byline: Veronica Garabelli

Norfolk has joined the ranks of international cities such as New York, Rome and Melbourne, Australia. Like them, Norfolk has been named to The Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities Network.

Norfolk was chosen from 400 applications around the world by a group of judges that included former President Bill Clinton and Olusegun Obasanjo, the president of Nigeria from 1999 to 2007. The New York-based foundation launched the program to address the increasing shocks and stresses that cities face in the 21st century.

“Norfolk survived the American Revolution, the Civil War, and a century of flooding,” says a write-up on the Resilient Cities Centennial Challenge website. “As a major military hub, it needs to ensure it remains resilient amidst rising sea levels.”

The three-year program offers support to cities in the Resilient Cities Network and shares best practices. The initiative also is designed to help participating cities foster new connections and partnerships.

The Rockefeller Foundation will provide seed money for Norfolk to hire a chief resilience officer, who will oversee the development of the city’s resilience plan. Mayor Paul D. Fraim says Norfolk hopes to hire someone for the position by May. Norfolk will take part in a resilience agenda-setting workshop that should begin in the next couple of months. 

“We expect to take full advantage of this designation and work as closely with the other cities that have been selected and The Rockefeller Foundation as we can in order to get the ultimate benefit from this,” says Fraim.

In its application, Norfolk said its five most pressing resilience-building priorities were coastal protection, utility redundancy, economic recovery, transportation network and health care.
“We’re probably most at risk for sea level rise,” Fraim says. “We also have a unique characteristic with something called subsidence. The city is slowly sinking, which is something other communities are not facing. We’re on the crater, we’re on the crust of the Chesapeake Bay, so we are slowly sinking at the same time the water is slowly rising and then we’re also impacted by the more frequent large storms that come up the coast.”

The 100 Resilient Cities Centennial Challenge required applicants to submit their needs and plans to build resilience. Norfolk was one of the 33 inaugural cities named to the network.  The program will accept its next round of city applications in mid-2014.

Rappahannock County is getting ready to join a statewide network of artisan trails.

“It really seemed to fit what Rappahannock needed, which is a marketing program that unites the community as a whole,” says Patricia Brennan, who organized the county’s effort to become part of the Artisans Center of Virginia’s Artisan Trail Network, which included 19 trails as of December. The program aims to increase tourism for participating communities and form alliances among artists, venues, galleries, retailers and businesses in the network.
Brennan, the owner of De’Danann Glassworks, a stained glass studio in Sperryville, raised the $15,000 required to kickstart the program.

“That says they’re ready, they’re interested and have foundational funding to put it together. Once that’s pledged, we get going,” says Sherri Smith, executive director of Artisans Center of Virginia, whose purpose is to promote Virginia artisans and their communities.

Brennan raised the $15,000 from the Rappahannock Association for the Arts & the Community, Rappahannock County Board of Supervisors and the town of Washington. “They got busy raising some of the funds, and it was totally community driven. I think that is what is really important to note about Rappahannock,” Smith says.

Benefits for trail members include a profile page on the ACV/Artisan Trail Network website, networking opportunities and use of Artisan Trail Network signs. If a qualifying business meets the initial enrollment deadline, it also receives a listing in a trail brochure distributed at visitors centers throughout the state.

Along with those benefits come some requirements. For example, participating craft shops, gift shops and galleries must emphasize artisan-made items from their region. Trail sites that sell agricultural and food products have to give priority to locally produced goods. Approved trail sites are asked to update their information on the ACV site regularly and create a profile on the Virginia.org tourism website.

“This is a marketing tool,” Brennan says. “It’s not like they’re providing the whole package for you. This is an interactive program. We will get out of it as much as we, as a community, put into it.”

Rappahannock County expects to launch its trail by autumn. Other trails in the network include the Monticello Artisan Trail, which includes the Charlottesville area; Bedford County Artisan Trail; and the HeART and Soil of the Shenandoah Valley trail, which features Augusta County, Staunton and Waynesboro. Rappahannock County has not yet announced its trail name.

For Martinsville and Henry County, the development of a “mega” industrial park on the North Carolina line could bring much-needed jobs to the region.

There’s just one problem. Area officials haven’t been able to get a grading permit to develop part of the 726-acre Commonwealth Crossing Business Centre. Not having a prepared site, however, makes recruiting a business prospect more difficult, says Henry County Administrator Tim Hall.

“Everybody knows our history with manufacturing leaving us, and we’re attempting to create job opportunities for our people, who deserve them,” Hall says. “We really think, and our research shows, that a site like Commonwealth Crossing, where it’s located and the companies that we’re hoping to recruit, that that site can be a game changer for a lot of people in Henry County and Martinsville.”

According to the Virginia Economic Development Partnership’s database, Henry County has lost more than 9,000 jobs and Martinsville has lost 4,250 since the mid-90s. 

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ (USACE) Norfolk district, which is in charge of approving the permit, says having a specified end user wasn’t necessarily the problem, the reason cited by economic development officials. “It’s more about knowing enough detail about what’s driving the site design in order to look at alternatives that would accomplish the project purpose, and we have that now,” says Tom Walker, chief of USACE’s Norfolk district regulatory branch.

A company hasn’t committed to coming to Commonwealth Crossing, but two businesses interested in the park allowed their names to be released to USACE, Hall says. Walker believes USACE is close to making a decision on the matter but was hesitant to give a timeline.

“We are waiting on information from the applicant,” Walker says. “We have indication that they pretty much have that information and are ready to submit it, but until we get it and we are able to evaluate it, we really can’t give a final answer.”

Meanwhile, the Commonsense Permitting for Job Creation Act has been introduced in Congress by Reps. Robert Hurt and Morgan Griffith and Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner. The act amends the Clean Water Act to say that regulators can’t deny a permit because of the lack of an end-user, if all other permit requirements are met.

Mark Haviland, spokesman for USACE’s Norfolk district, says the organization’s purpose is not to reject permits. “We are not looking for reasons to say ‘no’;  what we’re looking at are reasons to balance necessary development with the impacts on the environment … That’s kind of our purpose and to stay absolutely within our authorities and to be consistent in how we evaluate permits.”

Hall also acknowledges that Henry County understands the importance of regulatory agencies in this process. “We’re fully cognizant of the importance of the Clean Water Act, and we have no intentions of ever wanting to hurt our natural resources. Parallel to that we want to provide job opportunities, so we’re working toward that end,” he says.

Could Virginia soon welcome another federal agency? State officials have been working to bring the FBI to the Old Dominion since the agency announced last year it was looking for a new home. The FBI says the current headquarters in the nearly 40-year-old J. Edgar Hoover building in Washington, D.C.,  no longer meets its needs. The bureau is looking to consolidate 11,000 employees at one location. 

The General Services Administration (GSA), tasked with finding the FBI its new home, outlined some minimum requirements in its Request for Expressions of Interest, which were due in December. The GSA is looking for sites in Washington, Northern Virginia, and Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland. The headquarters must be within two miles of a Metro station and 2.5 miles of the Capital Beltway. Proposed locations also must be able to accommodate up to 2.1 million square feet of space which GSA estimates would require about 50 acres.

A GSA-owned warehouse by the Franconia-Springfield Metro station has garnered big support from Virginia politicians, including Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine. But the Springfield site is rumored to be next to a CIA facility, according to an article published by The Washington Post last spring. Fairfax County Supervisor Jeff McKay (D-Lee District) who is promoting the Springfield site, sees that as a benefit, not a hindrance. 

“I think one of the other real strategic benefits that we have over the Maryland site is we not only have federally owned land, but we also have private-sector land and private-sector players around the property that afford us the opportunity to have very creative opportunities on the table. So what has been put into the package allows the federal government to ignore the CIA presence, incorporate it, relocate it — I mean it runs the entire gamut of possibility.”

Other sites mentioned in the press have been near the Greenbelt Metro station and the former Landover Mall in Maryland as well as a 40-acre site at Poplar Point in Washington, D.C. 

GSA is not releasing the list of submitted sites because it is considered sensitive information, says spokesman Dan Cruz. “However, those sites available for use as part of the Developer Solicitation are expected to be identified in spring 2014 as part of the government’s public scoping of the project pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act. The overall process to find a new home for the FBI will conclude in 2015,” he said in an email.

A Richmond lawyer has won the Triple Crown, but her accomplishments have nothing to do with horse racing.

Courtney Paulk became the 79th person in the world to earn the Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming. To reach that goal, participants must swim 20.2 miles across the Catalina Channel in Southern California, 21 miles across the English Channel and 28.5 miles around Manhattan.

Paulk, a partner at Hirschler Fleischer in Richmond, had completed the first two legs of the three-part challenge before she completed the last swim, across the Catalina Channel, in September.

Since 2010, Paulk gained 25 pounds to become more comfortable in the cold water since no wet suits were allowed. “The cold water acclimation is one of the hardest things that you go through,” Paulk says. “The training is the training — you can do that — but if you’re not comfortable in cold water … you can’t do the swims.”

Paulk trained in bodies of water ranging from a swimming pool to the Rappahannock River, the Chesapeake Bay and the coast off Virginia Beach, swimming 20,000 to 50,000 meters a week. Paulk began long-distance swimming as a child. She completed her first long-distance open water swimming event in 2003 when she swam across the Chesapeake Bay.

“The best thing about swimming to me is that it’s a place where I can go where I really don’t think about a whole lot of stuff,” Paulk says.  “I don’t think about work. I don’t think about what I have going on at home. It’s very peaceful to me.”

Besides icy waters, Paulk also faced other challenges while trying to achieve the Triple Crown. In the Catalina Channel swim, a sea lion nibbled on her foot. Paulk also has encountered fish, dolphins and jellyfish during her swims.

Paulk set a goal to raise $10,000 for the American Heart Association as part of the Triple Crown journey. “We have a colleague here at our law firm who had a stroke a number of years ago, and she really has brought to everybody’s attention the risks associated with cardiovascular disease,” Paulk says.

This year, she’s thinking about participating in the 20-mile P2P Swim, from Provincetown to Plymouth, Mass. For Paulk, however, it’s less about the accomplishment. “It is just feeling like I’ve learned a lot about myself and being so pleased to have gone through the journey,” she says.