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byline: Rachael Smith

U.Va. hotel, conference center expected fall 2025

To fulfill a need for a new comprehensive conference space in , the is set to welcome the Virginia Guesthouse and conference center in fall 2025.

The new facility will feature 214 guest rooms, including nine suites.

The approximately 224,000-square-foot Virginia Guesthouse will offer close to 29,000 square feet of conference and meeting space, 15,000 square feet dedicated to food and beverage services and around 12,000 square feet of public spaces, including an expansive lobby living room on the first floor and a rooftop gathering space. The ground floor will serve as an area for students to study and socialize and also will have a welcoming center.

“It’s not designed to just simply be there for the betterment of It is designed to be for U.Va. and the surrounding ,” says J.J. Wagner Davis, U.Va. executive vice president and chief operating officer.

The Foundation will operate the hotel, which U.Va. is financing and building. Foundation CEO Tim Rose says the project reflects the university’s response to a critical need identified by U.Va. President Jim Ryan’s task force.

“It was determined that there was a significant need for conference facilities that could serve the faculty, be within walking distance and offer large enough meeting rooms to host conferences right here at the university,” he says. “Additionally, that it could be done at a price point that made sense for the broader academic community.”

The project replaces the old Cavalier Inn on Emmet Street, though it’s in a different location.

Construction began in October 2022 and has faced challenges, including supply chain issues and rising construction costs, which pushed the budget from its initial estimate of $130 million to $168 million. Nevertheless, the project has progressed, with the addition of the $3 million rooftop amenity.

The Virginia Guesthouse addresses the needs found by the university task force by providing an accessible and affordable option compared to other facilities such as Boar’s Head Resort, which, although also owned and operated by U.Va., is more expensive and not within walking distance of the main campus, and The Forum Hotel, which primarily serves Darden’s executive education program.

As part of the Ivy Corridor, a 14.5-acre parcel and entry point to U.Va., Virginia Guesthouse will be strategically located near other developments, including the newly opened School of Data Science and the Karsh Institute of Democracy, expected in 2026.  

Fairfax tech firm Antithesis exits stealth mode with $47M

It’s appropriate that Vienna Antithesis is housed in the former headquarters of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus’ parent company. After all, Antithesis emerged from stealth mode in February to announce it had raised a Jumbo-sized $47 million in seed .

Founded in 2018, Antithesis is an -powered cloud platform for autonomously debugging and continuously testing reliability of software. It was developed by a team who previously worked for FoundationDB, a Vienna-based startup specializing in databases that was acquired by Apple in 2015.

The five-year seed round was led by Amplify Partners, Tamarack Global and First In Ventures. Angel investors included New York Yext’s founder, Howard Lerman, and CEO, Michael Walrath.

Antithesis co-founder Will Wilson says the company’s focus is to identify serious bugs and vulnerabilities within software that often evade human detection. “We’re finding the kinds of problems that are very hard for human beings to discover or reproduce and the ones that maybe we didn’t think to go looking for.”

In the highly competitive world of tech , it’s not unusual for companies to operate silently for a while before publicly unveiling a new or product, and Antithesis was no exception to this strategy.

“From the ground up, we had to build some really new things and some technology that was very hard, and we wanted to be able to focus on that without a lot of distraction and without giving any potential competitors a heads-up about what we were doing,” Wilson says. “And we were very lucky that we were able to raise a lot of money … and hire lots of great people and get lots of great early customers while still being stealth.”

Jonathan Perl, a partner at Colorado VC firm Boulder Ventures, invested when the startup began seeking capital in 2019. “These guys were doing something ambitious in the quality testing part of software ,” says Perl, “and we thought that was a big deal.”

Antithesis has found advantages in the NoVa ‘s quality of life, stability, and highly skilled labor pool from government contracting.

“There’s a lot of really great talent in Northern Virginia, especially among engineers,” Wilson says. “They really know their stuff when it comes to computers … but unlike in San Francisco, we’re able to keep them for the long haul.” 

Editor Richard Foster contributed to this story.

Wise County tech park is growing

Progress continues on the Industrial Authority’s 200-acre industrial site in Wise County, which will expand an existing park. With help from various sources, including a total of $1 million from the Virginia Coalfield Authority, the project so far has received $4.8 million in investments, with plans to add future manufacturing and data centers.

Brian Falin, the IDA’s executive director, says the project dates back to 2013 when the IDA acquired the property, but development didn’t begin until 2019.

“We started taking a hard look at bringing this property up to the standard that the rest of the Lonesome Pine [Regional] Business and Technology Park is,” he says. Existing tenants include Foundever, DP Facilities’ Mineral Gap Data Center, and Ronald Blue Trust.

Jonathan Belcher, VCEDA’s executive director, says as the technology park evolved, attracting new tenants, the need for expansion was clear, and the adjacent Elam Farm was the logical choice.

By the time it’s developed, he says, the property will have a 65-acre industrial site ready to be marketed.

The project’s development encompasses multiple phases. The first phase focuses on fundamental groundwork and includes developing an access road and extending utilities like water, sewer and natural gas. Construction began in December 2023 and is on track for completion by September, Falin says.

The VCEDA — a $700,000 grant for Phase 1 and a $300,000 loan for Phase 2 — is coupled with a $1.8 million grant from Virginia ‘s Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization Program to pay for the first phase.

The second phase, bolstered by additional funding from other sources, will include earthwork, site clearing and grading, and Falin says it’s pivotal in delineating a 65-acre plot primed for development. Construction was slated to begin in May, targeting a December completion.

The property was a surface mining site in the early 1990s, Falin says, and over the years has transitioned into agricultural use.

Belcher says Southwest Virginia’s mountainous topography creates challenges for site development.

“Having that 65-acre site will be of tremendous value as we try to attract prospects that need a larger footprint like that,” he says. “We’re pretty well-situated as far as greenfield sites for companies that might need a smaller amount of acreage, but having a larger acreage is something we have less often.”   

McLean AI health care startup raises $111 million

A -based wants to provide more targeted medical treatments for people with cancer, heart disease and other common diseases.

, founded in 2020, is a precision medicine company on a mission to democratize personalized medicine and is doing it by developing -powered algorithms that can glean insights from health care data.

“We can’t wait for the next generation of high-fidelity data to deliver on the promise of precision medicine,” says Jeff Sherman. A Zephyr co-founder and chief officer, he’s also been the company’s interim CEO since February. “We believe patients need solutions today, so a core tenet of our company has [been] to operate it with a sense of urgency.”

Precision medicine is an approach that uses an individual’s genomic, environmental and lifestyle information to guide decisions related to medical management.

In March, the McLean-based company announced it had raised $111 million in a Series A round from about 30 investors, including Revolution Growth, Eli Lilly & Co., Jeff Skoll and Epiq Capital Group.

The company’s co-founders include Grant Verstandig, an entrepreneur who has founded health care and defense companies, and Yisroel Brumer, an entrepreneur who was a past acting director of cost assessment and program evaluation for the Department of Defense.

“We’re bringing in new sources to produce, fine-tune and generate the next version of our algorithms for new, more nuanced precision medicine insights. So that’s on the data and buildout front,” Sherman says.

With 45 employees, Zephyr plans to grow its staff significantly over the second half of the year in science and engineering as well as building out a business and commercial team.

In March 2022, Zephyr AI raised $18.5 million in seed funding, led by Lerner Group Investments and M-Cor Holdings. The company used it to develop core algorithms and put infrastructure in place to host a massive dataset as well as establish its core team.

Discussing his company’s success with investors, Sherman describes how Zephyr AI’s algorithms won them over during a demo.

“We were able to correctly identify how patients who are considered the same clinically actually respond differently to different drugs,” he says. “So, we’re able to demonstrate that in this real-world context, which I think is a pretty high bar for these kinds of companies.”  

Tazewell indoor salmon farm adjusts course

The $228 million Pure facility on 200 acres straddling and Russell counties has hit a snag with construction delays and is pushing back its expected timeline.

Administrator Eric Young says construction progress has not proceeded as anticipated on the Virginia branch of the United Arab Emirates-based Atlantic salmon farming and processing business’ project, which is expected to create about 200 local jobs. Factors contributing to the delay, he says, included supply chain disruptions, labor shortages and inflationary pressures.

But the plan for the indoor fish farm continues making its way upstream.

graded 100 acres to prep for a foundation in 2022 and is working with to build an access road. The next construction phase, including groundwork, will start in early summer, Karim Ghannam, co-founder and chief investment officer of 8F Asset Management, a Singapore-based private equity firm backing Pure Salmon, said during an April visit to Virginia.

The company now has plans to rework some engineering in the facility’s design to mitigate rising construction costs over the past three years, Young says, and it aims to capitalize on state bank bonds and additional fundraising efforts to address financial challenges stemming from inflation. Pure Salmon declined to disclose its budget.

“That’s one of the reasons they’re here; it’s a very strategic place where the land is cheap, the labor is a little bit less expensive, but you can still access those markets. And in the seafood industry, time is of the essence,” he says.

Says Lala Korall, a consultant for Pure Salmon, “We hope to be complete with construction by the end of 2028.” (When first announced, Pure Salmon had aimed for a 2023-24 delivery.)

Production will occur in phases, with salmon eggs entering the facility and fish being harvested before construction is complete, Korall says.

Pure Salmon Virginia has four employees currently but indirectly employed about 100 workers via earthwork subcontractors and engineering teams earlier.

Young says the project will diversify the ‘s economy and provide jobs ranging from aquatic veterinarians to fish filleters, with wages above the local average.

“We’ve been dependent on the coal industry for a long time here, and it has ups and downs … but food is food,” Young says. “People are always going to have food, so this should be recession-resistant as far as jobs.”  

Buchanan County expands industrial park

Economic is booming inside the Southern Gap in , where the county industrial development authority is spending $4 million to develop a new shell building and a 20-acre industrial site.

With support from the Virginia Coalfield Authority, the park has become a hub for growth in an area historically defined by its rugged terrain and limited industrial infrastructure.

“It’s going to allow us to have marketable industrial property and a marketable industrial shell building in an area right now [where] we don’t really have a lot to offer,” says Jonathan Belcher, VCEDA’s executive director. “We want to be able to bring job opportunities to all parts of the that we serve.”

With a $2.5 million loan from VCEDA, the Buchanan County Industrial Development Authority is developing the 20-acre site as part of the industrial park’s expansion. The project will capitalize on the initial success of the park, which already has several tenants, including Southern Gap Transportation and Logistics Center, Appalachian Power and Southern Gap Outdoor Adventure.

VCEDA has also provided a $1.53 million loan to facilitate the construction of a shell industrial building within the park, a response to increasing demand for industrial space. Paul’s Fan Co., for example, moved from Big Rock into the Grundy park in 2022.

Benefits of the move included reduced travel costs and time and increased marketability, says Paul’s Fan Co. President Todd Elswick.

“We were operating out of five different buildings in different locations in the extreme western part of the state,” he says. “It was killing our productivity.”

The new shell building, approximately 20,000 square feet with expansion potential, will cater primarily to manufacturing companies seeking a foothold in the region, Belcher says.

Construction on the shell building is slated to begin in April, with completion expected this fall. In mid-February, site development for the 20-acre parcel was set to begin imminently, with a projected completion date within the next year.

Matthew Fields, Buchanan County’s director of economic development and tourism, says the park had reached maximum capacity, and he wants the county to become more competitive by offering pad-ready sites and buildings.

“It’s kind of hard to invite somebody to sit with you at the table if you don’t have a chair for them,” he says.

No tenants have been announced for the shell building or site yet.

Radford Hub aims to connect students, biz community

For The Hub at , location is everything.

The new support center, which opened in October 2023, is just across the street from in downtown Radford.

“Our location … is symbolic to the vital role we play as an anchor institution and as a strong contributor to the well-being of the city of Radford and the ,” says Angela Joyner, the university’s vice president of economic and corporate education.

The 12,581-square-foot resource center, which houses multiple entities related to economic development, has several aims, including connecting students to internships; strengthening connections between the university and the region’s business community; and providing entrepreneurial programming and workforce training.

“The real key element here is that this is a resource for businesses,” says Radford Mayor David Horton.

Radford University’s economic development division, which is housed in the new center, has been working with university leadership since fall 2022 on getting The Hub off the ground.

“Upon the arrival of President [Bret] Danilowicz [in July 2022] and an increased focus on economic development, the Economic Development and Corporate Education Division was created,” Joyner says. “This commitment to positively contribute to the economic well-being of our region and specifically the city of Radford served as a catalyst to move forward this initiative.”

The first phase includes renovating The Hub’s building and moving in staff from the new division as well as the Vinod Chachra Innovative Mobile Personalized Accelerated Competency Training (IMPACT) Lab, which provides online, self-paced training in cybersecurity, data science, K-12 teacher training and geospatial intelligence. The lab, in partnership with Radford’s College of Education and Human Development, launched a program to help provisionally licensed teachers take courses needed to earn full licensure.

The remaining space is planned for coworking space, work-based learning/internships and meeting space, Joyner says.

“One of our objectives as we move forward is identifying companies who may want to have a footprint in the region and hire our students … [in-person or] remotely,” Joyner says.

The center also has the potential to address the shortage of skilled workers in information , particularly in cybersecurity and computer science. The Hub plans to establish a certification center for various high-demand fields like technology and computer science.

“The strategy and development of the certificates, micro-credentials and courses are developed on site,” Joyner says.

Associate Editor Robyn Sidersky contributed to this story.

Clarke County limits solar development

prioritizes . That’s what drives most of its policy-making as the county navigates the complexities of while preserving its farmland, explains County Administrator Chris Boies.

In January, the county’s approved new regulations for utility-scale solar projects.

Boies says the ordinance has always required solar plants to be situated near electrical substations, leveraging the county’s existing infrastructure. But the new amendments have explicitly named two substations, ensuring solar projects remain contiguous and within a 1-mile radius of those facilities.

“We also still allow and encourage household-sized solar for individual homes and farms,” he says. “We are not against solar; we are against losing agricultural land.”

With approximately 25% of the county under permanent conservation easements, maintaining open spaces and supporting farming communities are priorities reflected in the county’s comprehensive plan.

Board of Supervisors Chairman David Weiss, a local farmer, is a big supporter of the amended regulations. “This is not an anti-solar decision; it’s a land-use issue,” he says. “And we feel that, based on our size and our consumption and the small county that we are, we have done our share.”

One 20-megawatt solar project by Hecate Energy has already been approved, with the first of its two phases built out. A second proposal comes from Horus Virginia, which has requested to build a 50-megawatt .

While the project is pending, it’s been filed under the former regulations, ensuring it’s grandfathered in, says Ty Lawson, a land-use lawyer representing Horus Virginia.

If the project is approved, the county will be maxed out on , Boies says.

“It requires a fair amount of land, and as you go closer to urban centers, it’s harder to find the hundreds of acres of contiguous land to put the panels on,” Lawson says. “So, generally you do see commercial solar fields in places that are not densely occupied.”

Horus Virginia has proposed a site spanning over 400 acres that ensures minimal visibility from surrounding properties and public roads, Lawson says.

The project is a long-term investment, with solar panels typically having a lifespan of around 30 years, he adds.

At its Feb. 2 meeting, the county’s Planning Commission unanimously recommended approval of the solar farm development. During its Feb. 20 meeting, the Board of Supervisors authorized a public hearing that was set for March 19.  

Roanoke/New River Year-in-Review: Meeting the demand

The Roanoke and regions each had their most successful economic year in recent history, according to John Hull, executive director of the Roanoke Regional Partnership. That’s thanks to $387 million worth of economic investments announced in 2023, potentially creating thousands of jobs.

Roanoke County landed the biggest fish, with poised to become its largest employer, adding about 1,100 jobs as part of an $87 million expansion of its local customer service center. (See related story.)

Overall, the saw several major expansions, both from long-established companies such as Altec Industries and newer ones like STS Group.

Pulaski County

In October 2023, Wytheville-based third-party logistics provider Camrett Logistics announced it would invest more than $2 million to expand in Pulaski County, creating 58 jobs. The investment in Dublin will include new construction, renovating existing space and purchasing forklifts and electric trucks.

Additionally, Fireworks by Grucci announced in June 2023 that it’s expanding into Dublin at the 30,000-square-foot former Koinonia Tapes and Foams plant at ShaeDawn Park. The New York-based fireworks manu- facturer has also operated a facility at the Army Ammunition Plant since 1997.

Lynchburg

In December 2023, French nuclear power company Framatome announced plans to invest $49.4 million to expand, modernize and enhance its U.S. headquarters in Lynchburg, creating 515 jobs. The expansion will meet increased demand for servicing existing nuclear power plants and developing solutions for advanced and small nuclear reactors.

Meanwhile, Delta Star, a manufacturer of industrial electrical products like mobile power transformers and substations, announced plans in May 2023 to expand its manufacturing operation and headquarters, a move expected to create about 150 jobs. The company is investing $30.2 million in the facility, which was established in Lynchburg in 1962.

Salem

Salem had a banner year in 2023, with three new expansions totaling nearly 200 jobs.

In May, local convenience store products distributor Layman Distributing announced a $6.8 million relocation and expansion in the city, creating more than 40 jobs. It relocated to a larger facility at 2157 Apperson Drive, doubling its operational capacity and adding space for a new customer experience center and cold warehousing.

“For kind of a small family-run business, at the scale they’re growing, [it] is really impressive,” says Tommy Miller, Salem’s director.

A couple months earlier, in March 2023, German automotive parts supplier STS Group announced it would establish its North American headquarters at the
former General Electric plant in Salem, a $32 million investment expected to create 119 jobs. The company originally announced in 2021 that it would locate the headquarters in Wythe County but pivoted. STS Group is leasing 200,000 square feet, and construction related to building upfits is mostly complete. Equipment is being installed and commissioned, and initial hiring for management- level personnel has started.

In July, locomotive products manufacturer Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies (Wabtec) unveiled plans for a $2.7 million expansion of its Salem plant, adding 38 jobs. The expansion will accommodate the relocation of its pneumatically controlled braking systems manufacturing lines within its Graham-White manufacturing facility.

Local leaders are also talking with Wabtec about relocating production lines to Salem from a plant the company’s closing in Pennsylvania, Miller says.

Botetourt County

In May 2023, Alabama-based Altec Industries announced plans to invest $1.4 million to expand production on its construction equipment products line at the Botetourt Center at Greenfield, a move that’s expected to create 150 manufacturing jobs. Altec makes products like boom truck cranes and digger derricks for industrial customers such as electric utilities, telecommunications companies and tree care businesses. The expansion will be built on eight acres at Altec’s 80-acre site.

The Botetourt facility has seen nine expansions since Altec established it in 2001, Economic Development Director Ken McFadyen says, adding that Altec’s local hires have included engineering students from Virginia . “Altec has it figured out in terms of how to attract talent, and they do a wonderful job here,” he says.

Just a few days into 2024, Universal Logistics Holdings announced plans for a
$50 million facility in Botetourt County, creating 45 jobs. The trucking and logistics company will revamp a 254,000-square-foot facility that is expected to begin operating in 2025.

Roanoke

Roanoke takes pride in its balanced economic landscape across industries, with a strong manufacturing sector and growing biotech and sectors, says Marc Nelson, Roanoke’s economic development director.

Carilion Clinic is part of a public-private partnership to establish biotech incubator laboratories in downtown Roanoke, with an aim to develop the region into an advanced health care and life sciences hub. The effort involves Carilion, the City of Roanoke, Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center, Verge and Virginia Western Community College.

Roanoke is overseeing administration of $15.7 million in funds from the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development for the project. The funds will be used to develop 40,000 square feet of shared biotech laboratory space within Carilion’s former Jefferson Plaza building and is set to open in late 2024 or early 2025.

Meanwhile, local developer Ed Walker is partnering with the city on redeveloping 100 acres in southeast Roanoke encompassing the sprawling former American Viscose campus, a rayon plant that closed in 1958. As part of his agreement with the city, Walker will invest at least $50 million over the next 16 years on Riverdale, a mixed-use development planned to include commercial, residential and retail components. Riverdale’s first phase, which could be completed by 2029, will include 375 apartments and at least one 3,000-square-foot commercial building. The city and the Economic Development Authority have provided Walker’s company a forgivable $10 million loan to support public infrastructure work on the site.

Additionally, Nelson says, the city is actively addressing housing needs through the creation of an affordable housing fund and has secured federal to support affordable housing projects, with developments underway, including a 30-unit project in Belmont Fallon, which will be complete in early June, and a project downtown, which will have 60 to 70 units. Construction will begin this summer and last 18 months.

Furthermore, progress continues on the $300 million Crystal Spring Tower at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital. The project will add more than 500,000 square feet to the region’s only Level 1 trauma center and will add a cardiovascular institute and expanded emergency department to the hospital. The exterior of the tower is expected to be complete in early 2024, and following continued interior renovations, the tower is planned to open in 2025.

Meanwhile, in Roanoke County, in addition to the Wells Fargo customer service center expansion, the county celebrated the opening of Carilion Clinic’s $11.5 million Carilion Mental Health facility at Tanglewood Mall in October 2023. The 37,000-square-foot outpatient clinic, which has about 300 staff, including 70 health care providers, was projected to serve about 800 patients per week.

A month earlier, another ribbon-cutting was held to mark the opening of the $6 million, 26,000-square-foot Vistar Eye Center on Airport Road in the county’s Hollins area. Vistar’s seventh area location, it offers an array of eye services ranging from eye exams to cataract surgery and retina services.

And in June 2023, Galen College of Nursing opened its new $6 million campus in Roanoke County’s Oak Grove area at Roanoke Metis Plaza. The college, which offers programs including a two-year associate degree in nursing, is affiliated with Salem’s LewisGale Medical Center and is aiming to fill an urgent regional shortage of nurses, totaling some 800 vacant positions across Roanoke and the New River valleys as of early 2023.

Bedford

In June 2023, the Town of Bedford announced it would be getting its first business-class , a Hampton Inn by Hilton, bringing at least 85 rooms to the town.  

Associate Editor Robyn Sidersky contributed to this story.

Roanoke/New River Valley Big Deal: Banking on Roanoke

When County economic officials pitched on expanding its customer support center operation in the county, they emphasized how well they’d taken care of the nation’s fourth-largest bank previously and how they would continue to do so.

The pitch worked. Now the bank’s $87 million expansion will be the largest commercial office investment in the county’s history, making the San Francisco-based company the county’s largest employer, surpassing the local public school system, which has around 2,500 employees.

“One of the things that I emphasized was, ‘We really took good care of you before you said you wanted to grow, and we will continue to take great care of you as you expand, and here’s how we can demonstrate that,’” says Administrator Richard Caywood, citing past efforts such as transportation improvements to serve the company and neighboring businesses.

The expansion will modernize the bank’s 436,685-square-foot customer support center on Plantation Road, allowing room for about 1,100 jobs to be added to the bank’s local workforce of more than 1,650 current employees over the next four years. (As of early February, Wells Fargo had not released information about when hiring would begin.) Construction will commence in March and will be conducted in three phases, to be completed by the end of 2025.

John Hull, executive director of the Roanoke Regional Partnership, says the regional organi-
zation worked collaboratively with Roanoke County and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership to land the project.

Roanoke was identified through a site consultant and stands as the largest office capital investment project and the most substantial single project in Virginia for 2023, Hull says, tied only with Amazon.com’s project in Virginia Beach. (See related story, Page 23).

“It’s encouraging to see an office project of this size, this number of jobs [and] its level of investment,” he adds, “particularly in the post-pandemic environment, where there’s a lot of question about the future course of office tenancy.”

Caywood says the Wells Fargo announcement was crucial for Roanoke County because the banking customer support center on Plantation Road was already the largest site where county residents went to work every day. The site was originally operated by Dominion Bankshares, which was acquired in 1993 by First Union, which in turn was later bought by Wachovia and Wells Fargo.

“There’s a lot of changes in the national banking industry with a lot of consolidation, so it was critical for us to keep that [center], and the only way to do that was through that expansion and reinvestment occurring,” he says.

Brian Corde of Atlas Insight, the site selection consultant for the project, predicts in a blog post on the Roanoke Regional Partnership’s website that the Roanoke market will continue to be appealing for talent attraction. He says the will continue to see growth, adding that it has “great outdoor activity, great weather and a stable political environment, a reasonable one … [and] a good tax structure. Most importantly, you have places where people can actually live for reasonable amounts of money.”

Based on an economic impact analysis, Hull projects the Wells Fargo expansion will have a $322 million annual economic impact once the project is fully operational in 2025, with positive effects on housing demand and the and restaurant industries. The infusion of jobs will have a ripple effect throughout the local economy, he adds.

“When you think of what a household spends and how they spend their money, every one of those consumer sectors will be impacted in a positive way,” Hull says.

The expansion also helps the region not just by adding 1,100 jobs but by retaining Wells Fargo’s 1,650 existing staff members, Caywood says. “It’s a big deal for us,” he says. “There’s nothing but universal excitement about this project in the community.”