Amazon.com Inc. has hired more than 3,300 employees in Virginia to meet the increased demand for home deliveries during the coronavirus crisis, the e-commerce giant announced Thursday. The hirings are part of Amazon’s initiative to create more than 100,000 full- and part-time jobs in the U.S. in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s also more than double the number of Virginia jobs Amazon had anticipated to fill in mid-March.
The company also announced Thursday that it plans to create an additional 75,000 jobs on top of the previously announced 100,000, and it’s expected that 2,000 of those jobs will be filled in Virginia.
“The demand we are seeing for essential products has been and remains high,” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in his letter to shareholders released Thursday. “But unlike a predictable holiday surge, this spike occurred with little warning, creating major challenges for our suppliers and delivery network.”
Amazon operates a total of 10 fulfillment and sorting facilities in Ashland, Chester, Frederick County, Dinwiddie County, Richmond, Springfield and Sterling. On March 10, Amazon announced plans to build two additional facilities in Hampton Roads, creating an anticipated 1,500 jobs. And construction began earlier this year in Arlington County on Amazon’s $2.5 billion HQ2 East Coast headquarters, which is expected to add 25,000 jobs and more than 8 million square feet of development to the Crystal City, Pentagon City and Potomac Yard areas.
The new Amazon hires in Virginia will fill a variety of positions, including picking, packing and shipping customer orders and groceries, and delivering packages, Amazon spokesperson Rachael Lighty says. The jobs in Virginia will be at Amazon’s fulfillment and sorting centers, delivery stations and Whole Foods Markets stores, she added.
“Many of these new employees were impacted by layoffs related to COVID-19 and come from a variety of fields and life situations, including restaurant cooks, bartenders and servers, flight attendants, teachers, business owners, personal trainers, valet drivers, ride-share drivers, retirees, part-time workers whose jobs are now on hold, and people who just wanted to help out,” Lighty says.
The jobs are available on a rolling basis — and they’re expected to be filled quickly, according to an Amazon spokesperson. Jobs start with a minimum pay of $17 per hour as well as health benefits, overtime and paid time off. This reflects a $2 hourly increase that will cost Amazon $500 million just through the end of April.
“While we recognize this is expensive, we believe it’s the right thing to do under the circumstances,” Bezos said.
To abide by COVID-19 restrictions, new Amazon employees can attend orientation sessions virtually. Amazon employees might be expected in the future to adhere to COVID-19 testing at their work sites, even for those who show no symptoms, Bezos said.
The Small Business Administration’s (SBA) $349 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) relief fund officially ran dry Thursday morning, as expected.
“The SBA is currently unable to accept new applications for the Paycheck Protection Program based on available appropriations funding,” according to the SBA’s PPP page. Small businesses that receive the forgivable loans are allowed to use the funds to meet payroll costs and pay mortgage interest, rent and/or utilities payments.
The SBA approved 1.7 million loans before the fund ran out, with Virginia banks making 40,371 loans totaling $8.72 billion. Congress is still negotiating to replenish the fund. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin had recommended making another $250 billion available.
“As Congress continues to work on finding bipartisan agreement for additional funding, SBA must offer — at a minimum — more information to small business owners across the country so that they have more clarity regarding this process and its timeline, and can make informed decisions about how to pay their employees and keep their doors open during this health crisis,” Sen. Mark R. Warner says. “Frankly, regardless of the issues that may be preventing this relief from coming through as fast as it could be, business owners deserve some transparency in such a chaotic and uncertain time.”
The SBA opened applications for the PPP loans opened in early April ,when there were only 1,700 SBA-approved lenders in the United States. In 12 days, that number nearly tripled to 4,700 SBA-approved lenders, Virginia Bankers Association President and CEO Bruce Whitehurst said.
With milk prices dropping to the lowest point in years during the COVID-19 pandemic, Virginia dairy industry representatives fear that as many as 30 to 40 of the commonwealth’s 450 dairy farms could be forced out of business by the end of the year.
The dairy industry in Virginia has been in decline for several years now, with more than 100 dairy farms closing in Virginia since 2018. In 2019, nearly one Virginia dairy closed per week, said Matthew Nuckols, a former Virginia dairy farmer who now works for the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation as a grassroots membership and fundraising specialist.
“This is coming at a challenging time for dairy farmers, to say the least,” Nuckols said.
Virginia dairy farmers such as Rhonda Ware of Triple R Dairy Farm in Crewe are concerned about how this will affect their businesses in the long term. About 98% of dairy farms are family-owned and -operated operations like hers.
“The futures prices, like the stock market and everything else, look absolutely horrible,” said Ware, a third-generation dairy farmer. “We’re all just holding our breath, hoping that we all come out of this.”
Due to the sudden downshift in demand from restaurants, schools and other institutions, many dairy farmers have been forced to discard huge amounts of milk before it could be delivered to processors to be pasteurized as fluid milk or be processed into cheese, yogurt, butter or other dairy products.
The time it takes for milk to be harvested from cows to getting sold at grocery stores is a quick, 48-hour turnaround, with no wiggle room to alter production cycles. Not all dairy farms have equipment to produce milk that can be used for cheese, yogurt or other dairy products, so it has been impossible for those dairy farms to pivot to produce other products. And that’s not to mention the fact that demand for those products is also down.
Meanwhile, dairy production isn’t stopping. “You can’t just turn off a cow,” said Brittany Jones, a dairy farmer at Blacksburg-based Richlands Dairy Farm. “It doesn’t work like that.”
And because the milk supply doesn’t stop, dairy farms aren’t able to furlough employees, said Eric Paulson, executive director of the Virginia State Dairymen’s Association.
Despite the declining demand, Virginia dairy farms haven’t been forced to dump their milk supplies yet, but some dairy co-ops in the commonwealth have been forced to discard milk due to over-capacity at manufacturing facilities, Paulson said.
Although grocery stores continue to purchase milk, roughly 40% of dairy products are bought by food-service establishments, Paulson said.
“At the grocery store level, they’re obviously selling a lot more product, but it’s not enough to offset the food from restaurants,” he said. And although many restaurants continue to offer takeout and some school systems are running meal pickup programs from designated sites, these sectors have reduced their dairy orders by 80% to 90%, Paulson adds.
Giant Food, which has 59 grocery stores in Virginia, has been increasing its milk orders by 30% to 60% depending on the week, Giant Food spokesperson Daniel Wolk said.
“We are ordering unprecedented amounts of [dairy] product and we are going to extraordinary means to get product to our stores,” he added. “We have daily calls with our regional milk supplier, and we have worked together to ensure we meet our customers’ needs.”
Wegmans Food Markets Inc., which operates 12 grocery stores in Virginia, hasn’t changed the way it orders dairy products, despite the pandemic.
“We continue to place [dairy] orders at the same rate as before the pandemic,” said Wegmans spokesperson Marcie Rivera. “We understand demand has decreased in other areas, like schools and food service.”
At Ellwood Thompson’s, an organic grocery store in Richmond, the story is a bit different. Grocery manager Jordan Montero said that his shop’s usual dairy source — the Wisconsin-based Organic Valley co-op — has been out of gallons of whole and 2% milk, although Ellwood Thompson’s has been able to order half-gallons in recent weeks.
Organic Valley is a cooperative of 1,800 U.S. farms that produce farm products sold in regional stores. Some of its dairy farmers are in Virginia, mainly in the Shenandoah Valley.
A spokesperson said that a “shift in eating behaviors due to social distancing” has caused a decline in restaurant demand and, at the same time, increased demand from retail groceries.
“We are doing the best to redirect the milk intended for food service to retail,” Organic Valley spokesperson Elizabeth McMullen said in a statement. “We are working closely with our processors to maintain service levels to the stores … and anyone who has an issue finding a product can contact our consumer relations department.”
Ellwood Thompson’s sells about 12 Organic Valley half-gallons of whole milk a day, along with about 20 gallons of whole milk a week and 15 gallons of 2% milk per day, products that come from Mt. Crawford Creamery in Rockingham County. The store, Montero explained, mainly sells products that are produced within 100 miles of Richmond and are either designated organic or produced without GMOs.
“Right now, we’re out of gallon milk,” Montero said Wednesday, the day before the store’s next delivery. “I don’t know exactly why. Possibly panic buying.” Many shoppers are buying baking ingredients during the quarantine, another potential source of greater milk demand, he noted.
But the changes in distribution and demand are still not enough to hold up the dairy industry.
The bottleneck in dairy product sales is not because there’s not enough milk, but because the supply chain wasn’t set up to serve all grocery sales, said Jeremy Moyer, a dairy farmer at Amelia County-based Oakmulgee Dairy Farm.
“We’re just anticipating really low prices at least for April, May and June,” Moyer said. “Until processors change their packaging or what they’ve been processing to meet the grocery demand versus the restaurants and school demand, there’s still going to be low prices.”
The United States Department of Agriculture and the National Milk Producers Federation are working to purchase these excess products to redirect them to food banks and school programs, Paulson said, so that dairy farmers are able to make up for the significant losses they’ve faced.
“Unfortunately, the prices for milk were supposed to be better this year,” he said. “Maybe they still will be. Anything that’s going to suppress milk prices is just going to make it another very tough stretch.”
The Small Business Administration’s (SBA) $349 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) relief fund is expected to be exhausted by early Thursday.
Since the application process for the fully forgivable loans opened on April 3, Virginia banks have been flooded with nearly 30,000 applications totaling $6.6 billion worth of requests from small businesses hurt by the coronavirus crisis, according to the Virginia Bankers Association. During a time when many businesses are furloughing employees and struggling to keep operating, small businesses that receive the forgivable loans are allowed to use the funds to meet payroll costs and pay mortgage interest, rent and/or utilities payments.
Before the PPP application process opened in early April, there were only 1,700 SBA-approved lenders in the United States. In 12 days, that’s nearly tripled to 4,700, VBA President and CEO Bruce Whitehurst said.
“This is the most extraordinary thing I’ve seen in my 32-year career,” said John Asbury, CEO of Richmond-based Atlantic Union Bank.
Atlantic Union Bank, an SBA-approved lender, started accepting applications on April 3 and has since accepted more than 8,889 applications for $1.8 billion in funding, said Asbury. The bank has captured guaranteed SBA funding for 6,113 businesses for $1.4 billion. More than 90% of that will go to Virginia businesses that on average requested $202,000.
There haven’t been any discrepancies in what small businesses have requested versus what they’ve been loaned from Atlantic Union Bank, Asbury said, but the banking industry has had discussions about what are eligible payroll expenses.
Small businesses can ask to borrow up to the equivalent of two-and-a-half months of payroll expenses, based on their average monthly payroll for 2019, said Whitehurst. “Given that it’s very formulaic, ” he added, “small businesses have been able to calculate exactly how much they can borrow.”
Small businesses have to prove those payroll expenses, which the banks approves, Asbury said. What small business provides and the bank approves is what the small business will receive. The money that small businesses are anticipating is what ultimately shows up in their accounts, Asbury said.
“The foot race is SBA approval,” Asbury said. “If we find out as we approach 10 p.m. tonight that there’s still any money left, we’re going to keep going.”
The SBA hasn’t told banks how they’ll be notified if and when PPP funding runs out, he added.
The only way to obtain this funding is through banks, putting bankers on the front line of economic defense because the money isn’t coming from the government — it’s coming from banks. The SBA guarantees the loans, Asbury explained, but it’s the bank’s money to loan. “It’s first-come, first-served funding across the United States, and so we mobilized,” Asbury said.
But how are banks handling the tsunami of applications flooding their systems? It depends.
“This looks different for every bank,” Whitehurst said. “It could be a challenge for a small bank, but it could also be a challenge for a large bank and everybody in between.”
But one thing is true for banks of all sizes, he added: “This is nothing short of a gargantuan task to accomplish all of this.”
However, Virginia’s largest bank, McLean-based Capital One Financial Corp., has yet to even open its PPP loan application process, a Capital One spokesperson confirmed Wednesday night. “We are currently testing the effectiveness of our submission process with a small number of existing business banking customers. We anticipate being able to accept applications online shortly,” the spokesperson said. He declined to answer how Capital One, which has reportedly lost business accounts due to its inaction, plans to offer PPP loans if the federally allocated funds run out tonight as expected.
“The biggest worry right now is how fast the SBA and banking infrastructure can process loan applications and get funds into the hands of small-to-medium-sized enterprises,” says Zach Bethune, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Virginia. “The demand on the SBA [for loans] increased exponentially [due to the coronavirus crisis] and it takes time to build up the infrastructure and employment to handle it.”
With such a large influx of applications going through, banks fear not being able to fulfill the needs of all businesses.
Despite the possibility that PPP funds could run out as soon as tonight, small businesses have other outlets for funding, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Save Small Business fund, which provides up to $5,000 in grants to small businesses in economically vulnerable communities, and the SBA’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan Emergency Advance, which provides low-interest loans of up to $2 million.
Abingdon’s Barter Theatre – the nation’s oldest Actors’ Equity Union theater – has closed the curtain on its spring season.
The theater, which opened in 1933 during the Great Depression, announced March 19 it would furlough 87 of its employees, then days later furloughed six more. This left a skeleton crew of 11 to fundraise, pay bills and perform other basic functions.
Katy Brown, producing artistic director, gave furloughed employees two weeks of work with pay to cover the time for them to apply for unemployment. But without an end date for the crisis, Brown is unsure what this will mean for the rest of the venerable theater’s 2020 season, which was set to run from the end of April through December.
“Right now, it’s not even safe enough for us to gather a group of people in a room together to rehearse, let alone perform,” Brown says.
Nick Piper, who has been with the company for more than 25 years as an actor and director, is one of the many furloughed.
“It’s a waiting game of when we’re going to be able to get back to work,” Piper says. “Even after the country starts to open up again, it’s going to be a matter of when people actually feel comfortable gathering together again.”
Although some theaters, including Staunton’s American Shakespeare Center, are streaming recorded performances, Barter Theatre has only been able to stream its Peter Pan performance due to restrictions from the Actors’ Equity Union. Theaters are only allowed to stream past performances or current performances, which Barter was unable to do.
In place of performance streaming, the theater is producing video content, including a discussion of “Macbeth” in honor of Shakespeare’s birthday in April.
But aside from that, much of the future is unknown.
Piper anticipates furloughed workers will remain loyal to the theater. Most are resident actors, he says, who live in Abingdon and work at least 40 weeks of the year there, which is atypical of an actor’s vagabond life.
“I think people just want to get through this and see what happens next,” Piper says. “Barter started during the Great Depression — a ridiculous time to start a theatre. I feel like it’s in its DNA to come back in some form, whatever it is.”
Some of the top banks in Virginia in terms of 2019 deposits reported issues with customers being unable to access their online banking accounts Wednesday — the same day that millions of Americans expected to receive federal stimulus checks of at least $1,200 deposited into their accounts.
“Downtime for banking systems is so incredibly rare,” said Virginia Bankers Association President and CEO Bruce Whitehurst. “Banks are really good about keeping their customers up to date with exactly what’s going on any time they have downtime.”
Richmond-based Atlantic Union Bank first reported the outages Wednesday morning, and the bank encouraged customers to call their local branches or care center for assistance, but the bank reported Wednesday afternoon that number is also down.
“We recognize that this is frustrating given the increased reliance on digital channels during current events,” the bank tweeted.
When asked by a Twitter user when the issue would be resolved, Atlantic Union Bank responded that there was not an “estimated time of resolution.” With customer care center phone lines down — and some local branches — customers are expected to check the banks’ social media feeds for updates.
Some users are concerned about whether the online banking outages indicate a breach of security. “I hope our accounts haven’t been compromised,” an Atlantic Union Bank customer tweeted at the bank.
“This outage is not being caused by any type of security issue or breach,” Atlantic Union Bank said. “We are experiencing extremely high volume through all of our channels.”
Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based BB&T Corp. and Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks Inc., now part of the recently merged Truist Financial Corp., also reported online banking and customer call center outages. Another big concern from bank users has been that the outages have occurred on a typical payday for people who are paid on the first and middle of the month.
Found that I couldn’t log in, checked Twitter and saw this…Thanks for keeping us informed! Paycheck day for many is a rough time for it to happen 😂
Although most banks have been reluctant to acknowledge the outages occurring on the same day as anticipated stimulus check deposits, Pittsburgh-based PNC Bank, which has also reported outages, said in a statement that the problem was the result of customers using online banking to look for their stimulus checks.
“Like other banks, PNC customers have experienced intermittent mobile and care center access today,” PNC said in a statement. “This is the result of an unprecedented volume of customers using these channels to check their accounts for Economic Impact Payments and other forms of financial hardship relief.”
The West End Flats apartments in Roanoke has sold for $2.3 million, Roanoke-based Waldvogel Commercial Properties Inc. announced Monday.
The apartment complex includes 24 one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartments and A Few Old Goats microbrewery, which is located at 515 8th St. SW. The transaction closed on April 10. The property is 92% leased.
Roanoke-based developer Ed Walker sold the property after previously purchasing it from the city of Roanoke in 2013. Walker conducted extensive renovations on the building, reopening it in 2013. A Few Old Goats leased the commercial space in 2017 and opened a tasting room and outdoor patio.
The complex was bought by Roanoke-based SKN Properties LLC. Clay Taylor, Matt Zimmerman and Jason Fountain represented Walker in the transaction.
The buyer plans to continue apartment rentals and all leases will remain in place, Taylor says.
“In the future, the flexible zoning of the property presents the buyer with multiple options, including short-term rental and hospitality use,” he added.
Due to social distancing measures, SKN Properties chose to not perform a physical inspection.
“To minimize disruptions to resident life and to exercise best social distancing practices, the buyer was willing to forego the benefit of physical inspections, and that was key to making this work,” Taylor says.
Waldvogel was founded in 2004 and provides commercial and industrial sales, leasing and property management services in Southwest Virginia.
With its regular ambulatory and inpatient care declining by 40% to 70% during the COVID-19 crisis, Roanoke-based Carilion Clinic announced Tuesday it is furloughing employees to reduce expenses.
It follows similar measures taken by other health care systems operating in Virginia including Bon Secours Mercy Health and Ballad Health.
The number of employees who will be impacted is still being determined, according to Carilion. Some workers will have their hours reduced to 32 hours per week while others will be furloughed. There’s no anticipated end date for the furloughs, and Carilion says the furloughs will be assessed on an ongoing basis.
For the next six weeks, Agee and Carilion’s executive vice presidents are taking a 20% pay cut, and all senior vice presidents and vice presidents will take a 10% pay cut.
The $300 million expansion plan for Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital that was announced last spring will also be paused until later this year. The planned expansion will build a tower to care for emergency and heart patients, a behavioral health hospital across Jefferson Street and a parking garage and pedestrian skyway to connect the buildings.
All new contracts, renewals and vendor relationships are being reviewed to see if they can be delayed until the COVID-19 crisis subsides.
“We’re making these difficult choices now so that we can come through the other side of this pandemic stronger, and ready to address the pent-up medical needs of our community,” Nancy Howell Agee, president and CEO of Carilion Clinic, said in a statement. “I’m certain that as our community rebounds from this situation, we will need all of our dedicated employees, and my goal is to welcome them back to work as soon as possible and as soon as it is safe to do so.”
Some employees who had a reduction in hours during the past six weeks had taken on new roles such as screeners, protection safety officers, referral testing staff or call center attendants. Other employees will continue to be reassigned. Those who weren’t reassigned have had the option to use their paid time off or borrow from future paid time off up to 80 hours. During that time, they were allowed to continue receiving pay and benefits.
Furloughed employees are eligible for state unemployment benefits, and Carilion will pay their premiums for medical, dental and vision insurance during the furlough.
A Dairy Queen Grill & Chill in Harrisonburg sold for $1.15 million, Denver-based Blue West Capital announced Thursday.
Dairy Queen was the only tenant leased to the property at 78 S. Carlton Street in Harrisonburg.
The property sold as a sale-leaseback. The Dairy Queen franchisee will still be able to use the building, but will lease instead of own it. The franchisee signed a new long-term lease at closing and is also developing a new location in Richmond.
Robert Edwards and Shawn Dickmann of Blue West Capital represented the seller, Chesa Holdings LLC. The buyer, Lightkeeper LLC, was represented by a local broker.
“Even with all the uncertainty in the market surrounding COVID-19, investors are still eagerly buying quality single-tenant, net=leased assets,” said Dickmann. “Quick-serve restaurants with drive-thrus are still able to serve their customers while following government distancing guidelines.”
Blue West Capital focuses on the acquisition and disposition of retail shopping centers and commercial investment properties.
A 152,379-square-foot warehouse and distribution facility formerly used by IKEA in Pittsylvania County’s Ringgold area sold for $3.85 million, Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer announced Monday.
Rick Barker Properties LLC purchased the facility located at 240 Factory Lane — approximately six miles outside of Danville. The facility sits on 23 acres of land and had been leased to IKEA as a warehouse facility for the past five years, says Norman Moon, first vice president at Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer.
The facility will now be used by Danville-based Supply Resources Inc. for distribution of packaging, corrugated and paper products. Cruciger LP previously owned the property.
IKEA closed its Pittsylvania County furniture factory, which is a little over two miles away from the warehouse, last year.
Norman Moon and George Lupton Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer handled the sale negotiations on behalf of the seller.
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