The Shenandoah Valley’s economy is rebounding, but the region is struggling with a poor labor force participation rate, even compared with the national rate of 61%.
In Augusta, Bath, Highland, Page, Rockbridge, Rockingham and Shenandoah counties, only 50% of potential workers are actually employed, says Jay Langston, executive director of the Shenandoah Valley Partnership, calling the stat “abysmally low.”
To address this issue — and its underlying causes — James Madison University convened a conference in August, seeking input from more than 130 stakeholder companies and organizations, including the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, GO Virginia and the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
Four overarching issues affect labor participation: transportation, workforce training, affordable housing and child care, says Nicholas J. Swartz, associate dean of JMU’s school of professional and continuing education. Four working groups created from the conference will tackle each of these challenges in coming months.
“A champion will represent each group,” Swartz explains. “They’re going to determine what the problem actually is, including the root causes and how to address them. I want to move the needle.”
Part of the work begun in August was establishing the Shenandoah Valley Collective Action Pact, an agreement signed by more than 100 organizations and businesses to collaborate on short-term and long-term solutions for the region’s problems.
Swartz hopes that other regional anchor institutions in addition to JMU will also take leadership roles in the pact, as some solutions may take longer to enact. However, improving child care options and transportation access are immediate issues that he hopes to see addressed soon.
One potential answer to the transportation problem, Langston says, may be found in the poultry industry, where company vans shuttle employees to and from work.
Housing also is a barrier, Langston notes, because while “manufacturers are strapped for workers, if people are going to take jobs, they need a place to live” that’s affordable.
Also, career opportunities in manufacturing need to be better communicated. “There are well-paying, good jobs,” Langston says. “The sky is the limit, but people don’t perceive those jobs in that manner.”
Laura Toni-Holsinger, executive director of United Way of Harrisonburg-Rockingham County, notes that child care availability — never great locally — has dwindled further in the past two years. She hopes private and federal stimulus money investments will bring long-term solutions.
Ultimately, says Swartz, “We really want this to be a model for other areas of the commonwealth.”
Virginia Business Deputy Editor Kate Andrews contributed to this story.
At the site of what was once a Burlington Industries textile mill in Hurt, Staunton River Plastics is building a 250,000-square-foot manufacturing facility.
Staunton River Plastics is the first tenant for the newly named Southern Virginia Multimodal Park, says Linda Green, executive director at the Southern Virginia Regional Alliance in Danville.
Burlington Industries, once known as Klopman Mills, closed its plant there in 2007. “To see this come back alive is so critically important to the community,” Green says. “That was the largest employer in the area.”
Hurt Mayor Gary K. Hodnett notes that the estimated $34 million project is expected to bring about 200 new jobs to the area, slightly fewer workers than had been employed by Burlington Industries.
“It means so much to the town to rejuvenate the local area,” Hodnett says. People in Hurt who lost their jobs when the mill closed took jobs in Danville and as far away as Greensboro, North Carolina, he adds. “This will pull labor like a magnet back to Hurt.”
Hodnett is chairman of the Staunton River Regional Industrial Facility Authority — a joint partnership between Pittsylvania County, Danville and Hurt that is redeveloping the industrial park.
Staunton River Plastics is a wholly owned subsidiary of Rage Corp., an Ohio-based plastics manufacturer that produces products used in the health care and beauty industries.
Staunton River Plastics will manufacture parts for a long-term contract with a Fortune 500 company, according to a company news release.
Advantages to the Hurt location, according to Green and Hodnett, include railroad access and proximity to a Rage Corp. plant in nearby Altavista. The Altavista facility opened in 2004 and the company announced $2 million-plus expansion there in 2018.
The Staunton River Plastics project was announced in May 2020; it is estimated that it will be finished by early 2022. A groundbreaking ceremony was held for the project in mid-July.
The project received a $500,000 grant from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund, as well as a $300,000 Virginia Investment Performance Grant from the Virginia Economic Development Partnership and $135,000 from the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission.
Staunton River Plastics also is eligible to receive rail access funding from the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation, and benefits from the Virginia Enterprise Zone Program. ν
More than two years after FreightCar America left town, eliminating about 200 assembly jobs, the buildings once occupied by the railcar manufacturer in downtown Roanoke remain empty.
Chicago-based FreightCar America opened its Roanoke plant in 2005, leasing space at the East End Shops, a locomotive workshop and maintenance complex of about 900,000 square feet of industrial space owned by Fortune 500 rail company Norfolk Southern Corp.
“There’s a lengthy history of rail maintenance and activity on that property,” says John Hull, executive director of the Roanoke Regional Partnership.
During its early 20th century peak, more than 5,000 laborers worked at the multibuilding facility, which was owned by Norfolk and Western Railway, a Norfolk Southern forerunner. Last year, Norfolk Southern closed down the 136-year-old East End Shops, relocating its remaining 85 skilled labor jobs there to Pennsylvania and eliminating about 20 clerical positions.
Marc Nelson, Roanoke’s economic development director, says a team including the Virginia Economic Development Partnership and the Roanoke Regional Partnership are working with Norfolk Southern to find a lessee or buyer for the East End Shops property. One offer was in the initial stages as of late July, he added.
Located along Campbell Avenue in downtown Roanoke, the property is “quite sizeable,” Hull says. “There aren’t very many spaces like this available. It’s a very special-purpose space. There are rail lines through it.”
In April 2020, FreightCar America received a $10 million Paycheck Protection Program loan that FreightCar said would enable it to retain jobs at its sole remaining U.S. production plant in Alabama, according to SEC filings. But just five months later, the company raised eyebrows when it announced it would be moving all those jobs to Mexico.
A handful of the 200 laid-off FreightCar workers from Roanoke had moved to the Alabama plant, says Morgan Romeo, executive director of Virginia Career Works – Blue Ridge. But most of them needed help finding new jobs, prompting a regional assistance effort.
One advantage for the former FreightCar employees, Romeo says, is that “FreightCar guys have lots of technical skills that transferred to Newport News shipbuilding.” Other ex-FreightCar employees received training to qualify for welding certifications and some received on-the-job training for new positions as machine operators and machinists.
“It was a big hit,” she says, but local officials “did their best to remedy the situation, to get folks back to work.”
Businesses aren’t the only organizations finding it difficult to hire employees. Amid dropping state unemployment rates and a nationwide labor shortage, Danville and Pittsylvania County have been seeking new ways to interest people in working for local government.
Pittsylvania’s Board of Supervisors approved $1,000 employee referral and sign-on bonuses in July, says Holly E. Stanfield, the county’s human resources manager. “We knew we needed to do something different to attract people to this area.”
This summer, Pittsylvania County had about 30 openings to fill, mainly in the social services department and the sheriff’s office. The county’s unemployment dropped to 4.1% in May, while the national unemployment rate was 5.8%.
Additionally, the county launched an ad campaign aimed not at specific job positions, Stanfield says, but at “people who are eager to learn, work and make an impact utilizing their skills and talents.”
Meanwhile, Danville was working to fill almost 45 job openings, according to Sara Weller, the city’s director of human resources. The city was having trouble recruiting police officers as well as unskilled and skilled labor positions, including commercial drivers license holders, mowers and mechanics.
Danville adopted a new pay rate system last year, after conducting a compensation study in late 2019 “to ensure our pay rates are consistent with average market pay in other localities of similar size, which increases our recruitment and retention,” Weller says.
But Virginia’s minimum wage rose to $9.50 an hour in May, as part of the commonwealth’s phased approach to increasing the rate to $15 by 2026, pending General Assembly approval.
As a result, Weller says, “we’re working with the consultant to work up to that $15 to see what that looks like.”
To attract job applicants, the city also has increased the amount of annual leave employees earn and the number of paid holidays, she adds.
Both the county and city are using health and wellness benefits as recruiting tools. “We have an outstanding wellness program and do offer a wellness incentive,” Stanfield says. “If an employee gets an annual exam, which most insurance plans cover, we pay $125 if they participate in that.”
And in Danville, “we offer an onsite employee health center that provides primary care to all employees at fees ranging from free to $25,” Weller says.ν
Problems plugging Silver Line Phase 2 into the rest of the Washington transit system are delaying the project’s transfer from the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA).
The transfer’s target date was Labor Day, but it’s not clear how long the transfer will be delayed, according to Marcia McAllister, communications manager for Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project. “One more outage will be required” at the Wiehle-Reston East station, the end of Phase 1, she says. “We will request that from Metro. They will set the date. We are all working together on this.”
How much that will affect Phase 2’s planned opening in the first quarter of next year also wasn’t immediately clear.
“This is not really a significant setback,” says Buddy Rizer, executive director of Loudoun County Economic Development. “In Loudoun, we have prepared ourselves for an early to mid-2022 launch and we are still on track for that. While timeline certainty would be beneficial, we know it’s coming, and we would rather that it be right from the start. I don’t anticipate this impacting our plans.”
Although Rizer says he cannot divulge specifics on those development plans, “a new signature hotel is a possibility at Dulles.”
WMATA is in the process of hiring employees for the stations and expects to complete hiring by October or November, according to Joe Leader, WMATA’s chief operating officer.
Charles W. Stark, who retired in June as Silver Line rail project director and senior vice president of the airports authority, was with the project since it began in 2014. As of late June, he said, Metro was still planning on Silver Line Phase 2 “getting ready for carrying passengers [and] getting ready for revenue operations sometime in the first quarter of next year.”
Stark joined the organization as head of the Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project to lead construction efforts for Phase 2 of the 23-mile extension of the region’s public transit system.
Six stations are on the Silver Line Phase 2. The Reston Town Center, Herndon and Innovation Center stations are in Fairfax County. The Dulles Airport, Loudoun Gateway and Ashburn stations are in Loudoun.
The second phase of the project was originally scheduled to open in 2018, but ran into a series of problems, including the discovery of cracks in concrete panels installed at five of the six new stations.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit last year, it felt as if the long-running goal of transforming Tysons from a commuter-driven “edge city” into a vibrant, urban, walkable destination “would be so disrupted,” says Victor Hoskins, president and CEO of the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority.
But the increase in social distancing and remote work caused by the pandemic “actually has improved the kinds of things we thought we could do,” he says. “Out of unfortunate circumstances, we’ve found new ways to do the work that we do.”
Those new ways have included creating more bicycle and walking paths and making better use of public spaces, Hoskins says. “It sounds small, but it’s happening and it’s creating a better sense of place” in keeping with the long-term vision for Tysons, he says, “and we want to hold on to all of those things.”
Hoskins isn’t the only one who sees a silver lining in the otherwise dire events of the past year and a half.
Sol Glasner, president and CEO of the nonprofit booster organization Tysons Partnership Inc., says that, if anything, the pandemic has prepared Tysons for even greater success in the long term. That’s because the Fairfax County area once commonly known as Tysons Corner “is urbanizing but not yet urban,” he says, and can maneuver in ways that more established places could not during the crisis, he says.
Leading recovery
According to an economic report that the Tysons Partnership released in March, Tysons is “well-positioned to lead regional recovery.” The Tysons Economic Report 2021 noted that Tysons is “well on its way to achieving the 40-year vision of the Comprehensive Plan” that was adopted for the region by Fairfax County government in June 2010.
The study found that, as in other regions, the housing market is booming: “Tysons has seen 34% growth in housing stock since 2010, with forecasted growth expected to continue increasing another 36% to nearly 19,000 units by 2025.” According to the report, “that makes it four times higher than the county average and significantly greater than comparable submarkets.”
Tysons’ residential population is 28,000, and its rate of growth has been 39% from 2010 to 2018. That’s four times higher than the county’s average population growth during the same time period and three times that of the region, according to the report. The total number of households in the area is projected to reach between 36,000 and 57,000 by 2050.
Tysons also has experienced growth in the office market. Inventory increased 7.6% between 2010 and 2019, according to the report, which projected 5% office-based growth during the next five years.
“Lately, Tysons has not gotten as much attention as Crystal City and Herndon-Reston, but it is the big boy of the region,” says Terry Clower, director of George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis at the Schar School of Policy and Government in Arlington.
The Tysons/McLean area boasts seven Fortune 500 companies — Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. (“Freddie Mac”); Capital One Financial Corp.; DXC Technology; Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc.; Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp.; Park Hotels & Resorts; and Tegna Inc.
Tysons’ real estate market, particularly its residential market, is growing faster than in other parts of the region, Glasner believes, because people have begun to see it as a livable community, one that allows for a reasonable commute into Washington or out the Dulles corridor.
“I’m not of the school that says that urban centers are going away,” Glasner says. “I do see them taking different shapes, with different ways of getting around.”
Projected to open in 2023 near Tysons Galleria, The Mather will offer two luxury apartment towers with a total of 300 units for senior citizens ages 62 and older. rendering courtesy Mather Life Ways
Since the Silver Line’s debut in Tysons in 2014, overall ridership at each of its four Tysons stations has grown year over year, according to the report. Ridership for the first 2 ½ months of 2020 was on course to continue growing but then dropped significantly due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
What the aftershocks of the pandemic will mean for transportation, Hoskins admits he doesn’t know. “There may be some negative externalities,” he concedes, but he hopes that the flexible work arrangements that have made traffic lighter in the area during peak hours will continue.
Forward-thinking projects
Hoskins gives much of the credit for Tysons’ success to developers who are “forward-thinking” about mixed-use projects that have “residential, commercial, even learning in the same place.”
As examples of innovative mixed-use development, he cites The Mather, a complex for seniors that is part of the 19.4-acre Arbor Row, and The View at Tysons, a proposed six-building complex from Clemente Development Co. Inc. that would include residential and retail space as well as a hotel and performing arts center.
Plans for The View’s 600-foot Iconic Tower, the project’s focal point, which would be the tallest building in Virginia and surrounding states (45 feet taller than the Washington Monument), took a while to get off the ground and went through several changes before being approved in 2019. Clemente Development founder and CEO
C. Daniel Clemente says the timing turned out to be fortunate.
If construction had started earlier “and we were about ready to deliver, we would not have had the opportunity to create the most up-to-date building. We wanted to make every other building obsolete. Our game plan would have been wiped out,” he says. Now, according to Clemente, the building will be able to incorporate post-pandemic safety features.
Another project, the Boro Tower, co-developed by The Meridian Group and Rockefeller Group, recently signed Korean contractor Hanwha Defense and Richmond-based law firm Williams Mullen to its 440,000-square-foot office tower and was 80% leased by late June.
Katie Yanushonis, senior vice president for Meridian, a property management group, says that from talking with prospective commercial tenants, she believes that despite the heightened interest in remote work, “there is a place in the world for office space. It may look a little different, but company culture is a big motivation in coming back.”
At the height of the pandemic, “our office space numbers were 20% occupancy. Now numbers are up to 50%,” she says. “By fall, we expect to be above 50%. We’re moving in the right direction.”
The Boro mixed-use development in Tysons includes the centerpiece 437,000-square-foot, 20-story Boro Tower. Photo courtesy The Meridian Group
At The Boro, “we did see a softening during the pandemic,” Yanushonis says. “We may have seen a bit of a shift, but it never felt significant. We saw slight increase in vacancy rates, but, all that being said, we were still able to get some deals done at terms we felt good about.”
Tanya Graves, Meridian’s director of marketing and tenant services, says the pandemic has accelerated the use of innovative technologies such as apps and touchless access for facilities. And remote work has also resulted in physical changes. “People enjoy living in a community that has a lot outside their door, that has outdoor space and lounges where you can work outside your home,” she says, so “we’ve added features.”
Reviving retail
The pandemic was a particular blow to the retail and hospitality industries, but Glasner sees signs of rebirth. At Tysons Corner Center mall, he says, weekend shopping is approaching pre-pandemic levels.
The Tysons Economic Report 2021 noted that Tysons generates more than $3.5 billion in annual retail spending, representing 17% of total retail spending in Fairfax County.
Many Tysons retailers, like others around the country, have found ways to adapt and survive, often by developing hybrid online and brick-and-mortar models, says the Schar School’s Clower, who believes there will always be customers who say, “I’m not going to buy it unless I try it on.”
In some places, shopping malls are being converted into distribution and fulfillment centers, Clower adds, but he doesn’t see Tysons adding that kind of congestion to the already hectic mix.
The sector in Tysons that probably has seen the steepest decline has been the hotel industry, Glasner says. The pandemic sharply cut business travel and “Tysons never was seen as a tourist destination.”
But even that market is beginning to turn around, he says. The economic report predicts that the hotel market in the Washington, D.C., area will rebound to 2019 levels by 2025.
The pandemic didn’t slow down the march to bring more music and arts to Tysons, however.
Hoskins and Glasner both praise Capital One Hall, Capital One’s new corporate events venue and performing arts center, with a 1,500-seat auditorium and 250-seat black box theater. The hall is set to open in October, with a performance by country group Little Big Town, and country singer Clint Black is scheduled to perform there in February 2022.
Victor Hoskins, president and CEO of the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority. Photo by Will Schermerhorn
Glasner says it will be “so magnetic for recruiting and retention” and help the financial giant attract the most talented workforce, adding that it’s a major amenity for Capital One’s McLean headquarters campus. It also will be a community resource.
“It’s such a substantial facility, it will become a regional asset. It will make people think differently,” says Hoskins, who believes the performance center will rank as one of the top five venues in the greater Washington, D.C., area. “We’ve never had that level of a performance arts center. It changes the game of the arts, even how we market the area. Tysons will be a center of culture.”
The struggle for work-life balance was taking its toll on women professionals even before the pandemic struck. But the lack of child care and the burnout from increased workloads may now be driving some women business leaders and aspiring leaders out of the workforce altogether.
A May 19 Deloitte Global study, “Women @ Work: A global outlook,” found that a majority of 5,000 working women surveyed across 10 nations said they plan to leave their current employer within two years; nearly a quarter may leave the workforce for good.
And the September 2020 Women in the Workplace report from LeanIn.org and McKinsey & Co. found that before the pandemic, women held 28% of senior vice president roles and 21% of C-suite roles. But last summer, according to the report, one in four women in those top positions was thinking of leaving their jobs, compared with one in six men in such roles.
To prevent an exodus of women leaders, especially women of color, from the workplace, it’s time to truly commit to prioritizing work/life balance and flexible work options, says Donna C. Wertalik, a member of the Women in Business Leadership team at Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business.
Widening gaps
COVID-19 deepened women’s risks for unemployment, for losing their financial independence and for being exposed to domestic violence. Women also have been more exposed to health risks indirectly aggravated by the pandemic and lockdown, says Wertalik, director of marketing strategy analytics for the Pamplin College.
Since the pandemic began, 77% of women surveyed by Deloitte said that their workloads have increased. They reported a 35-point drop in mental wellness and a 29-point drop in motivation at work compared with before the pandemic.
Katherine Whitney, co-founder and director of Warren Whitney, a management consulting firm in Richmond that specializes in executive search, succession planning and board development, has seen the ways that the pandemic has hurt women leaders, and particularly next-generation women leaders.
“I’ve seen the struggle,” Whitney says. Working remotely can be efficient, but “on the other hand, it’s exhausting,” she says, citing the extreme amount of pressure “we put on ourselves or the company puts on us” to get everything done while working from home.
Whitney views one of her clients — an upper-level executive — as typical of women executives during the pandemic era. “She was working 13 hours a day and weekends. Her organization was really impacted by the pandemic. She is a next-generation leader. She didn’t give up, but it is not a fun life. And when people are working way too many hours, they make mistakes” and aren’t productive, she says.
Family-friendly policies such as flexible work, remote work, child care and parental leave are crucial when it comes to retaining women professionals, Wertalik stresses. She recommends supporting parents through online platforms and parenting groups and even offering workshops to improve children’s self-sufficiency and discipline.
“Ensure mental health and well-being are front and center as it relates to resources and true support,” she says. “Companies need to nurture their employees’ individual resilience. Without that human factor, even the most cutting-edge technologies won’t be enough.”
Seeking equity
Family concerns aren’t the only reason women professionals leave the workforce. A 2015 LinkedIn study found that the No. 1 reason millennial women were exiting was a “lack of advancement opportunities.” Gen X and Baby Boomer women listed “dissatisfaction with senior leadership” as their top reason for leaving the workforce.
Poor promotion opportunities early on the career ladder — known as the “broken rung” — often drive a lack of diversity at higher levels.
“Ensure that the first level of management has the same demographic breakdown as your entry-level workforce. Make sure women get that first promotion. This is crucial,” Wertalik says, because once the employee pool begins to narrow in demographics, that’s amplified at each subsequent level of leadership.
Companies need to make a conscious effort to ensure that women are given opportunities to grow, she says, including “lateral opportunities to expand skill sets, chances to work on difficult projects, and direct access to leadership and mentorship.”
Before the pandemic, the average American female worker earned only
81 cents for every dollar the average male worker made, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But at least the gap was starting to narrow. Since the pandemic, the pay gap is widening. Economists project that the gap will widen by 5%, so that the average female worker will earn about 76 cents for every dollar the average male worker makes.
And the time it will take for that gender gap to close grew by 36 years in the space of just 12 months, according to the World Economic Forum’s 2021 Global Gender Gap Report. The report estimates that it will take an average of 135.6 years for women and men to reach parity on a range of factors worldwide, instead of the 99.5 years outlined in the 2020 report.
But Whitney says she does see more serious steps being taken toward pay equity. When she conducts executive searches, she finds some companies are willing to set compensation first, “instead of saying, ‘Let’s wait and see how low we can get.’ If the right person happens to be in a position that didn’t pay well, she shouldn’t have to live with that forever.”
In several recent cases, Whitney says she’s seen women receive big salary jumps from their previous positions “because the board believed it was the right thing to do to set the compensation and then find the person.”
Work/life flexibility
Women working remotely during the pandemic experienced new pressures to balance home and work responsibilities, says Katherine Whitney with management consulting firm Warren Whitney. Photo by Matthew R.O. Brown
But women need to do their part, too, Whitney continues. “I feel that women don’t negotiate as well for salaries. Women need to be willing to push a little bit harder.”
Beth Vann-Turnbull, executive director of Housing Families First, a nonprofit emergency shelter in Henrico, agrees that men are more willing to advocate for themselves.
“There’s more of a push from men to be CEOs. More men will push for it and get it,” says Vann-Turnbull, who adds that she’s personally experienced “imposter syndrome,” a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their own skills, talents and accomplishments.
Looking around at other women professionals, “I don’t think I’m the only one who suffers from it,” Vann-Turnbull says.
To counter that, Whitney advises young women professionals to be “more intentional about your career paths. Don’t just let things happen. If you want to be CEO, ask yourself what experience do you need to have had? What are you going to do to get better in areas you need? Look at the skills. Map out what you need.”
And find a mentor who can help with that journey.
Or, Whitney suggests, a series of mentors, “people you learn from, who help you set up for success.”
Vann-Turnbull says she’s had informal mentors in fields similar to her own who have been “incredibly helpful. They can help you reframe issues. Or they can affirm that you haven’t taken a wrong term. They let you work things out.”
Organization consultants also can be helpful, she adds, providing perspective and a safe place to try out ideas.
Danielle Ripperton, executive director at the Children’s Museum of Richmond, finds that mentors have given her more confidence to accomplish her goals. Additionally, she recommends that women who want to move up the career ladder join professional associations and local community organizations so “you can see leaders out there. You don’t feel alone.”
Hybrid and remote work options allow women more flexibility to succeed, says Heritage Wealth Advisors CEO Dee Ann Remo. “My hope is we don’t go back to normal.” Photo by Matthew R.O. Brown
She says she’s especially benefited from bosses — both male and female — who valued executive development. “I’m very lucky to be in a field that has growth opportunities and leadership experiences,” says Ripperton, who became head of the museum in December 2019.
“They didn’t make an assumption that, because I had a child, I didn’t want to go away for five days for a great leadership program. You need to ask and let people feel comfortable people saying yes or no. You need to have a culture where people feel comfortable” accepting or declining growth opportunities, she says.
Dee Ann Remo, founder, CEO and managing director of Heritage Wealth Advisors in Richmond, finds herself “a little more optimistic” now about how the aftershocks of the pandemic will affect the next generation of women leaders.
“I’m kind of glad we had the experience that proves that hybrid [employment] works. My hope is that we don’t go back to normal,” Remo says. She’s found that women managers are “delighted” when they find that they will be able to continue to make decisions about where and when they work.
Women have always needed work/life flexibility to move up the corporate ladder, Remo believes, but in the past that need often has been accompanied by a lag in their career advancement and the stigma that they weren’t as serious about their work.
“We just blew all that up” during the pandemic, she says, by demonstrating that people can work in different situations and still stay on track.
In the long run, the upheaval caused by COVID-19 may help close the gaps between men and women, Remo says. Previously, “women might have made the decision that their only choice was to work less hours. Now they might make the decision that they can work the same amount but at a different time or from a different place. They will be able to say, ‘I’m not asking to be on a different track. I’m just asking to be able to make wise decisions.’”
Companies that embrace the new way will win the talent war without giving anything up, she says. In any case, “women are going to say, ‘No, we’re not going back to the old way. We just showed you this works.’”
Big plans are in place for a 103-acre plot on the Loudoun-Fairfax county line, property originally pitched by the two counties as a potential location for Amazon.com Inc.’s HQ2 East Coast headquarters.
Rivana at Innovation Station, the first phase of the 4.4 million-square-foot Innovation Station mixed-use development project announced in March, is ideally positioned for a changed business world, says Loudoun Economic Development Executive Director Buddy Rizer.
“This is coming online at a time when we can react to post-pandemic demand. We can respond to what office users of the future want,” in terms of safe building design such as smaller elevators and wider hallways, he says. “We can compete for large Class A office users. I think it’s a game-changer.”
Innovation Station will be connected to the planned Innovation Center Metro station, expected to open in Herndon this summer on the Silver Line.
In addition to more than 1,950 apartments and 1.8 million square feet of office space, Rivana’s plans call for an 11-acre park that will allow for the kind of open-air activities that have become popular since the start of the pandemic, Rizer says. “We’ll be able to capture that new dynamic. You can do all kinds of things. There can be corporate meetings on the lawn, yoga in the park.”
There also will be a 3,000-seat performing arts venue. “There can be concerts or TED Talks, community use. It will be a great location for corporate meetings,” he says.
The goal of the project is “to create a sense of place,” says Jeffrey D. Young, managing partner of Origami Capital Partners LLC, based in Chicago. Origami is one of four real estate and investment firms, most based in Texas, that co-own Novais Partners, the master developer of Innovation Station and co-developer of Rivana with Houston-based The Hanover Co.
“We want to draw people in, so they want to come and spend the day,” Young says. The developers plan to do that by “curating local culture into the retail, having farm-to-table restaurants, celebrating the Loudoun winemaker who sells wine, so that people have something they’re not getting at any other place.
“I envision people wanting to get married there,” he adds. “There’s the park setting and the entertainment venue and a hotel nearby.” (Rivana plans also call for a 265-room hotel.)
Groundbreaking for Rivana is set for early 2022. Fairfax County will be more involved in the development’s second phase, Young says.
Inspired by Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden and the highly visible point person for the nation’s COVID-19 pandemic response, prospective students have been flooding medical schools with applications.
But Dr. Richard V. Homan, president and provost of Eastern Virginia Medical School and dean of its School of Medicine,has another theory about why applications have increased. He says it speaks to a sense of duty brought on by a national crisis: “It’s like 9/11, when a lot of individuals elected to go into the military. People wanted to contribute.”
Dr. Richard V. Homan, president and provost of Eastern Virginia Medical School. Photo by Mark Rhodes
The American Medical College Application Service reported a nearly 17% increase in applications last fall. During the past decade, the year-over-year increase in applications had been below 3%.
Medical schools in Virginia have experienced the same trend since the start of the pandemic.
At Eastern Virginia Medical School applications were up almost 30% — from 6,800 to more than 8,800 for 151 slots, Homan says.
The school offers more than 20 health programs, and Homan sees a heightened interest in health professions such as physician assistants and public health workers. (The national Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health reported a 20% nationwide increase in applications to master’s in public health programs last fall.)
The Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine in Roanoke received 6,374 applications for the class that starts this summer. That’s a 45% increase over the 4,400 annual applications the school has received on average since 2016.
“You hear the talk about the ‘Fauci effect,’” says Dr. Aubrey L. Knight, the school’s senior dean for student affairs, but there’s another important factor as well — the pandemic also moved the application process completely online for many medical schools. In the past, the application process generally started virtually and was followed up with on-campus interviews.
Dr. John J. Densmore, associate dean for admissions and student affairs at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville, notes that “medical schools have always interviewed people in person. The switch to virtual made it much less expensive for applicants.” U.Va.’s School of Medicine saw a 35% increase in applications for fall 2020, Densmore says.
The Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine in Richmond reports that applications jumped from 7,309 applicants for the fall 2020 class to 8,185 applicants for the fall 2021 class, according to Dr. Michelle Y. Whitehurst-Cook, senior associate dean for admissions.
Knight says that there were concerns that, with the virtual application process, potential Virginia Tech students might not be able to tell if they were a good fit with the school, and the school wouldn’t be able to tell whether a student was a good match. However, the process went better than he expected.
The school “was able to do a good job not only [with] virtual interviews but [with] virtual meetings,” he says, and was able to offer students detailed information about the program and the overall educational experience. “There was less of an impact than I was fearing. We don’t know whether we will be doing virtual interviews this year, but if we do it again, I won’t be as afraid.”
Virtual learning
The pandemic not only changed the application process for medical school, it also changed the way medical students are being taught and tested. The need for social distancing shifted many medical school classes from in-person to online.
“It changed the teaching process dramatically,” Densmore says. At U.Va., students traditionally spend their first 18 months largely in the classroom, followed by more than two years of hospital and clinic work.
In spring 2020, preclinical classes went entirely virtual, with course directors hurrying to change to an online format. “In the fall, there were some in-person options,” he says. “We have continued to expand that this spring, particularly as our students are vaccinated.”
On-site visits to learn clinical skills were shut down for about 12 weeks beginning in spring 2020 and students switched to virtual electives. Medical school students began returning to hospitals and clinics in summer 2020 but were limited initially by a shortage of personal protective equipment, Densmore says.
Knight has found the shift in teaching methods to be “a very mixed bag,” he says. “There are things we’ve learned from the [new] application and education process that may never go away.”
He’s heard good things from students about the revised approach to basic science education. “We’ve learned a lot about virtual learning, as well as the value of providing alternative options instead of stand-and-deliver lectures. I think that … will outlive the pandemic.”
And he believes “students were very appreciative of the ways in which we very quickly made sure we attended to their safety and to the safety of patients. Carilion was sensitive to everyone’s needs.”
Still, “when we had to pull students from hospitals and clinics, it was a big challenge to keep them on track,” Knight says. “I know it limited the patient contact they had. That’s not a good thing. We want to send our students out from here as well-versed in clinical medicine as possible. The limits have taken a toll.”
Med schools get a checkup
Dr. Christopher Woleben, the VCU School of Medicine’s interim senior associate dean for medical education and student affairs, thinks some of the pandemic-driven changes have been for the better, though, particularly in preclinical education.
“I think we’ve learned to do remote learning technology better,” such as creating virtual breakout discussion groups, says Woleben, who is also an associate professor in the school’s Department of Emergency Medicine.
Once the pandemic hit, the school quickly had Zoom video conferences up and running for preclinical students. “We continue to have some in-person experiences in small groups. Of course, we’ve had to change the rooms and the timing to make sure we’re meeting requirements for social distancing,” Woleben says. “We’re hoping to transition back to more traditional in-person classes in the fall. I think we will continue to offer opportunities for students to participate virtually. It will probably be a hybrid experience. “
From March through June 2020, Woleben continues, “we were not sure what was going on, how to keep clinical-phase students safe,” so students were temporarily moved from in-person clinical training to online elective classes.
Dr. Aubrey L. Knight, senior dean for student affairs at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. photo by Natalee Waters
Third-year students took an eight-week nonclinical course until it was deemed safe to return to the health system in July 2020.
Fourth-year medical students returned to clinical work in June 2020. With a shortened timeframe to prepare to apply for residencies, “individual schedules were designed by hand to make sure they got the experiences they needed. It was a lot of all-hands-on-deck,” he says.
Woleben is proud of his medical students’ response to the pandemic crisis. Many stepped up as volunteers to conduct contact tracing for the Medical Reserve Corps, a national network of community-based units that provide volunteer assistance for public health initiatives and emergencies. “Their question was: ‘How can I help?’”
Waleed Ahmad, who recently finished his first year at the VCU School of Medicine, applied to medical school before the pandemic hit, but by the time he started in August 2020, classes were mostly online.
The virtual experience was “pretty well done,” offering opportunities for small group meetings, says Ahmad, a native of Loudoun County and a graduate of James Madison University. He is president of the school’s class of 2024.
As a first-year student, Ahmad didn’t examine actual patients, but he did take the required Practice of Clinical Medicine class, during which students perform exams on actors who portray patients. This year, however, the class broke into small groups, employing social distancing and wearing surgical masks and face shields.
“The toughest thing” about studying medicine online, Ahmad says, has been the lack of social contact with other students. “You work together. You study for exams and then have a sense of release together. The goal is to build a sense of community and cohesiveness. Our class missed that. I hope we have that next year.”
The pandemic improved medical schools’ capabilities for delivering remote classes, says Dr. Christopher Woleben with the VCU School of Medicine. Photo by Caroline Martin
The Match game
The pandemic also disrupted a major medical school testing tradition. In March 2020, the Step 2 Clinical Skills medical licensing exam test was put on hold. The daylong in-person test was designed to assess potential physicians’ communication and physical exam skills. This January, the Federation of State Medical Boards and the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) — the exam’s sponsors — announced that they no longer had plans to revive it.
“The Match,” on the other hand, continues. On the third Friday of March each year, fourth-year medical students from around the nation take part in the nonprofit National Residency Match Program (NRMP). The Match determines where they will spend the next three to seven years of their residency training. The 2021 Main Residency Match saw the largest number of placements offered since the program began in 1952, with 35,194 first-year positions offered, according to the NRMP.
This year’s match was very similar to prior years, according to Woleben. He and other medical school officials say they didn’t see any last-minute changes in medical specialties on the part of this year’s fourth-year students, who are already locked into career paths.
But, Woleben says, “it will be interesting to see what happens with the third-year class. Will there be more interest in critical care, in infectious disease, in population health?”
The pandemic has raised awareness of the disparities that exist in health care, he believes, as well as making changes in the way classes are taught.
“I think that the pandemic will affect how everyone practices medicine. It will have a lasting effect.
Medical
schools in
Virginia
Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine
Main Campus: Richmond Website: medschool.vcu.edu Annual in-state tuition and fees1: $37,143 Dean: Dr. Peter Buckley No. of students: 765 No. of faculty: 3,461
Eastern Virginia Medical School Main Campus: Norfolk Website: evms.edu Annual in-state tuition and fees1: $32,456 President/Dean: Dr. Richard V. Homan No. of students: 1,384 No. of faculty: 545
Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine
Main Campus: Blacksburg
Website: vcom.edu Annual tuition and fees1: $46,900 President: Dr. Dixie Tooke-Rawlins No. of students: 2,122 No. of faculty: 133
Liberty University College of Osteopathic Medicine
Main Campus: Lynchburg Website: liberty.edu/lucom Annual tuition and fees1: $49,910 Dean: Dr. Joseph R. Johnson2 No. of students: 621 No. of faculty: 53
University of Virginia School of Medicine
Main Campus: Charlottesville Website: med.virginia.edu Annual in-state tuition and fees1: $48,690 Dean: Dr. David S. Wilkes No. of students: 630 No. of faculty: 1,254
Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine
Main Campus: Roanoke Website: medicine.vtc.edu Annual in-state tuition and fees1: $56,092 Dean: Dr. Lee A. Learman No. of students: 175 No. of faculty: 829
1 Estimates based on tuition plus semester, annual and one-time fees
2 Interim dean
More than a year after the pandemic began, signs point to people moving away from densely populated city centers, says Anirban Basu, chief economist for Associated Builders and Contractors, an industry trade association based in Washington, D.C.
The construction industry has taken note.
Basu predicts: “This decade will be about the suburbs, with more people and activity leaving cities behind.”
The pandemic has been a big driver of this trend, he says, because telework has increased the opportunity to work miles from densely populated areas. The pandemic also has increased the use of online shopping, often at the expense of brick-and-mortar businesses. Millennials’ expanding search for affordable homes are factors in the shift, too.
“Presumably, Northern Virginia will be a major beneficiary of de-densification, but so will the suburbs of Richmond and Norfolk,” Basu says.
“This decade will be about the suburbs, with more people and activity leaving cities behind,” predicts Anirban Basu, chief economist for Associated Builders and Contractors, an industry trade association based in Washington, D.C. Photo by Stephen Gosling
Nationally, residential construction is booming, but commercial real estate fundamentals are weak, according to the economist. “Whether one looks at bankrupt retailers, shuttered restaurants, emptied office suites or under-occupied hotels, the demand for new construction has been diminished by the pandemic.”
The residential market is certainly thriving in Virginia, says Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist for Virginia Realtors, the state trade association. And while retail construction has been hard-hit in the state, “the bright spot has been the industrial market, as the online market has expended. There have been a lot of fulfillment centers and, at the same time, a tremendous amount of construction of data centers.”
The data center construction pipeline reached near-record levels by the end of 2020, according to JLL’s Year-End Data Center Outlook report, with Northern Virginia accounting for half of the growth.
Consumers spent $861.12 billion online with U.S. merchants in 2020, up 44% year over year, according to estimates by researcher Digital Commerce 360. All that ecommerce means an increase in warehouse and transportation construction. “Ports are booming,” says Peter Thaler, senior vice president for Hitt Contracting Inc.’s Richmond and Raleigh offices.
Thaler says Hitt’s decision to take on industrial projects such as warehouses and data centers has been timely. “It’s just going through the roof. We have a large job down in Boydton, in the south.” He sees data centers moving toward Southern Virginia because the Loudoun County market has become so expensive.
Another possible bright spot for construction is the casino industry. Since the state legalized casino gambling in 2019, four cities have approved casino referendums — Bristol, Danville, Norfolk and Portsmouth. Projects in those cities entered development early this year. A casino project also is being considered in Richmond. (See Page 17)
Winners and losers
Office construction has not fared well overall since the pandemic began. A CoreNet Global survey early this year found that 59% of businesses expect their office footprints to shrink.
Much is on hold, as companies wait to see whether it’s safe for employees to return back to work in close quarters, according to Thaler. “Some companies did some reconfiguring, but they haven’t moved in. I haven’t seen any big corporations coming back to work. Law firms and insurance companies have decided not to come back to the office right now.”
The Virginia office market does have bright spots: The first phase of Amazon.com Inc.’s HQ2 East Coast headquarters is under construction in Arlington, with the company announcing in February plans for its second phase, which includes the distinctive spiral-shaped Helix building. And in Hampton Roads, the office market’s ties to the military has kept things “pretty steady,” according to Sturtevant.
The pandemic has changed what people are seeking in a home and has accelerated an urban exodus to the suburbs, says Daniel Jones, president of East West Communities’ Richmond division. Photo by Matthew R.O. Brown
The single-family homebuilding market is one of the big winners nationally, Basu says; that’s the case in Virginia as well, according to Sturtevant.
Since the middle of 2020, Sturtevant has seen more suburban and exurban and even rural development. With people able to work from home, there’s been increased interest in living in more remote areas, “especially where there is high-speed internet. That’s on everybody’s mind.”
Chesterfield County-based developer East West Communities also is seeing a shift from urban areas, according to Daniel Jones, president of the company’s Richmond division.
“COVID created discontent in people’s current situation. The exodus to the suburbs is perhaps happening earlier than they had anticipated,” Jones says. He believes it’s sparked by a “You Only Live Once” attitude. “People are saying, ‘We can live anywhere. We want better schools, more space. We want to be closer to family members.’”
The pandemic also has seen people express increased dissatisfaction with their current living spaces, Jones says. “People are stuck at home. They’re starting to find those problems that they’ve never focused on before. They’re electing to renovate or to move to meet current needs as well as potential needs.
“It used to be you wanted a big, open floorplan. Working at home, with kids at home, people are finding that sound travels. The house dynamic is changing,” he says. People are finding they need to close off home office areas from other family members’ activity, he says. And buyers also are seeking spaces that can be converted into home gyms. “The house is turning into more of a command center.”
Some people are choosing to buy second homes at the beach or in the mountains, he adds. “They’re thinking, ‘I can work part of the time from a second retreat and not have to worry about the commute.’ There’s a lower cost of living and a better of quality of life.”
Steve Fritz, chief operating officer for HHHunt Corp., a Glen Allen-based residential real estate developer, is seeing a shift of homeowners moving from cities to suburbs. And he’s also seeing a shift in the type of spaces homebuyers are seeking. “There’s a keener interest in flexible space to use as a home office or as a place for children to study. Flexible space is No. 1 in the selection of options in buying decisions. We already had options, but we are planning to expand that.”
‘Through the roof’
In apartment construction, Fritz is seeing an overall trend toward larger spaces: “I think studios are perhaps a little less desirable” to people who have been working from home for more than a year.
The Breeden Co.’s Breeden Construction branch in Richmond builds multifamily rental properties, and company Vice President Travis Powroznik says the exodus from the cities isn’t happening as much on the rental side. That’s because renters often don’t have desk jobs and the flexibility that accompanies those white-collar positions, he says. “People want to be in close proximity to where they work,” in places such as hospitals, grocery stores and restaurants, Powroznik adds.
Paul Reimers, owner and president of PR Construction & Development in Leesburg, says demand for home remodeling is at the highest point he’s seen in nearly 35 years. Photo by Will Schermerhorn
In addition to the hot new home market, “remodeling is … through the roof,” according to Sturtevant. “People can’t find a new home to move into. Or they could sell but think, ‘Where are we going to go?’ We’ve seen a lot of that as well.”
Paul Reimers, owner and president of PR Construction & Development in Leesburg, says, “On the remodeling side, this is the craziest I’ve seen [it]” in nearly 35 years of business. “It’s absolute lunacy in the whole market. The phone has been ringing off the hook.
“The more time people spend around home, the more they think, ‘I should have done this. I want to do this.’ People are wanting to do different things that they wouldn’t have done all at once” before the pandemic began, he says. “You can’t get them to stop.” Reimers points to the example of a client who hired him to work on two bathrooms, and now he is remodeling their kitchen.
The shift away from cities is impacting the remodeling business as well as new construction. In March, Reimers was enlarging a house in Middleburg for customers who planned to make it their primary residence instead of living in Washington, D.C.
And Basu sees a trend toward more commercial renovation. Many owners of buildings, especially older ones, are strategically upgrading the properties to become more competitive in attracting tenants.
Where consumers want to live and work isn’t all that is driving changes in the construction industry, though.
Going into the pandemic, a shortage of construction workers represented the most pressing issue facing the industry, Bara says. While contractors continue to face skills shortages, the recent rush to suburban homeownership “may induce a flow of workers, from nonresidential contractors to residential ones.”
A big concern now for builders is the availability of materials. Lumber prices are up 188% since the onset of the pandemic, according to Random Lengths, which issues reports on the wood products industry. Builders are reporting shortages of steel, doors, windows and appliances.
The whole construction supply chain has been disrupted by the pandemic, Fritz says. In March 2020, “plants and mills hit the brakes. But things didn’t stop 35 to 40 days later. And then things didn’t slow down in the fall. They’ve never had a chance to catch up.”
Powroznik sees the industry adapting, getting more creative about how it buys and uses lumber. “Designs may start to change,” he says, “because of the cost of lumber.”
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