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byline: Sandy John

CAV Angels hits $20 million+ milestone

When Greg and Marion Werkheiser connected with during their search for seed investors for their augmented reality software in 2018, the couple reaped benefits beyond an initial $300,000 infusion.

“The investment itself gave us credibility to other investors,” says ARtGlass CEO Greg Werkheiser, a 2000 graduate of the School of Law who co-founded the -based company in 2017. It also gave him a continuing relationship with CAV Angels investors — each of whom have ties to — who advise and encourage ARtGlass, which enables sites like George Washington’s Mount Vernon to develop immersive experiences for patrons.

The ties to the U.Va. community also “gave us a sense of comfort that these people were interested, perhaps, in us for more than just what their rate of return is gonna be,” Werkheiser says. To date, CAV Angels has invested $1.375 million in ARtGlass.

ARtGlass’ success is just as important to CAV Angels. Founded in 2015, the nonprofit -based investment club is not affiliated with U.Va. but links high-potential with ties to the university to its network of 150 accredited investors. CAV Angels hit a milestone in summer 2023 when it surpassed $20 million in investments; by late 2023, it had invested more than $23 million.

“It will be at $25 [million] before you know it,” says CAV Angels Managing Director Rich Diemer, a 1980 graduate of U.Va.’s McIntire School of Commerce.

CAV Angels has 50 portfolio companies, among them a variety of innovative Virginia companies, including Richmond’s BrainBox Solutions and Charlottesville’s Astraea and . About 30% of the group’s investments have been in women-founded companies, and two of its investments, in Boston-based autonomous underwater vehicle company Dive Technologies and Oregon-based firm Phitonex, have monetized at six times their valuations.

Individual CAV Angels choose which startups to invest in. Because listening to pitches and reviewing due diligence reports is time-consuming, some investors may consider a $5 million sidecar fund announced by CAV Angels in late 2022. Accredited investors can commit money to the fund, and a separate committee makes investment decisions. Unlike traditional pooled funds, which take 20% of profits for the fund managers, CAV Angels will take 10% for the manager, and 5% donations each for CAV Angels and organizations benefiting U.Va. such as and the alumni association.

That approach “could broaden our appeal to some investors,” Diemer says.  

Inn at Little Washington plans five-star upgrades

After more than 40 years of growing his three-Michelin-star restaurant, chef and owner Patrick O’Connell is nearing his wish of offering guests “all the amenities of great hotels in Europe with the warmth of visiting a private home.”

Expansion plans include adding a reception building, two new buildings with 10 guest suites and a service building. Two other buildings within the inn’s existing 22 acres will be renovated and expanded to add a spa and pool. Some functions, such as guest check-in, will be relocated to provide better flow and “concentrate all of our key service activities under one roof.” Currently, the inn has 23 guest rooms, including a few suites.

The Town of Washington’s Architectural Review Board approved the preliminary plan in May 2023 after O’Connell led members and residents on a tour around the property, showing how new facilities would relate to existing structures. “In the end, it will look as if it’s always been here,” and fit in with other town buildings, he says. Agencies such as the soil and water district must review plans before a final plan is submitted, a process that O’Connell says could take about nine months.

Until plans are finalized, O’Connell won’t disclose added square footage, saying only that it will be “quite a bit.” He also won’t discuss cost estimates, although he says industry standards indicate “a five-star establishment has to consider investing about $1 million” per guest room or suite. He’s less precise about the spa price tag, saying it will depend on convincing a lender about potential return on investment.

The inn, already ‘s largest private employer with more than 200 workers, will hire spa staff and increase housekeeping, room service and valet staff, O’Connell says.

The inn “is an enormous driver of economic activity,” says Washington Mayor Joe Whited. The county receives about $200,000 to $400,000 in annual tax revenue from the inn, which also generates town meals and lodging taxes.

Sales taxes from the inn diversify county revenue streams and reduce dependence on property taxes, says county Supervisor Keir Whitson, who believes the expansion is “good news for local people.”

O’Connell says the project will “bring us full circle from what was once a small restaurant” to “finding ourselves in a league of competition with the top 20 hotels in the world.”  

King George exploring second industrial park

officials are negotiating with two landowners where the county wants to build a new industrial and technology park as it looks for a spot to lure more businesses.

The existing 149-acre King George County is full, and there’s nothing to offer prospects there. During the past two years, the county had to pass on two projects that could have accounted for at least $520 million in investment and 220 jobs, says Nick Minor, the county’s economic development and tourism director.

“Those two hurt, and I wish I started working on this park two years ago just to win those two projects,” he says.

Minor’s vision for a second county industrial park starts with 48 county-owned acres near U.S. Route 301 and state Route 3, where the county owns a transportation depot, and continues with adjacent 28-acre and 107-acre privately owned plots; a third owner with 104 acres is interested in selling in the future. King George supervisors gave the county’s economic development authority authorization to purchase the properties in June; Minor says an agreement could be reached by December.

Minor believes the new provides an excellent location: on a main corridor, within half a mile of water and sewer, and 10 minutes from Naval Support Facility Dahlgren. He sees a park catering to the base, which accounts for 11,000 of the county’s 13,000 jobs. In fiscal 2020, the base accounted for $472 million in local contracts, and 30% of its employees live in King George.

“They’re a [ and development] base, and we don’t have anything that necessarily complements what they do,” Minor says.

Minor estimates it will cost about $2 million to “get the site where someone could come in and start moving dirt.” The county will have to conduct engineering studies, perform impact reviews and get water and sewer infrastructure to the site. The county’s comprehensive plan also must be revised to include a new industrial park.

Gov. Glenn Younkin has pushed for more site readiness, and the General Assembly included $200 million in its 2022-2024 budget toward such initiatives.

Virginia Economic Development Partnership President and CEO Jason El Koubi calls such long-term investment critical.

“Generating capital investment and new jobs can be transformational for more rural communities, and King George County is prudent to consider strategic investments in this initiative,” El Koubi says. 

Love at first site

Home to eight companies and three Fortune 1000 companies, metro is “punching above our weight” for a region of 1.3 million residents, says Jennifer Wakefield, president and CEO of the Partnership.

For the third year in a row, the Richmond region was named by Business Facilities magazine as a top 10 location for corporate headquarters and corporate campuses. Richmond ranked No. 9, coming in just behind the Washington, D.C.-Arlington-Alexandria region.

Business Facilities’ rankings consider the number of corporate headquarters in a location and what resources that area offers for business operations, such as the cost of doing business and quality of life for workers. Richmond scores high in those factors and offers companies a strong business climate, workforce availability and solid infrastructure, say economic development officials.

The region’s star also is rising among those who make business location decisions, according to annual surveys of site selection consultants and corporate officials conducted for GRP, the lead regional economic development organization. A 2021 survey found that 20% of site selection consultants had considered Richmond previously, but only 2% of corporate executives had. But by the 2023 survey, nearly 40% of both groups said they’d considered the region, and site selection consultants said they short-listed Richmond about 40% of the time. 

Friendly business climate

While cost is never the only factor companies prioritize when weighing locations, businesses want to locate headquarters or major assets in places with low taxes and stable, business-friendly policies, Wakefield says. Ranked second on CNBC’s Best States for Business list in 2023, Virginia checks those boxes; the state’s 6% corporate tax rate hasn’t changed in 50 years.

GRP compared the costs for operating a 50-person office — including rent, salaries and benefits, and utilities for a year — and found Richmond is less expensive than seven other major cities, including Atlanta, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Washington, D.C. Companies settling in Richmond pay lower costs for office rents, state unemployment insurance and commercial electric rates than in the comparison cities.

Fortune 500 utility Dominion Energy, which has its corporate headquarters and 5,400 employees in Richmond, charges industrial electric rates in Virginia that are more than 16% below the national average, according to Dominion Energy Virginia President Ed Baine. The company’s array of solar and wind projects under development also helps attract businesses that want renewable energy to help meet sustainability goals.

By the time company executives contact a local economic development office about a , they’re ready to move quickly, so the locality must be ready, too, says Anthony J. Romanello, executive director of the Economic Development Authority.

Take for example Facebook (now Meta Platforms), which approached the county in late 2016 about building a 970,000-square-foot data center complex and was able to start construction by fall 2017 because the county offers a quick permitting process.

Additionally, last year, to attract more companies with lab and activities, the Henrico Board of Supervisors lowered its research and development tax rate from $3.50 to $0.90 per $100 of assessed value. Last year, Thermo Fisher Scientific announced a $92.3 million expansion of lab operations in Henrico, and diagnostic lab testing company Genetworx also said it would double the size of its facility in the county’s Innsbrook area.

In recent years, Henrico also raised the threshold for exemption from BPOL (business, professional and occupational license) taxes to $500,000 in annual gross receipts. Supervisors “recognize that if we reduce the tax burden on the business community, they will respond in kind. We have seen substantial investment since taxes were reduced,” Romanello adds.

In the city of Richmond, business-friendly policies such as a citywide technology zone to encourage the growth of tech firms and a commercial area revitalization program to keep commercial corridors vibrant have helped attract and retain businesses, says Leonard Sledge, director of Richmond’s Department of Economic Development.

“We endeavor to move at the speed of business to help businesses grow in the city,” he says.

Worker availability

Many companies with Richmond operations praise the availability of skilled workers, due in part to the city’s proximity to several colleges and universities.

“One of the attractions of having a big base of operations in Richmond is a deep talent pool,” particularly in information technology, says Ted Hanson, CEO of ASGN, which occupies 78,000 square feet across multiple offices in the city. The company moved its headquarters from California to Henrico three years ago. Its largest business unit, Apex Systems, also has its headquarters and about 530 employees in Henrico.

The 17 counties of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area have a workforce of 695,000 people, which rises to 1.2 million for the broader Central Virginia area. The greater Richmond region is home to more than 20 higher education institutions — including public schools like Virginia Commonwealth University, private universities like the University of Richmond, and two historically Black colleges and universities, Virginia State University and Virginia Union University.  Collectively, they graduate thousands of students annually. With about 1.7 million higher education students within a 150-mile radius of Richmond, recruitment opportunities are unlimited. Additionally, nearly 40% of the region’s working-age population, ages 25 to 64, have at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with the national average of 33.5%.

“The state’s top-tier universities and thriving business communities help create a strong pipeline of candidates for a range of positions,” says Bill Nash, CEO of -based Fortune 500 used-car retailer CarMax, which has 2,300 associates in metro Richmond.

Performance Food Group, a Fortune 500 company that employs nearly 1,000 workers at its Goochland headquarters and two area distribution centers, has “been very successful building the Performance family with local residents,” says company spokesperson Scott Golden. While PFG makes “some strategic hires outside of greater Richmond,” the company recruits locally for information technology, human resources and finance professionals, as well as skilled warehouse workers, truck drivers and front office workers.

Metro Richmond’s labor pool is also increasing because the region’s population is growing at a faster rate than the state as a whole — by 9.8% between 2010 and 2020, compared with 7% statewide. People relocating from Northern Virginia make up the largest group moving to the region, Wakefield says.

Occasionally, companies tell GRP that they’re worried about the potential number of available workers in Richmond, but in those cases, the market may be too small for their needs, Wakefield says. “If they’re looking for an Atlanta-sized market,” Richmond isn’t the right place, she adds.

Quality of life

Richmond’s quality of life is vital in attracting and retaining companies and their employees, economic development officials and company representatives agree.

The region’s low cost of living grabs people’s attention, says Matt McLaren, managing director of business attraction for County Economic Development. “People from larger metros nationally and internationally are surprised by the affordability, low congestion and sophistication of our market,” he says. “Taking them through neighborhoods and seeing them look at their real estate apps is always fun as they compare what they could afford in our region versus back home.”

Richmond’s cost of living is better than some markets with which the city directly competes for business relocations, including Charlotte, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee. Richmond home prices averaged about $383,000 last year, substantially lower than the national average of $452,000.

Henrico EDA’s Live Your Best campaign focuses on the region’s quality of life and promotes it as a place “where workers and families are going to want to be,” Romanello says. The campaign touts Henrico’s top-ranked public schools, variety of housing and neighborhood options, low cost of living, and recreational attractions ranging from the James River to craft breweries.

Many projects coming to Chesterfield involve relocating employees, McLaren says. “Once they visit, it is an easy decision for them to choose to locate to a region rich with diversity and affordability of housing, amazing educational opportunities … [and] amazing recreational and cultural attractions.”

Richmond’s “deep talent pool” is an attractor for companies, says Ted Hanson, CEO of ASGN, which moved its headquarters to from California in 2020. Photo by Matthew R.O. Brown

CarMax’s Nash echoes those comments: “Our hometown of Richmond is a vibrant place to live and work and attracts top talent from across the country.” He highlights the city’s restaurants, museums, and proximity to mountains and beaches as things his company’s employees love about the region.

Just as geography provides Richmonders a central location that’s two hours from mountains, beaches or the cultural offerings of Washington, D.C., it also offers companies a central location on the East Coast, approximately halfway between Florida and Maine and two hours from the nation’s capital. With three interstates serving the city, 45% of the U.S. population is within a day’s drive, including major markets in the Northeast and Southeast. Port access is available via river barge, trains and trucking.

For commuters, the city’s traffic is relatively light. “Richmond’s central location is a real benefit. You have the advantages of being in the state capital but not having to battle the hustle and bustle of traffic that you may get in other areas of the state,” ASGN’s Hanson says.

One of the region’s few weaknesses site selectors mention in GRP’s annual survey is the limited number of direct flights from Richmond International Airport. “Our location is an advantage but also a disadvantage because airlines look at the largest markets,” Wakefield says, adding that Perry Miller, president and CEO of the Capital Region Airport Commission, “has done a tremendous job of attracting new direct flights,” and the airport now has direct flights to
35 destinations. “That’s needed because we’re being counted out of projects.”

Regional cooperation

While economic development officials use phrases like “secret sauce” to describe Richmond’s brew of positive qualities, one of the biggest attractions for corporate headquarters and campuses is simply the fact that so many companies already have settled in Richmond. “Other companies like to cluster where there are headquarters and corporate service firms,” Wakefield says.

Henrico’s economic development staff is happy to tell corporate prospects that it has six Fortune 1000 companies and to namedrop Markel Group, Altria Group and others with major operations in the county. “Worldwide companies have double-downed on Richmond, and the rest of the world takes note of that,” Romanello says.

“Success begets success,” Sledge says, offering CoStar Group’s major investment in Richmond as an example. The D.C.-based real estate analytics and information company, with 1,500 area employees, has been in Richmond since 2016, and broke ground on a $460 million, 750,000-square-foot expansion of its riverfront campus in 2022. “Because of the business they are in,” Sledge says, “that investment sends a strong message about the city, region and commonwealth.”

Richmond-based companies also do their part to help economic development. Dominion Energy, for instance, has a team of energy experts that assists businesses seeking to expand or relocate in Virginia. Many companies, whether long established in Richmond or newcomers, contribute to the quality of life by being good corporate citizens, providing grants and volunteers for local nonprofits, sponsoring cultural events, and working to keep Richmond a vibrant community, Sledge says, adding that regional cooperation around economic development is also a plus.

“We are equally as excited and enthused about growth in the city as we are about growth of our partners in the counties. We need and want each other to be successful,” Sledge says.

Ranking among Business Facilities’ Top 10 metro areas for corporate locations is a bonus. Choosing a corporate site involves “some subjectivity,” but also plenty of analysis and objective criteria, Wakefield says, so when an executive sees Richmond in the Top 10, he or she might think, “if someone else put them on a list, maybe I shouldn’t discount them.” 

 

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Photo courtesy Virginia Tourism Corp.

Richmond at a glance

Founded in 1737 by Col. William Byrd II, Richmond is known as the River City for its location on the James River. The state’s capital, Richmond, is home to the Virginia General Assembly and much of state government. The metro region, which includes Chesterfield, Goochland, Hanover and Henrico counties, is headquarters to 11 Fortune 1000 companies. The region is also home to the University of Richmond, Virginia Commonwealth University, Randolph-Macon College, Virginia State University and Virginia Union University.

Population

226,604 (city); 1.3 million (metro region)

Top employers

  • VCU Health System/VCU: 21,332 employees
  • Capital One Financial: 13,000
  • HCA Virginia Health System: 11,000
  • Bon Secours Richmond: 8,416
  • Dominion Energy: 5,433

Major attractions

Richmond is home to historical and cultural attractions such as the Poe Museum, the American Civil War Museum, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Virginia Museum of History & Culture and the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia. Visitors can also enjoy time outside at Maymont park, Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden or the Kings Dominion amusement park. Carytown, the Fan District and Scott’s Addition offer many options for shopping, dining and entertainment.

Top convention hotels

Richmond Marriott
413 rooms, 26,760 square feet of event space

DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Richmond – Midlothian
237 rooms, 26,039 square feet of event space

The Jefferson
181 rooms, 26,000 square feet of event space

Hilton Richmond Short Pump Hotel and Spa
254 rooms, 21,937 square feet of event space

Notable restaurants

Lemaire
New American, lemairerestaurant.com

Longoven
New American, longovenrva.com

L’Opossum
Modern French, lopossum.com

Shagbark
New American/Southern, shagbarkrva.com

Stella’s
Greek, stellasrichmond.com

Fortune 500 companies

  • Performance Food Group
  • CarMax
  • Altria Group
  • Dominion Energy
  • Markel Group
  • Owens & Minor
  • Arko
  • Genworth Financial

Revivicor’s $100 million pig-organ facility moves forward

By early next year, -based will be raising genetically modified pigs in Montgomery County, with plans to harvest their hearts and kidneys for xenotransplantation into human patients.

Founded in 2003 as a spinoff company of PPL Therapeutics (the company that cloned Dolly the sheep seven years earlier), Revivicor provided the genetically modified pig heart that was successfully transplanted by University of Maryland School of surgeons into a 57-year-old terminal heart patient in January 2022. The man lived for about two months without organ rejection signs, though his death is still being studied. (While a pig virus was detected in the heart, no related infection was observed in the patient, who experienced other complications.)

Now, Revivicor is building a $100 million, 69,000-square-foot designated pathogen-free facility at Montgomery’s Falling Branch Corporate Park, says Dewey Steadman, head of investor relations for Revivicor’s parent company, Silver Spring, Maryland-based United Therapeutics. Revivicor will raise up to 200 genetically modified pigs indoors at the , which United Therapeutics purchased for $1.06 million in June 2022. 

The company’s clinical focuses on much-needed replacements for human hearts, kidneys and the thymus. As of August, more than 103,500 patients were on the national waiting list, with 17 people dying each day while waiting for transplants, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration.

With expected approval from the Food and Drug Administration, Revivicor will produce transplant for the University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins University and New York University.

During the first year at the Falling Branch facility, Revivicor expects to hire 20 permanent employees, paying a minimum annual salary of $75,000. Locals expect it will have an economic impact far beyond job creation, however. 

“The breakthroughs they are having and the publicity they are getting are putting our region on the map. It’s motivating companies to want to be here,” says Brett Malone, president of the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center, where Revivicor started its research more than two decades ago. “Their expansion has provided a lot of motivation and encouraged people to work on cutting-edge research.” 

Brian Hamilton, Montgomery County’s director of , believes that Revivicor’s investment in Falling Branch will attract more research activities to Montgomery and Virginia Tech. While it hasn’t prompted other companies to make inquires yet, “once Revivicor is delivering organs, I think it will be a lot more noticeable.”

Son’s cancer fight inspires startup

The sight of Neal Piper’s then-3-year-old son, Noah, stuck on the couch all day, tethered to an IV pole with a feeding tube after the boy’s diagnosis in 2019 put his father on a new mission.

Piper, who had 15 years of experience in commercializing products, including 10 years in sales, marketing and leadership roles for pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, saw a need for technological improvements in tube feeding, a market valued at $11 billion globally. After consulting doctors, patients and hospital administrators, Piper founded -based in 2020, raising about $1 million in seed funding to develop a new tube-feeding system. He hired biomedical sciences students as interns, employed a design firm to create prototypes and brought in regulatory consultants.

Luminoah’s system is a “discreet, portable, connected device” that “will completely transform how nutrition is delivered while reducing costs to the health care system,” says Piper. The system consists of a small, pager-sized, rechargeable pump a patient can wear on their belt and attach to a feeding port. A packet of liquid nutrients pumped by the system fits into a pocket and the device collects data on how much nutrition the patient receives — a change from the manual logs patients now must keep. Internal testing shows the device meets the performance metrics of competing products at half the size, Piper says. 

Luminoah participated in -based ‘ spring cohort, which included $20,000 in funding. The company won top honors and the people’s choice award at Lighthouse’s annual Demo Day pitch competition in May. That was followed by securing $6 million in Series A funding, which Piper thinks will carry the company through U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval, anticipated in 2024. Funders included Fry’s Path Capital, , Virginia Venture Partners and 757 Angels.

Luminoah has “made great progress in building and testing a device that is unique to the market and has attracted outside capital in a very tough fundraising environment,” 757 Angels Managing Director Paul Nolde says. 

By the end of this year, Luminoah expects to grow from four to 12 full-time employees and from eight to 12 part-time contractors, Piper says. He plans to manufacture the first thousand devices in-house and then scale with a contract manufacturer. 

The best news, though, is that his son, Noah, now 7, is cancer-free. 

Bedford firing up tech training

After Winoa USA closed its steel abrasives plant in 2020, town economic officials came up with the idea of renovating the empty facility into a technical training center for the industry that could include a commercial .

In August, the Bedford Authority expects to be closer to that goal, with plans to purchase the 60,000-square foot plant, previously assessed at $1.9 million. (The purchase cost was not available as of the mid-July press time for this issue.)

With a $99,000 grant from GO Virginia, the town will spend the next year crystallizing its planning for the Bedford Regional Metal Workforce Retention Center. Bedford’s director of planning and community development, Mary Zirkle, is heading up the initiative.

With nearly 5,800 metal and machinery jobs in Southwest Virginia, including the Roanoke and New River valleys, there’s a need for training, says EDA Chairman Jonathan Buttram, adding that the training center will attract more businesses to the region. “If we have a place that’s producing skilled labor, companies will want to be near it.”

“Having a training center in Bedford would be a huge step forward in providing skilled employees to fill our workforce needs,” says Mike Amos, president of Roanoke-based Precision Steel Manufacturing Corp., which needs workers skilled in fabrication, tube bending, traditional and robotic welding, and computer numerical control (CNC) machining.

The Winoa plant has three high-bay areas, allowing the EDA to consider multiple uses. Potential uses under discussion include:

  • Partnering with Central Virginia Community College to provide certificate programs in basic metalworking. CVCC offers metal working classes on campus but has limited space.
  • Forging a public-private partnership to provide industry- or company-specific training.
  • Creating a flexible metalwork training space that companies could rent.
  • Opening a commercial-scale foundry for training or .

The back bay was built as a foundry, and Bedford has a 10-million-watt transformer that could power an induction or arc furnace. “It would be the only foundry for training in the U.S.,” Buttram says.

Alan P. Druschitz, an associate professor in Virginia Tech’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, supports establishing a foundry for hands-on training and research. “This would be truly unique,” he says, “since new materials and new processes could be developed along with the workforce to put these materials and processes into high-volume production.”

U.Va. biolab seeks to catalyze region’s growth

Thomas Barker says his seed-stage wants to find “modern, modular, functional space” to allow the company he co-founded, Vasarya Therapeutics, to be “very efficient and optimal on our enterprise.”

But good lab space is hard to come by in , and what exists is spread around, “so you don’t necessarily get the impact of having other startup and tech companies in your space being in close proximity,” adds Barker, who is also Vasarya’s chief scientific officer.

hopes to address those problems by creating CvilleBioLab, an where early-stage companies can spend a year or two performing research while also being mentored by business leaders and advisers who can help “de-risk” the startup process, including navigating issues like intellectual property protection, says Nikki Hastings, executive director and co-founder of the nonprofit. Founded in 2016, CvilleBioHub advocates for and works to build the area’s biotech community.

In March, the organization received a $100,000 GO Virginia grant to support planning for CvilleBioLab. While there’s no timeline for selection, CvilleBioHub’s real estate partner, Rockville, Maryland-based Scheer Partners, is searching for an existing building to convert. “Ideally, we’d like 15,000 to 20,000 square feet, although we could get started with 5,000,” Hastings says.

Depending on the size, Hastings, the biotech track director at the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce, estimates spending around $3 million for infrastructure and equipment, with operating costs for staffing, maintenance, and overhead running between $500,000 and $1 million annually. Funding is still being determined, Hastings says.

The facility will include a wet lab and equipment including refrigerators, ultra-low-temperature freezers for DNA samples and other biological material, incubators, cell culture and DNA analysis tools, and basic lab equipment like microscopes.

The lab’s buildout is expected to take about a year. Companies will apply for a spot, with six to eight startups sharing the facility, though Hastings says CvilleBioHub will use part of the planning grant to “more definitively” determine programming during the summer. A lab director and advisory team will support occupants.

Charlottesville-area researchers who want to spin their work into a startup would benefit from having a formal , says Renna Nouwairi, a Ph.D. candidate in bioanalytical chemistry at “It would be a shame for our city and local economy to miss out on opportunities because a startup-friendly infrastructure is not in place.”