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byline: Richard Foster

Stik-Pak Solutions breaks ground on $14.3 million manufacturing facility

Contract food-packaging company Stik-Pak Solutions broke ground Tuesday on its $14.3 million new manufacturing facility at Franklin County's 550-acre Summit View Business Park in Rocky Mount. 

The company plans to move from its current location in the Franklin Commerce Center into the first 50,000-square-foot phase of the new facility by mid-2020. Stik-Pak plans to add 50 to 60 more employees at the facility, which is expected to expand to 100,000 square feet by 2025. Started in 2015, the subsidiary of North Carolina-based M&H Holdings provides flexible pouch packaging to the food industry.

“This is an example of how an existing business can be successful and continue to create jobs and investment in Franklin County,” said Cline Brubaker, chairman of the county’s Board of Supervisors, in a statement. “We’re delighted to help Stik-Pak grow with a strong workforce, great business climate and now a marquee project like Summit View Business Park that is accommodating the company’s growth while redefining our economic future.”

In addition to numerous business and industrial sites, the county-owned Summit View Business Park is expected to eventually include pavilions, athletic fields, a BMX bicycle course, a festival area, a tourist visitor center and multiuse trails. Martinsville-based ValleyStar Credit Union began construction on the first building in the park, a 19,000-square-foot administrative campus, in September.

Virginia receives $4.2 million in grants from Appalachian Regional Commission

Virginia has received six grants totaling $4.2 million from the Appalachian Regional Commission's Partnership for Opportunity and Workforce Revitalization (POWER) program, Gov. Ralph Northam announced Wednesday. The grants will support efforts including broadband and solar power expansion, workforce development and water systems improvements.

A congressionally funded initiative, the POWER program helps communities and regions that were formerly economically dependent on coal. The Virginia grants were part of $44.4 million in awards to 54 projects across 13 states in the Appalachian Regional Commission region.

“POWER grants are playing a critical role in supporting coal-impacted communities in the Appalachian region as they diversify economies, invest in growth-oriented infrastructure, train a next-generation workforce and ingrain resiliency and hope into their local fabric,” ARC Federal Co-Chair Tim Thomas said in a statement. “Projects like this help ensure a prosperous future for Appalachia.”

The six funded Virginia projects are:

  • The Southwest Virginia Workforce Development Board will receive $1.5 million for its Recovery Opportunities and Pathways to Employment Success (ROPES) project, which aids people recovering from substance use disorders to find pathways to employment.
  • BARC Electric Cooperative will receive $1 million to expand broadband in the Rockbridge County town of Goshen.
  • Southwest Virginia Community College was awarded $588,072 to create a fast-track curriculum for training entry-level automobile technicians.
  • The LENOWISCO Planning District Commission will receive $50,000 to fund research to identify technologies that can monitor and evaluate leaks in small, rural public water systems.
  • Appalachian Voices was awarded $49,940 for a project aimed at growing the solar energy industry in Southwest Virginia.
  • Appalchian Community Capital will receive $1.04 million for the Opportunity Appalachia Project, a program to attract investment dollars to federally designated Opportunity Zones in the region.

 

 

$1.5 million grant will launch autonomous systems center

Gov. Ralph Northam announced Wednesday that a $1.5 million grant from the Virginia Research Investment Fund will help launch the Commonwealth Center of Innovation for Autonomous Systems, a collaborative research center led by Virginia Tech with Old Dominion University.

The center has lined up $2.2 million in matching funds. Companies that will be collaborating with it include Atlas-NA; Burton-LeRoy; Cambrian Design and Development; Procomm Aviation; Sanchez Engineering Services; SimIS; Textron; and UAVPro.

“Virginia’s colleges and universities enjoy a strong record of cutting-edge research, and we are proud to support the development of new technologies with promising commercial prospects, especially in the area of unmanned autonomous systems,” Northam said in a statement released Wednesday. “Innovative projects and public-private partnerships like these will help bolster the commonwealth’s leading position in the unmanned autonomous systems industry, advance the application of these technologies and reinforce our continued work to expand and diversify the commonwealth’s economy.”

The grant was awarded by the Virginia Research Investment Committee, a body created by the Virginia General Assembly to award research grants to public universities and promote collaborative academic research projects.

“The Virginia Research Investment Committee is excited to support unmanned systems research in Virginia,” said Peter Blake, director of the State Council of Higher Education and chair of the Virginia Research Investment Committee. “The Center for Autonomous Systems will lead to new product development for first responders, infrastructure inspection, maritime systems and more.”

 

 

State awards $180,000 in Community Business Launch awards

The Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development has awarded $180,000 in state Community Business Launch (CBL) grants to provide support to four localities with entrepreneurial training and regional economic development efforts, particularly in downtown commercial districts.

Gov. Ralph Northam announced in a press release Wednesday that Giles County, the city of Norton and the towns of Buchanan and Culpeper have each been awarded $45,000 in CBL grants. Since 2014, the CBL program has awarded $1.44 million to 24 communities serving more than 450 entrepreneurs. The grants program has attracted more than $2.25 million in private investment, with more than 230 new full-time jobs created and at least 100 jobs retained.

“This initiative recognizes the importance of small business in our communities and combines funding with educational training to help prepare budding entrepreneurs to run successful businesses in their home communities,” Northam said in the release. “By aligning regional and local economic strategies with a community’s unique vision for its future, we can build support for the new and expanding businesses that fill storefronts and create new job opportunities.”

 

$200 million Alexandria apartment community prepares for Dec. 1 opening

The $200 million Array at West Alex mixed-use apartment community in Alexandria is preparing to open to residents on Dec. 1.

Built on a five-acre urban center, the project will include 278 apartments, with rents ranging from $,1875 per month for a studio to $2,665 for a two-bedroom. A 62,000-square-foot Harris Teeter grocery store is expected to open there in early 2021. Other commercial tenants include a Silver Diner restaurant and Higher Ground Education, a Montessori school.

Developed by Weingarten Realty of Texas and Alexandria-based Abramson Properties, the project broke ground in 2019 and will be managed by The Bozzuto Group from Greenbelt, Maryland. Construction was managed by Reston-based Orr Partners, with architecture and design by DCS Design of Tysons. The contractor was the Baltimore-based Whiting-Turner Contracting Co.

State government not holding IT suppliers accountable for delays, study says

Since switching to a model with eight suppliers providing the state government’s information technology infrastructure services, the Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA) has seen significant service delays and has not held suppliers accountable, according to a study released Monday by the Joint Legislative Audit & Review Commission (JLARC).

Collectively, the eight contractors have not completed 43% of critical deliverables needed to implement the state government’s new IT infrastructure program in the wake of the state’s termination of its previous IT services supplier, Northrop Grumman Corp. Those deliverables were due by December 2018.

As of July, the study states, VITA’s new managed security supplier, Atos, was 245 days late completing an update of the state’s database of IT assets.

The JLARC report also says VITA may not be staffed and structured adequately to oversee the multi-supplier model.

The delays have resulted in issues such as the phones in one Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services field office being out of order for 27 days. Submitted as a high-priority incident, the IT issue should have been resolved within four hours, the JLARC study states.

Among other instances cited in the report, agencies have been unable to use Google Drive cloud storage services for more than a year, while VITA is working on a security upgrade, even though the agencies are paying for the service under a contract with Google. Additionally, the Virginia Department of Transportation has reported a significant increase in network outages since VITA has shifted to the multi-supplier model for IT services.

What’s more, VITA has not held the suppliers accountable for failing to meet required performance requirements outlined in their contracts. According to the report, VITA could have fined Unisys Corp. $2 million for “unmet and unreported performance requirements” between December 2018 and June 2019 but didn’t. Five of the seven other suppliers appeared to have similar problems with unmet performance requirements, says Lauren Axselle, a JLARC principal analyst for ongoing oversight.

It’s unclear, Axselle says, whether VITA could still pursue fines against the companies for not meeting contract requirements.

The report places part of the blame for the delays on Reston-based Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), which it says is “significantly behind schedule” in its role of integrating the various suppliers’ services into the state government’s IT infrastructure.

SAIC’s delays were caused in part when it had to temporarily step in and assume Northrop Grumman’s responsibilities for all of the state’s IT infrastructure services after VITA fired Northrop Grumman in August 2018. That was due to the fact that Northrup Grumman failed to fulfill responsibilities related to implementing VITA’s new multi-supplier model, the report states, including not giving other suppliers access to needed systems and information.

JLARC’s recommendations for VITA in the report included instituting a comprehensive tracking tool to ensure the status of deliverables and suppliers’ contract requirements.

Chamber partnership launches 2019 Election Center website

The Chambers of Commerce Roundtable, a partnership between the Virginia Chamber of Commerce and local and regional chambers throughout Virginia, has launched its 2019 Election Center, a website detailing General Assembly candidates' stances on economic issues.

Among the resources it offers are interview videos with select candidates for state Senate and the House of Delegates, and questionnaires from more than 150 General Assembly candidates.

Latest poll shows strong support for General Assembly Democrats

Virginia voters are showing a strong preference for Democrats going into this fall's General Assembly elections, shows a new poll released Monday.

Democrats lead Republicans by 13 points on a generic ballot, according to the poll of 726 likely voters conducted throughout September by the Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University.

Furthermore, 53% of voters said they preferred Democrats to take majority control of the Virginia General Assembly, as opposed to 37% in favor of Republicans maintaining their longtime leadership of the state legislature.

In a pivotal campaign season when every General Assembly seat is up for election on Nov. 5, political analysts say that Democrats have the best chance in more than 25 years to wrest control of the legislature from Republicans.

Among the survey’s other findings:
• Democrats lead Republicans in voter enthusiasm, 62% to 49%, with 84% of Democrats stating they would definitely vote in the election, compared to 74% of Republicans.
• Gov. Ralph Northam held a 51% approval rating with voters.
• Virginia voters are unhappy with the state of the nation, and 62% said the country is on the wrong track.
• President Trump had a 37% approval rating among the Virginia voters and a generic Democrat candidate would defeat Trump by 51% to 36%.
• Fifty-nine percent of likely Virginia voters were less likely to vote for a state candidate who supports Trump; 49% of voters said they were more likely to vote for a state candidate who supports impeaching Trump, versus 44% of voters who said they would vote for a state candidate opposed to impeachment.

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Block.one pays $24 million federal penalty

On Sept. 30, the Securities and Exchange Commission ordered blockchain technology company Block.one to pay a $24 million civil penalty for conducting an unregistered initial coin offering of digital tokens that raised $4 billion.

The SEC order found that Block.one violated the registration provisions of federal securities laws. Block.one consented to the order and did not admit or deny the SEC’s findings.

Co-founded by Virginia native and Virginia Tech graduate Daniel Larimer, Block.one announced plans in September to locate its $10 million U.S. headquarters in Arlington County, creating 170 jobs. Registered in the Cayman Islands with offices in Hong Kong, Block.one has an operation center in Blacksburg that employs more than 80 engineering and research and development workers. The company's Arlington headquarters project received a $600,000 grant from the state government's Commonwealth's Development Opportunity Fund. Block.one is also eliginle to receive a Major Business Facility Job Tax Credit for the jobs the project is expected to create over the next three years. 

Block.one’s $4 billion ICO of 900 million tokens was held between June 2017 and June 2018 and the company “did not register its ICO as a securities offering pursuant to the federal securities laws, nor did it qualify for or seek an exemption from the registration requirements,” according to an SEC release. The company stated that it intended to use the capital raised from the ICO for general expenses, as well as to develop software and promote blockchains based on the software.

“A number of U.S. investors participated in Block.one’s ICO,” said Stephanie Avakian, co-director of the SEC’s enforcement division. “Companies that offer or sell securities to U.S. investors must comply with the securities laws, irrespective of the industry they operate in or the labels they place on the investment products they offer.”

Steven Peikin, co-director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, said, “Block.one did not provide ICO investors the information they were entitled to as participants in a securities offering.”

USDA awards funding to 10 Virginia agriculture projects

Ten agriculture-related projects in Virginia have been awarded a total of $541,467 in funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Specialty Crop Block Grant fund.

Gov. Ralph Northam announced the federal grant funding in a press release Thursday. Funded projects include a Tidewater Agricultural Research and Extension Center (AREC) project to optimize pumpkin production by improved crop disease identification and management. The Alson H. Smith Jr. AREC in Winichester received funding to study how to maximize the efficiency of plant growth regulator spray on apple crops. Other funded research projects include studies of how to protect boxwood plants from boxwood blight and tracking the establishment of the release of an Asian wasp that kills the eggs of brown marmorated stinkbugs, a crop pest.

“Agriculture is Virginia’s largest private industry, and to ensure this sector stays at the forefront of our economy, we must continue to support research and technological advancements that enhance the competitiveness of our specialty crops,” Northam said Thursday. “These grants fund important projects that will help improve food safety for growers, boost agricultural development and create new market opportunities, especially in our rural areas.”

“Governor Northam’s administration is committed to rural economic development, specifically protecting, enhancing, and diversifying our range of agriculture products,” said Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry Bettina Ring. “These projects propose to give our farmers new options for crops, crop protection, varieties, farming methods and more, continuing to support Virginia’s No. 1 private sector industry.”