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byline: Richard Foster

Smithfield Foods donates $75,000 to The Faison Center

Smithfield Foods Inc. announced on Wednesday that it has donated $75,000 to fund the Smithfield Foods Outdoor Learning Center Overlook at The Faison Center's Richmond campus. Unveiled at the event, the new outdoor learning center will allow the center's students to enjoy learning activities outside the classroom. 

With campuses in Richmond and Newport News, The Faison Center is a nonprofit educational and treatment center serving children and adults with autism.

“Our mission at The Faison Center is to give children and adults with autism and other related learning challenges the best opportunity to live rich and fulfilling lives. This outdoor overlook is a wonderful addition to our commitment to improve the lives of the individuals we serve,” said Brian McCann, president and CEO of The Faison Center, in a statement. “We are so pleased by the gracious support Smithfield has given us throughout the years, and we are grateful for their generous contribution to expand our program offerings.”

The new outdoor center supports Faison's holistic approach to enriching the lives of its students by helping them connect with nature.

“Smithfield Foods is based here in Virginia and we have always believed in the importance of strengthening the communities where our employees live and work in unique ways,” said Stewart Leeth, vice president of regulatory affairs and chief sustainability officer for Smithfield Foods. “As a company committed to environmental stewardship, we’re honored to help The Faison Center expand its services by establishing a designated outdoor space where students can come together to enjoy nature and learn more about our environment.”

Smithfield Foods is the world's largest pork processor and hog producer.

Photo courtesy Smithfield Foods Inc.

 

Virginia Tech Transportation Institute receives $15M in federal grants

The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) announced Wednesday that it will receive $15 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Transportation to study how to safely integrate autonomous vehicles onto U.S. roads and highways.

“As one of our premier research centers, the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute continues to lead and innovate in autonomous technologies and vehicle safety,” Virginia Tech President Tim Sands said in a statement. “These awards, and the support of our national and state transportation agencies, will enable the advancement of critical research to address transportation challenges and create new opportunities for smart infrastructure growth.”

VTTI received two of the seven grants awarded nationwide through the U.S. Department of Transportation's Automated Driving Demonstration Grants program. The grants will support two VTTI projects: One will examine how autonomous cars will interact with public safety workers, such as taking traffic direction from a police officer at the scene of an accident. The other grant will be used to research how to safely integrate automated trucks onto U.S. roadways.

VTTI is the largest transportation research institute in the nation and houses the largest group of driving safety researchers in the world. 

Tom Dingus, director of VTTI and endowed professor of biomedical engineering and mechanics at Virginia Tech, said, “Receiving these prestigious awards from the U.S. Department of Transportation is an honor and fantastic for Virginia Tech and Virginia. Over the years, VTTI has established itself as a global leader for automated vehicle evaluation and development. We are very happy to take these important steps to move automated vehicles forward to save lives, improve mobility across the population, and reduce the impact of vehicle emissions.”

 

Airbnb sites in Virginia see nearly 372,000 summer visitors

Nearly 372,000 people stayed at Airbnb sites in Virginia this summer.

San Francisco-based Airbnb Inc., an online lodging marketplace, said Virginia hosts earned a total of $60.3 million in supplemental income in accommodating 371,900 guest arrivals between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

Those figures represent an increase from 2018's summer season when there were 280,900 guest arrivals in Virginia, with local hosts making a total of $42.9 million.

The top 10 Virginia destinations for Airbnb guests during this summer were: 

Virginia Beach: 47,300 guest arrivals ($9.4 million in host income)

Richmond: 27,500 ($3.8 million)

Charlottesville: 25,000 ($3.7 million)

Norfolk: 23,900 ($4 million)

Arlington: 18,000 ($4.7 million)

Williamsburg: 15,200 ($1.9 million)

Alexandria: 14,800 ($3.3 million)

Fairfax County: 12,100 ($3.5 million)

Lynchburg: 11,800 ($1.1 million)

Loudoun County: 9,600 ($1.8 million)

The top five origin cities for Airbnb guests in Virginia were: Washington, D.C.; Richmond; Virginia Beach; Philadelphia; and Arlington.

PBS KIDS gets new leader

Linda Simensky has been promoted to a new role, head of PBS KIDS Content, at Arlington-based public television broadcaster PBS.

In her new position, she will lead the development of a multiplatform video content strategy for children’s programming.

Simensky joined PBS in 2003. She has worked with producers at the public television network on the development of a number of shows for children, including “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood,” “Wild Kratts,” “Dinosaur Train” and “Odd Squad.”

Before joining PBS, she was senior vice president of original animation for Cartoon Network.

Fifty-six minutes in America

On May 31, a disgruntled Virginia Beach public utilities engineer went on a shooting rampage through a city municipal building. Over 36 minutes, he killed 11 city workers and a contractor and wounded four others, including a police officer, before he was fatally wounded in a gunfight with police.

On Aug. 3, a white nationalist shot and killed 22 people and wounded 24 more at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart during a 20-minute massacre aimed against immigrants.

About 14 hours later, on Aug. 4, yet another armed and angry young man gunned down 10 people, including his own sister, and wounded 14 others outside a Dayton, Ohio, bar. That attack lasted 30 seconds.

It took 90 minutes — more time than all of these shootings combined — for the Republican-majority Virginia General Assembly to adjourn its July special legislative session on gun control without debating or voting on any legislation.

Instead, they referred all pending bills to the Virginia State Crime Commission for study. The legislature plans to reconvene on Nov. 18, after the upcoming election in which every Assembly seat will be on ballots.

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam called the special session in the wake of the Virginia Beach workplace shooting. However, Republican House Speaker Kirk Cox decried the move as “an election-year stunt,” calling the session “premature” and saying lawmakers required more time to study gun violence before contemplating legislative actions.

The sale of guns and ammo is an $11 billion industry in the United States. But the financial costs of gun violence far exceed that. Lost wages and economic contributions attributed to firearms violence alone total more than $49 billion annually.

Last year, there were 340 mass shootings across the nation, leaving 373 people dead and 1,346 wounded, according to the nonprofit research group Gun Violence Archive. As of early August, there had been 255 mass shootings in the United States this year — more than one a day — killing 275 people and injuring 1,065.

And that’s just mass shootings. In 2017, more than 39,700 Americans died from overall gun violence, including 1,028 Virginians, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That being said, Virginia is largely a gun-friendly state. About 29% of Virginians own at least one firearm, according to the results of a 2015 survey published in the medical journal Injury Prevention.

In its annual Gun Law Scorecard, the nonprofit, San Francisco-based Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence gave Virginia a “D” grade, citing factors such as its lack of universal background checks and not requiring gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms. Also, seven years ago, Virginia repealed its law limiting people to purchasing one handgun per month.

In decades past, it wasn’t unusual for even Old Dominion Democrats to campaign as gun-toting hunters — take U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, for example, who handed out blaze-orange “Sportsmen for Warner” bumper stickers depicting hunting rifles during his successful 2001 campaign for governor. However, Warner, who once received an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association, has walked back many of his pro-gun stances in recent years, renouncing past votes against banning assault rifles and high-capacity magazines.

Virginia politicians generally have adopted strong anti-gun stances at their peril, though, as evidenced by Democrat Dan Gecker. A popular, two-term Chesterfield County supervisor, Gecker lost his 2015 state Senate race to Republican Glen Sturtevant Jr. Gecker’s campaign was mortally wounded, politicos say, by $700,000 worth of gun-control ads funded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund.
Nevertheless, fatigued by the relentless tide of mass shootings, public opinion may be shifting.

A May Quinnipiac poll found that 94% of U.S. voters favor universal background checks, and 61% want stricter gun laws. About 84% of Virginia voters support stronger background checks, and 54% favor increased gun control, according to a 2018 poll by Christopher Newport University’s Wason Center for Public Policy.

Following the August shootings, President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke about expanding background checks and instituting “red-flag” gun laws to restrict firearms access for people who are deemed a threat to themselves or others. (Both are initiatives Northam intended to introduce during Virginia’s aborted special session.)

Regardless of the solutions proffered, one thing is clear: Ignoring or sidestepping the problem may not be an option for much longer.

International ports convention returns to Norfolk

In October the Port of Virginia will play host to the 108th annual American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA) Convention and Expo, which will be held at the Hilton Norfolk The Main hotel.

It will be the fifth time over the last 93 years that the convention representing the Western Hemisphere’s ports industry has convened in Norfolk.

“We’ve been at this for a long time,” says Aaron Ellis, public affairs director for the Alexandria-based international trade association.

The AAPA represents 130 seaport authorities and 200 associated organizations from the United States, Canada, Central America, South America and the Caribbean. Its first convention was held in December 1912 in New York City. Last year, it met in Valparaíso, Chile.

Focusing on topics such as economic development, trade, technology and coastal resiliency, this year’s event in Norfolk is expected to draw 500 to 600 attendees and more than 80 exhibitors. Ludovic Renou, president of Norfolk-based cargo carrier CMA CGM America LLC, will deliver the keynote address.

The Port of Virginia “is just a fabulous port. It’s got everything that is of interest to somebody in the port industry,” Ellis says. “It’s got one of the deepest channels in the country; it’s got a huge Navy presence. There are just so many aspects that make Norfolk a good [ports industry] calling card, if you will.”

The convention’s theme will be “Revolutionizing America’s First Port,” a nod to the Virginia ports industry’s origins, which reach back to the early 1600s in colonial Jamestown. The AAPA convention was last held in Virginia in 2007, the 400th anniversary of Jamestown’s founding.

“The Port of Virginia has literally been America’s first port for over 400 years,” says Jay Stecher, the Port of Virginia’s vice president of marketing and communications. “If you think about what they were doing at that time to what we’re doing now — the investments we’re making in people, in technology and equipment and what the future is going to bring — we think it’s going to be an interesting theme.”

And with the port having just completed a $320 million expansion of its Virginia International Gateway facility in Portsmouth, complete with the East Coast’s largest ship-to-shore cranes, Virginia has a lot to show off at the convention.

“[It’s] one of the reasons we’re so excited about having the convention in Norfolk this year,” Stecher says. “The timing was perfect to showcase all the benefits [the Port of Virginia has] to share with the maritime industry.”

Encore performance

UPDATED AUG. 28

In 2007, when Stephen Moret was CEO of the Baton Rouge Area Chamber in Louisiana, he had a career-changing moment.

A new employee from Georgia had raved about her state’s innovative workforce development program, so he arranged to take a tour. “It’s probably something the Georgia people regret to this day,” jokes Moret, now president and CEO of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP).

“I’ve never been more impressed with a single economic or workforce development program than I was with Georgia Quick Start,” he recalls. “It was just so impressive.”

Moret was so impressed, in fact, that when he was tapped as Louisiana’s secretary of economic development in 2008, his first order of business was to replicate Georgia’s Quick Start program — and improve upon it. And he hired the second-ranked Georgia Quick Start official to run it.

That became Louisiana’s FastStart program. Launched that same year, it provides prospective companies with free recruitment and training services as long as they commit to creating a set number of jobs in the state.

FastStart quickly eclipsed Georgia as the top-ranked workforce development program in the nation. Business Facilities Magazine deemed it the “gold standard” for such programs. During the past 10 years, FastStart has developed custom workforce solutions for companies including Benteler, Electronic Arts, Gardner Denver, GE Capital, IBM and ConAgra.

Now Moret’s set to do it again here in Virginia, as he prepares the VEDP to create a “world-class, turnkey, customized workforce recruitment and training incentive program” based on the Georgia and Louisiana initiatives.

“Every time you create something new, you can kind of say, ‘Well, what would you do differently if you had to do it over?’” Moret says. “I just saw this as a big opportunity for Virginia. [It’s] something I’ve already seen work [and it’s] particularly powerful for the smaller metro and rural regions where companies are worried about … [finding] enough quality talent.”

VEDP’s new program will be focused on economic development projects — new facilities or expansions of existing ones — that Virginia is competing with other states to land, mostly manufacturing plants, corporate headquarters, distribution centers and software-development facilities.

Moret has hired Mike Grundmann, VEDP’s new senior vice president of workforce solutions, to head the program. Grundmann is a 20-year veteran of Georgia’s Quick Start and was director of advanced manufacturing for the Georgia Department of Economic Development. Working for Quick Start, Grundmann oversaw the development of more than 100 custom workforce solutions for companies including Ciba Vision, Pirelli Tire, Amazon, Sony Music and Gatorade.

By this time next year, Moret expects to have hired 12 full-time employees toward an eventual staff of 50 that will be devoted to Virginia’s new workforce solutions program. VEDP expects to begin work on pilot projects by the end of this year. By its fifth year, Moret expects that the program will be providing workforce solutions for 100 economic development projects in the commonwealth each year. The General Assembly allocated $7 million to fund the program’s launch and operating costs, including hiring staff and purchasing equipment.

Speedy solutions
VEDP staff will work quickly to market Virginia’s assets to the client companies and will tour facilities and interview company leaders to understand their specific hiring needs, business models and processes, Grundmann explains.

Says Moret: “We’re selling not just customization; we’re also selling speed. Sometimes you’ll have a company say, ‘I’ve got a plant in Germany. I essentially want one just like that in the United States, and I want to have it up as quickly as possible.’”

In the current low unemployment environment, recruiting and training employees is a service companies find very attractive, Moret says. And they’ll find it especially valuable, he adds, when they learn that it would cost them three to four times as much to develop the same level of customized recruiting and training services that VEDP can offer for free. (VEDP estimates it will spend $800 to $1,000 per job position for recruiting and training.)

A key part of that service is recruiting people who are a good match for the company’s culture and values, Grundmann says. “When a company is building a new plant, they’re excited about all the latest and greatest [technological innovations]. They’re also excited about the opportunity to build a culture from scratch,” he says.

“That’s one of the big advantages of the pre-employment training,” Moret says. “Are people showing up on time? Are they exhibiting the skills that you need? And how are they interacting with other folks? Those are all things that help them get to a better fit.”

VEDP staff also will develop custom training materials for new employees.

“It is not only extremely customized, but very rich in illustrations, 3-D animations, video, everything to make it more visual. The whole idea is to shorten the new-hire learning curve,” Grundmann says.

Adds Moret: “We’re not producing any credentials … [or] degrees.  … It’s literally recruiting and training people not just to be a welder or an electrician but to be a welder for this particular company, this particular plant.”

Prospective workers will train on the actual equipment they’ll be using, usually in the same factories where they’ll eventually be working. VEDP will get the process started and then will partner with the commonwealth’s community colleges, which will implement the training services.

“Virginia’s community colleges have long played a critical role in meeting the training needs of businesses, both those that are new to the commonwealth, as well as those expanding here,” says Virginia Community College System Chancellor Glenn DuBois. “We’re excited about this program and what it will mean for the individuals and businesses that we serve, as well as the impact for Virginia’s growing reputation.”

Back on top
Virginia’s program is well-positioned for success, Moret says. “We got to the No. 1 … [workforce] ranking in Louisiana with far less to work with than we have in Virginia. We’ve got one of the best public education systems in the country and one of the best higher-education systems. We’ve got great community college facilities.”

Another feature that will make Virginia’s program stand out from those in Georgia and Louisiana, Moret adds, is that VEDP will give client companies a choice between using its fast-track customized workforce program or receiving a Virginia Jobs Investment Program (VJIP) grant that will provide funding so the company can create its own recruitment and training program.

However, Moret is confident that when companies learn how much expertise and added value VEDP’s staff will bring to the table, they will choose its program.

Moret sees the initiative as a key component in raising Virginia to the top of all the major national business rankings. In July, Virginia regained its prestigious No. 1 ranking on CNBC’s annual America’s Top States for Business report. That ranking was largely due to Virginia landing Amazon’s $5 billion East Coast headquarters (HQ2), a coup that Moret helped accomplish.

“I think what we can do here will be far better than what Georgia and Louisiana have … and that’s not taking anything away from them. We have the advantage of hindsight, and we’re starting from scratch,” Moret says.

“We’ve got a much stronger starting position, a much stronger set of existing assets and if we deliver really, really well and market it really aggressively, I think we’ll get there quickly. Our public goal is to get ranked in the top two to three in the country within three years and shooting for No. 1 within five [years]. I’m absolutely 1,000% certain we’ll hit the first [goal] and I think there’s a very good chance we’re going to hit the second one too.”

CORRECTION: The print version of this story incorrectly stated the companies with which Louisiana's FastStart company has worked. This story has been updated with the correct information.

Altria in talks to merge with Philip Morris International

Henrico County-based Altria Group Inc. announced Tuesday that it's discussing an all-stock “merger of equals” with spinoff company Philip Morris International Inc.

“There can be no assurance that any agreement or transaction will result from these discussions,” the company said in a press release. “Additionally, there can be no assurance that if an agreement is reached, that a transaction will be completed. Any transaction would be subject to the approval of the two companies's boards and shareholders, and regulators, as well as other conditions.”

A longtime Fortune 500 company listed among the S&P 500, Altria is the parent company of Richmond-based tobacco products manufacturer Philip Morris USA, best known for its Marlboro cigarettes brand. Altria holds significant minority stakes in Belgian international beer brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV, as well as San Francisco-based e-cigarette manufacturer Juul Labs and Canadian cannabis company The Cronos Group.

Altria spun off Philip Morris International into an independent company in 2008. Based in New York, Philip Morris International is also a Fortune 500 company and manufactures Marlboro cigarettes and other tobacco products and brands for sale in more than 180 nations outside the United States.

Construction leaders’ confidence dipped in June

In June, the U.S. construction industry expressed a small drop in confidence about near-term prospects for nonresidential construction but contractors remain reasonably upbeat, according to the results of the most recent Construction Confidence Indiex survey released by the Associated Builders and Contractors.

Contractors were slightly less optimistic about sales expectations, profit margins and staffing levels than in the prior month, according to a statement from the national construction industry trade association, which represents 21,000 members in 69 chapters nationwide.

Overall, 67% of contractors survyed in the June report said they expect sales to rise in the next six months, while 59% predict staffing increases and 54% expect profit margins to grow. Responses above 50% in the index indicate industry growth.

Although “economists near and far are searching for signs of the next economic downturn,” the contractors' outlook shows that nonresidential construction is still positioned as a driver for economic growth, ABC Chief Economist Anirban Basu said in a press release.

“What is perhaps most impressive is the expectation that profit margins will continue to rise,” Basu said. “This is an indication that contractors continue to enjoy pricing power, helping to offset the impacts of rising wage pressures. Even with wages rising, more contractors expect to add people than to subtract them, another reason to believe that, for now, the U.S. expansion remains firmly in place. This is further supported by indications that sales of nonresidential construction services continue to expand.”

 

Governor launches workforce development listening tour

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam embarked on the first leg of an eight-stop workforce development listening tour Monday in Roanoke. 

The tour coincides wtih National Workforce Development Month in September. The talks are intended to provide workers, employers and local leaders a forum to provide suggestions and feedback to Northam on how to address employment challenges and strengthen Virginia's workforce. 

“Virginia was recently named the best state to do business in America, and that recognition is the result of our ongoing and targeted investments to build a diverse and highly-skilled talent pipeline,” Northam said in a statement Monday. “Over the next month, I look forward to visiting every region of the commonwealth to hear directly from the people of Virginia about the business, workforce and education challenges they face. These conversations will help us better understand how we can address their needs as we work to develop policies and programs aimed at expanding economic opportunity for all Virginians.”

“With unemployment at record lows, businesses are struggling to find the talent they need,” Megan Healy, the state's chief workforce development advisor, said in a press release. “We know the innovative solutions to some of the commonwealth's largest hiring challenges will come from people in our communities closest to the these issues.”

The sessions are scheduled as follows:

  • Aug. 26: Roanoke
  • Aug. 27: Harrisonburg
  • Sept. 4: Danville
  • Sept. 10: Northern Virginia
  • Sept. 17: Norfolk
  • Sept. 20: Richmond
  • Sept. 23: Richlands