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byline: Kate Andrews

Richmond casino plan goes to polls

Early voting is underway across Virginia, and in Richmond, residents will also decide by Nov. 2 whether Silver Spring, Maryland-based Urban One Inc. can establish its proposed $565 million ONE Casino + Resort in the city.

Urban One CEO Alfred Liggins has high hopes for what could be the nation’s only majority Black-owned casino and resort.

“South Richmond has been waiting for an economic development opportunity of their own,” he says. “Other sections of Richmond have seen tremendous growth in recent years, but that growth has not, to date, included South Richmond. ONE is going to be a catalyst for new jobs, critically needed tax revenue, and additional economic development and opportunities in this part of the city.”

Leonard Sledge, director of the city’s economic development department, notes that the city expects the casino to generate 1,300 direct jobs. It will also make a $25.5 million upfront payment to the city government if the casino referendum passes next month.

“We believe it’s a great opportunity for the city,” Sledge says. Beyond casino jobs, the Maryland media conglomerate plans to build a 15,000-square-foot soundstage adjacent to the resort for film, TV and radio production, with a promise to spend $50 million on productions there. The casino also plans to partner with Virginia Union University and Reynolds Community College for workforce training, Liggins adds.

Brian Anderson, president and CEO of ChamberRVA, says he supports the resort because it would produce well-paid jobs and include space for 15 local bars and restaurants. “This is going to be not chain-driven, not corporate-driven, but local restaurant-driven,” he says. “My gut says that it has a good chance to pass.”

No public polling has been done to gauge support for the casino, although the process has seen some opposition, particularly at earlier stages.

Quinton Robbins, political director for the progressive Richmond For All organization, which opposes the project, lives about two miles from the site and has canvassed area voters. There is “not necessarily a plurality of support,” and there’s also “a lot of anxiety” among voters over the project, he says. “This is another sort of bad deal the city has whipped up.”

Robbins notes that Liggins was quoted in The Washington Post in August as saying that nobody — Liggins included — wants a casino in their backyard. “I think people only want this deal if it’s going to benefit working Richmonders,” Robbins says.  

This article has been corrected.

Peraton awarded $109M cyberspace contract

Herndon-based federal Peraton Inc. announced this week it has been awarded a contract worth up to $109 million by the U.S. Cyber Command, a project that will deliver full-spectrum cyberspace operations for the Department of Defense.

The indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity Cyberspace Operations Support Services task order could last four years, the company said in a news release Tuesday. Peraton, which employs about 22,000 people in more than 90 locations, would support the command’s directorate of operations, the Cyber National Mission Force and Joint Task Force ARES, strengthening the DoD’s information network. The company has worked with the command since 2016.

“Peraton is proud to continue our work partnering with the DoD to improve the nation’s ability to withstand and respond to cyberattacks,” Tom Afferton, president of Peraton’s cyber mission sector, said in a statement.

Earlier in the year, Peraton acquired Chantilly-based federal IT contractor Perspecta Inc. for $7.1 billion and Northrop Grumman Corp.’s federal IT and mission support services business for $3.4 billion. The company grew out of Veritas Capital’s 2017 acquisition of the former government services business Harris Corp.

Fluence files plans for IPO

Fluence Energy Inc., an Arlington-based energy storage and digital application company owned by Siemens and AES Corp., announced this week it has filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering of its Class A common stock.

The number of shares and price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined, according to a news release from the company Tuesday. J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, Barclays Capital Inc. and BofA Securities will act as lead book-running managers for the proposed offering, the company said, and IPO will be made  through a prospectus.

Fluence, which was founded in 2018 as a joint venture of Arlington-based Fortune 500 energy company AES and industrial manufacturer Siemens, announced late last year that the Qatar Investment Authority will invest $125 million in the company, with AES and Siemens retaining approximately 44% shares each of the company. Fluence has more than 3.4 gigawatts of energy storage in 29 markets globally, and more than 4.5 gigawatts of wind, solar and storage assets in Australia and California.

$300M widening of U.S. Route 58 has started in Patrick County

A groundbreaking ceremony took place Wednesday in Patrick County to widen a 7.4-mile stretch of U.S. Route 58 in Patrick County, the first phase of a project to create a continuous four-lane highway between Virginia Beach and Interstate 77.

The project, part of the U.S. Route 58 Corridor Development Program enacted by state lawmakers in 1989, will cost approximately $300 million, according to the governor’s office. The two-lane section of the highway over Lovers Leap Mountain is currently restricted to tractor-trailers, but that will change once improvements are completed under a November 2020 agreement between the Virginia Department of Transportation and Roanoke-based Branch Civil Inc.

VDOT and Branch Civil signed their public-private partnership in 2003 to develop and widen the highway from Hillsville to Stuart, a 36-mile corridor through Carroll, Floyd and Patrick counties, as soon as state funding became available. Although earlier sections were widened before now, it took 18 years to reach this stretch of Route 58.

“Once the General Assembly prioritized funding for the project, the Virginia Department of Transportation and our partner Branch Civil used an innovative progressive design-build approach to refine the design and advance the project to construction,” state Commissioner of Highways Stephen Brich said in a statement. “This was the first time this contracting style was used in Virginia and supported a new level of engagement between the Virginia Department of Transportation and our contracting partner.”

The section set to be widened is between the Poor Farmers Farm Store in Vesta and the Route 58 Stuart Bypass, and there are two other parts of Route 58 that will be widened at a time to be determined, including a four-mile stretch in Vesta and a 7.2-mile section near Crooked Oak.

“Route 58 is a vital road for locals, tourists, and commercial traffic, connecting Southern Virginia from the beach to the mountains,” Northam said in a statement. “By widening this key section, the project will open up this part of Southwest Virginia to faster, safer travel and more economic investment.”

State launches app to connect vendors with Va. agencies

Virginia has launched an app to help connect state government agencies and other users with local, woman- and minority-owned businesses more efficiently, Gov. Ralph Northam announced Wednesday.

The Start Small app is available for free, and it allows users to conduct keyword searches to match with businesses that fit their needs, and can be narrowed to small, woman- and minority-owned (SWaM) businesses certified through the Department of Small Business and Supplier Diversity, as well as those owned by service-disabled veterans.

“Virginia is stronger because of our small businesses,” Northam said in a statement. “This app makes it easier than ever to support our local, women-owned, and minority-owned businesses. I encourage all Virginians to take advantage of Start Small to find vendors that fit their needs.”
In 2019, Northam appointed Janice Underwood as the state’s chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer and tasked her with leading the creation of the One Virginia Plan, which aimed in part to create more inclusive practices in state agencies, including hiring more minority- and woman-led vendors and contractors. Northam issued an executive order that year directing executive branch agencies and institutions to allocate more than 42% of discretionary spending to certified small businesses.
In 2020, more than $945 million was spent by agency charge cardholders, and there are 13,000 SWaM-certified vendors registered with the state. More than 191,000 purchase order worth more than $1.5 billion were issued through the state’s electronic procurement system known as eVA, and the app will use vendor data from that system. Virginia Department of Transportation created the Start Small app, according to Wednesday’s announcement.

German manufacturer bringing 355 jobs to Henry County

Schock GmbH, a German quartz composite sink manufacturer, plans to build an $85 million manufacturing facility in Henry County, creating 355 jobs, Gov. Ralph Northam announced Tuesday.

Virginia competed with Florida, Georgia and North Carolina for the project, which will occupy a 95,500-square-foot shell building on 14.7 acres in Patriot Centre Industrial Park. Northam met with company executives in May during his trade trip to Germany.

“We are excited to welcome Schock to Virginia,” Northam said in a statement. “This important European company is choosing to invest in Virginia because of our highly skilled workers and our outstanding business climate. When a global leader like Schock selects Virginia as its gateway into the United States, that’s a sign that this is a great place to do business. We look forward to a successful partnership for many years to come.”

According to the governor’s office, the new facility will be completed in phases, with the first phase — establishing the capability to produce quartz composite kitchen sinks — finished in five years. Schock invented the material in 1979 and manufactures more than 200 sink models in 40 colors within multiple product lines.

The Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with the Martinsville-Henry County Economic Development Corp. to secure the project for Virginia, and Northam approved a $1.7 million grant from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund to assist Henry County with the project. The company is eligible to receive state benefits from the Virginia Enterprise Zone Program, administered by the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development. The Virginia Talent Accelerator Program will assist the company with job training at no cost to Schock.
“For Schock, this expansion is very special — it’s our first production site outside Germany,” CEO Ralf Boberg said in a statement. “The facility will serve the strongest growth market for our product category and allow us to meet demand for colored kitchen sinks with local ‘Made in the USA’ products. We are thrilled to have found the ideal location in Henry County. As an industrial business hub, the region has a well-qualified and dedicated workforce — one of the key success factors for us as a company — and its geographic location and interregional infrastructure are perfect for our needs.”
Schock joins Yardley, Pennsylvania, metal packaging company Crown Holdings Inc., which is building a $145 million aluminum can manufacturing operation in Henry County, expected to create 126 jobs. That project was announced in January.

Governor: Staff shortages becoming dire in Va. hospitals

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said that hospital workers in the state are “losing their patience” and that medical facilities will not be able to handle all patients with COVID-19 or other ailments if hospitals are understaffed beyond where they are now.

“They need our help,” he said Monday at a news conference. “It’s getting to the point where we worry about nurses and technicians and custodians — they’re at the point where they can’t take it anymore. We don’t want to get to that point, where there’s not enough staff, there aren’t enough [staffed] beds.”

According to the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association, Virginia is in the midst of a fourth surge of the coronavirus with the second-highest spike, after the height reached just after the holidays, when total daily hospitalizations exceeded 3,200. Thursday’s COVID hospitalization number was 2,068.

“In addition to the current surge, many Virginia hospitals are experiencing a growing demand for emergency department care (including for non-COVID medical needs) [and] several Virginia hospitals are providing medical care to Afghan refugees who are being resettled in the U.S.,” said Julian Walker, VHHA’s vice president of communications. “Some patients who delayed medical care during the pandemic are now seeking hospital-based care, and [there’s a] growing demand for behavioral health treatment services. Each of these conditions continue to place strain on our hospitals and the dedicated caregivers on their teams across Virginia who have bravely battled this pandemic for more than 18 months. During this period, demand for supplemental health care staff and travel nurses has significantly increased, as has competition for those professionals.”

The governor also noted that staffing is a problem for many school systems — particularly substitute and full time teachers and bus drivers — although the state legislature has put aside $11.5 million to pay bonuses to attract more school employees.

Northam spoke bluntly regarding adults who have not gotten vaccinated, totaling about 20% of the 18-and-above population in Virginia. He appealed to their sense of family connection and specifically what their spouses and children would do if they died.

“I want to give you two facts: These vaccines are incredibly safe and effective,” he said. “We have the data from millions of people around the world. Two, by choosing not to get vaccinated, you are absolutely hurting other people. You are costing everyone a lot of money — $5 billion in costs to treat a disease that could be avoided with a free vaccine.”

He also explained the process of intubation, which allows the most serious COVID patients to receive oxygen and often is a last-ditch effort to save lives. “They put a tube just about the size of a garden hose down your throat to keep you alive,” Northam said. “It is miserable, it is expensive. Give some thought to what your family will do without you. You’re taking a foolish, dangerous chance, and it affects many more people than just you.”

According to the governor, the 200,000-plus state employees who are required to either be vaccinated or present proof weekly of a negative COVID test are vaccinated at a rate of about 75% to 80%, similar to the general adult population. He said that he did not plan to change the policy that allows workers to be tested instead of getting the vaccine.

With 80.1% of Virginia adults having received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine and 60% fully vaccinated, the state is ranked No. 14 in the country for per capita vaccination rates and has the highest rate in the South, Northam said. However, he noted, rates differ widely by region, with far more people in Northern Virginia having been vaccinated compared to rural areas. He encouraged political officials and community leaders in under-vaccinated areas to encourage people to get their shots, saying that some have not done enough outreach.

Northam also said that he expects federal officials to approve shots for children ages 5 to 12 in six weeks or perhaps a bit longer, at which time school systems will begin providing vaccines with cooperation from local health departments.

He noted that Pfizer booster shots are now available at pharmacies, health departments and doctors’ offices for people who are immunocompromised, over age 65 or are frontline workers who received their second shots at least six months ago. For more information on locations that offer booster shots, visit vaccinate.virginia.gov.

CNU President Paul Trible to retire in August

Christopher Newport University President Paul S. Trible Jr. announced Friday he plans to retire as president next August. He will then serve as chancellor for the next academic year, and Adelia Thompson, university’s chief of staff and acting CEO, will be CNU’s interim president.

Trible, a former U.S. senator and member of the House of Representatives, was appointed CNU’s fifth president in 1996 and oversaw a significant expansion of the former commuter college to a prominent public liberal arts university, which is now celebrating its 60th year. During Trible’s tenure, the school’s endowment grew from $300,000 to $54 million, and its operating budget grew exponentially, as did enrollment, which increased from 2,920 full-time students in 1996 to 4,739 last year. CNU was ranked fourth among public regional universities in the South in the 2021 U.S. News & World Report rankings.

According to a news release from CNU, Trible informed the Board of Visitors that he wished to retire Aug. 1, having served 26 years as the Newport News university’s president. Thompson will serve as the school’s interim leader for the 2022-23 academic year, as she did during a six-month sabbatical taken in February by Trible to care for his wife, Rosemary Trible, who was ill. He returned to work in August. Rector Robert Hatten said Thompson will not be considered as a candidate for president during a national search to be launched in early 2022.

After Trible’s chancellorship ends in the summer of 2023, the new president will start, and Trible will serve on faculty as the Davis Professor of Leadership and American Studies or retire to his home on the Northern Neck, Hatten said.

In a video message to the university, the 74-year-old Trible said, “Time is racing by, and I don’t want to lose — for the second time in my life — the opportunity to spend time with the people I love the most in this world.” During his two children’s formative years, he added, “I was a young United States congressman and senator intent on saving the world, and I missed so many special moments with them and Rosemary. I don’t want that to happen again.”

Trible also oversaw more than $1 billion in capital construction at CNU, including more than 40 construction projects, and the campus grew from 100 acres to 260 acres. A graduate of Hampden-Sydney College and Washington & Lee University’s law school, Trible served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1983 as a Republican.

He was a member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations in 1988 and a teaching fellow at the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

U.Va. receives $50M gift for new performing arts center

The University of Virginia announced Friday it has received a $50 million lead gift to build a performing arts center, a donation by Tessa Ader, a prominent Charlottesville-area philanthropist who serves on the Fralin Museum of Art advisory board at U.Va.

“My late husband, Richard, and I long felt that a state-of-the-art performing arts center was needed by the University of Virginia,” Ader said in a statement. “As a longtime trustee of The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, Richard and his co-trustee Joe Erdman made transformative gifts to the university and Charlottesville in support of the arts. I believe this new facility will be a wonderful asset to our community and am hopeful my gift will encourage others to come forward as well to make it a reality.”

Richard Ader, who died in 2019, was an attorney based at the Manhattan firm Greenbaum, Wolff & Ernst, and represented artists including Joseph Cornell, for whom he was estate executor. After retirement, the Aders lived in the Charlottesville area, and in December 2020, Tessa Ader created the Richard M. and Tessa G. Ader Endowed Fund for Music Education at the Charlottesville Symphony at U.Va.

The new performing arts center — with a 1,100-seat concert hall, a 150-seat recital hall and practice space — will be in the Emmet-Ivy corridor near other facilities being built, including the School of Data Science and the Karsh Institute of Democracy. Ader’s gift will lead the funding of the center. The design process is expected to start soon, but a timeline for completion of the center has not been set yet.

“I am excited and humbled by Tessa’s decision to help us provide a new home for the arts at U.Va.,” university President Jim Ryan said in a statement. “Her gift, which clearly stems from a love for all forms of creativity, will provide the U.Va. community with new opportunities for participation in the arts. It will also warmly invite the broader community to Grounds through performances by world-renowned artists and our talented students. The performing arts center will be a place that celebrates the arts as fundamental to the human condition, a university education and a democratic society.”

Ader’s gift is among the largest in the university’s history, including a $50 million donation by alumni Martha and Bruce Karsh announced in June to establish the democracy institute.

Thomas Nelson Community College renamed Va. Peninsula

Thomas Nelson Community College, based in Hampton and James City County, will soon be called Virginia Peninsula Community College, the Virginia Community College System’s state board voted Thursday.

In February, the college’s local advisory board voted unanimously to change the school’s name, bestowed to honor Thomas Nelson Jr., a signer of the Declaration of Independence and Virginia’s fourth governor — and also a slaveholder. Support gathered for a geographically descriptive name, and the local board signed off Sept. 1 on the moniker approved Thursday by the state board.

“Hundreds of names were suggested as the college began consideration of a new name,” Thomas Nelson President Towuanna Porter Brannon said in a statement Thursday. “Narrowing the list of suggestions down to three was no small task. However, when speaking with diverse groups of students, faculty, staff and alumni about the new name, one theme continued to emerge — ‘Virginia Peninsula Community College represents me.’ I believe we have identified a name that is welcoming, inclusive and representative of our unique region.”

Four schools have changed their names this year: Chesterfield County’s John Tyler Community College, which will be known as Brightpoint, after the board’s unanimous support for the new name in July; Lord Fairfax Community College, which serves Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and Piedmont regions, will be known as Laurel Ridge; and Patrick Henry Community College, which is adding an ampersand to become Patrick & Henry, the two counties it serves. In November, Dabney S. Lancaster Community College in Clifton Forge is expected to seek approval from the board for a new name, which has not yet been announced. Name changes are expected to go into full effect within the next 12 to 18 months.

In summer 2020, following widespread racial justice protests spurred by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, VCCS requested that community colleges examine the names of their schools and buildings to reflect “values of inclusive and accessible education.”

According to TNCC, two buildings on the college’s Hampton campus named for associates of Nelson will be renamed, but three other buildings named for his contemporaries will not receive new names as they are set to be replaced in coming years.

“This new name emphasizes this college’s community and sends a welcoming and inclusive signal to the students they serve and those they seek to serve,” N.L. Bishop, chair of the state board, said in a statement. “I commend the college leadership who led a thorough and inclusive process to examine the college’s name and move the institution forward. Community colleges are life-changing institutions, and we want every single person in the community to understand that he, she or they are welcome here, and we exist to help them move forward.”