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byline: Sydney Lake

Huntington Ingalls wins $213.9M Navy contract

The U.S. Navy awarded Newport News-based Huntington Ingalls Industries a $213.9 million follow-on contract to perform engineering services for San Antonio-class amphibious transport docks, the U.S. Department of Defense announced Friday.

Under the contract, HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding division in Pascagoula, Mississippi, will help the Navy manage engineering changes, integrate systems and provide shipboard technology training.

The San Antonio class can accommodate up to 800 personnel for amphibious assault for special operations purposes.

HII is the nation’s largest military shipbuilding company, employing more than 42,000 people worldwide. The DOD also announced last week the company landed a $2.99 billion Navy contract to refuel and overhaul USS John C. Stennis supercarrier.

 

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Altamira Technologies names new CEO

McLean-based Altamira Technologies Corp. announced Friday it has hired Jane Chappell as its new CEO. 

Chappell most recently worked for Raytheon Corp. as vice president of its global intelligence solutions mission area of its intelligence, information and services business. She succeeds retiring Altamira CEO Ted Davies.

“Jane’s executive leadership and lifelong commitment to the national security mission will strengthen Altamira’s execution of critical customer programs,” Joe Wright, Altamira’s chairman of the board, said in a statement.

Chappell worked for Raytheon for nearly 37 years after earning her bachelor’s degree in mathematics and computer science from Western Kentucky University.

Founded in 1999, Altamira focuses on defense, intelligence and homeland security and provides engineering, analytics and cyber services.

 

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Leonardo DRS files IPO registration

The Italian federal defense contractor Leonardo announced Friday it has filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an planned initial public offering (IPO) of its U.S. subsidiary, Arlington-based Leonardo DRS.

The $2.54 billion IPO could take place in March, according to reports from Reuters. Leonardo did not release the official amount of the IPO.

“By retaining our majority shareholding we intend to maintain a significant exposure in this strategically important market, whilst continuing to leverage established relationships for all of Leonardo’s businesses,” Leonardo CEO Alessandro Profumo said in a statement.

The company intends to list a minority stake of Leonardo DRS on the New York Stock Exchange using the ticker symbol DRS, Profumo added. 

After the completion of the offering, Leonardo US will remain the majority shareholder of Leonardo DRS. It’s anticipated the company will enter a proxy agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense to allow Leonardo DRS to continue to compete and perform on classified programs.

Leonardo released a Feb. 19 statement saying it was considering the IPO.

Leonardo DRS is the largest U.S. subsidiary of the Italian defense/aerospace conglomerate and is a military defense tech contractor with $2 billion in annual revenue. The company works with customers including the U.S. Army, Navy and intelligence community. In 2020, the company won a $120 million U.S. Navy contract to provide engineering design and software testing for aircraft protection systems.

Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, BofA Securities Inc. and J.P. Morgan will serve as lead book-running managers and Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley will act as book-running managers for the proposed offering. Mediobanca is serving as financial adviser to Leonardo.

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Three Va. companies land spots on $4.45B Air Force contract

The U.S. Air Force has awarded positions on a potential 10-year, $4.45 billion contract to three Virginia-based companies, the U.S. Department of Defense announced Friday.

Reston-based General Dynamics Corp., Herndon-based ManTech and Falls Church-based Northrop Grumman Corp. were awarded spots on the contract to provide security services under DOD’s Special Access Program.

Under the contract, the companies will provide Special Access Programs (SAP) security support services, which safeguard classified information. The contract includes the implementation of security protocols to protect technology programs, information security operations, counterintelligence training, analysis and investigations as well as logistics and communications security support for SAP activities and facilities.

 

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Maximus acquires Attain fed biz for $430M

Reston-based government services company Maximus announced Monday it has acquired the federal division of McLean-based Attain LLC for $430 million.

With more than 30,000 employees worldwide and $2.8 billion in 2019 revenues, Maximus promotes itself as the nation’s largest Medicaid enrollment administrator. The company was founded in 1975 and provides business process management and technology services. Attain is privately owned and serves the federal government focusing on artificial intelligence and machine learning.

“Our M&A strategy remains keenly focused on enabling us to build long-term, sustainable, organic growth by continuing to build scale, enhance our clinical and digital capabilities and extend into new areas,” Maximus President and CEO Bruce Caswell said in a statement. “We believe this is an optimal path to enhancing long-term shareholder value.”

Under the acquisition, the business will become part of Maximus’ U.S. federal services segment and is expected to generate up to $140 million in revenue this fiscal year. The acquisition will extend Maximus’ ability to design, develop and deliver mission support to federal customers.

“We aim to deliver a unique citizen experience and use digital technologies and industry leading capabilities to deliver innovation to our federal customers and the citizens they serve,” Caswell said in a statement. “Attain Federal joining Maximus helps drive this aim forward even further.”

 

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Richmond office building sells for $29.5M

An office building in downtown Richmond has sold for $29.5 million, Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer’s Capital Markets Group announced Friday.

The 140,573-square-foot Edgeworth Building is located at 2100 East Cary Street and was once a tobacco factory. It is 95% leased to Hirschler, RK&K, Ernst & Young and HKS Architects.

Originally built in 1925, it was redeveloped in 2007 into an office building and was awarded the Adaptive Reuse Project of the Year by the Greater Richmond Association of Commercial Real Estate (GRACRE). 

A family office out of New York City purchased the building. Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer did not release the name of the buyer. According to Richmond property records, FC Edgeworth Lessor was the most recent owner.

“Since the pandemic, Richmond’s office properties have performed more favorably than those in peer cities like Raleigh, Charlotte and Nashville,” Eric Robison of Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer said in a statement. “Richmond has regained nearly 60% of the initial job losses caused by COVID-19 and office space put on the market for sublease has stayed relatively steady, totaling only 1.3% of market availabilities.” Robison completed the sale.

 

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Life preservers

With small businesses struggling to tread water during the early, unpredictable days of the pandemic, the U.S. Small Business Administration in early April 2020 launched the initial $349 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) relief fund to provide forgivable loans to help businesses stay afloat.

Eligible businesses could use the funds to meet payroll costs and pay mortgage interest, rent and/or utilities payments. Banks were swamped with applications from businesses that were furloughing and laying off employees. The initial round of PPP funding, which provided 1.7 million loans, was tapped out after only 13 days.

Before it was exhausted, Virginia banks processed more than 40,000 applications totaling nearly $9 billion, according to the Virginia Bankers Association. Prior to the establishment of the PPP loans, there were only 1,700 SBA-approved lenders in the United States. That number nearly tripled in less than two weeks to 4,700. The 11 Virginia-based credit unions that offered PPP loans processed 1,112 loans, totaling $126 million in the first round of PPP funding, according to the Virginia Credit Union League.

The federal government allocated an additional $320 billion PPP funding round in late April 2020. Approximately 113,000 businesses in Virginia (including Virginia Business Media LLC) collectively received $12.5 billion funding during the first two funding rounds. Small and midsized banks wrote most of the loans, while larger banks including McLean-based Capital One Financial Corp., reported encountering difficulties in processing the high demand for the popular loans.

Sixteen Virginia companies, including Lorton-based fast food chain Five Guys Enterprises LLC, received the maximum $10 million in PPP loans.

Large corporations such as Arlington-based digital media company Axios Media Inc., Shake Shack, Ruth’s Chris Steak House and AutoNation came under fire for receiving large loans intended for the smallest businesses. In May 2020, Axios announced it was returning $4.8 million it had received in PPP funding. Although the company is under the 500-employee threshold for PPP loan eligibility, it is backed by tens of millions of dollars in venture capital.

After months of federal negotiations, the relief loan floodgates reopened this January, as the SBA opened an additional $284.5 billion round of PPP funding.

This time, borrowers who received allocations during the initial rounds of PPP funding in 2020 could reapply under Second Draw PPP Loan applications. First Draw PPP Loans are for borrowers who had not received a loan before Aug. 8, 2020, while the Second Draw PPP Loans are aimed at assisting eligible businesses with 300 or fewer employees.

As of Jan. 31, the SBA had approved 891,044 loans worth $72.7 billion for the latest PPP round. Virginia banks had processed 16,549 loans totaling more than $1.5 billion, according to SBA data released in early February. For 2021 PPP loans made as of late January, the average loan size was $82,000, with the maximum loan amounts still set at $10 million.

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Unfinished business

In March 1986, the first issue of Virginia Business magazine off the press was gently wrapped in a baby blanket, cradled in a basket and delivered to its then-owners at the Media General building in Richmond.

“We all felt like we had given birth,” recalls Lisa Antonelli Bacon, one of Virginia Business’ first staff writers. “We were very proud of ourselves and proud of Media General for being willing to take that step.”

Thirty-five years later, that then-infant magazine is now a full-fledged, grown-up publication that has matured and adapted over the years. It has expanded from a monthly magazine, adding daily online business coverage and a variety of annual special issues and events, including the Virginia 500 issue and Virginia’s Best Places to Work.

Virginia Business was established by Richmond-based Media General, which at its height was a Fortune 500 company that owned several television stations and newspapers, including the Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Tampa Tribune. Dissolved when it was acquired for $4.6 billion by Nexstar Broadcasting Group in 2017, the company traced its origins back to the late 1880s.

Jim Bacon

During the heady growth years of the 1980s, Media General took notice when a crop of regional business publications began popping up across the nation. Business magazines such as Regardie’s, a Washington, D.C.-region publication that ran from 1980 to 1992, inspired Media General to aim high when it launched Virginia Business.

“Our goal was to be the premier business publication in Virginia,” says Jim Bacon, who was hired as the monthly magazine’s founding editor in 1986 and later became its publisher. With Media General’s financial backing, Virginia Business had ample funds to pursue its mission of being the commonwealth’s primary source for statewide business news.

‘A big deal’

Virginia Business didn’t want to be mistaken for another Richmond-focused magazine, despite having its headquarters in the capital city. With plenty of regions and sectors to cover, the magazine strived to give readers an understanding of what “makes an industry tick,” Jim Bacon says.

One of Virginia Business magazine’s original staff writers, Lisa Antonelli Bacon recalls swaddling the magazine’s first issue in a baby blanket to deliver it to Media General executives in March 1986. Photo by Jay Paul

“We all had this idea that we were doing something important; we were doing something that other publications weren’t doing,” recalls Lisa Antonelli Bacon. “We really were just carving it out of stone.”

As is still customary today, Virginia Business hired freelancers across the state to cover stories for the print magazine. Although none of the magazine’s original staff writers and editors had experience with business journalism specifically, Jim Bacon recalls, the publication’s staff would spend weeks and months researching for articles.

“In the early days, we pretty much devoted our lives to the magazine,” says Lisa Antonelli Bacon. “We would spend the day together working, then go to the Marriott for drinks after work.”

At that time, Virginia Business’ present-day owner and publisher, Bernie Niemeier, worked as an executive in the circulation marketing department at Richmond Newspapers Inc., a Media General division that operated the Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Richmond News Leader.

By 1990, Media General was going through an “acquisition growth spurt” that lasted well into the early 2000s, Niemeier says. One of the properties acquired was the Tidewater Virginian — a “spunky little magazine,” says Jim Bacon, which Virginia Business bought about a year into its operations, adding experienced staff writers and salespeople with extensive knowledge of the Hampton Roads community.

“Virginia Business was a big deal,” says Susan Horton, who had been with the Tidewater Virginian for five years before its acquisition by Virginia Business. “Always was a big deal from the get-go as far as the reputation of the magazine.”

Horton, who worked as sales manager at Virginia Business until her 2017 retirement, recalls the magazine’s sales staff focusing its outreach on forging close ties with the business community at lunches, events and conferences. “That’s how the magazine grew,” she says. The magazine’s outreach efforts evolved over the decades to include tech-focused email and online marketing in addition to traditional in-person relationship-building.

Statewide focus

What helped Virginia Business survive and thrive was a willingness from both editorial and sales staff to experiment by launching special projects, events, themed issues and various targeted special publications.

Former Virginia Business Managing editor Paula Squires joined the staff in 2001 and oversaw several new projects, including the launch of a Virginia Business publication solely focused on the Roanoke region. Virginia Business published 54 editions of Roanoke Business, which ran as a standalone monthly magazine from 2012 to 2016.

Virginia Business’ 1986 staff. (Bacon is second from left.)

Working at Virginia Business is “a great way to learn a little bit about a lot of different industries,” says Jessica Sabbath, also a former managing editor. Sabbath, who left the magazine in 2019, recalls how the Port of Virginia became one of her favorite beats to cover during her 13 years with the magazine. As a special projects editor, she was tasked with putting together the magazine’s annual Maritime Guide even though she didn’t have any prior knowledge about the commonwealth’s extensive ports system. Immersing herself in reporting on the Hampton Roads economy and logistics showed her the impact that the Port of Virginia has on Virginia’s economy.

Jessica Sabbath

Robert Powell was the magazine’s longest-serving editor. A longtime associate business editor for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, he helmed Virginia Business from 2004 until his retirement in 2019, overseeing the launches of a variety of special issues and events, including the magazine’s annual Big Book and Virginia Business Person of the Year issues, as well as regional digests for Roanoke, Richmond and Hampton Roads.

“I thought that was great that we covered our tracks enough to not be considered just a Richmond magazine,” Powell says. “One of our big aims was to keep track as much as possible with things all over the state and travel the state as much as we could to make sure people knew we were interested in their part of the state.”

‘A giant role’

Robert Powell

During Squires’ and Powell’s tenures, the publication also moved toward becoming more than a monthly magazine, adding daily and weekly email newsletters covering the state’s business news. The publication’s website, which was one of Jim Bacon’s last initiatives before he left the magazine in 2002, has evolved in recent years into VirginiaBusiness.com, a daily business news site.

In 2007, just before the Great Recession hit, Media General appointed Niemeier as Virginia Business’ publisher. The recession resulted in layoffs at Media General at the same time the media conglomerate had taken on a great deal of debt to buy large-market television stations. The company wasn’t focused on funding smaller publications like Virginia Business.

Determined to keep Virginia Business operational, Niemeier partnered with Virginia Capital Partners to purchase the magazine from Media General in 2009. The investment firm then sold the publication to Niemeier in 2017, making him the sole owner of Virginia Business Publications LLC.

“I just think it’s really important for the commonwealth if we have a healthy, independent publication like Virginia Business that covers business on a statewide basis,” Niemeier says, explaining why he acquired the magazine’s parent company. “It’s not something every state has.”

Bernie Niemeier

And as local newspapers continue to decline in circulation and staff size, Virginia Business is filling a gap left by publications that no longer have as many resources left to cover the business community.

“People sometimes take business stories for granted, or they think they’re going to be really boring. But they play such a big part in our lives, whether it’s a new building being built or someone coming in and creating a lot of jobs,” says Veronica Garabelli, who joined the magazine in 2012 as a special projects editor and now teaches journalism at Virginia Commonwealth University.

“Most people spend most of their time at work,” she says, “so it plays a giant role in all of our lives. Virginia Business is the only publication that’s really dedicated to looking at business in the state at a statewide level.”

 

 

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Unbound giving

Fitting with the unprecedented year that was 2020, philanthropic donations in Virginia pivoted during the past year, with an overwhelming focus placed on COVID-19 relief and social justice support.

“Like the disease, the economic disease that has hit our Main Street knows no bounds,” Charlottesville-based venture capitalist Pete Snyder told Virginia Business in June 2020. (Snyder announced this January that he is seeking the 2021 GOP nomination for governor.) In spring 2020 he and his wife, Burson, founded the Virginia 30 Day Fund, which works to send forgivable $3,000 “lifelines” to small businesses across the state to fill the gap in cash flow that businesses were experiencing while waiting for federal Paycheck Protection Program funds. As of January, The Virginia 30 Day fund had raised more than $4 million and provided funding to about 1,000 Virginia small businesses.

Foundations and large corporations funded efforts to help essential workers and nonprofit organizations dealing with the pandemic’s economic fallout. Large corporate donations included a $20 million gift from McLean-based food manufacturing giant Mars Inc. for deploying critical supplies in developing countries and supporting food programs. Smithfield Foods Inc. donated $30 million worth of food to Feeding America. Henrico County-based Altria Group Inc. one of the world’s largest tobacco product manufacturers, donated approximately $7 million among Feeding America, the Community Foundation for a greater Richmond and the American Red Cross, while Richmond-based energy utility Dominion Energy Inc. donated $1 million to organizations including the American Red Cross.

And then, nationwide racial justice protests sparked by the May 2020 police killing of George Floyd initiated a new wave of giving to social justice initiatives. Altria and Dominion each committed $5 million in donations to funding nonprofits fighting racial injustice, as well as helping minority-owned and small businesses impacted by protests. Goochland County-based CarMax also announced plans to donate $1 million to the efforts in 2020.

Virginia HBCUs saw large donations following the racial upheaval. In December 2020, Norfolk State University received its largest-ever donation — a $40 million gift from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos. The gift will support scholarships as well as workforce and economic development activities.

Other large gifts during the past year have gone to state universities and nonprofit organizations, including a $10 million gift to Virginia Tech announced in January from Mehul Sanghani, CEO of Reston-based Octo Consulting Group, and his wife, Hema, to support the university’s Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics, as well as a food access program, Virginia Tech Athletics and the Global Business and Analytics Complex. A $10 million giving initiative from Norfolk-based Sentara Healthcare announced in January will be split among grants to local universities as well as public health and health equity improvement initiatives.

John L. Nau III, president and CEO of Silver Eagle Distributors LP, the largest Anheuser-Busch beer distributor in the country, in May 2020 made a $27.5 million donation to the University of Virginia’s new Democracy Initiative at the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. And a $24 million gift announced in December 2020 to Virginia Commonwealth University and VCU Health from the C. Kenneth and Dianne Wright Foundation will go toward clinical research and scholarships.

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‘As resilient as you get’

After sealing the deal on Amazon.com Inc.’s $2.5 billion East Coast HQ2 headquarters as Arlington’s economic development director in late 2018, Victor Hoskins took his talents to the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority (FCEDA) in August 2019. 

But instead of competing with his Northern Virginia neighbors when he took the helm in Fairfax, Hoskins has made it his goal to bring sturdy economic development projects — as well as recovery initiatives — to the entire region. 

Well before COVID-19 hit, Hoskins in 2019 started working with 10 Northern Virginia jurisdictions to forge the Northern Virginia Economic Development Alliance, aimed at promoting economic development cooperation across localities and helping the region better compete for large projects such as HQ2.

“Victor was one of the key folks who encouraged the formation of that group,” says Stephen Moret, president and CEO of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership. “Without the involvement and support of the FCEDA, it would not have been possible for the NOVA EDA to be formed.”

Since its September 2019 launch, The Alliance, as it’s now known, has not only been a beacon for future development, but has served as a job-generating machine amid the pandemic, advertising thousands of open jobs on its website and offering several job fairs highlighting top employers. 

“Especially during the pandemic, his emphasis on collaboration has been essential,” Moret says.

Armed with the experience of landing some of the state’s largest-ever economic development deals and five years focused on economic development in Arlington, Hoskins approaches his job with a sense of unity for Northern Virginia and playing on each jurisdiction’s strength — all while maintaining his focus on keeping Fairfax County a major economic engine for the commonwealth. (The 2020 Fortune 500 list included 35 Virginia companies, with 11, the lion’s share, based in Fairfax County). 

Although Hoskins says new economic development deals slowed down during fall 2020, he remains optimistic about the region’s resilience to both recover and expand following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Virginia Business: How have your economic development tactics and day-to-day operations changed during the pandemic?

Victor Hoskins: Probably the biggest change obviously is that we could not see our clients in the same way we could before. We had to do everything virtually. … It took us 48 hours to go from 10% telework to 100% telework. … It was really good in many ways. It accelerated our pace. We were going to go to the cloud, but we didn’t think we were going to go in two weeks. We thought it was going to be maybe two years. … The focus of our work really changed quite a bit. Unemployment shot up to 10.2%. It hadn’t been like that in Northern Virginia since the Great Recession. It was really tough on small businesses.

VB: How has FCEDA contributed to the economic recovery?

Hoskins: We’d already been working with small businesses, but we actually joined with the county to work with them even more. We really focused on businesses that have 50 employees or less. For the first time in history, the county board of supervisors put forth $52 million in grant money for businesses with 50 employees or less … [and that] served over 4,800 businesses directly.

We marketed that program for the county. They handled the part of the administration, and then really the full administration of the underwriting and all of that was done by the Community Business Partnership, which is located at George Mason University. … Because [the pandemic] particularly hit minority businesses, women-owned businesses and veteran-owned businesses, we actually focused on [those groups], and 72% of the funding went to either women-, minority- or veteran-owned businesses.

VB: How has the Alliance faced the crisis?

Hoskins: With the Alliance, something that was a nice-to-do [regional initiative] … became an essential to-do [because of] COVID. We really needed one another. We really needed mutual support. We did shared costs. We did a 12-part workshop series, the first time that 10 jurisdictions had ever cooperated on anything like that. … The first sessions really were focused on applying for [Paycheck Protection Program] money, applying for [Economic Injury Disaster Loan] money, working with the [Small Business Administration and] working with the [county] Department of Economic Initiatives. … I think that kind of [cooperation] that we had hoped for actually became something really essential. We have … directly given leads that have come to us that didn’t fit our environment to other jurisdictions where they fit better, and we didn’t do that before. … Not only do we virtually go to conferences together and not only do we provide technical assistance content for our businesses, we actually even share programs. 

VB: Tell me about the launch of the Alliance.

Hoskins: We started with a digital website [novaeda.org]. Our first month, we opened up in April [2020], I think we had 300 hits, and now we [are] averaging 20,000 a month. … We do digital marketing in five major markets, including New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles. Basically, we go after talent in those markets to draw them here and we also digitally market in the D.C. region. What we market are jobs. … When we first started … I think we might’ve had 2,000 jobs on there. We now have 87,000 jobs on that website.

VB: And the Alliance has also been sponsoring online career fairs too, correct? 

Hoskins: By the end of May [2020], we did our first virtual career fair. Kids were coming out of college, a lot of them in this region, [and] we wanted them to stay. The universities wanted them to stay. I’m sure their parents wanted them to stay. … We created this virtual career fair, where we had, I think a dozen companies, they had about 3,000 job openings. That was our first one. We partnered with 30 universities, and seven of them were historically Black colleges, which was really cool. … In total, we’ve worked with 100 companies and we’ve done five [virtual job fairs]. Three we presented ourselves, two we co-sponsored, about 3,100 attendees, about 1,000 companies, over 8,500 connections. … It’s been a really, really great opportunity for people who are looking for jobs and also for the companies who need to hire. We really want to be known as the place where companies can get the talent they need.

VB: What are the top current economic development deals in Northern Virginia?

Hoskins: In the first half of [2020], we closed the Microsoft deal [with] 1,500 jobs, 400,000 square feet, [a] $63 million investment. That was a really great deal. [And then] the Aerotek deal of 1,500 jobs, the ID.me [deal with] 1,000 jobs, 37,000 square feet. Volkswagen headquarters, which was a big one in the summer, [with] 798 jobs retained and 196,000 square feet.

We had a lot of really good announcements in the beginning of the year, but by September [2020] it slowed down, and I got to tell you, the fall was really, really quiet. That is not how it normally is. Now, we hit about 11,000 jobs during that time, and that’s a lot of jobs, but the office space, the amount of space they’re taking, we can see very clearly that it’s been impacted by COVID.

VB: What is the outlook for commercial real estate in Northern Virginia?

Hoskins: The interesting thing is, we see a bifurcation of the market, the bigger companies, [like Amazon and] Microsoft, they’re going ahead and they’re making their announcements; they’re doing their thing. [However], the smaller companies that you don’t hear about, a lot of them are 50,000 square feet and below, they seem to be very hesitant about [renewing] leases. Many of them may have shared some of their lease space to lease to others on a sublet. That’s been the tough part. We’re a big office market. … We’re 119 million square feet in terms of our office market. That is the second-largest county office market in the country. We’re second only to Orange County, California, in terms of the size of our office market. That’s a big deal. Our vacancy rate is about 13.8%. It’s still healthy, but we would really prefer it at 10%, but 13.8% is not bad. …We have about 2.5 million square feet under construction. … The slowdown affects us proportionately because we have a lot of [office] space. … It’s a little different for the [rest] of Virginia because they have a more diverse [job] market. …This is a tough moment for us. That’s all I can say.

VB: Do you see your FCEDA operations returning to a pre-pandemic ‘normal’ or will the pandemic experience change how you conduct business?

Hoskins: Our office and many offices … that are our size, we’re 40-plus employees, we’re probably going to have a hybrid [work] schedule for most people. … We’re at about 10% telework [and] we may go up to 20% telework, but still have 80% in the office off and on, some people a lot, like myself, and some people may be less, people that have long commutes. … I think this actually in the long run is going to be a good thing for us and I see hybrid schedules becoming a very accepted norm, but I have to say this is difficult for me to imagine me not in an office. I miss my people; I miss the contact with them.

This is difficult when you haven’t met [an employee] in person and you’re meeting them for the first time, and you have to … [develop] team spirit, [an] esprit de corps. [We] went from monthly staff meetings to staff meetings every Monday, all of us. … We all hear the same message on Monday morning, then on Fridays, all the business investment staff, national and international business investment staff, all meet together to go over deals every week.

VB: Has the pandemic affected construction and development timelines?

Hoskins: We’ve been very fortunate: 2.5 million square feet under construction and no slowdown, not on the private side. … Big projects like Capital One, they have done an incredible job keeping their employees safe, taking temperatures and making sure that people wear masks. … They’re finishing the performing arts center, right in the middle of COVID. It’s exciting to see, but I’m sure it’s not what everyone ideally would like to have going on right now. It’s complicated. We have a couple of … 175,000-, 200,000-square-feet buildings going up at Tysons. We have some buildings being finished off in Reston right now. All of these projects are underway, and they have not stopped.

I have to say that the construction companies, the construction workers, they’re on top of it. I think that’s really a good sign, which means we’ll get through this. It’s just a little rough getting through it right now.

VB: When will lodging, retail and hospitality recover in Northern Virginia?

Hoskins: We see a recovery of office [happening] in 2022. I think we’ll be more back to close to normal, making up for a lot of what we’ve lost during this year. We’ll catch up next year. [But] for hospitality, it’s probably ’22, ’23, ’24, honestly. Really, hospitality is affected by business travel and the reduction of business travel. … Part of it’s going to be permanent because it’s so much less expensive to do certain services just virtually and then go when you have to. That doesn’t mean no business travel; that means reduced business travel. I can imagine consulting services, in particular companies like Accenture and others like that, are going to be doing less travel. That means less travel to this market and less travel from this market. Less travel to this market means less hotel rooms. … It’s [also] going to be really tough on retail and we’re expecting a 20% loss in the retail, restaurant, that whole category of small business that serves local commercial. We see that. That’s what happened last time, the last recession: 20%.

VB: What does recovery look like from an economic development perspective?

Hoskins: This region is about as resilient as you get. We had a dentist in one of our Northern Virginia jurisdictions doing 3D printing of N95 masks with a group of his friends and giving them to frontline workers, right in the middle of the pandemic. Why? Because he couldn’t serve his customers. … People are really taking advantage of all the innovation that they can. I think what you’re going to see is, we’re going to be resilient because we are. … It’s never like you think it’s going to be.

… I can tell you right now, if I think [an economic development prospect] is not serious about a conversation after July 1, when we start to think [about] traveling again, I don’t think I want to fly to their market. … I just want to have a conversation with you. “You have a general interest? Great, I’m glad you have a general interest. Let’s do it [remotely].” Do a PowerPoint deck, answer any questions they might have, invite them to come to you.

… There’s a set of questions that when we get certain answers, we know where the deal is going. When you don’t hear those answers, you’re not going to pursue that business anymore. I think that’s really figuring out what are your new filters … because you’re not going to go to every appointment in another market; you’re only going to go to the ones you need to go to.

VB: You came to FCEDA not long before COVID hit. What was that like?

Hoskins: I’ve been very fortunate to have this job. …  After Amazon was over, I was looking for something interesting to do anyway. To end up in Fairfax was great. The surprise was COVID, but that would have happened anywhere. I would’ve had that challenge no matter where I went. I found it very exciting to be part of this team and that the state team that we work with is pretty amazing. [Moret] is the best in the business. I love working with him. … He came on … when we were working on Nestlé [USA]. … It was his first deal when he came to town and ever since then, I’ve just had such a great time with him. We did Amazon together. We just did the Microsoft deal … We’ve had some really good work together. I think that speaks to really what I’ve seen in all of economic development in Northern Virginia — the spirit of liking to work together. It travels throughout the state. I’m sure you feel it now.

 

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