The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday will consider launching a small business and nonprofit relief grant program that could disperse up to $30 million to local businesses impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The proposed guidelines would allocate $10,000 to businesses with one to 10 employees, $15,000 to businesses with 11 to 25 employees and $20,000 to businesses with 26 to 49 employees. The board will have to make a decision on Tuesday about the program in order to implement it by June 1.
The relief program would be funded by a portion of the $200 million in federal stimulus funding the county received through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, according to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors May 12 agenda. In an April 29 letter to the Board of Supervisors, County Executive Bryan J. Hill suggested that the CARES Act funding would be used to cover health department expenses, personal protective equipment costs and funding for nonprofits.
But board members at their May 12 meeting will consider disbursing a portion of the stimulus funds as grants to local small businesses and nonprofit organizations. The program could offer anywhere between $10 million and $30 million, based on what officials decide.
On April 14, the Board of Supervisors approved the Fairfax County Small Business COVID-19 Recovery Microloan Fund (Microloan Program) to help small businesses negatively affected by COVID-19-required closures, and on May 5, the board announced it had allocated $2.5 million in funding for the microloan fund. However, it wasn’t enough to keep up with demand.
Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing (APAH) has purchased the former Arlington American Legion Post 139 building for $8.8 million to construct apartment units and a new veterans programming center, Toronto, Canada-based real estate company Avison Young Inc. announced Monday.
The Arlington chapter of the American Legion — a national organization that provides programming for veterans — opened in 1947. It has served veterans returning from World War II and the Korean, Vietnam, Gulf and Afghanistan wars.
The 182,000-square-foot development, Lucille and Bruce Terwilliger Place, will be a 160-unit, seven-story, mixed-use complex. Veterans will be given priority placement in half of the building’s one-, two- and three-bedroom housing units. The remaining 6,000 square feet will be dedicated to a new American Legion Post 139 building, which will include space for workforce development programs, counseling, community activity rooms and a computer lab. The building’s name is a nod to the project’s initial $1.5 million donation from The Terwilliger Family Foundation.
“I was pleased to fund this innovative project because Arlington is my hometown and I attended the Naval Academy,” Bruce Terwilliger said in a statement. “I want to support those who have served in our military and now need an affordable home.”
Located at 3445 Washington Blvd., the 1.3-acre site is less than a mile from George Mason University’s Arlington campus.
The project began in 2016 when American Legion Post 139 selected APAH to redevelop the aging site. Avison Young was approached by APAH in 2016 to market the site, led by Principals Jim Kornick and Chip Ryan, both in the firm’s Washington, D.C. office.
“While other developers offered comparable prices with likely shorter timelines, Post 139 selected APAH because of a shared vision of veterans-preference affordable housing and ongoing services tailored to today’s veterans,” Kornick said in a statement.
The project took almost four years to secure zoning entitlement changes and debt and equity structure and is expected to cost $80 million, including $33.8 million in Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTCs) awarded by the Virginia Housing and Development Authority (VHDA). Capital One purchased the tax credits and contributed $70,000 in predevelopment grants. VHDA and the state government also provided permanent loans for the project and Arlington County loaned $11.5 million.
“Arlington is proud to be one of the first communities in the nation to reach functional zero for veterans’ homelessness,” Libby Garvey, chair of the Arlington County board, said in a statement. “Today we look forward to a completed Terwilliger Place that will help us ensure that we continue helping veterans find an affordable place to call home right here in Arlington.”
APAH officials also say that the project can be replicated by other veteran-focused organizations.
“Thousands of veteran-serving organizations across the nation have similar challenges, they have land, but their facilities are aging and not attracting younger veterans,” APAH CEO Nina Janopaul said in a statement. “There are more 20,000 veteran-serving organizations like Post 139 across the nation. Imagine the difference it would make for veterans and affordable housing if even a fraction of them replicate this model.”
The project is expected to take approximately 26 months to complete and is expected to be finished in 2022.
The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors and the Loudoun County Economic Development Authority (EDA) established the fund. The board of supervisors diverted $1.15 million from its business incentive funding, and the EDA appropriated $250,000. Grants awarded range from $5,000 to $10,000, depending on the number of employees at a given business.
More than 1,200 applications were submitted during the 72-hour application window, which opened April 29 and closed May 2.
After applications were received, the Loudoun County Department of Economic Development worked with the Loudoun Treasurer’s Office, the Commissioner of the Revenue, the Department of Finance and Budget and the Loudoun Cooperative Extension office to collect applicant information. Buddy Rizer, ; Janet Romanchyk, department of finance and budget deputy chief financial officer; and Roger Zurn, Loudoun County treasurer had the final say on applicant eligibility.
“This process provided new insight into the economic devastation that COVID-19 has had on thousands of Loudoun County businesses,” Loudoun County Department of Economic Development Executive Director Buddy Rizer said in a statement. “This grant funding is just one piece of the puzzle for Loudoun’s recovery, and we look forward to working with all businesses moving forward.”
All applicants had to document and demonstrate less than $2.5 million in annual revenue, at least a 25% COVID-19-attributed revenue loss and that they were licensed and operational in Loudoun County.
After applicant eligibility was confirmed, applications were separated into three categories: agricultural business with zero to two employees, businesses with three to 50 employees or home-based businesses with three to 100 employees and businesses with 51 to 100 employees.
All eligible businesses with 51 to 100 employees were funded and agricultural businesses with zero to two employees received funding, said Brian Tinsman, marketing and communications manager for the county’s economic development department. Applications from commercial businesses with three to 50 employees and home-based businesses with three to 100 employees were chosen at random from a single pool to receive $7,500 apiece from the remaining funds.
“While there are no current plans to open future rounds … this process has provided additional data about the need within the business community, and that will be taken into consideration for any funding or services that the county provides,” Tinsman said.
Connected DMV, a regional nonprofit collaboration in Northern Virginia, Washington D.C. and Maryland, announced Thursday it has formed a 45-person COVID-19 Strategic Renewal Task Force to make formal recommendations for addressing short-term and long-term COVID-19-related economic recovery. Founded in 2019, Connected DMV focuses on economic development in Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Maryland.
The task force is not acting on behalf of the three administrations. Members were selected by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, the Greater Washington Board of Trade and the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area. The group will meet monthly through October 2020 and then present their recommendations for economic recovery to Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.
The monthly meetings will be facilitated by Jack McDougle, president and CEO of the Greater Washington Board of Trade.
“Rebuilding our region’s economy after COVID-19 isn’t just a challenge — it’s an opportunity,” McDougle said in a statement. “We can come back stronger, but only if we work together across jurisdictions and sectors. That’s exactly what this impressive group of leaders can and will do.”
Among the Virginia leader tapped for the task force was Fairfax County Economic Development Authority President and CEO Victor Hoskins, who said, “Regional collaboration will be key to post COVID-19 economic recovery, so I am honored to represent the regional economic development community to guide how this area responds to this unprecedented crisis. Working together is the only way this region wins in economic development, and that collaboration is even more important now.”
Members were invited to join the task force with approval from their respective organizations, according to the task force. “Generally, recommendations will be developed in a regional context,” said a statement from the task force. “Details within the recommendations may call for differing actions across jurisdictions.”
Task force members from Virginia include:
Julie Coons – president and CEO, Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce
Dr. Anne M. Kress – president, Northern Virginia Community College
Victor Hoskins – president and CEO, Fairfax County Economic Development Authority
Angela Navarro – deputy secretary of commerce and trade, Commonwealth of Virginia
Richard Bynum – president, Greater Washington & Virginia, PNC Financial Services Group
James Cook – vice president, strategic engagement and partnerships, MITRE Corporation
Lesley Kalan – corporate vice president and chief strategy and development officer, Northrop Grumman
Brian Kenner – head of HQ2 policy and economic development, Amazon
The Floyd CountyEconomic Development Authority announced this week it has received a $2.3 million grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration to construct the first building for the Floyd Growth Center, a shared space in the Floyd Regional Commerce Center for small industrial companies.
Different from a small business incubator, the center will allow businesses to stay as long as they want, said Floyd County Community and Economic Development Director Lydeana Martin. The county estimates that two businesses will be able to operate in the center at a given time, unless building plans change or the space is further divided, she added.
Building 1 will be a 13,000-square-foot industrial building with two main spaces. One space will be approximately 4,300 square feet, and the other approximately 8,700 square feet. Both spaces will have a production area, a drive-in door and office space.
“When we applied for this last August, our goal was to develop affordable spaces for premium production or fabrication work, where local businesses could grow into and other businesses could consider space in Floyd,” Floyd EDA Chairman Jon Beegle said in a statement.
Construction for Building 1, which is expected to cost $2.88 million, is expected to begin by spring 2021.
The project is being funded through the Additional Supplemental Appropriations for Disaster Relief Act of 2019, which gave the EDA $600 million for disaster relief and recovery related to Hurricane Florence, which hit the county hard in 2018. The Floyd Growth Center construction will also receiving $302,000 in funding from the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission.
“The EDA’s support for the Floyd Growth Center Building is a significant investment in our region’s economic development,” U.S. Rep. H. Morgan Griffith, R-New River Valley, said in a statement. “It will promote long-term growth and job creation, as well as build capacity for resilience and recovery in the face of natural disasters.”
“[The U.S. EDA] had special funding to help communities affected by Hurricanes Florence and Michael in 2018,” Martin said. “Thanks to input from more than 50 local businesses, we were able to document the impact of those storms including loss of power, blocked roads and flooding. This building will provide a more resilient option to businesses looking for non-retail space.”
The EDA grant will be matched with $576,385 in local investment and is expected to spur $5 million in private investment, according to the Chamber of Commerce.
“EDA is proud to support Floyd County’s strategy to nurture and protect business interests,” Dana Gartzke, performing the delegated duties of the assistant secretary of commerce for economic development, said in a statement. “Designed to withstand natural disasters, the new Floyd Growth Center Building will support essential training and the continued success of local businesses within the regional economy.”
A state-funded study released in 2017 showed that there is potential for more than 6,000 housing units and 16 million square feet of development in the Military Circle corridor (the area that includes Military Circle Mall, Military Highway and Norfolk International Airport), and the city has been planning to use this space for mixed-use development.
The hotel site is highlighted in orange. The EDA now owns sites 20, 21 and 25. Photo courtesy Norfolk EDA
The EDA now has control of the entire Military Circle Mall property. In 2014, the Norfolk EDA purchased the former JCPenney store on an outparcel of the mall for $2.3 million (highlighted in yellow in photo) and redeveloped the 200,000-square-foot building into an office building, which is now 100% leased. The purchase announced May 1 included the remaining mall property and its surrounding outparcels (shown in green).
The United States construction industry lost 975,000 jobs in April, according to an Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) analysis of data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s the largest recorded decrease in construction jobs since 1939 — when the government first started tracking employment, according to ABC.
“The hope had been that construction activity would hold up well, given the industry’s classification as an essential industry in much of the nation and the presence of substantial backlog coming into the [COVID-19] crisis, which stood at 8.2 months in February,” ABC Chief Economist Anirban Basu said in a statement. “But alas, in large measure, those hopes were not realized.” The Construction Backlog Indicator (CBI) is a forward-looking national economic indicator that shows work construction companies are contracted to do in the future, measured in dollars.
Although construction remains an essential industry in the majority of U.S. states, there were 560,500 people who lost their nonresidential construction jobs. The greatest job losses occurred among nonresidential specialty trade contractors, nonresidential builders and heavy and civil engineers, according to ABC.
“The level of construction industry job loss in April easily surpassed that of the worst month sustained during the Great Recession, when 155,000 jobs were lost in March 2009,” Basu said. “The construction industry lost nearly a million jobs last month alone.”
This brought the construction unemployment rate to 16.6% in April, which is 11.9% higher than April 2019. But “because of technical reasons related to the BLS survey and a classification error in several responses, the unemployment rate is probably closer to 20%,” the ABC statement said.
ABC anticipates that May will present more job losses.
“Based on a combination of business confidence indicators, initial unemployment claims and other emerging data, May will represent another month of crushing construction employment loss,” Basu said. “Project postponements and cancelations are now commonplace, with construction backlog failing to be the protective shield that it normally is during the early stages of economy-wide recession.”
State employment numbers that would reflect Virginia-specific construction job losses won’t be released until May 22, an ABC spokesperson said.
A vacant plot of land in Richmond across from The Diamond baseball stadium has sold for $1.95 million, Colliers International announced Thursday.
Located at 3110 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd., the property is 1.19 acres. The property is located directly across from the planned Boulevard redevelopment project, known as The Boulevard RVA. The redevelopment project launched in 2016 and will eventually consist of more than 60 acres of mixed-use development.
NB Arlington LLC sold the property to Arthur Ashe Blvd. RE LLC, which hasn’t yet released plans for the property.
However, a master-planning initiative, the Richmond 300, is underway, which will be used by city administration, developers, architects and builders, residents, nonprofit organizations and business owners to make decisions about redevelopment, including in the area where the parcel sits on the outskirts of Richmond’s Scott’s Addition district.
Richmonders who have provided input for the Richmond 300 plan are currently being surveyed about whether the pandemic will cause changes in what they would like to see the land be used for.
“We are probably still too close to this pandemic to truly understand its effects on the built environment, but since the master plan will come out in late May, we want to have something in the plan related to any longer term effects of the pandemic on land-use planning in Richmond,” the survey says.
Colliers Senior Vice Presidents Harrison Hall and Peter Vick represented NB Arlington in the transaction and Senior Vice President Marc Allocca represented Arthur Ashe Blvd. RE. LLC.
The Falcon Point apartment complex in Virginia Beach has sold for $6.575 million, Colliers International announced Thursday.
Seminole Trail Properties purchased the property from The Runnymede Corp.
Located at 2105 Lake Smith Drive, Falcon Point includes 64 apartment units. It was constructed in 1971 and has received both exterior and interior renovations.
The apartment complex is located approximately 3 miles from the Chick’s Beach area, which is a stretch of beaches running 2 miles from Lynnhaven Inlet. Interstate 64 is less than 5 miles from the complex.
Colliers Senior Vice Presidents G.S. “Hank” Hankins and Charles Wentworth, First Vice President Victoria Pickett, Managing Director Will Mathews and associates Clay Ellis and Garrison Gore represented the seller. They all serve on Colliers mid-Atlantic team.
Facebook Inc. announced Thursday that it has awarded a total of nearly $170,000 from its COVID-19 Local News Relief Fund Grant Program to three Virginia media outlets: The Richmond Free Press, Charlottesville Tomorrow and the Henrico Citizen.
Facebook received more than 2,000 applications for the funding, dividing more than $10 million in grants among 144 local U.S. newsrooms to support publishers who have been hard-hit by plummeting advertising revenues during the pandemic. The grants stem from $25 million in local news relief funding that Facebook announced in March as part of a $100 million global investment to support the news industry.
“We’re proud to support this diverse group of publishers — many of which are family or independently owned,” Campbell Brown, vice president of global news partnerships at Facebook said in a statement. “Not only are these journalists working tirelessly to serve people right now — they’re focused on transformation, building innovative local news businesses that can continue to serve communities beyond the current pandemic.”
The Richmond Free Press received $100,000 from Facebook. Founded in 1992 by the late Raymond H. Boone, a former associate professor at Howard University, the weekly broadsheet newspaper covers the city’s African American community.
“Obviously we are very gratified and we are very pleased because it will help us to continue to cover this awful virus and to educate our readers and to encourage our readers,” said Jean Patterson Boone, publisher of the Richmond Free Press. Pointing out that her newspaper’s predominant demographic is disproportionately affected by the disease, Boone said that it’s important for the Richmond Free Press to correct misinformation about the pandemic. “I’m just delighted we have an opportunity to step up our role and … stay in business. We have never missed a payroll through this whole [pandemic] and we don’t intend to.”
Charlottesville Tomorrow received $35,000 in grant funding. The nonprofit, local journalism website is supported by reader contributions, foundation grants and philanthropists. Founded in 2005, it covers topics ranging from government and politics to public health and business.
Established by Tom Lappas in 2001, the Henrico Citizen covers local news in Henrico County. The publication, owned by T3 Media LLC in Henrico, received $34,350 in funding.
In applying for the grant, applicants were asked to submit a budget roughly outlining how the funding would be used. The Henrico Citizen plans to use the funding toward part-time, freelance and intern help, as well as multimedia and explore more in-depth virus coverage, Lappas said. He said the publication also plans to involve small businesses and nonprofits on a project that the Citizen plans to release more details on later.
“It’s going to be fantastic for us, especially at this time where we’ve lost probably half of our advertising revenue in the last couple months,” Lappas said. “Just trying to keep going has been a challenge.”
Preference was given to publications that serve immigrant, rural, underserved or economically disadvantaged communities; represent areas where COVID-19 impact is acute; are family- or community-owned or independent; have an established digital readership; and have not yet received grants from the Facebook Journalism Project in 2020, according to Facebook.
“In looking at the criteria, they described us in a lot of ways — locally-owned, serving a specific geographic area affected by the virus,” Lappas said. “I thought a lot of things lined up for us to potentially get one, but I knew that the competition was going to be pretty significant. I was really pleased to see the email come through today.”
Recipients were selected by the Local Media Association and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. The Institute for Nonprofit News, Local Independent Online News Publishers, Local Media Consortium and the National Association of Broadcasters were also a part of the selection process.
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