Cvent’s goal is “getting the friction” out of meeting and event planning, says McNeel Keenan, vice president of product management for the Tysons-based global event marketing and management company.
To do that, Cvent offers software products that handle registration, check-in, budgeting, marketing, speaker and exhibitor management for in-person, hybrid and virtual events. Hotels use tools such as Cvent Passkey to manage room blocks and Cvent Diagramming to manage multiple large events.
These products can streamline many time-consuming tasks, like responding to request for proposal (RFP) applicants, Keenan says. However, Cvent’s AI-powered tools “help craft a faster response,” he notes. Also, the company offers an annual user conference that includes training camps, tech tours and meetups.
This year marks Cvent’s 25th year in business. In 1999, CEO Reggie Aggarwal started the company with six employees, and it became profitable for the first time in 2004. Four years later, the company started the Cvent Supplier Network of venues. Then in 2013, Aggarwal took the company public, but in 2016, the company was purchased by Vista Equity Partners and taken private again.
With the pandemic came an important shift for all meeting planners and other industry professionals, including those at Cvent. The company began hosting virtual and hybrid events on a new virtual event platform launched in August 2020, and at the end of 2021, it went public for the second time. At the end of 2023, Cvent had about 4,800 employees and 22,000 customers worldwide, and it was back to in-person events.
And the deals weren’t yet done; in 2023, private equity firm Blackstone purchased Cvent for $4.6 billion, and in 2024, Cvent made several significant purchases.
In January the company acquired Jifflenow, which schedules and manages B2B appointments, and iCapture, which captures website visitor information for leads.
In June, it acquired Reposite to power the Cvent Vendor Marketplace, a network of more than 40,000 vendor offerings.
And in September, Cvent bought Splash, an event marketing technology company that Keenan says is geared to “simpler, field marketing events,” such as lunches, dinners and parties that take place alongside larger trade shows.
Smooth sailing
Aggarwal said in a statement that the company’s M&A strategy is driven by customers, “and we hear all the time that our customers want one platform, seamless data flow and an improved attendee and customer experience. Each of our recent acquisitions has been a strategic move to address these needs and expand our capabilities to better support our tens of thousands of customers.”
Organizations want the flexibility to run a mix of formats and event types, which optimizes their budgets, “something that is even more compelling in an uncertain or challenging macroeconomic environment,” according to Aggarwal.
Artificial intelligence is the next frontier in events management, “but candidly, I think we’re still a ways away from seeing what it can really do for our industry,” he says. “Cvent focuses on the practical application of AI across its platform because we want to make it easy for all of our customers to harness the power of AI in their day-to-day lives.”
The company has already rolled out
20 AI-related initiatives — including predictive modeling for registration planning, personalization tools, AI-powered event diagramming and chatbots.
In-person events continue to be the priority, Aggarwal says. The reason is simple, he added: 65% of planners say in-person events are more valuable to their stakeholders now when compared with 2019.
New York investment platform CAIS used Cvent’s software to support its 2023 Alternative Investment Summit. Photo courtesy CAIS
“That said, virtual events and hybrid events are still core aspects of a successful total event program,” Aggarwal notes.
Coming out of the pandemic, Keenan says, organizers have learned that a hybrid event can require the work of running both a virtual event and an in-person one.
As a result, “ambitions are pared back,” he says. “Now planners are making the conscious decisioning to dial it back a bit. They’re thinking of their budget. People are asking what makes sense, and so we’re seeing more balance.”
Since the pandemic, organizers also have learned that “people now expect the content to be recorded. You can capture it and get more value,” he says.
Zero to 60
CAIS, a New York-based alternative investment platform for independent financial advisers, “has gone from zero to 60” using Cvent products, according to Andrew DePaul, its senior vice president of marketing.
“Our first event with Cvent three years ago was basically a trial run, an internal meeting in Brooklyn,” DePaul says, but there was plenty of work on the line, because CAIS held more than 100 events in 2022.
So far, DePaul says Cvent’s products have helped boost attendance at its 2022 and 2023 Alternative Investment Summit; the third summit was scheduled in October, and “I think we will break records,” DePaul says.
What helps event planners break attendance records is what Keenan calls the “bespoke experience” Cvent offers. The big thing, he says “is to enable organizers to personalize the experience” for each attendee.
In CAIS’s case, the Attendee Hub app, which connects attendees to all the content, networking and sponsors the event has to offer, is especially helpful, according to DePaul. “Through Hub’s one-on-one feature, people can see everybody else attending. They can connect and have a meeting on their own. We’ve ramped it up and we’re seeing better engagement. We definitely will be all-in again next year.”
CAIS is making plans to take its summit on the road and has been hosting smaller scale events such as round table dinners. Cvent’s products are useful for small events — and for small businesses, DePaul says. “They’re good at working with you, so you’re buying the things you need. You don’t have to do a whole package.”
Two products coming online soon are aimed at smaller users, such as nonprofit organizations.
Cvent Essentials, which is in beta, is a pared down version of the Cvent platform that is designed for occasional users and has templates to support various types of meetings with different support and resources.
Also in the works is Event in a Box, a check-in and badging program that can be used for events with up to 250 attendees.
Cvent’s wide variety of products was on display at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in southern France.
No, Keenan says, “we were not running the film festival itself,” but big sponsors such as Spotify and TikTok find new markets for themselves at Cannes by “running their own events on the side.” That’s where Cvent comes in.
It can take a village — or a valley — to attract a multinational corporation.
Shenandoah Valley economic and workforce development officials combined forces to entice Northrop Grumman to locate a 315,000-square-foot advanced electronics manufacturing and testing facility on a 63-acre site in Waynesboro, a project announced in November 2023.
Construction of the $200 million-plus project is well underway, according to Jay Langston, executive director of the Shenandoah Valley Partnership in Harrisonburg. A groundbreaking ceremony attended by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Northrop Grumman Chair, CEO and President Kathy Warden was held in February for the facility, which is expected to be operational by 2026.
The Falls Church-based aerospace and defense giant anticipates creating an estimated 300 jobs — mostly a variety of engineering and manufacturing positions — over the next five years.
“The Northrop Grumman model opens up a new sector in manufacturing electronic components unlike anything we’ve had,” Langston says.
Northrop Grumman employs about 95,000 employees — 6,800 in Virginia —
and reported $39.29 billion in 2023 revenue. This year, the company ranked No. 109 on Fortune magazine’s annual Fortune 500 list and No. 382 on its Global 500 list.
“Northrop Grumman has put its faith in us. It’s a big name. It’s a statement for us,” says Langston, adding that regional economic development officials plan to promote the Waynesboro facility as an example for attracting other advanced manufacturing companies to the region.
Manufacturing overall is big business in the Shenandoah Valley, employing more people than any other private sector industry, according to a December 2020 SmartAsset report.
Greg Hitchin, Waynesboro’s economic development director, appreciates the importance of Northrop Grumman’s decision to make such a big investment in the valley. “It’s a tremendous opportunity” for the city to attract “new manufacturing of this caliber,” he says.
Hitchin led a team to “work through all factors we needed to get this here. … We got a GO Virginia grant to do our due diligence work ahead of time.” That $821,000 grant, awarded in July 2021, allowed the city to perform due diligence on nine sites, totaling 1,182 acres.
In November 2023, Gov. Glenn Youngkin said he had approved an $8.5 million grant from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund to assist the city in securing the NG project, and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership’s Virginia Talent Accelerator Program is providing Northrop Grumman with employee training and recruitment services at no charge.
Hitchin believes one of the key reasons Northrop Grumman chose Waynesboro was the fact that the location had been upgraded to a Tier 4 site, a state site-readiness designation meaning that all infrastructure permit issues have been identified and quantified, and that plans for necessary infrastructure improvements have been completed and approved. Tier 5, the highest designation, is for shovel-ready sites, and “zero is a cornfield,” Hitchin says.
A new access road to the Northrop Grumman Waynesboro site is being funded by a Virginia Department of Transportation grant.
Now, he says, “the building is going up. The concrete walls are up. It changes every day. It’s well on the way to meeting its schedule.”
Students at Blue Ridge Community College study mechatronics, a training program that college officials say will provide skilled area workers for Northrop Grumman. Photo courtesy Blue Ridge Community College
Timely training
Another factor that may have helped draw Northrop Grumman to Waynesboro is access to the valley’s strong workforce development programs.
“Our mechatronics program is something that is going to be very valuable” to Northrop Grumman, as well as to other advanced manufacturing companies, says John Downey, president of Blue Ridge Community College in Weyers Cave.
Mechatronics, he explains, is the integration of mechanical systems with electronics and software. “We teach the basics. They train on the more specific,” Downey says.
BRCC is working with Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, near Northrop Grumman’s Albemarle County plant, which produces maritime systems and equipment. BRCC also is working with James Madison University, regional technical schools and even high schools on associated workforce development efforts.
That’s because Northrop Grumman and other high-tech companies don’t just need high-tech training; they also need workers trained in accounting, human resources and other professions.
“The education system in the valley provides the gamut,” Downey says. “We even train and test CDL drivers. It saves [companies] time. They can get people on the road a lot sooner.”
Key workforce development issues on the horizon are artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, Downey adds. “That’s a huge growth area for community colleges. We need to be in the forefront, helping not only big manufacturing companies but also smaller businesses in the community.”
The Shenandoah Valley is home to various kinds of manufacturing — such as food, medical and pharmaceuticals — that help keep the region recession-resistant, Downey says.
The food and beverage industry — from growing and processing to packaging and transporting — remains “by far our dominant sector” in the valley, according to Langston.
“Agriculture is so important to us, but we take it for granted in general. We want to better celebrate it,” he adds. The Shenandoah Valley is home to four of Virginia’s top five agricultural counties — Rockingham, Augusta, Page and Shenandoah — producing more than $1.3 billion annually in commodities sold, according to the 2022 U.S. Department of Agriculture Census.
Agricultural production is a huge investment and a great engine for jobs, according to Langston. “People don’t think about who is doing the construction, putting up the silos, providing the equipment. There are people who specialize in all kinds of things that are necessary to make it all work — fuel, equipment dealers, delivery truck, fertilizer, storage.”
Neil A. Houff, president of Weyers Cave-based Houff Corp. and a Virginia Crop Production Association board member, observes that farms in the Shenandoah Valley “are getting bigger and getting smaller.”
Growth is “going in both directions — large and niche. Some midsize farms are consolidating, while some are breaking into niche markets,” Houff says.
What is driving that divide, he notes, is the valley’s proximity to large populations of people of different income levels. “That makes us attractive to traditional food production and traditional farming,” while making room for niche markets such as organic farms and small vineyards.
Sustainability and humane treatment of livestock have become bigger issues in recent years, Houff adds.
Farmer Focus, a partner-owned collective of nearly 100 family farms raising humanely treated poultry, celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. The Harrisonburg-based company plans to add 300 jobs by 2025.
Overall, the poultry industry in the valley has been “pretty steady,” Houff says. The area also is a big beef production area, he says, but most of the beef grown is shipped west for processing because facilities in Virginia facilities are on the smaller side.
What’s more, many existing businesses seem to be in growth mode, Houff adds.
Dairy processing operator HP Hood announced plans this spring to invest more than $83.5 million to expand its Winchester-area facility. The project includes upgrades to production and packaging equipment, as well as construction of additional warehouse and cooler space.
In May, fast-casual Mediterranean restaurant chain Cava opened a 55,000-square-foot production and packaging facility in Augusta County. The company made an initial investment of approximately $35 million in the Verona facility, which manufactures dips and spreads.
Leiber, a German-based manufacturer, is set to invest up to $20 million to establish its first U.S. operation in Innovation Village in Rockingham County, it announced in September 2023.
The new facility, which will extract brewer’s yeast from the byproducts of beer making and process it into animal food, will reflect two aspects of the region’s agribusiness, says Joshua Gooden, deputy director of economic development and tourism for Rockingham County.
Rockingham received a $4.5 million grant from the Virginia Business Ready Sites Program in August for site development at Innovation Village. Gooden says the county plans to build a 20-acre pad site on a 165-acre property in hopes of attracting another large industrial facility.
In addition to its manufacturing draw, the Shenandoah Valley is rich in natural, historic and cultural attractions that power a thriving tourism industry, with lots of state parks, campgrounds, wineries and breweries. Langston says that the region’s abundance of open spaces was a boon to area businesses during the pandemic.
The Virginia Metalcrafters Marketplace, with roots tracing back to the late 19th century, has become an attraction on the edge of Waynesboro for visitors who want to drink and dine. What was once the Waynesboro Stove Co. became Virginia Metalcrafters, a company known for its decorative hardware, fireplace accessories, trivets and other decorative items, although that company closed in 2006.
In 2016, Basic City Beer turned the site into a tourism attraction, opening as the first occupant of what is known today as Virginia Metalcrafters Marketplace.
The self-described “microcosmic brewery” was joined by Common Wealth Crush, an urban winery. Happ Coffee relocated to the market from downtown Waynesboro, and Basic City has expanded since its opening, adding an arcade in its tap room, a speakeasy-style bar and an 800-capacity music venue. Hitchin says a coworking space will be added to the mix soon.
And let us not forget Buc-ee’s, a Texas-based chain of mega-sized convenience stores, which is building a location on Interstate 81 in Rockingham. Owned by Arch “Beaver” Aplin III, Buc-ee’s is known for its huge size and its mascot — a toothy, ballcap-wearing cartoon beaver.
The chain purchased 21.3 acres for the center for $6.6 million in September 2023. Gooden says it’s expected to open in spring 2025. The Buc-ee’s center in Rockingham will be 74,000 square feet and have 120 fueling positions.
Rails and roads
Business success in the Shenandoah Valley depends greatly on its extensive logistics and transportation network, Houff and Langston agree.
Led by the Port of Virginia’s Inland Port in Front Royal, the region’s logistics industry “is essential for us — for manufacturing, agriculture [and] the food and beverage industry,” Langston says.
But since the pandemic, he has seen a slowdown in the desire to build new logistics facilities. “If it’s not overbuilt, it’s very close. Speculative logistics is no longer out there. I’ve heard that this is a countrywide phenomenon.”
Transportation, too, is critical in the valley, which has Interstates 81 and 64 and two major rail lines — CSX and Norfolk Southern — running through it.
“The poultry industry would not exist without rail. Virginia could not support it,” Langston says. “We need corn and soybean meal from the west to feed our animals and our birds.”
Given its importance, Houff is pleased to see plans to improve rail infrastructure in the region.
The Virginia Inland Port has finished $15 million in structural improvements, including three new rail sidings, and it can handle more freight from the Port of Virginia’s ocean terminals, which are set to be the widest and deepest channels on the East Coast. What’s more, the Virginia Department of Transportation’s $3.1 billion Interstate 81 Corridor Improvement Program lists 64 planned upgrades along the 325-mile corridor from Winchester to Bristol.
“The I-81 improvements are going to be a huge plus,” Langston says. “They’ve been needed for years.”
Big Run Overlook, Shenandoah National Park
Shenandoah Valley at a glance
The Shenandoah Valley lies between the Blue Ridge and Allegheny mountains, bisected by Interstate 81. The region includes Augusta, Bath, Highland, Rockbridge, Rockingham, Shenandoah, Page and Frederick counties, as well as the cities of Harrisonburg, Staunton,
Lexington, Waynesboro and Winchester. Agriculture remains a key industry for the region, once known as the breadbasket of the South. Advanced manufacturing is growing, and the valley has numerous logistics and food and beverage industries. It’s also a hub for higher education, including James Madison University, Mary Baldwin University, Shenandoah University, Virginia Military Institute and Washington and Lee University.
Population
373,472 (2021)
Top employers
•Amazon.com•Booz Allen Hamilton
•Capital One Financial•Freddie Mac
•General Dynamics•Inova Health System •Northrop Grumman•RTX
Major attractions
The Shenandoah Valley, which was settled in the 1700s, is known for its historical and cultural attractions, including the Virginia Museum of the Civil War, the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley and the American Shakespeare Center’s Blackfriars Playhouse. The region also is home to such natural attractions as Shenandoah National Park, the George Washington and Jefferson national forests, Natural Bridge and Luray Caverns.
Boutique/luxury hotels
The Blackburn Inn and Conference
Center (Staunton)
8,400 square feet of event space, 49 rooms
The Mimslyn Inn (Luray)
Nearly 5,000 square feet of event space,
45 rooms
The Georges (Lexington)
1,700 square feet of event space,
33 guest rooms
Top convention hotels
The Omni Homestead Resort (Hot Springs) 72,000 square feet of event space, 483 rooms
Hotel Madison (Harrisonburg) 21,000 square feet of event space,
230 rooms
Hotel 24 South (Staunton) 8,500 square feet of event space,
124 rooms
Best Western Plus Waynesboro Inn & Suites Conference Center 5,500 square feet of event space,
75 rooms
Notable restaurants
Local Chop & Grill House (Harrisonburg)
American, localchops.com
The Catamount Lounge (Front Royal)
Cocktails, thecatamountlounge.com
The Shack (Staunton)
New American, theshackva.com
The Joshua Wilton House (Harrisonburg)
American, joshuawilton.com
Retired U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. William G. Kelly covered a lot of ground during his first year as president of Christopher Newport University.
“I wanted to commit myself to listen and learn, so I invited students to walk with me at 6:30 a.m. every single Wednesday,” Kelly says, estimating that about 15 students and faculty members took him up on his offer each week to make the 2-mile trek around the university’s Newport News campus.
One thing that stood out to Kelly from their discussions, he says, was “the quality of the students. Folks were respectful. They asked me, ‘How are you doing?’”
Before taking the helm as Christopher Newport’s sixth president in July 2023, Kelly served as the 42nd superintendent of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut, where, he says, “I truly enjoyed engaging with young people going into the Coast Guard and their families.”
Prior to that, Kelly was stationed with the Coast Guard in Washington, D.C., as an assistant commandant for human resources, responsible for carrying out the armed service branch’s diversity and inclusion strategic plan.
A native of Yonkers, New York, Kelly is himself a 1987 graduate of the Coast Guard Academy and earned his master’s degree in instructional systems design from Florida State University. He and his family moved 15 times during their years with Coast Guard, including a stint in Newport News.
Trible’s legacy
Much of Christopher Newport University’s relatively short history occurred during the tenure of former Republican U.S. Sen. Paul S. Trible Jr. CNU’s fifth and longest serving president, Trible led the university for 26 of its 64 years, from 1996 to 2022. (Adelia Thompson, the university’s vice president for advancement, external engagement and the arts, served as interim president between Trible and Kelly.)
Under Trible’s administration, the commuter school was transformed into a residential campus with dormitories, a student union, a theater, a concert hall and a baseball stadium. His key accomplishments included growing the university’s endowment from $300,000 to more than $64 million.
However, Trible’s legacy was also complicated by “a decline in Black presence, both on campus and in the adjacent neighborhood,” according to a December 2023 investigative report from ProPublica, the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Under Trible’s stewardship, the article reported, “the university pursued policies that thinned the ranks of Black students and faculty even as its continuing expansion eradicated a nearby Black community.”
“We have work to do in that area,” Kelly acknowledges. “We need to do better jobs of showing this is a campus you can come to. We need to make sure we are serving all of the community.”
Strained relations between the university and the local Black community can be traced back to the 1960s, when Shoe Lane, a predominantly Black neighborhood, was dismantled to make way for the school’s expansion.
Today, only a handful of Shoe Lane residents remain near and on CNU property. In April, CNU and Newport News Mayor Phillip Jones announced the formation of a joint task force to research Shoe Lane’s removal and assess the impacts of that decision in subsequent decades, according to a CNU news release, with an aim of paving “the way for informed and equitable strategies moving forward.”
One of CNU’s strategic priorities, announced in March, is to “enhance the overall quality of life in Newport News and Hampton Roads” by being a resource “for residents who seek learning opportunities and for organizations who seek assistance in solving complex problems.”
CNU pledged to be a major contributor to the regional economy and workforce and to provide internship and service opportunities for students from the area.
Another new strategic CNU priority is to “create a stronger culture of inclusion” that prepares students to thrive in a diverse, interconnected world.
To that end, Christopher Newport has stepped up its efforts to recruit students both from its neighboring communities and from around the world.
Funded by a grant from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, the university is working with 17 high schools in Hampton Roads communities to help low-income and first-generation students make a successful transition to college.
Efforts to recruit students from nearby schools aren’t new, says Dean of Admission Robert J. Lange III. Before Kelly’s arrival, “we were headed in the right direction,” Lange adds, but “I think President Kelly has energized efforts. He’s put his money and authority where his mouth is,” in positioning CNU as a hometown university for the area.
“We’re in every one of those schools. We counsel them through the process. It’s high-touch,” continues Lange. “It’s allowed us to offer direct admission through the Common Application,” a single online form used by more than 900 colleges and universities. Even students who aren’t immediately accepted profit from the experience, he says, because “if you’re not now eligible, it tells you what you can do to become eligible. It demystifies the process.”
CNU’s signature program, he says, is Community Captains, an early admission, two-year college preparatory program for Newport News public high school sophomores.
Applications from these targeted schools, which serve a high number of Pell Grant-eligible students, are up nearly 30% compared with last year, Lange says. The university’s outreach program even includes some area elementary and middle schools.
Expanding reach
Kelly (right in blue cap and shirt) leads students and faculty on an early morning 2-mile walk around CNU’s campus. Photos courtesy Christopher Newport University
Back in the days when Christopher Newport was a commuter school without a residence hall, “‘out-of-state’ used to be Richmond and NOVA,” Lange jokes.
Now CNU is expanding its reach, escalating efforts to attract students beyond Virginia. Kelly has launched a new initiative that, beginning this fall, will provide out-of-state students with scholarships that are competitive with affordable mid-Atlantic private schools, Lange says.
The university has added a second out-of-state recruiter, he says, and is putting together an advisory board to help CNU understand how it is perceived by out-of-staters. “We’re flying in school counselors. We’re visiting feeder schools out of state.”
The university also has formed a partnership with a company that is able to identify the best prospective students, based on test scores and activities. “We offer them conditional admission without them having to go through full applications,” says Lange. “We build their applications.”
As for international students, their numbers at CNU have historically been quite low because “we have never had a sustained international [recruitment] effort,” according to Lange, but “with President Kelly, it is now a priority.”
Under Kelly’s leadership, CNU is in the process of establishing a partnership with a company that helps place foreign students. It can also assist these students post-graduation with visa applications, Lange adds, helping to keep new talent in Virginia.
With all these efforts, Christopher Newport reports it’s on pace to receive a record number of applications for the 2024-25 academic year.
Applications from students seeking to transfer to CNU from Virginia community colleges and other institutions for 2024-25 were up by about 13% over last year as of early July, according to Jim Hanchett, chief communications officer. He declined to specify the number of applications received.
Students of color/first-time college students made up 26.9% of the undergraduate population in 2023-24, Hanchett says. As of early July, the percentage for the coming year is at about 35%.
Solving problems
Another university strategic priority set out in March is to “advance the power and promise of the liberal arts” in a way that helps graduates “solve real world problems.”
One option that helps meet that strategic goal is the President’s Leadership Program (PLP), a four-year, 18-credit minimum leadership studies minor. Courses cover topics such as values and ethics and theories and perspectives on leadership.
PLP was established in 1998, and there are about 1,100 students currently in the program, “which is roughly one-third of the entire student body,” notes PLP Director Lacey Grey Hunter.
Hunter says Kelly been “very, very” involved with the program since his arrival on campus. “One of my favorite things is PL Pizza, where [Kelly has] met with groups of 10 to 15 students to share pizza” and to discuss the university’s direction, Hunter says. “They ask him questions. He asks questions. He is transparent. They’ve asked him about challenges in his own world.”
Kelly has addressed PLP students about “what it is like to follow a common mission,” Hunter adds. “He talked particularly about 9/11” — when Kelly was on Coast Guard duty, standing watch off the ports of New York and Boston following the 2001 attacks — “and what it means to agree, if needed, to give your life for something.”
In June, Kelly welcomed incoming PLP freshmen to campus to take part in the four-day “Leadership Adventure,” in which students participated in leadership development sessions, team-building events and outdoor activities.
Group activities were designed to bring students together to collectively solve problems or achieve a shared group goal, according to Hunter. Examples include rock wall climbing, escape room events,and building a device with limited supplies to protect a raw egg dropped from the third floor.
Leadership Adventure feels like a summer camp, she adds, “because the students are divided up into cabin colors and spend a heck of a lot of time together.”
Getting an edge
CNU also takes pride in becoming the first school in Virginia to offer an undergraduate certification in research and creative activity. The certificate, which requires 12 credit hours of coursework, will be available this fall.
Undergraduate research is one of CNU’s four educational pillars, explains David A. Salomon, director of student research and creative activity. The others include study abroad, internships and service to the community through the school’s CNU Engage program.
The research and creative activity program got off the ground eight years ago, but SCHEV granted its certification this past spring.Now, “it shows up on [students’] transcript,” Salomon says. “Colleges and companies can see the evidence of their experience.”
Students can research any topic, including “the complexities of scientific phenomena, delving into the nuances of historical events, or examining the intricacies of social dynamics,” he says, no matter whether it’s relevant to their majors. The process produces “students who are more marketable from every perspective. It gives them that much more of an edge.”
For the 2022-23 school year, 37% of all undergraduates at CNU engaged in research or creative activity before graduation, surpassing a 30% goal set by CNU, according to Salomon.
It’s not just the academic programs at Christopher Newport that the new president finds impressive, however. Kelly, who played baseball for the Coast Guard Academy, praises the school’s “phenomenal athletics program,” as well.
During Kelly’s first year on campus, 16 teams were represented in NCAA championship events, CNU’s women’s sailing team advanced to nationals, and the university’s cheerleading squad won a national championship.
“The Captains compiled an overall record of 247-78-5, for a winning percentage of .756, the fourth best ever in CNU
athletic history,” according to Director of Athletics Kyle McMullin. What’s more, 21 student athletes received All-American recognition for their academic and athletic accomplishments for the 2023-24 school year.
Kelly spent much of his first year at Christopher Newport listening. His second year as president, he says, will be about strengthening relationships and being “the No. 1 storyteller for the university.”
That story, Kelly says, is going out to “Richmond, to alumni, to community members who want to support something bigger than themselves.” Now is not a time for dramatic transformation, he adds, but a time to “move the university forward. We’re not in the process of having to rebuild. It’s a time to evolve.”
At a glance
Founded Founded in 1960 as Christopher Newport College, an extension school of William & Mary, Christopher Newport became independent of W&M in 1977 and received university status in 1992. The public university is named for Christopher Newport, the privateer and ship captain who helped establish the first permanent English colony in North America at Jamestown in 1607.
Campus Christopher Newport university is located in Newport News. Its 260-acre campus features buildings with a mixture of architecture styles, from the Greek- and Roman-inspired Mary M. Torggler Fine Arts Center, with its columns and cascading glass rotunda, to the sleek and modern Ferguson Center for the Arts, a regional venue that has hosted touring Broadway shows and famous performers such as Tony Bennett, John Legend and Liza Minelli.
2023-24 enrollment
4,407 undergraduate students
96 graduate students
2% international undergrads
28% minority enrollment
93% in-state undergrads
Employees
Approximately 285 faculty and 715 staff
Academic programs
Christopher Newport University offers more than 90 areas of study, from fine and performing arts to computer engineering and neuroscience. CNU has traditional two-year graduate programs as well as five-year bachelor’s degree and master’s degree programs in applied physics, computer science, environmental science and teaching.
Tuition, fees, room and board*
In-state residents: $28,711
Out-of-state: $43,348
*2023-24 school year Source: Christopher Newport University
Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall, entertains its Tea Club members with monthly tastings, while nearby New Dominion Bookshop offers story times and “Friday Night Writes,” an event featuring emerging writers.
And about a mile north at McIntire Plaza, outdoor gear and clothing consignment shop High Tor Gear Exchange has hosted outdoor equipment exchanges, workshops and even an art show.
This type of experiential retail is getting some of the credit for luring customers back to the city’s brick-and-mortar stores and giving them a bit of a post-pandemic bump, as vacancy rates in the city’s six primary shopping districts have dropped to the lowest point since January 2020, according to a report released in January by the Charlottesville Office of Economic Development.
“The general trend is that the vacancy rate has dropped a bit,” says Chris Engel, director of economic development for the city, although “there’s a fair amount of fluctuation. There’s been continual churn since the pandemic.”
In January 2020, just ahead of the pan-demic, the city had 20 vacancies among 450 retail properties, or a 4.47% vacancy rate. The following year, the number jumped to a 7.66% vacancy rate. As of January 2024, the city’s retail districts had 19 vacancies — a 4.2% vacancy rate.
The report surveys retail properties within the city’s six major shopping areas: Barracks Road; the Downtown Mall; McIntire Plaza; Preston Plaza; Seminole Square; and The Corner. The twice-yearly retail vacancy study is the 32nd such report conducted by the city’s economic development office.
Engel cites the value of experiential retail in the rebound. Business magazine Fast Company has noted it too, reporting in February that 80% of customers believe that the experience a company provides is just as important as its products and services. Examining consumer trends shaping retail this year, Fast Company recommended hosting “events, entertainment or classes. Whatever it is, make it something unique they can’t get from other retailers — or from shopping online.”
Here’s a look at how retailers across Charlottesville are responding to this trend and how the six shopping districts are faring:
Downtown Mall
One of the newest experience-rich stores in Charlottesville is The Beautiful Idea, which opened on the Downtown Mall in mid-September 2023. The shop is “one-third radical bookstore, one-third things like shirts and greeting cards. And the front third is flea market-style, with LGBTQ jewelry and artwork,” says co-owner Joan Kovatch, adding that a lot of the store’s art is “pretty politically radical” and “a little on the spicy side.”
More importantly, the store aims to be a community hub “with a queer focus. We want people to spend time and hang out. We want to be an actual welcoming space.”
None of Beautiful Idea’s three co-owners have owned a brick-and-mortar store before, but they’re learning the advantages of “selling an experience,” Kovatch says. The store hosts movie nights, book discussions and offers trainings on topics such as overdose prevention and online security.
Being located on the Downtown Mall has been great for foot traffic, according to Kovatch. Charlottesville’s pedestrian mall, which opened nearly five decades ago on the city’s historic Main Street, features community events and workshops and includes an outdoor music and entertainment venue.
The Downtown Mall area’s vacancy rate has dropped from 5.79% to 3.14% since the July 2023 economic development office’s study; there were six vacancies among the district’s 191 storefronts as of January.
Beautiful Idea’s neighbors on the mall include C’ville Arts, Daedalus Bookshop, Magpie Knits, Jean Theory and Decades Arcade, featuring vintage pinball machines and arcade games.
There are restaurants nearby, and when there are shows at nearby Paramount Theater and Ting Pavilion, “we see a lot more traffic,” Kovatch says. “There’s local traffic, but a lot comes from people visiting,” especially during the holidays. “It’s been bigger than we anticipated. We’ve been able to set some money aside for projects. Our longer-term goal is to have a community center.”
Seminole Square
Minerals & Mystics was “a walk-in place, but we’ve become a destination store. People come for who we are. They say, ‘We had to find out what your name is about,’” says owner Leah Williams.
The store, which sells sterling silver jewelry, incense, candles, rocks and minerals, also has expanded the number of experiences it’s able to offer customers since changing locations to a bigger storefront in Seminole Square this spring.
“Our space more than doubled when we moved. We have a coffee shop. We offer classes. Our goal is to offer holistic health in one area where people can have a moment of peace,” Williams says.
Minerals & Mystics owner Leah Williams (left) shows customers Mike McAdams and Hank Hall around her store at Charlottesville’s Seminole Square. Williams sells jewelry, incense, candles, rocks and minerals at her shop. Photo by Jeneene Chatowsky
The bigger space, tucked between a nail salon and a barber shop, is in a better location, offering more visibility, she adds. “As you come into the shopping center, you can really see us now. We’re already seeing some new faces.”
Other stores in the shopping center include Dover Saddlery, Super Shoe and Plan 9 Music.
Williams also hopes that new customers will be drawn to Seminole Square by a substantial renovation being undertaken in the shopping district.
Charlottesville-based Great Eastern Management Co. owns the shopping center, which includes a former Giant store and other commercial sites. Great Eastern plans to redevelop part of Seminole Square’s nearly 24 acres into a mixed-use development with at least 350 apartments.
“They’re moving toward groundbreaking. It probably will be early in 2025,” Engel says. “A lot of things have to come together to get a big project like that off the ground.”
Seminole Square, which opened in 1986, “has been in a rut,” Williams says. “The city wants to improve livability on Route 29. I’ll be interested to see how that will change things.”
Since part of the site is set to become an apartment complex, “we’ll see if people shop where they live.” In the meantime, Williams says, she isn’t daunted by the disruption. In her view, “construction makes people curious. I think we’ll see a lot of interest. It’s something new and different.”
The Corner
The number of retail vacancies at The Corner, located across the street from the University of Virginia, remains “pretty constant,” according to Engel.
While the retail vacancy rate rose from 3.28% in January 2020 to 4.91% in January 2024, retail locations at The Corner continue to benefit from proximity to U.Va. and UVA Health’s University Hospital, according to the city economic development report.
There are three vacancies out of 61 storefronts, up by just one vacancy from July 2023.
The Corner has attracted major chains such as CVS and fast food restaurant Raising Cane’s, which opened last October, but “if you calculate the figures, you’ll find … more stores [in the district] are small and locally owned,” Engel says.
For example, family-owned Mincer’s, which sells U.Va.-branded apparel, gifts and accessories, has been open since 1948.
One of the newest additions to The Corner is actually a return: Littlejohn’s, a New York-style deli, first opened in 1976 but closed during the pandemic. In mid-April, it reopened in the same space after four years.
“We’re fortunate to see a constant cycle of new small businesses,” Engel says, noting that Chaps Ice Cream, an old-fashioned ice cream parlor located on the Downtown Mall for more than 35 years, recently opened a second location at The Corner.
The Plazas
Vacancy rates remain stable at two small Charlottesville shopping centers, according to the economic development report.
Preston Plaza, a small shopping center in the middle of Charlottesville that was built in 1968, has no vacancies, according to the report. That’s been unchanged since January 2021. The plaza has 10 storefronts, including a bakery, an upscale consignment shop and several restaurants.
And McIntire Plaza, just north of the Charlottesville historic district, has seen miniscule changes since the July 2023 vacancy study. It currently counts just a single vacancy out of its 59 storefronts, which house antique stores, a jewelry store, a glass gallery, a coffee shop and math tutoring and custom-sewing services.
Given the location and low lease rates, that vacancy is expected to be filled quickly, according to the economic development office. McIntire Plaza currently has a 1.69% vacancy rate, which is anticipated to drop back to 0% in the next report.
What sets the two shopping areas apart from others in the city, says Engel, is that they offer “more accessible price points to local owner-operated businesses.”
Barracks Road
Martine Funari, founder and CEO of Fluffy’s Pet Shop, has been at Barracks Road
Shopping Center for five years. The store sells natural pet treats and vitamins, toys, accessories and pet outfits, including Halloween costumes. “We even have things for cats. We have cakes for cats for birthday parties in the shape of a fish. They’re cute as a button,” she says.
The outdoor strip mall located on U.S. Route 29 opened in 1957 in Albemarle County before the city annexed the land it sits on six years later. The shopping center got a facelift about a dozen years ago, with the removal of its concrete canopy. New design elements included a trellis structure, lounge seating areas, screening walls and a central fountain.
The city’s latest retail vacancy report finds an 8.33% vacancy rate at Barracks Road, up from 7.14%. That’s partly due to the closing of a 36,000-square-foot Bed Bath & Beyond store, Engel says. The big-box home goods chain filed for bankruptcy in April 2023. Barracks Road has 84 storefronts. The January report shows seven vacancies.
The COVID pandemic was hard on business, says Funari. The store was closed for more than four months amid the pandemic, but the pet shop has “a lot of regular customers, mainly connected with the university,” she says, and the shopping center is doing well overall. “There’s a mix of big stores, and there are a few mom-and-pops like us. It gives the place good equilibrium.”
Soma — a women’s lingerie, swimwear and sleepwear shop — opened in December 2022.
“Business really has picked up. We have a great following already,” according to Joann Rock, sales lead for the Soma store. A Chico’s FAS brand, Soma had been part of a nearby Chico’s women’s clothing store before opening in the separate storefront.
A big benefit of the Barracks Road location is the overall shopping experience, according to Rock. “People have shopped here for years and years. There’s a mix of clientele, a blend of stores. It’s a stable environment.”
A teenager who goes to Barracks Road to shop at Aerie, an American Eagle brand for young women, “might be with her mother who goes to us or goes to Chico’s,” Rock says. “I think that mix is doing well for us.”
Keswick Hall Photo courtesy Keswick Hall
Charlottesville at a glance
Widely known as home to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate and the University of Virginia, the Charlottesville region is located about 65 miles west of Virginia’s state capital. The city was founded in 1762, with the Jefferson-designed U.Va. campus founded 57 years later. The region is popular for vineyards, breweries and distilleries, as well as for access to the Blue Ridge Mountains. The area’s largest industries include higher education, health care, defense, hospitality and tourism.
Regional population1
Charlottesville: 51,132
Albemarle County: 116,148
Buckingham County: 16,673
Fluvanna County: 28,214
Greene County: 21,370
Orange County: 37,629
Nelson County: 14,713
Major employers
University of Virginia/UVA Health
Albemarle County
Sentara Health
City of Charlottesville
U.S. Department of Defense
Northrop Grumman
Crutchfield Corp.
CFA Institute
Major attractions
Monticello, the home of America’s third president and author of the Declaration of Independence, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that draws visitors from around the globe. You can see the distinctive Jefferson-designed Rotunda at U.Va. Another must-see for history-minded visitors is Highland, the Albemarle estate of President James Monroe. Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall is a good place to visit for eating, shopping and socializing. Take in the natural beauty of the surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains along Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway and at Shenandoah National Park. Hikers will savor Instagram-worthy views from Spy Rock and Humpback Rocks. Take a break from picking apples and peaches at Carter Mountain Orchard with live music and apple cider doughnuts. Or take a tasting tour through area vineyards like Jefferson Vineyards, Trump Winery, Blenheim Vineyards and Pippin Hill Farm & Vineyard.
Major convention hotels
Boar’s Head Resort 168 guest rooms and suites;
22,000 square feet of meeting/event space
Kimpton The Forum Hotel 208 guest rooms and suites;
22,000 square feet of meeting/event space
Omni Charlottesville Hotel 205 guest rooms and suites; 12,441 square feet of meeting/event space
Boutique/luxury hotels
Albemarle Estate at Trump Winery
The Draftsman
Graduate Charlottesville
Keswick Hall
Oakhurst Inn
Quirk Hotel Charlottesville
Notable restaurants
C&O French, candorestaurant.com
Ivy Inn American, ivyinnrestaurant.com
Orzo Kitchen & Wine Bar Mediterranean, orzokitchen.com
Smyrna Mediterranean-Aegean, smyrnacville.com
The Ridley
Southern, ridleyva.com
1 July 2023 estimates from University of Virginia Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service based on 2020 U.S. Census Bureau data
If you’re trying to visualize what powers manufacturing growth around Roanoke these days, picture 3D-printed helicopter blades and robotics, not old-style grommets.
Also known as additive manufacturing, 3D printing produces objects by creating a series of consecutive layers, as opposed to “subtractive” manufacturing, which removes material to carve out an object. Advanced manufacturing companies also use artificial intelligence, robotics, laser-beam machining and nanotechnology — and they’re all part of the growing manufacturing sector in the Roanoke and New River valleys.
With all these advancements, “there’s a spectrum of opportunities. It’s not your grandfather’s manufacturing,” says John Hull, executive director of the Roanoke Regional Partnership. Both the Roanoke and New River valleys are finding ways to benefit significantly from the opportunities, he notes.
The Roanoke metropolitan statistical area — which includes the city of Roanoke and the counties of Roanoke, Botetourt, Franklin and Craig — is outpacing other Virginia regions in terms of manufacturing growth, accounting for about 50% of the sector’s expansion in Virginia from 2019 to 2023, and 1% of manufacturing employment growth nationally, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That works out to about 1,500 more manufacturing jobs added over those four years, and 11.7% of all manufacturing jobs statewide are in the Roanoke region, according to BLS data.
A manufacturing consortium covering the New River Valley and Southern Virginia, led by the New River Valley Regional Commission, received a $500,000 Tech Hubs Strategic Development Grant last fall from the U.S. Economic Development Administration. Only 29 applicants won grants, out of more than 400 applications.
The New River Valley proposal includes experts from the Virginia Tech College of Engineering’s Advanced Manufacturing Team, and Christiansburg-based Meld Manufacturing, which makes large-scale, metal industrial 3D printers. Radford University, New River Community College, Volvo Trucks and the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center are all part of the consortium as well, and the participants expect to expand their research and work with the federal funding jolt.
Workforce development is a critical component in attracting regional economic development, says Ken Fadyen, Botetourt County’s economic development director. Photo by Don Petersen
‘To the next step’
The Roanoke and New River valleys are well-established centers of vehicle manufacturing, with Volvo Trucks’ largest truck manufacturing facility in the world situated in Dublin. In 2022, Volvo Truck’s 1.6 million-square-foot New River Valley assembly plant rolled out its first electric truck.
Kevin Byrd, executive director of the New River Valley Regional Commission, says that the federal Tech Hubs Strategic Development Grant will provide more professional opportunities in the region beyond vehicle manufacturing, especially in the burgeoning 3D printing industry. “It allows us to really dive deep, to take it to the next step. It’s allowing us to establish ourselves on the global map.
“In our backyard we have a lot of transportation industries that use additive manufacturing. They are taking materials and using 3D printers to make products,” he says. “These are primarily large-format products, such as parts for aircraft, helicopter blades and heavy truck components.”
But the consortium is not just for the most advanced manufacturing companies, according to Byrd. “We want to help small- and medium-sized manufacturers adopt and implement these new technologies, grow their business and create jobs at all skill levels.”
To do that, he says, the consortium will create a hub “to bring traditional and nontraditional partners together to learn from each other. We want to foster cross-sector relationships and make sure there is alignment.”
Katie Boswell, executive director of Onward New River Valley, a public-private economic development organization, sees the region as “highly collaborative.”
That was a big factor in winning the grant, she says: “We were meeting consistently, having leader summits and networking opportunities to talk through what would be a good fit [and] what technologies our region could focus on globally. We have a lot of industry partners that are doing a lot of work in this space.”
Workforce development has been a critical factor in attracting manufacturing to the Roanoke and New River valleys, says Ken McFadyen, Botetourt County’s director of economic development. “You could have the greatest sites, but if you don’t have a skilled workforce, it’s like you’ve got a car but no energy to fuel the car.”
The Roanoke Valley especially benefits from the workforce development efforts of Virginia Western Community College in Roanoke, which has “demonstrated an eagerness to partner with industry,” says Hull. “With automation more common, workforce skills are in demand,” and VWCC can help companies “with industry-specific [workforce] training and with general skills training in areas such as math,” he says.
Amy S. White, VWCC’s dean of STEM and workforce solutions, finds that manufacturing companies in the region want soft as well as hard skills.
“They want not only technical skills, but the ability to work collaboratively.They want critical thinking skills, communications skills,” White says. “However you catalog it, they want us to create a flexible student who can adapt” to constantly changing workplaces.
But it is “customized training that we pride ourselves on” and that manufacturers are particularly interested in, White says. “We can go to a corporation and do training on the floor.”
At the college, she adds, “all of our classes are hands-on. We’re fortunate to have a lot of great equipment. We have a lab dedicated to robotics. We have hydraulics, pneumatics, electrical.” She’s especially proud of VWCC’s mechatronics program, which focuses on the integration of mechanical systems with electronics and software.
With advanced manufacturing, “technology changes at a crazy pace,” she says, and “usually academics doesn’t move at [the] speed of industry. That’s where partnerships come in.”
Transportation hub
Transportation-related manufacturing has been a mainstay of the Roanoke Valley for years, Hull notes, with long-standing clusters that serve the freight rail, heavy truck and passenger markets.
The manufacturing industry benefits from a large, diverse workforce in the Roanoke Valley, and its workforce development system is strong, according to Hull.
The Roanoke Valley is well-positioned to be a manufacturing hub, Hull says, with Interstate 81 running through its heart, while New River Valley has easy access to interstates 77 and 64, as well as I-81. Roanoke County’s Wood Haven Technology Park, an industrial park located at the intersection of interstates 81 and 581, is the region’s primary site for high-tech manufacturing. Last year, the county was awarded a $820,000 federal grant to improve Wood Haven.
Additionally, companies in the region are keeping up with technological trends and expanding to meet future needs, Hull adds: “They’ve done things to prepare for the EV [electric vehicle] industry. They’re looking at the technologies of the future.”
For example, Mack Trucks, a division of Sweden-based Volvo Group, is investing $14.5 million and adding more than 50 jobs and 72,000 square feet to expand its manufacturing operation in Roanoke County to include “an emerging medium-duty electric truck line,” the company announced in February.
Roanoke County-based Virginia Transformer Corp. is also getting into the electric vehicles market by launching a division to create components for commercial EV power chargers.
Meanwhile, in Roanoke city, manufacturing has long been a “stalwart” sector of the economy, says Marc Nelson, the city’s economic development director. “It’s one of the sectors we can always rely on. Wages are excellent. It’s been very steady over time.”
Now, he says, “we’re in a space crunch” for land for major economic development projects like the 123,000-square-foot distribution center that Amazon.com announced last year that could employ hundreds of workers at the city’s 440-acre Roanoke Centre for Industry and Technology. “A lot of land is occupied. The city is 97% built out.”
To solve the problem, the city is seeking funds from the Virginia Business Ready Sites Program, a state-funded initiative administered by the Virginia Economic Development Partnership. “We received a small [$85,000] grant from the program last year to conduct engineering and design work” on another tract of land at the Roanoke Centre for Industry and Technology, Nelson says. “The additional funds would put us closer to developing the site, which would create additional capacity within the park.”
Growth in Salem, Botetourt
Transportation-related manufacturing has been a boon for Salem, says Tommy Miller, the city’s director of economic development. “We’ve benefited greatly with the existing and new Volvo manufacturing. We’ve got good momentum.”
In Salem, STS Group AG, a supplier for Volvo, is a new entrant. Last year, it announced it would invest $32 million to establish its North American headquarters and a manufacturing operation in Salem’s former General Electric factory, with plans to create 119 jobs. Improvements to the site are nearly complete, Miller says.
Salem also is home to Wabtec Graham-White, which produces products for the freight rail industry. Last summer, the company announced plans to invest $2.7 million to expand its existing facility to relocate its manufacturing lines for pneumatically controlled braking systems.
Miller wants to keep existing companies happy and maintain current industries while “diversifying our manufacturing base” to include even more advanced manufacturing. The goal, he says, is to “continue to have a healthy, growing ecosystem.”
In nearby Botetourt County, manufacturing accounts for 1 out of 5 jobs, and the county’s Botetourt Center at Greenfield is home to five manufacturing companies. Like Salem, the county prioritizes strong relationships with its existing manufacturers while also attracting new companies. Botetourt is succeeding at both, says McFadyen, its economic development director.
Since 2016, the county has made 11 economic development announcements; six have been expansions of existing manufacturing operations, while five are new.
Among the county’s growing companies is Universal Logistics Holdings, which announced in January that it would invest approximately $50 million to expand into a new facility for its heavy truck division. Similarly, Altec Industries, in Daleville, announced last year that it would invest $1.4 million to expand its construction equipment product line.
Beyond the Botetourt Center, McFadyen says, “We are always looking to the next large site we can develop. That may involve property acquisition. We’re constantly exploring.
“It’s important to understand the economic impact that manufacturing has in local communities. They attract dollars from outside the community. They create tax revenue. They create jobs that inject payroll into the communities,” he says. “If manufacturing doesn’t come, the economy is circular.”
Roanoke/New River valleys at a glance
Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke Photo courtesy Visit Virginia’s Blue Ridge
The Roanoke Valley region, in the Blue Ridge and Allegheny mountains, includes Alleghany, Botetourt, Franklin and Roanoke counties, the cities of Covington, Roanoke and Salem and the town of Vinton. Located along its namesake river, the New River Valley includes Floyd, Giles, Montgomery and Pulaski counties, as well as the city of Radford and the towns of Blacksburg and Christiansburg. The combined region is home to Virginia Tech, Hollins University, Roanoke College, Ferrum College and Radford University.
Population
Roanoke Valley: 315,251
New River Valley: 182,813
Roanoke Valley major employers
Carilion Clinic
Wells Fargo Bank
HCA Virginia Health System
Kroger
New River Valley major employers
Virginia Tech
Volvo Trucks North America
Montgomery County School Board
Radford University
Carilion New River Valley Medical Center
HCA Virginia Health System
Moog
Major attractions
The largest city along the Appalachian Trail, Roanoke is convenient to the Blue Ridge Parkway. The neon-lit Roanoke Star turns 75 years old this November. You can also visit the Taubman Museum or Center in the Square, which is home to museums, an aquarium and Mill Mountain Theatre. Also, you can catch a Salem Red Sox game or
take a boat around Smith Mountain Lake. After tailgating at Virginia Tech, you can
make time for an event at the Moss Arts Center or a movie at Blacksburg’s 1930s-era Lyric Theatre. FloydFest 2024 takes place July 24-28 at its new location in Check.
Top convention hotels
The Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center
63,670 square feet of event space, 300 guest rooms
The Inn at Virginia Tech and Skelton
Conference Center
23,705 square feet of flexible meeting space, 147 guest rooms
Boutique/luxury hotels
The Liberty Trust (Roanoke): 54 rooms
Fire Station One Boutique Hotel (Roanoke):seven rooms
Jackson Park Inn, Ascend Hotel Collection (Pulaski): 32 rooms
Natural gas as a source of energy for Virginia power plants is set to reach its final days by the middle of the century — or is it?
The Virginia General Assembly set that deadline in 2020 when it passed the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which requires the state’s two major electric utilities to shift to carbon-free, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power for electricity generation, seemingly leaving no place for fossil fuels such as natural gas or coal.
Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin has advocated for revisions to the act to include other power sources such as natural gas, a nonstarter for the Democratic-majority General Assembly. But Dominion Energy’s proposal to put a natural gas plant in Chesterfield County has raised questions about whether the company, which serves 64.4% of Virginia, will meet the state mandate to produce all power for Virginia customers from renewable energy sources by 2045.
West Virginia-based Appalachian Power must meet the same carbon-free target by 2050, but “we’re a small player in Virginia,” says Teresa Hamilton Hall, senior corporate communications consultant. The company, which serves about 20% of the commonwealth, has only one natural gas plant in Virginia. “The majority of our electricity generation,” Hall says, “is still from coal.”
Over the past two decades, Dominion has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions substantially, according to the company. Through 2022, Dominion says, it “reduced carbon emissions from power generation by 47% (compared with a 2005 baseline), and methane emissions from gas operations are down 38% (from a 2010 baseline).”
“We’re all-in on renewables,” says spokesperson Aaron F. Ruby. “About 95% of our new power plants are carbon-free. We’re currently building an offshore wind project off Virginia Beach. There’s a call for a second. We’re expanding our battery storage fleet, [and] that allows us to store from wind and solar during periods of low demand.”
Activists and Chesterfield County residents stood outside Bellwood Elementary School in June 2023 to protest a planned Dominion Energy natural gas power plant. Photo by Patrick Larsen/VPM News
Dominion has divested much of its natural gas transmission and storage assets in recent years, following the cancellation of its proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline project with Duke Energy in 2020. The aborted 600-mile natural gas pipeline, which faced long delays amid legal challenges, was supposed to run from West Virginia to eastern North Carolina through Virginia.
In 2020, Dominion sold the majority of its gas transmission and storage assets to Berkshire Hathaway Energy for $8 billion. The Richmond-based Fortune 500 utility sold its remaining interest in the Cove Point natural gas liquefaction facility in Maryland to Berkshire Hathaway for $3.5 billion in July 2023. Two months later, Dominion announced it was selling its three natural gas distribution companies to Canadian pipeline and energy company Enbridge for $14 billion. The $6.6 billion sale of East Ohio Gas closed in March, with the other sales expected later this year.
All of this comes at the same time as the Biden administration has paused approvals on new liquefied natural gas export facilities while the Energy Department examines the environmental, economic and political impacts. The United States was the world’s largest LNG exporter last year, and the Cove Point facility Dominion sold exported LNG to nearly 30 nations.
That’s not to say that Dominion is completely done with natural gas, however. The company has about a dozen natural gas plants in Virginia that generate about 35% of its electricity in the state.
And the demand for that power is only expected to grow. It’s been projected that the demand for energy from Virginia’s fast-growing data centers industry could quadruple by 2038, accounting for about 50% of Virginia’s total electricity supply.
Plans for Chesterfield
Last summer, Dominion revived plans first proposed in 2019 to build a natural gas peaker plant — a plant that would run only during periods of high demand or during extreme weather — in Chesterfield County. (Chesterfield was previously home to two Dominion coal plants that were deactivated in 2023 after more than 50 years.)
Consisting of four natural gas-powered turbines, the company says the proposed Chesterfield Energy Reliability Center would serve as “an ‘always ready’ generation resource that can be quickly deployed on the hottest and coldest days and serve as backup generation when other resources are unavailable or insufficient to meet customer needs.”
Construction on the plant is planned to begin in 2025 and be completed in 2027, according to Dominion. The cost hasn’t been released, but the project was estimated at $600 million in 2019. Dominion has applied for state and local permits for the facility, which requires approval from the State Corporation Commission, a process expected to take about nine months.
Once fully operational, the project would generate approximately 1,000 megawatts — enough energy to power up to 250,000 homes.
In late February, Chesterfield residents and regional activists opposed to the project gathered for a town hall led by state Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Chesterfield County. It included members of Friends of Chesterfield, a community group that opposes the project on multiple grounds, including health concerns for area residents, about 44% of whom are people of color, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
In mid-March, a coalition of nine Democratic state legislators from Central Virginia, including Hashmi, issued a statement in opposition to the plant. “Dominion Energy’s current pursuit of permits to build a new gas-fired power plant in Chesterfield County undermines the state’s transition to clean and renewable energy,” the legislators wrote. They also pointed out that, according to a May 2023 SCC filing from the utility, Dominion expects that its carbon emissions will increase from the 21.8 million metric tons it emitted in 2021 to as much as 43.8 million metric tons by 2048.
Nicole Martin, president of the Chester-field NAACP and a member of Friends of Chesterfield, questions whether the plant, once built, will shut down in 2045. “If they invest $600 million, as was estimated in 2019, how long are they going to keep it going?”
Additionally, Martin says, she’s concerned that Dominion’s residential customers are being asked “to foot the bill” for power-hungry data centers in Northern Virginia.
Martin also wonders why Dominion Energy needs to build a new natural gas plant when the company is making advances in renewable power. As an example, she cites a battery storage pilot project the company launched with Virginia State University to provide backup power to the VSU Multi-Purpose Center.
But battery storage is currently a weak link in the renewable energy chain, according to Dominion spokesperson Ruby. “The prevailing battery technology is only capable of storing energy for four to six hours,” he says. “We need to see battery storage advance into multiday duration. That’s one of the advances we’re going to need to see to reduce reliance on natural gas.”
The proposed Chesterfield peaker plant is needed because current battery storage is not sufficient to meet demands during emergencies such as winter storms, Ruby says, citing a Christmas 2022 storm with temperatures so low that Dominion “had to operate power plants at maximum.
“For the next couple of decades natural gas will play a critical role in empowering Virginia — it’s always available, always reliable,” Ruby says. “It’s an essential partner with renewables.”
And what happens after that?
Dominion Energy does lots of long-term planning, Ruby notes, and “we have to do that with a healthy dose of humility about what we know and do not know. The further out you go, the more variables [exist]. It’s premature to make long-term decisions. We don’t know what’s going to happen with advances in clean technology, such as longer battery storage” and hydrogen.
Given the unprecedented demand and limitations, “there’s the potential that we may need to operate some of our natural gas plants longer than planned,” he says. While the Virginia Clean Economy Act sets a 2045 deadline, there are “important provisions of the law that would allow us to petition for beyond that date. It depends on whether [natural gas plants are] needed for grid reliability. It’s not a decision we can make today,” he says, but will probably be determined in the late 2030s or early 2040s.
Patrolling pipelines
Natural gas doesn’t just power giant electrical plants, though. While electric power utilities accounted for 57% of Virginia’s natural gas usage in 2022, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, commercial and residential customers using natural gas for heating and cooking accounted for about 25% of natural gas usage in the state.
Accordingly, natural gas companies and utilities are looking for ways to expand pipeline systems, a process that has sometimes hit major roadblocks and court challenges from residents and environmental groups.
Like Dominion’s canceled Atlantic Coast Pipeline, the 303-mile, $7.5 billion-plus Mountain Valley Pipeline, which would run through the Roanoke and New River valleys, has been plagued by delays over the past 10 years from lawsuits, protests and regulatory hurdles. Meanwhile, natural gas concern Williams Cos. announced plans in March to boost its volume by adding 26 miles to its Transco pipeline system in Pittsylvania County.
The VCEA doesn’t contain provisions impacting natural gas for heating or cooking. Nevertheless, companies such as Virginia Natural Gas are continually working to modernize pipeline systems to improve efficiency and reduce carbon emissions, according to Robert Duvall, president of the Virginia Beach-based natural gas distributor, which serves more than 300,000 residential customers across southeastern Virginia.
“Our mission is to keep the gas in the pipeline. We want it to come out at the burner tip only when the customer needs it,” Duvall says. “Our goal is to keep emissions at less than 1%. We’re at 0.4% and getting even better.”
Virginia Natural Gas has been replacing aging cast-iron pipelines with more durable materials such as plastics that are less expensive to maintain. From 2012 to 2023, it invested more than $475 million on infrastructure projects authorized under a state program, resulting in a more than 32% reduction in methane emissions from pipeline leaks, the company says.
The amount of pipeline replaced and upgraded in VNG’s system in the past decade “is the approximate driving distance from Virginia Beach to Savannah, Georgia,” according to Amanda Bouchonville, VNG’s Steps to Advance Virginia’s Energy (SAVE) program manager.
Duvall sees natural gas pipelines as key to Virginia’s energy future. “Natural gas [is] a foundation fuel that is able to underpin wind and solar,” he says. “It can be put in service very quickly. It has affordability [and] reliability.”
VNG is one of four natural gas distribution companies of Southern Company Gas, a wholly owned subsidiary of Southern Co.
Columbia Gas of Virginia, with more than 290,000 customers across a broad swath of the state, also is committed to finding leaks and replacing aged pipes, says Jennifer Montague, president and chief operating officer. “We have a car that drives around detecting gas leaks. We’re trying to keep more of the gas in our system.”
Its parent company, NiSource, is actively “exploring new technology,” according to Montague. For example, Columbia Gas of Pennsylvania, another NiSource subsidiary, has a pilot hybrid program that allows for blending of hydrogen into the natural gas system at various percentages, ranging from 2% to 20%. According to NiSource, hydrogen can be a zero-carbon fuel “because when combusted, hydrogen produces water vapor, not greenhouse gas emissions.”
“It’s not much of a difference. It dries your clothes the same,” Montague says.
Montague also sees natural gas as an essential part of Virginia’s energy future. “The electric grid is not ready without the inclusion of natural gas,” she says. “I hope it doesn’t have to be either/or.”
Virginia’s first Black governor says it’s past time for the state’s historically Black colleges and universities to receive their fair share of the pie.
Former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, a Virginia Union University alumnus, jokes that he has been advocating for increased state funding for Virginia HBCUs “for about a hundred years.”
The Biden administration gave a push in that direction last September in letters to 16 Southern governors — including Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin — calling on them to correct what it calls decadeslong underfunding of 16 land-grant HBCUs in their states. According to the White House, states underfunded these schools by $13 billion from 1987 to 2020.
The commonwealth has two land-grant schools — Virginia Tech in Blacksburg and Virginia State University in Ettrick, an HBCU founded in 1882. Federal officials estimate that VSU is owed more than $277 million in state funding.
Land-grant schools were established by the 1862 Morrill Act, under which the federal government provided money to create 57 public colleges for agriculture and engineering. States generally provide required dollar-to-dollar matches for these institutions. During the days of racial segregation in the South, Black students were unable to attend colleges established by the 1862 act, so a separate Morrill Act system was set up in 1890.
Youngkin’s administration has denied that the commonwealth has underfunded VSU compared with Virginia Tech, and expressed skepticism over how federal officials came up with the numbers.
Wilder, a Democrat, says he’s written to Youngkin on the subject. “The underfunding has been documented at the federal level. I say to the governor, ‘Start putting money in the budget for HCBUs — all of them.’ This has been ignored too long by too many.”
William R. Harvey, who retired in 2022 after 44 years as president of Hampton University, suggests that HBCUs seek state funding for specific projects, like HU’s Proton Therapy Institute, which treats cancer patients. Photo by Mark Rhodes
The 93-year-old Wilder, the nation’s first Black governor since the Reconstruction era and later Richmond’s first popularly elected mayor, is now a distinguished professor at the Virginia Commonwealth University’s Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs named for him. Last September, the school’s annual Wilder Symposium addressed the topic of HBCU funding head-on under the title, “HBCUs and the Absence of Support.”
Under Youngkin’s proposed 2024-26 state budget, released in December 2023, VSU’s operating funding would go up about 9.2% — from $232 million for fiscal 2024 to $250 million proposed in 2025. The Democratic-controlled state legislature will get a crack at the budget to make amendments (likely in a special session this spring) before submitting it to the governor to sign.
There are multiple ways of advocating for more funding, Wilder says. In 2006, a group of alumni and supporters of Maryland’s HBCUs filed a federal lawsuit accusing the state government of providing inequitable resources to its four historically Black schools. In 2021, Maryland reached a $577 million settlement to end the lawsuit.
Wilder says he’s not advocating that Virginia HBCU supporters follow Maryland’s example, but he notes that both chambers of the General Assembly have significant Black leadership, including the state’s first Black speaker of the House of Delegates, Del. Don Scott.
“I don’t think a lawsuit is necessary,” Wilder says. But if HBCUs are not better funded, “we’ll say that your projects likewise will not be funded. There will be no pie for you if there’s no pie for me. … Power concedes nothing without demand. Now that we people of color can do something, we need to do it.”
Economic drivers
Virginia State University President Makola Abdullah, who serves on President Joe Biden’s HBCUs advisory board and is board chair of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, expresses hope that the General Assembly recognizes the value of investing in HBCUs and will be “receptive” to funding increases. “It’s exciting that we’ve reached the point where this conversation is happening” in Virginia, he says.
VSU ranks No. 26 in U.S. News and World Report’s list of Best Overall HBCUs for 2023, and its enrollment grew by 8% for fall 2022 and another 11% in fall 2023, surpassing 5,000 students. In 2021, Virginia State got a major boost in the form of a record-setting $30 million gift from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. She also donated $40 million to Norfolk State University, part of a series of donations to HBCUs and other traditionally underfunded institutions.
Major donations are important, but consistent public funding would translate into more scholarships, increased financial aid and updated technology and equipment, VSU’s president says. More than that, increased resources would mean that “the entire community would be uplifted,” Abdullah says. “VSU is a premier economic driver in Petersburg.”
Land-grant schools such as VSU “invest so much back into rural America,” says U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat who serves on the House Agriculture Committee and in December 2023 launched her bid for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.
Speaking at the 1890 Land Grant Universities Recognition event co-hosted last September in Washington, D.C., by the nonprofit 1890 Universities Foundation, she told the audience that “back home in Virginia, I have heard from our farmers and our institutions of higher education about the critical nexus between research and the success of Virginia’s No. 1 private industry — agriculture.”
In the past three decades, “more than $275 million should have been available for Virginia State University, had it received state funding per student equal to that of Virginia Tech,” according to Spanberger. “This is unacceptable; those investments could have supported more infrastructure, more student services, and the ability to compete for research grants to better serve Virginia’s students. We need to do better.”
Acknowledging disparity
Although the Biden administration’s letter was specifically aimed at land-grant schools, “it comes at a time when we’re trying to get Virginia to do more for all Black schools,” says James W. Dyke Jr., senior advisor for McGuireWoods Consulting in Tysons.
“This has been going on a long time. Black schools have always received less funding. It’s built up over the years. I think everybody acknowledges the disparity,” says Howard University alumnus Dyke, who was Virginia’s education secretary under Wilder and has worked in recent years on increased funding for HBCUs.
Now is an especially important time to allocate more money to HBCUs, Dyke says. While many institutions around the country are struggling to attract students, enrollment at HBCUs is on the rise, increasing 57% by 2022, according to a National Center for Education Statistics report last spring.
And after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned affirmative action at most colleges and universities last June, Dyke says, “I think there will be more demand.”
He’s far from alone in that assessment. According to a July 2023 report by Inside Higher Ed, HBCU leaders are expecting more applications. While more interest is generally welcome, administrators at HBCUs nationwide expressed concern that they don’t have the resources and infrastructure to accept more students.
Currently, predominantly Black universities produce 20% of Black college graduates in the country but face significant underfunding compared with predominately white institutions, according to the Wilder Symposium, which billed it as “a crisis that impacts financial support for students, technology resources, and building infrastructure.”
It’s in the best interest of businesses and communities to better support all HBCUs, Wilder says. “Businesses are looking for leadership to come from all of their schools in Virginia. They need a [workforce] pipeline. We produce the doctors, the lawyers, the engineers.”
Like other higher ed institutions, HBCUs are not a monolith. Some, like NSU and VSU, are public universities that receive federal, state and private funding, while others are private universities that rely on tuition, donations and endowments. In Virginia, Hampton University, Virginia Union University and Virginia University of Lynchburg are the state’s private HBCUs.
In 2022, Virginia Attorney Gen. Jason Miyares, a Republican who is rumored to be eyeing a 2025 gubernatorial run, wrote that the state’s laws and constitution allow some public funding of private HBCUs — through the Tuition Assistance Grant program for individual students and with loans to universities through the Virginia College Building Authority.
“This is a significant moment in time for HBCUs,” Virginia Union University President Hakim J. Lucas said when Miyares made that determination.
William R. Harvey, who retired in 2022 after 44 years as president of Hampton University, knows about the effort it takes to attract donations and has advice for other private HBCUs.
When Harvey became HU’s president almost half a century ago, the university’s “finances were in bad shape. They had not balanced the budget. Physical buildings had decayed.” The school’s endowment was $29 million.
Harvey and his team went to work, and “people responded.” At his retirement, Hampton’s endowment contained more than $400 million, a 1,279% increase. MacKenzie Scott also made a $30 million donation to the school in 2020, its largest donation. But that endowment increase also reflects support from nonbillionaire donors.
People responded, Harvey says, because “we asked them to fund specific projects. We didn’t ask for $50 million, we asked for the proton center.” That’s the $225 million Hampton University Proton Therapy Institute (HUPTI), which employs proton treatments on a variety of cancers. The facility opened in 2010, funded by private donors and regional lenders, as well as some public support from the state and federal governments.
Harvey views the institute as a “classic example” of how Hampton and other HBCUs are helping their communities. “We are curing cancer. Cancer is the No. 1 killer in Virginia. We are easing human misery and saving lives.”
Virginia HBCUs at a glance
Virginia has five historically Black colleges and universities, spread across Hampton Roads and Central Virginia. Some of the oldest in the nation, these institutions are a mix of public and privately run schools.
Hampton University
Located in Hampton, the private, not-for-profit university is on 314 acres and has 3,649 students, 3,255 of them undergraduates.1 It was founded in 1868 as Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. In July 2022, Hampton welcomed its new president, retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Darrell K. Williams; he succeeds William R. Harvey, who had served as the university’s president since 1978.
Norfolk State University
The four-year public school near downtown Norfolk was founded in 1935. It has a 134-acre campus and has 6,045 students. NSU’s December 2021 commencement speech was delivered by music superstar and Virginia Beach native Pharrell Williams, who also hosted his Elephant in the Room business forum at NSU that year. NSU unveiled its 6,000-square-foot Micron-NSU Nanofabrication Cleanroom in October 2021.
Virginia State University
Virginia State University was founded in 1882 as one of Virginia’s two public land-grant institutions (the other is Virginia Tech). Located in Chesterfield County’s Ettrick area near Petersburg, its 231-acre campus overlooks the Appomattox River. VSU has 5,190 students, 4,829 of them undergraduates.
Virginia Union University
The private university was founded in 1865. Hartshorn Memorial College, a women’s college established in Richmond in 1883, became part of VUU in 1932. Storer College, a Black Baptist college in West Virginia that closed in 1955, merged its endowment with VUU. The university has 1,704 students, 1,227 of them undergraduates.1
Virginia University of Lynchburg
Virginia University of Lynchburg traces its origins to the 1886 founding of the Lynchburg Baptist Seminary. Renamed over the years, VUL was incorporated as Virginia University of Lynchburg in 1996. The private not-for-profit school has 837 students, 479 of them undergraduates.2
Since becoming Arlington County’s economic development director in November 2022, Ryan Touhill’s most pressing challenge has been sharply delineated: The county’s office vacancy rate has hit 23.7%, nearly twice the national rate of 13.1%, a record high itself, according to the National Association of Realtors.
Like other localities, Arlington is coping with multiple factors that create urban building graveyards: fully remote white-collar jobs, hybrid work policies that require less office space, and a preference among businesses for streamlined, modern offices ready for the latest technology, as opposed to aging facilities.
Considering how best to generate tax revenue for the county, Touhill says, his immediate concerns are, “How do we drive more demand? How do we remove oversupply of office space? How do we impact value?”
Arlington’s certainly not alone in asking such questions, although its situation is more dire than other Virginia localities. In Richmond, just 10% of offices are sitting empty, and only 8.1% in Hampton Roads, according to statistics released for 2023’s first quarter. As of July, Fairfax County had a 16.7% office vacancy rate, and Washington, D.C.’s rate was 18.9%.
Washington and its surrounding localities were particularly hard hit by the pandemic-driven office shutdowns and subsequent slow returns to in-person work.
Kate Bates, president and CEO of the Arlington Chamber of Commerce, says the high vacancy rate is a crisis that is impacting local government funding for services such as social services, schools and parks, all of which are reliant on commercial tax revenue.
“Arlington’s tax base on the real estate side is 50% residential and 50% commercial. It’s important to everything that we keep as much of a balance as possible,” she says.
The county’s real estate tax revenue makes up 58% of its general fund revenues, and Arlington generated $852.2 million in real estate tax payments last year, according to its fiscal 2023 budget. Residential real estate taxes made up 29% of local taxes collected, compared with 16% for commercial real estate levies. And while commercial property assessments increased by 0.6% in 2022, office property values declined by 9.6%.
“There is no silver bullet, or we would have figured this out already,” Touhill says, but his department has launched a series of initiatives to shrink the vacancy rate and expand long-term business opportunities in the region.
Rezoning initiative
Tina Leone, CEO of the Ballston Business Improvement District, says loosening regulatory barriers for the use of office-zoned properties has made a big difference in opportunities offered in Arlington.
To attract employees from at-home work, Leone says, “you have to adapt to the new ways people are working.” That means repurposing some office space to offer services such as child care, pet boarding, indoor recreation and distilleries.
Ballston Business Improvement District CEO Tina Leone says office spaces have needed to adapt to attract workers. Photo by Will Schermerhorn
“There’s a host of new uses. There’s pickleball. There was a request from a company that wanted to put in ice hockey coaching, with flooring that doesn’t require ice. There’s some industrial uses and makerspaces. Designing and constructing clothing is now allowed. There’s urban farming,” Leone says. “We’re on the cusp of something huge.”
Known as the Commercial Market Resiliency Initiative, the program started last year with an update of zoning ordinances.
It’s one way to help reduce the glut of office space, Touhill says. “We wanted to make sure that if a landlord found a tenant, there was not any obstacle.” The results so far, he says, have been “a dozen new uses.”
Bates lauds the streamlining of what she says was an outdated, overly restrictive zoning process. “There are a lot of the uses we see now that weren’t invented when the zoning code was written,” but the chamber would still like to see the county make some adjustments. For instance, don’t try to anticipate and list allowable uses, but “just make a list of things you don’t allow,” she says. “We are working hard to raise the awareness of commercial brokers, to let them know they don’t have to go through a big, long process” to receive permission for an alternate use of office space.
Leone praises Touhill and his team for their hands-on approach to working with businesses to solve problems. “It’s a great competitive advantage to have a county that is willing to think a little further ahead.”
Tracy Sayegh Gabriel, president and executive director of the National Landing Business Improvement District, where Amazon’s multibillion-dollar HQ2 East Coast headquarters is located, appreciates the county’s “commitments to placemaking, with investments in multimodal transportation infrastructure, next-generation parks and small-business development.”
That, she says, delivers “the kind of connectivity and vibrancy that companies and residents are seeking.”
Touhill’s team is also looking at adaptive reuse of commercial buildings as a tool in the county’s efforts to grow the local talent pipeline.
“My experience — driven by Amazon HQ2 — made it clear that helping the development of the workforce is a big driver” in attracting top businesses to the region, Touhill says. “Our region has an imbalance of worker supply to job demand. We’re helping chip away at that” by attracting and supporting higher education in the region, including the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus under development in Alexandria and George Mason University’s growing Mason Square presence in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor.
The county’s decision to encourage the use of commercial office spaces for educational programming “has sparked a thriving education hub in Rosslyn,” including, most recently, institutions like the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and Northeastern University, says Mary-Claire Burick, president of the Rosslyn Business Improvement District.
“The ripple effect is drawing more students to Rosslyn, creating additional vibrancy and feeding our talent pipeline,” she says, an approach that “helps cultivate an ecosystem of innovation and provide support for emerging companies.”
Supporting startups
Startup support is not a new idea, but two recent county initiatives are aiming to help local small businesses thrive and grow — and hopefully lease office space in Arlington.
The Rosslyn Jazz Fest featured Galactic and Anjelika “Jelly” Joseph in Gateway Park this year. Photo by Josh Brick
One is the newly created $1 million Arlington Innovation Fund, which provides technical assistance and nondilutive,co-investment grants ranging from $25,000 to $50,000 to early-stage tech startups.
“We want to help local entrepreneurs extend the life of early-stage capital, a crucial stage in their life cycle,” Touhill explains. The fund targets companies “that have already raised some funding but need more. We’re not looking to seed first round. We want tech companies that have gained some traction.”
In return, the county hopes “to develop a homegrown pipeline of tech companies that will then create jobs,” he says, and encourage those companies “to become office tenants and grow into thriving members of Arlington’s business community.”
Touhill says he’s confident that the county can build relationships with growing companies. “We have a great location. We have talent. We have a positive business environment. We have the university system and federal agencies. The environment is there.”
Started in 2021, the second initiative, ReLaunch, is an assistance program that provides small-business owners access to business consulting and marketing services and can also help with technology solutions. Arlington Economic Development is seeing tremendous demand for ReLaunch, Touhill says. Since launching in 2021, the program has assisted more than 200 small businesses in Arlington.
Meanwhile, AED is also focused on developing tourism and increasing traffic to county businesses. In August, the Arlington Convention and Visitors Service launched a new tourism brand, “All in Arlington,” to market the county’s arts and cultural offerings. And AED’s Arlington Cultural Affairs division is supporting the effort in a variety of ways, including by making grants to local artists and arts organizations. The division even designates a biennial Arlington poet laureate, an award that comes with a small stipend.
“We’re one of the few economic development offices in the nation that has a cultural affairs division for the promotion of the arts and our rich cultures,” Touhill says. “It shows our commitment and it helps economic growth.”
Burick praises AED’s cultural affairs team “for partnering with us to create a distinctive sense of place that makes Rosslyn more than just a location, but a destination.” For instance, its Rosslyn fall Jazz Fest draws close to 10,000 people each year.
In addition to supporting performances and festivals, the county has commissioned more than 70 art installations throughout Arlington, and it has venues that run the gamut from dance studios to a mini gallery and an 80-seat theater.
“‘All in Arlington’ is the first branding effort we’ve made in a number of years,” Touhill says. “We’ve got a new website and marketing.”
This emphasis on art and culture contributes to overall vibrancy in the county, Leone says. “It makes it more like our European counterparts. Others are trying to get to it. We’re just about there.”
To achieve the right balance, she says, the BID regularly surveys Ballston workers and residents to determine “the amenities that people need or want.”
Art and culture can differentiate a place, Leone notes. “It sets us apart. It offers something that you don’t see everywhere. It creates connections and stickiness — people don’t want to leave. They know this is the place for them.”
Arlington National Cemetery Photo courtesy U.S. Army/Elizabeth Fraser
Arlington at a glance
In 1790, the land that makes up almost all of Arlington County, as well as the city of Alexandria, was ceded to the federal government and officially became part of the nation’s capital. In 1847, the land — known as Alexandria County — was returned to Virginia, and in 1920, Alexandria County was renamed Arlington, after the home of American Civil War Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Today, Arlington is home to the Pentagon, Ronald Reagan Washington Airport and Amazon HQ2. George Mason University, Marymount University, Northern Virginia Community College, the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech all have presences in Arlington.
Population
234,000
Top employers
Accenture
Amazon.com
Deloitte
Federal government
Local government and schools
Major attractions
Near the Pentagon is the 9/11 Pentagon Memorial and the Arlington National Cemetery, where President John F. Kennedy and his brothers, Sens. Robert F. Kennedy and Edward M. Kennedy, are buried. In Ballston is the MedStar Capitals Iceplex, the training center for the NHL’s Washington Capitals, as well as a center for public skating. Rosslyn Jazz Fest has been held since 1991, and in September the free, outdoor event was at Gateway Park. Shirlington is home to the Signature Theatre, a regional theater company that has received a Tony Award.
Top convention hotels
Hyatt Regency Crystal City
686 guest rooms,
53,000 square feet
of meeting space
Crystal Gateway Marriott
701 guest rooms,
38,000 square feet
of meeting space
DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Washington D.C. – Crystal City
627 guest rooms,
31,464 square feet
of meeting space
Sheraton Pentagon City Hotel
419 guest rooms,
30,429 square feet
of meeting space
Notable restaurants
Café Colline French, cafecollineva.com
Cheesetique Wine bar and comfort food, cheesetique.com
Ruthie’s All-Day Upscale American diner, ruthiesallday.com
Last year began on a high note for the Hampton Roads residential real estate market, with home prices and apartment rents soaring. According to the Real Estate Information Network, monthly median rent costs rose 20.4% compared with 2021, with median rents of $1,800.
But by the fourth quarter of 2022, rent growth slowed and sales volume plummeted as the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to battle 40-year-record inflation rates.
Old Dominion University’s 2023 Hampton Roads Real Estate Market Review & Forecast, presented in March, noted that fourth-quarter rent growth was down to 5% in the region, compared with 11.6% for 2021’s fourth quarter. Paul Van, CEO and chief investment officer for Croatan Investments in Virginia Beach, said consumers’ economic health had declined, and the record high $755 million in multifamily sales in 2021’s fourth quarter plummeted 77% to $173 million in 2022’s fourth quarter.
Clark Simpson, senior vice president of Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer’s capital markets group in Virginia Beach, notes the effect on the market. “Last year, developers were more aggressive buying land because construction loans had lower rates and rent growth was solid,” but that’s slowed, he says, because of higher interest rates and construction costs, as well as concerns over the rate of rent growth.
By early summer, the region’s homebuying market righted itself, with median sales prices setting records in May and June, at $335,000 and $345,000 respectively, according to REIN, and Virginia Realtors reported in May that multifamily inventory rose by 1.4% in the first quarter of 2023, with the average monthly rent payment rising by $56.
While the higher cost of housing is not great for buyers or renters, the whole Hampton Roads region is not a monolith, notes Alvin “AJ” Abston, a senior market analyst for Washington, D.C.-based CoStar Group, which collects and analyzes real estate data. Micro-economies among the region’s localities were affected by inflation differently.
With regard to rentals, Virginia Beach, with a population of almost 457,700, “has been able to absorb the extra level of inventory” and has 5.6% vacancy, he says. Suffolk, on the other hand, with a population of 96,000, “has vacancy in the double digits. It’s a smaller market, so impacts are seen a lot quicker.” The submarket of Chesapeake is seeing an influx of residents, he adds. “More people are moving in who have been priced out of other areas.”
Demand is high in the affordable housing market, notes Christine Gustafson, vice president of marketing and public relations for The Breeden Co., which is redeveloping Tidewater Gardens in Norfolk. The project replaces 618 aging units, built in the 1950s, with 714 units.
“We can’t build fast enough,” she says. Breeden is also involved in The Lift & Rise in Newport News, part of the Marshall-Ridley Neighborhood Transformation Plan. The community includes a mix of 81 affordable and market-rate apartments, with rents ranging from $968 for one bedroom units to $2,250 for three bedrooms.
Breeden also has been busy at the other end of the market spectrum with the Lofts at Front Street, a luxury 258-unit building in downtown Norfolk on the Elizabeth River, with rents ranging from $1,740 to $2,685. This apartment community and others reflect customer demand, such as “Zoom rooms or coworking spaces,” Gustafson says. “What may have been a billiard table will now be a work table where people can work and meet.”
Thalhimer’s big project last year, Simpson says, was the April 2022 sale of Smitty’s Mobile Home Park in Norfolk for $9.75 million. The buyer, Bonaventure, a real estate developer in Alexandria, plans to build a 418-unit apartment and townhome complex, replacing 100 mobile homes.
“They’re Class A apartments. It will really improve that corridor,” he says.
In Alexandria’s Old Town North, a collection of three brick office buildings built in the 1980s is being transformed into Tide Lock, a community of 234 luxury apartments and condominiums featuring Potomac River views and space for retail and a nonprofit music school.
And last summer in the city’s Alexandria West neighborhood, tenants began moving into two, 14-story former office buildings that have been converted into Park + Ford, a 435-unit modern apartment complex with 115,000 square feet of office space.
Faced with a glut of vacant office space generated by a mix of high inflation and low post-pandemic return-to-office rates, some real estate developers in Northern Virginia have begun turning to office-to-multifamily (OTM) adaptive reuse projects.
This year, the inventory of U.S. office space shrank for the first time in recent memory, going back to at least 2000, according to data from Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL). Ground has been broken for less than 5 million square feet of new offices as of late July, while 14.7 million square feet of office space was removed from the market, as aging and vacant buildings are demolished or repurposed.
Meanwhile, in April, the amount of available office space for lease across the nation hit a high not seen since the 1980s savings and loan crisis, according to CoStar Group, a Washington, D.C.-based provider of real estate data and analytics. And with more than half of leases signed before the pandemic not yet expired, office vacancies are expected to increase. The national office vacancy rate is projected to rise from 13.2% to over 17% by late 2026, according to CoStar.
And while leasing of new office spaceincreased from 57.4 million square feet in the second quarter of 2020 to 97.5 million square feet in the second quarter of this year, according to CoStar data, the amount of space being leased has shrunk significantly. Due largely to hybrid work policies, companies’ needs for space have shifted dramatically. The average U.S. office space leased in the second quarter was 3,275 feet, nearly 20% smaller than before the pandemic.
Empty office buildings in city centers mean fewer customers for downtown businesses ranging from food trucks and restaurants to urban transit systems. The typical office worker now spends $2,000 to $4,600 less per year in city centers, according to research released in April by Stanford University.
One silver lining, according to Dallas-based real estate services firm CBRE, is that there are “new opportunities for restaurants in growing office markets and the suburbs of many major coastal cities.”
The main reasons for these high vacancy rates, according to a report by Curtis Dubay, chief economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are that “workers just don’t want to go back to the office, and employers can’t make them because of the tight labor market.” Plus, “interest rates have risen sharply in the last 18 months, and they won’t be going down soon,” which puts a damper on commercial real estate demand.
Virginia Realtors Chief Economist Ryan Price agrees with that assessment. “As companies are coming back to work, occupancies are coming back up, but slowly. The hybrid model is pretty sticky,” Price says. Additionally, amid inflation and fears of a 2024 recession, some companies are reevaluating “their space needs and looking to downsize,” Price says.
Adding to the problem, nearly $1.5 trillion in commercial real estate debt will be coming due by the end of 2025, according to commercial real estate data and analytics provider Trepp. Many of these mortgages are interest-only loans for which borrowers have been making only interest payments during the life of the loan, with the principal due at the end. And CoStar estimates that as much as 83% of outstanding securitized office loans won’t be able to refinance if interest rates remain at current levels.
This has led to a landscape some media outlets have deemed a “commercial real estate apocalypse,” with communities, financial institutions and commercial real estate businesses all seeking solutions.
‘The hiccup’
Northern Virginia, like the rest of the Washington, D.C., region, has been hard hit by these trends.
The outlook for Northern Virginia’s economy and office market remains “heavily dependent on and intertwined with the nation’s defense budget” and the government contracting industry, according to a JLL report: “While defense contract awards are up significantly year-over-year, [office] absorption remains negative, ending a 20-year correlation. This trend is expected to continue into next year as leasing remains subdued, particularly large-block leasing.”
Of the office activity that does occur, the research finds that the corridor “stretching from Old Town through National Landing and Rosslyn Ballston corridor, out to Tysons and the toll road, is expected to capture a disproportionate share of demand.”
When completed, Tide Lock, located in Alexandria’s Old Town North neighborhood, will include 234 apartments and condominiums featuring Potomac River views, as well as space for retail and a nonprofit music school. Rendering courtesy Community Three Development
Tide Lock and Park + Ford are among the OTM conversion projects developers have taken up in the region in recent years in response to the office space glut.
Real estate investment company USAA Real Estate (now Affinius Capital) and national real estate developer Lowe joined to convert the former Park Center office complex at 4401 Ford Ave. in Alexandria into apartment community Park + Ford, a project that started just ahead of the pandemic.
Drawing on its experience with a prior office-to-residential conversion, The George in Wheaton, Maryland, Lowe capitalized on the brutalist buildings’ 10-foot ceilings and large floorplates to create larger-than-usual apartments, along with remote worker-friendly amenities such as coworking common space and a pet spa. Maryland-based Whiting-Turner handled construction, with design from D.C.-based Bonstra | Haresign Architects.
Park + Ford was developed in response to “growing interest among young professionals … for an apartment community with more room for working and family, along with style and convenience,” says Mark Rivers, an executive vice president at Lowe. “As we began welcoming residents, we found that the pandemic only fueled demand for precisely the environment
and residences that we have created at Park + Ford.”
The cost of OTM conversions varies considerably, according to CBRE, ranging from $100 to $500-plus per square foot, depending on the original layout, existing conditions and scope of work.
Conversion usually calls for reworking of plumbing and electric, and distribution of HVAC throughout the building. But lighting — or the lack of it — is often the biggest challenge.
“A lot of offices have a lot of interior space, where with residential projects, you need to have window access. You need to have daylight without compromising the structure,” says Mwangi Gathinji, vice president of Community Three Development in Washington, D.C., which is building Tide Lock. The company has also completed OTM conversions in D.C. and Maryland.
The answer can be to “cut an atrium in the middle of the building,” Gathinji says, but “you’re always trying to mitigate the amount of chopping. That’s usually where the hiccup is” — cost. With OTM conversions, “there’s a lot of stuff in there that is not known, as opposed to starting from scratch. You have to know if the back-of-the-napkin numbers work.”
Creative reuse
Despite the widening gap between office and multifamily vacancy rates, OTM conversions are up only slightly, and there’s no evidence they’ve significantly increased, according to a March 2023 CBRE report. “Construction costs and regulations on residential construction will continue to limit conversions to smaller, older office properties,” the report states.
Still, about 45,000 of the 122,000 apartment conversions in the pipeline nationally are redevelopments of office buildings, according to RentCafe’s Adaptive Reuse Report, released in July.
In response to these trends, Arlington County has been promoting office space repurposing through rezoning and other tools, but Arlington hasn’t seen many conversions to multifamily, possibly because the floorplate in the county’s office buildings aren’t easy to convert to multifamily uses, says Cara O’Donnell, Arlington Economic Development’s director of media relations.
Instead of multifamily projects, the county is seeing rezoned office spaces being adapted creatively, O’Donnell says. “There’s big push for alternate uses — everything from indoor recreation [or] mini-fulfillment space to ghost kitchens and R&D labs. There’s been a lot of rezoning since the beginning of this year.”
Opened last year in Alexandria West, the 435-unit Park + Ford apartment complex is an adaptive reuse of the former Park Center office complex. Photo by Shannon Ayres
In April 2022, the county launched its Commercial Market Resiliency Initiative to modernize county regulations in response to economic shifts. The initiative “gives AED a new tool to chip away at our record-high office vacancy rate,” director Ryan Touhill said in a blog post. “But even more than that, as we move forward in this post-pandemic era and office tenants are trying to determine an in-office vs. hybrid environment, we want to create places in which people want to be. Got a pandemic puppy? Fluffy could be right next door at doggy daycare while you’re at work. Need some produce for dinner? The new urban agriculture business downstairs is the perfect place to pick up microgreens. These are all types of businesses that are already seeing success in other areas of Arlington; we want the flexibility to allow them to succeed in our commercial corridors as well.”
Trophy case
The Washington, D.C., office market reached a record high office vacancy rate of around 20% in July, but 60 buildings, mostly older structures, accounted for 41% of the vacancies, according to JLL.
Over the past five years, the office market nationally has seen “a flight to quality,” with newer trophy office buildings and Class A buildings featuring modern amenities and technologies faring far better than older Class B and Class C office buildings where “the vacancy is extremely high,” says Brent C. Smith, a real estate professor at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Business, who is also the CoStar Group endowed chair in real estate analytics.
This pattern holds at the state level, especially in Northern Virginia, according to Price, who says, “newer, good locations near amenities are performing better than Class B or C buildings in suburban, lower-rise office parks.”
The Northern Virginia office market “remains bifurcated,” with vacancy in trophy buildings at only 8.2% during the second quarter of 2023, according to a July report from JLL. Class A buildings had an 18.4% vacancy rate, and Class B/C buildings were 23.8% vacant.
“Real estate has become more aligned with human resources. There’s a direct correlation between recruitment and retention and top-of-the-market amenities,” says Michael Hartnett, JLL’s mid-Atlantic head of research.
For example, a location that is walkable to a Washington-area Metro station “checks a box” for employees who are also interested in mixed-use places where they can live and work, he says.
Northern Virginia’s struggles with office vacancy aren’t mirrored by the rest of the state, however.
Richmond, which has the second highest vacancy rate in Virginia, has only about half as many office vacancies as Northern Virginia, according to Alvin Abston Jr., a senior market analyst with CoStar. With entities like the state government mandating more time in office, “there’s not as much space being thrown back onto the market,” he says.
In Hampton Roads, where land is at a premium, some older office buildings dating to the 1970s and 1980s are being torn down to make way for more in-demand uses such as hotels or convenience stores, according to Robert Wright, a Virginia Beach-based senior vice president with Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer.
Scrapping an old, tired building “is the easier path,” he says, but a conversion can work “when the value of an office building is really low.”
Virginia Beach particularly doesn’t fit the picture of a city overstocked with office space, according to Lou Haddad, president and CEO of Armada Hoffler, a real estate investment trust with Class A office properties in and around Virginia Beach’s Town Center.
“You can’t paint it all with same brush,” Haddad says. “We are seeing near-record demand for our office space. Headquarters [space] is over 99% leased. … Portfolio-wide, over 97% is leased.”
A plus for Armada Hoffler, according to Haddad, is that the company has concentrated on the trophy market sector, which typically attracts tenants such as Fortune 500 companies and high-end professional firms “that need that top address” to attract employees and clients.
“It had better be a top-quality property to attract the top people and ask them to work back in the office. B- and C-quality buildings are struggling. Top assets are staying full,” he says. “You have to have a good human environment. It sets the tone.”
Richmond and Norfolk don’t have much Class A space, something that is “a blessing and a curse,” according to Abston. Tech is able to drive office values, and without Class A space, “you aren’t enticing people to these midsize markets. There are fewer tenants related to the tech industry.”
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