Virginia hotel revenues improved slightly last week, STR Inc. reported Wednesday.
During the week of Aug. 16-22, hotel revenues decreased by 42% and rooms sold declined by 31% compared to the same week last year, but this marks a small improvement from the previous week, which saw a 44% decline in revenue and 32% decrease in rooms sold, according to the CoStar Group division that provides weekly market data on the U.S. hospitality industry.
The average daily rate (ADR) paid for hotel rooms dropped 16% to $97.55 compared to last year, while revenue per available room (RevPAR) fell to $48.82, a 41% decline.
Hotel revenue and rooms sold across the state were still well below last year’s rates, but Hampton Roads continues to hold on to the highest occupancy rates among the nation’s top 25 markets, with 61.2% occupancy last week and 64.2% occupancy since the week of June 21-27. Its RevPAR level, however, fell to third place in the nation last week at $67.97, behind San Diego and Los Angeles. It maintains first place over the last four weeks, though, with an average of $72.42.
Compared to the same week in 2019, revenues fell 60% in Northern Virginia, 51% in Charlottesville and 34% in Hampton Roads. During the week of Aug. 9-15, revenues fell 62% in Northern Virginia, 37% in Charlottesville and 31% in Hampton Roads. Williamsburg continues to suffer the worst losses in the state, with hotel revenue having fallen 70% compared to this week last year, and rooms sold declining by 56%.
“Performance of the hotels in Hampton Roads during the current week was in general worse than last week,” Professor Vinod Agarwal of Old Dominion University’s Dragas Center for Economic Analysis and Policy said in a statement. “It appears that additional restrictions imposed in Hampton Roads, due to rising infection cases, have started to affect the recovery for Hampton Roads hotels.”
On Aug. 1, the governor enacted more restrictions on Hampton Roads restaurants after the region saw a spike in the number of COVID-19 cases, which was attributed to people gathering in large numbers at restaurants, bars and house parties. Gov. Ralph Northam ordered no gatherings larger than 50 people, restaurants cannot sell or serve alcohol after 10 p.m., and they must close by midnight until the order is rescinded.
In recent weeks, the number of new cases has gone down in parts of the region, including Virginia Beach and Norfolk, but Portsmouth, Chesapeake and the Western Tidewater Health District continue to report positivity rates above 10%.
Torc Robotics plans to invest $8.5 million and create 350 jobs in Montgomery County, not far from its current operation in the Blacksburg Industrial Park, Gov. Ralph Northam announced Wednesday.
The company produces self-driving vehicles and was started in 2005 by a group of Virginia Tech students who were on a robotics team together. In 2019, Torc was acquired by Daimler Trucks, a division of Daimler Group, to commercialize automated trucks. The terms of the purchase were not disclosed, and Torc remains a separate entity.
The company currently employs 175 people, and the expansion to the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center will allow Torc to grow its software development operations, which will be focused on its project with Daimler Trucks.
“Trucking is the backbone of the U.S. economy, delivering food and products to every community,” Torc CEO Michael Fleming said in a statement. “We greatly appreciate Virginia’s support of our mission to save lives and our innovative partnership with Daimler — the inventor of the truck — to commercialize self-driving trucks and make our roads safer. Commercializing self-driving trucks is a marathon, not a sprint, and requires a long-term commitment from companies, investors and employees. Virginia policy enables us to test our vehicles on public roads, which is critical to bringing this technology to market.”
The Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with Montgomery County and Onward New River Valley to secure the project for Virginia, which was competing with North Carolina and Texas, according to the governor’s office. Northam approved $3.5 million from the Virginia Economic Development Incentive Grant, a self-funded program of performance-based incentives for projects that would pay large groups of employees high wages, and a $800,000 grant from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund.
VEDP’s Virginia Talent Accelerator Program will assist in training new employees at no cost to the company. Torc Robotics is a 2013 graduate of the Virginia Leaders in Export Trade (VALET) program, a two-year global export acceleration program run by VEDP.
“This region’s talented workforce can help forward-looking tech companies grow, and Torc Robotics is demonstrating that by creating 350 new jobs in Montgomery County,” Northam said in a statement. “Self-driving technology is a booming sector, and Torc has been at the forefront of the industry since its founding.”
Joining other state universities, James Madison University introduced a COVID-19 dashboard Tuesday to track positive results among students, faculty and staff.
According to the dashboard, JMU has 24 self-reported cases and four positive tests performed at the university health center; all but one of the cases were among students. The university noted in its description of the dashboard that it “cannot guarantee that this information is complete” because self-reported cases make up the majority of its case count. “Individuals not tested at the University Health Center who test positive may choose not to report,” the site says, “but their positive status should be included in the Virginia Department of Health’s total case count.”
According to a Daily News-Record story, Harrisonburg police said move-in weekend was relatively calm compared to previous years, with no citations for large parties, which have been banned by its city council due to the pandemic. No gatherings of more than 50 people are currently allowed in the city, and the university has told students that it will suspend lease holders who host large parties and receive more than one warning.
VCU reported 63 active student cases Tuesday and 13 active cases among employees. Other schools across the state are providing updates as well.
Newport News-based defense contractor ITA International LLC was awarded a five-year, $50 million contract to consolidate and modernize the U.S. Air Force’s electromagnetic spectrum operations at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, the company announced Tuesday.
EMS includes an array of frequencies used for radios, GPS, cell phones and remotely controlled devices; previously used mainly by U.S. military branches, the spectrum now sees commercial and adversarial military competition, according to Department of Defense officials. ITA will help automate and integrate its EMS data under the new contract, awarded by the U.S. General Services Administration.
ITA started in 2005 as a marine business and is now an international provider of integrated support services for government agencies, nongovernmental organizations and commercial clients. The company placed at No. 19 in the Virginia Chamber’s Fantastic 50 list in 2020, which recognizes the state’s fastest growing companies.
McLean-based Altamira Technologies Corp. announced Tuesday that it has hired Craig Reed as president and chief growth officer. He will be part of a new executive management committee, with CEO Ted Davies and COO Blaine Worthington, according to a news release.
Reed was most recently chief growth officer at Herndon-based IT company Serco Inc. and held executive positions at Northrop Grumman, DynCorp and Engility, as well as serving as president and COO at NT Concepts. He is on the board of directors at Altamira and is president-elect of the National Capital Region branch of the Association for Corporate Growth, as well as a senior fellow and member of the George Mason University’s Government Contracting Center board of advisers.
Founded in 1999, Altamira focuses on defense, intelligence and homeland security, providing engineering, analytics and cyber support. Last July, Columbia Capital and Razor’s Edge Ventures sold the company to an investor group led by private equity firm ClearSky for an undisclosed amount.
McLean-based consulting firm Guidehouse has hired Patricia Cogswell, former deputy administrator of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), as a strategic adviser, the company announced Tuesday.
She has had a long career in public service, including leadership roles at the White House, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, mainly focused on national security, intelligence and transportation. Cogswell also was assistant director for intelligence at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and was deputy assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism from 2010 to 2013.
She also received the DHS Policy Thought Leadership Award in 2010 and 2011 and the DHS secretary’s Award for Excellence in 2008. At Guidehouse, which provides management, technology and risk consulting for public and commercial sectors, Cogswell will focus on national security risks. The company is part of the Veritas Capital portfolio.
“Patty is a true champion of agency innovation and we are honored she is joining the Guidehouse team,” CEO Scott McIntyre said in a statement.
Virginia Natural Gas President Jim Kibler will retire later this year, and former VNG president Robert Duvall will take his place, effective Sept. 4, the utility announced Tuesday. Duvall is currently senior vice president of customer operations at Southern Company Gas, VNG’s parent company.
Duvall was president of VNG from 2014 to 2016 and joined Southern Company Gas in 1984 as a distribution engineer at Atlanta Gas Light. He is a Clemson University graduate and has served in a variety of engineering and operations positions.
Kibler plans to remain with the company the rest of the year as special adviser to Southern Company Gas’ external affairs department in Washington, D.C., as well as supporting the leadership transition, the company announced in a news release Tuesday. Kibler has been with the company 16 years.
Virginia Beach-based VNG is one of four natural gas distribution companies of Southern Company Gas, itself a subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Co. VNG provides service to nearly 300,000 customers in southeastern Virginia.
The changing of the guard comes at a challenging moment, as VNG had signed a 20-year commitment to distribute gas through the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which Dominion Energy Inc. canceled last month, and in June, the State Corporation Commission delayed a $346 million VNG pipeline expansion that would have run through Chesapeake. The utility has until the end of the year to resolve several issues in the SCC ruling.
Lidl US, the Arlington-based grocery store chain, plans to open 50 stores by the end of next year on the East Coast, the company announced Tuesday. The expansion will bring its total number of stores in the United States to 150.
Seven new stores will be in Virginia: Alexandria, Burke, Chantilly, Charlottesville, Falls Church, Manassas and Sterling. Other stores will be in Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and South Carolina.
Lidl, the German parent company of Lidl US, operates more than 11,000 stores in 32 countries, and it established its U.S. headquarters in Arlington in 2015. The company plans to invest $500 million and create about 2,000 jobs with the expansion. It also plans to close two stores in North Carolina and open its fourth U.S. distribution center in Georgia, according to the company’s news release.
Liberty University confirmed Tuesday afternoon that Jerry Falwell Jr. has resigned as president, chancellor and member of its board of directors. According to a news release, the embattled evangelical leader sent a letter of resignation late Monday to members of the Board of Trustees’ executive committee.
The Board of Trustees accepted Falwell’s resignation, which came after a scandal-ridden day of personal revelations about his marriage. He was already on an indefinite leave of absence that began Aug. 7 at the request of the board.
Falwell agreed to resign immediately Monday after the board asked him to do so, according to statements by the university, but then reversed course later in the day and “instructed his attorneys to not tender the letter for immediate resignation.” However, he then changed his mind a second time and had his attorney send the resignation letter to executive committee members late Monday night, according to Tuesday’s news release.
Conflicting reports about his future with the Christian institution emerged Monday evening, with several news outlets reporting he had already resigned or was about to do so. However, in a brief telephone interview with Virginia Business Monday night, Falwell said the reports were “completely false” and that he had not agreed to leave the post permanently.
Falwell, who took the reins in 2007 at the Christian university founded by his televangelist father, Jerry Falwell Sr., said in an interview with ABC News that was posted online just before midnight Monday, “I was never called to be a pastor. My calling was to use my legal and business expertise to make Liberty University the evangelical version of Notre Dame.”
Falwell also spoke to The Wall Street Journal late Monday night, confirming he had resigned and said he was still due his full compensation as president, which reportedly reached $1 million.
According to Liberty’s news release, “Falwell’s severance compensation was dictated by the terms of his pre-existing employment agreement without any adjustment by the university or its board.” The university did not give further details about the contract.
The board also expects to select a search committee for its new president at its next meeting, scheduled in late October. Jerry Prevo, former chairman of the Board of Trustees and a retired evangelical pastor from Alaska, is currently acting president.
“Our students are ready to be world changers as champions for Christ,” Prevo said in a statement Tuesday. “Their spirit is strong as they look to the future. I intend to do all I can to nurture their spiritual side as they grow academically and enjoy all our campus has to offer.”
“The university’s heartfelt prayers are with him and his family as he steps away from his life’s work,” the news release concluded.
Falwell’s resignation comes after a Reuters report Monday afternoon that alleged he and his wife, Becki Falwell, were involved in a years-long affair with a former business associate from Miami, Giancarlo Granda. Although Falwell acknowledged in a statement Sunday night to the Washington Examiner that his wife had had an “inappropriate relationship” with a former friend, who then went on to blackmail the couple, he denies that he participated by watching them have sex on multiple occasions, as Granda alleged in his interview. Falwell did not name Granda in his statement.
Granda, for his part, said he did not try to extort money from the Falwells but said he was trying to extract himself from a soured business deal and relationship with the couple. He told Reuters the sexual relationship began in 2012 when he was a pool attendant at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel and met the Falwells, who were there on vacation. Over the next six years, Granda says they met several times a year in Miami, New York and at the couple’s home in Lynchburg.
In 2013, a shell company, Alton Hostel LLC, purchased a Miami Beach youth hostel for $4.65 million, with Jerry “Trey” Falwell III listed as its sole manager. According to a 2017 Politico article, Granda managed the hostel, and Falwell III was given the money to purchase the property by his father, Falwell Jr.
Granda told Reuters that he had a falling-out with Jerry and Becki Falwell in 2018 after he wanted to “negotiate a buyout” and sever ties with the couple. In a text message from this June to Falwell that was shared with Reuters, Granda wrote, “Since you’re okay with ruining my life, I am going to take the kamikaze route. It really is a shame because I wanted to reach a peaceful resolution and just move on with our lives but if conflict is what you want, then so be it.”
However, Falwell characterized the situation as a “Fatal Attraction” scenario, referring to the 1987 movie. Falwell said in his phone interview with Virginia Business on Monday that the Reuters story was “90% false,” and that “all you have to do is see what we sent to the Washington Examiner, and you’ll see what’s correct.”
Falwell already was on an indefinite paid leave of absence as president and chancellor of the university. The move followed an uproar over an Instagram photo Falwell posted of himself and his wife’s assistant. Taken at a yacht party, the photo shows Falwell with his arm around the woman, while both of their pants are partially unzipped and Falwell is holding a glass of dark liquid that he said was “black water” and “a prop.” According to a Politico story last week, the yacht belongs to NASCAR mogul Rick Hendrick, with whom the university has a sponsorship deal.
Several people connected with Liberty called for Falwell to resign after the photo surfaced, with some noting that it violated several rules of conduct at the conservative institution.
The photo was just one of a series of controversies around Falwell this year, including a tweet depicting Gov. Ralph Northam’s infamous blackface yearbook photo that prompted some Black employees and students to leave Liberty, and Falwell’s decision in March to invite students back to campus after spring break, when most other colleges and universities were telling students to stay at home in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
With more than 110,000 students enrolled, most of them online, Liberty is Virginia’s largest school by enrollment and is the nation’s second-largest online university, behind the University of Phoenix.
Falwell, who was the university’s general counsel before becoming president in 2007, is broadly credited for bringing Liberty out of deep debt to its current financial strength, including a $1.59 billion endowment as of 2019. The university also dramatically increased online enrollment during his tenure, saw more than $1 billion in construction projects and built an impressive athletics program.
The university — and Falwell himself — became well known for its connection to President Donald Trump, whom Falwell endorsed early in 2016 during the Republican primary season. He was the first prominent evangelical leader to throw his support to Trump, and the newly inaugurated president spoke at Liberty’s 2017 commencement.
Marc Butler, who has held executive roles at Bank of New York Mellon Corp., will join Skience as the Herndon-based wealth management firm’s president and chief operating officer, the company announced Monday.
Butler was most recently COO and managing director of BNY Mellon/Albridge and held other leadership roles at BNY Mellon/Pershing. At Skience, which was formerly called The Athene Group, he will oversee the company’s business and technology teams.
“In this role, I look forward to driving continuous platform innovation to meet unmet user needs, advancing industry alliances, evolving the business to enable client success, and ensuring Skience is a great place to work and grow,” Butler said in a statement.
Skience, helmed by CEO Sanjeev Kumar, received a majority investment in 2018 from private equity firms Sagewind Capital and Berenson Holdings. It is a 2019 Northern Virginia Technology Council Tech100 honoree and winner of a 2020 American Business Awards Silver Stevie award for fintech solutions.
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