founder of Cabinets to Go, will likely assume ownership of the 219 LL Flooring stores, the company’s name and other assets by the end of the month, following approval by the Delaware Bankruptcy Court.
Earlier on Friday, Sept. 6, LL Flooring announced that it had not found a purchaser and planned to close all of its stores over the next three months, but later in the day, the deal with F9 emerged, meaning that about half of the flooring retailer’s 400-some stores will remain open under new ownership.
Under the deal, F9 Investments, part of the Cabinets to Go parent company F9 Group, will acquire 219 stores, LL Flooring’s intellectual property, and inventory sitting in the 219 stores and at the company’s Sandston distribution center, which was sold to a limited liability corporation connected to QTS Data Centers earlier this week for $104.75 million.
In its August bankruptcy filing, LL Flooring said it planned to close 94 stores, but that number rose to 211 in subsequent court filings. The 219 stores to be purchased by F9 “are open and continuing to serve customers with few changes to store operations and policies.” According to a court document filed by F9 attorneys this week, its purchase proposal “provides a certain recovery for stakeholders, and ensures continued employment for approximately 750 to 1,000 of the debtors’ employees.”
In June 2023, Tennessee-based F9 attempted to purchase LL Flooring, formerly Lumber Liquidators, but the company’s board rejected the offer, sparking a proxy war.
Although financial details were not provided in the sale announcement, in a document filed Sept. 3 in Delaware Bankruptcy Court, attorneys representing F9 said that it had offered LL Flooring $44.5 million in cash at closing and at least $22 million in assumed liabilities in a $66.5 million bid this summer. In a second document filed this week in the LL Flooring bankruptcy case, F9 said it had paid a deposit of $4.1 million toward the total purchase.
According to LL Flooring’s announcement, the acquisition is set to close by the end of September, pending approval by the federal bankruptcy judge.
LL Flooring filed for bankruptcy in August and announced it was pursuing a sale of its business, and that it had separately received a nonbinding letter of intent to sell its eastern Henrico distribution center. That sale was approved by the court, and an entity connected to QTS Data Centers has agreed to buy the 995,792-square-foot distribution center on 97.55 acres in the White Oak Technology Park for $104.75 million. QTS owns much of the technology park property, as well as all 622 acres of White Oak Technology Park II.
LL Flooring’s sales fell in fiscal 2023 to $904.7 million, down from $1.11 billion in fiscal 2022, when it opened 17 stores.
In May 2023, Sullivan purchased 9.4% of LL Flooring stock in preparation for a bid to merge LL Flooring’s stores with Cabinets to Go. According to a court document filed by F9 this week, LL Flooring owes about $7 million to F9, which owns many of the LL Flooring store locations and leases them to the company. On July 10, Sullivan, F9 Brands President and CEO Jason Delves and Jill Witter, a Texas-based legal consultant for F9 Investments, were elected to LL Flooring’s board, in an attempt to “hold the board accountable for the company’s abysmal stock price performance on an absolute and relative basis, an ineffective operational strategy, tremendous waste of capital and flawed strategic review process, among many other failures,” according to a May 31 announcement by F9, which owned 8.85% of LL Flooring’s common stock at the time.
Sullivan founded Lumber Liquidators in 1994 and left in 2016. In 2019, the company paid $33 million to settle allegations of securities fraud to the U.S. Department of Justice for “filing a materially false and misleading statement to investors regarding the sale of its laminate flooring from China to its customers in the United States,” according to a Department of Justice statement. The total fine included a $6 million payment to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in a separate settlement. The settlement goes back to activities that took place in 2014 and 2015.
According to the DOJ, the CBS news program “60 Minutes” conducted an investigation starting in 2014 to test laminate products sold by Lumber Liquidators, which were shown to violate California Air Resources Board regulations and failed tests for maximum formaldehyde emissions, even after California authorities notified the company of the issue in 2013 and 2014. In a March 2015 episode of “60 Minutes,” Lumber Liquidators issued a “false and misleading statement to investors” that denied the allegations and affirmed that the company had complied with CARB regulations, the DOJ statement concluded.
Sullivan and other executives left the company in the months after the airing of the CBS report, and in 2020, Charles E. Tyson became the company’s president and CEO, after which Lumber Liquidators renamed itself LL Flooring in 2022.
In July, news broke that LL Flooring was considering filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and shareholders elected the three F9 nominees to the company’s board. However, in the August SEC filing, LL Flooring revealed that the three F9 board members resigned shortly after the decision to enter Chapter 11 proceedings. According to F9’s court document, “these three persons did not engage in and recused themselves from discussions of the LL board” on F9’s bid to purchase LL Flooring’s assets.
Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears filed paperwork Wednesday with the Virginia Department of Elections to run for governor in 2025, in which she will seek the Republican nomination.
Although she has not yet announced her decision to run, Earle-Sears posted on X that she is holding a “special event” Thursday evening at Chick’s Oyster Bar in Virginia Beach at which she’ll presumably declare her candidacy. In August, she said in Albemarle County at a Republican event that she was “exploring” a gubernatorial run and that she would not be running a second time for lieutenant governor.
Earle-Sears is the first Republican candidate to enter the 2025 Virginia gubernatorial race, joining U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, who declared her candidacy for the Democratic nomination last November. If either woman is elected, she will make history as the commonwealth’s first female governor. Born in Jamaica, Earle-Sears would also be the first immigrant to hold the top statewide office. She is currently Virginia’s first female lieutenant governor, as well as the first Black woman and immigrant to hold statewide office in Virginia.
The lieutenant governor, whose most public duty is serving as president of the Virginia State Senate when it is in session and casting tiebreaker votes, emerged from a crowded field of GOP candidates for lieutenant governor in 2021 — drawing notice and criticism for a group of ads that showed her holding a military-style rifle. She also has distinguished herself from other Republicans by criticizing former President Donald Trump, after previously campaigning for him. In a memoir she released in 2023, Earle-Sears wrote that she didn’t believe he should seek a second term.
A Marine Corps veteran, Earle-Sears served a single term in the House of Delegates two decades ago, representing part of Norfolk, and ran unsuccessfully against U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott for Congress in 2004. She moved to Winchester and opened a plumbing and electrical business, and was named to the state Board of Education by then-Gov. Bob McDonnell in 2011. Earle-Sears ran as a write-in candidate for U.S. Senate in 2018 after the GOP nominated Corey Stewart, whom she called “not a true Republican,” and cited his past alliances with white supremacists, including the organizer of the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Jason Kessler.
According to Earle-Sears’ statement of organization for her “Winsome for Governor” candidate committee, John Selph of Henrico County-based Forest Consulting Services, an attorney and former controller for the Republican Party of Virginia, is treasurer.
Attorney General Jason Miyares has also been frequently mentioned as a possible contender for the Republican nomination for governor; in July, he told the National Review, “I will be happy to comment about and discuss my political future at the appropriate time.” Gov. Glenn Youngkin is prohibited by state law to run for a second consecutive term as governor.
With confetti flying and a DJ playing walk-up music for Richmond’s mayor and other luminaries, the Richmond Flying Squirrels announced Wednesday that Fortune 500 company CarMax will be naming sponsor for the Squirrels’ new ballpark starting with the 2026 season. The replacement for the Richmond Diamond will be known as CarMax Park, officials with the Double-A Minor League Baseball team revealed.
Although Squirrels President and Managing Partner Lou DiBella said that the deal with CarMax had been signed several months ago, few other details were revealed about the transaction, including the amount CarMax agreed to pay and how long the sponsorship will last.
“We haven’t disclosed the financial conditions for the contract, but what I will tell you is, we’re super thrilled to be able to ensure that the Squirrels are going to be here for a very long time,” CarMax President and CEO Bill Nash said following Wednesday’s news conference held at the Bon Secours Training Center, the former training location for the Washington Commanders. Nash also declined to say how long the naming rights will continue, but added, “We’re involved with them for a very long time in the future.”
In August, the Richmond Economic Development Authority’s board approved a 30-year lease and stadium development agreement between the EDA and the Flying Squirrels, in which the Squirrels will pay $3.2 million in annual rent for the next 10 years, with the rates decreasing after that point.
The mood Wednesday was celebratory, with former Squirrels CEO and current senior adviser Todd “Parney” Parnell serving as emcee and a crowd of fans, officials and others receiving hand towels printed with “CarMax Park.” Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, who shepherded the $2.4 billion Diamond District redevelopment project centered around the new baseball stadium, called the corporate sponsorship a “big freakin’ deal.”
The multiuse Diamond District project is planned to include 2,800 residential units, 935,000 square feet of office space and 195,000 square feet of retail and community space. A team known as Diamond District Partners is developing the project; it includes Richmond-based Thalhimer Realty Partners, Chicago-based Loop Capital, Pennrose, Capstone Development and multiple Virginia-based partners.
During the event, Parnell revealed new renderings of CarMax Park, which is expected to be finished by spring 2026; a ceremonial groundbreaking will take place Friday.
DiBella said that there will be several outdoor areas around the field in CarMax Park, with capacity for about 2,000 people standing, and 8,000 fixed seats. The venue also will host concerts and comedians when baseball games aren’t scheduled, and it will have indoor areas that can be used for community events, DiBella said, calling the park “a great social center for the community” that will have programming year-round, instead of just during baseball season.
But the park’s prospects weren’t always so sunny, as DiBella had sounded a warning bell in 2023 that he wasn’t sure that the new stadium — built to meet Major League Baseball’s requirements for all Minor League facilities — would be finished in time for the spring 2025 deadline, and could mean the departure of the team from Richmond.
Ultimately, the city received a one-year extension from MLB to finish the new stadium by 2026, which is expected to cost approximately $110 million and will be funded with $170 million in general obligation bonds issued by the city.
Speaking at the news conference, DiBella acknowledged the long wait for a new stadium, which dates back to 2010, the Squirrels’ debut season in Richmond, when city officials first promised to build a ballpark to replace the nearly 40-year-old Diamond that previously was home to the Richmond Braves Triple-A team.
Although CarMax’s involvement will not influence the funding structure for the stadium, its investment will be considered part of the team’s revenue stream, which is important, as the Squirrels’ rent has risen every year since the team has played in Richmond and is among the highest rents for any Minor League team, DiBella said.
Richmond Flying Squirrels senior adviser Todd “Parney” Parnell embraces team president and managing partner Lou DiBella as Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney looks on at a Sept. 4, 2024, news conference announcing the team’s new stadium naming sponsor, CarMax. Photo by Kate Andrews
On stage Wednesday, DiBella called the groundbreaking and pending start of construction “a miracle. … Fifteen years and something like $3 million in legal fees and multimillion dollars in consultancy fees, and I can’t tell you how many hours of work that got thrown away … during different [city] administrations. Frankly, an awful lot of meetings where you didn’t feel like there was honestly a commitment. I gotta say this, you gotta give credit to the people that got it done, and the people that got it done were this city council, this administration and the community leaders that are now our friends.”
In particular, DiBella cited Stoney and Richmond Chief Administrative Officer Lincoln Saunders for their roles in moving the stadium process forward, noting that “you guys got ‘MFed’ enough by me. Lincoln and I, it was so tense with us for so long,” DiBella said, “but I never doubted [Saunders’] commitment to this day. The biggest winners today are the citizens of Richmond.”
Stoney, a two-term mayor who is running for the Democratic nomination for Virginia lieutenant governor, noted that “15 years ago, the city made a promise to the Flying Squirrels, and fast-forward to 2024, we are keeping our promise, and with the 30-year lease, with the CarMax partnership, I am proud to say that the Squirrels are here to stay.”
The event was a bright spot for Stoney and Saunders, a friend of the mayor appointed as the city’s CAO in 2020, who have come under fire lately after reports in the Richmond Times-Dispatch revealed alleged misuse of procurement credit cards by some city officials, including former spokesperson Petula Burks, and a lack of transparency and timeliness in answering Freedom of Information Act requests for city documents.
There are still a few bumps in the road on the way to seeing the Diamond District become reality, including a $40 million lawsuit among current and former partners in the joint development team building the Diamond District, but DiBella said that he doesn’t expect the lawsuit to cause a delay in building the stadium, the construction of which the Squirrels team is overseeing. “It better not,” he said, laughing. “But no, I don’t believe it [will].”
Peter Woodfork, Major League Baseball’s senior vice president of minor league operations and development, said that beyond providing a new stadium with amenities for fans, the replacement of the Diamond is also an upgrade for players and others who work for the team. “This is an extremely important step for all of us … to have a facility that young men and women who work in baseball operations that allows them to do their job, anything from clubhouses to female facilities to batting cages,” he said.
Although Woodfork emphasized that “every expectation” is that the new ballpark will be open for 2026’s baseball season, “if something negative happened, we’d have to regroup on our side.”
Stu Shea, Peraton’s chairman, president and CEO, has stepped down, and Steve Schorer has been named to succeed him at the Reston-based federal contractor owned by Veritas Capital. According to Tuesday’s announcement, Schorer will start Sept. 9.
“On behalf of Peraton and Veritas, I’d like to thank Stu for his many years of service and leadership at the company and wish him well in his future endeavors,” said Ramzi Musallam, CEO and managing partner of Veritas Capital, Peraton’s parent company. Schorer was previously CEO of Alion Science and Technology, which Huntington Ingalls Industries purchased for $1.65 billion from Veritas in 2021, and he was president of DynCorp International previously.
Schorer also worked in high-level positions at L-3 Communications and DRS Technologies. Shea has been Peraton’s only chief executive since it was formed by Veritas Capital in 2017. In 2021, Peraton purchased Chantilly-based IT contractor Perspecta Inc. and Northrop Grumman’s federal IT and mission support services businesses in 2021 for a total of $10.5 billion. In 2023, Peraton moved its headquarters, which serves as a hub for 5,000 of the company’s 19,000 employees, from Herndon to Reston.
“We are excited to welcome Steve as CEO of Peraton,” Musallam said in a statement. “His extensive industry expertise and experience leading some of the world’s premier government technology services organizations make him the ideal person to drive Peraton’s next important phase of growth. We look forward to working closely alongside him as Peraton continues to deliver on its mission to solve the U.S. government’s most complex technology and information challenges.”
At the start of his career, Shea created some of the earliest computer mapping systems for the CIA, the Air Force and the National Security Agency, and he is a founder of the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation.
The Virginia Credit Union League has signed a letter of intent to consolidate with the League of Southeastern Credit Unions & Affiliates, the trade organization representing credit unions in Alabama, Florida and Georgia.
Virginia credit unions will decide this fall whether to merge VACUL’s associations, foundations and service corporations with those of the LSCU, with results set to be announced in November, according to VACUL’s announcement Tuesday. If successful, the merger will create an organization representing 386 credit unions and 31.5 million members that would be led by LSCU President Samantha A.M. Beeler, and the combined service corporation would be led by Steve Willis, president of Leverage, which encompasses 12 companies and more than 30 partnerships in the credit union industry. Beeler and Willis were named in April as dual executive leaders of LSCU, which represents nearly 300 credit union members with almost $200 billion in assets and 12.4 million members.
VACUL, a state trade association, represents 98 credit unions in Virginia. The league offers training and operation resources for members and also lobbies the state legislature and other governmental bodies on behalf of the industry.
“With advocacy being at the core of our focus as an association and board, we believe this move to be in the best interest of credit unions as it will undoubtedly increase our advocacy impact and influence,” Jeff Bentley, VACUL board chair and president and CEO of Northwest Federal Credit Union, said in a statement. “We look forward to continuing our due diligence to identify a path forward that will be beneficial to all Virginia credit unions.”
According to Credit Union Times, this is the first proposed merger of state leagues since 2022.
In February, Carrie Hunt left VACUL as its president and CEO, and Chief Operating Officer Karima Freeman stepped in on an interim basis.
NextMark Credit Union President and CEO Joe Thomas, who chairs the VACUL Transition Committee, added, “While we seek member feedback during this discovery phase, we remain committed to advancing our collective industry and serving our members with greater impact. We believe the Virginia Credit Union League and the League of Southeastern Credit Unions share the same vision for success for credit unions.”
This announcement comes after the Virginia Bankers Association and the Maryland Bankers Association merged in July, creating the Mid-Atlantic Bankers Association holding company headquartered in Glen Allen.
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