byline: Virginia Business

CENTRAL 

Charlottesville-based geospatial analytics firm Astraea was acquired by Nuview, a Florida-based company developing a satellite imaging constellation, the companies announced Feb. 27. Financial terms of the deal were not available. Founded as a for-profit benefit corporation in 2016, Astraea applies data science and artificial intelligence to analyze imaging and sensor data gathered from Earth-observing satellites. Founded in 2022, Orlando, Florida-based Nuview is developing a constellation of satellites planned for launch in 2025 that will use lidar technology to scan and map large areas of Earth terrain from space, creating 3D imaging. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Petersburg-based Atlantic Strategic Minerals will invest more than $50 million to restore and reopen a mining operation in Dinwiddie County and a concentrator plant and mineral separation plant in Sussex County, producing critical minerals that are used in various supply chains, the governor’s office announced March 11. The project is expected to create 71 jobs at the Sussex County facility. Founded in 2020, ASM is majority-owned by Appian Capital Advisory, the London-based investment adviser to private capital funds investing in mining and mining-related companies. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Richmond-based Atlantic Union Bank’s parent company announced Feb. 26 that the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors has approved its acquisition of Danville-based American National Bankshares, holding company of American National Bank and Trust. The Fed’s signoff was the last regulatory approval needed for the merger — announced in July 2023 — to close on April 1, according to Atlantic Union CEO John C. Asbury. The impending merger is expected to create a bank with total assets of $24.2 billion as of Dec. 31, 2023, $18.5 billion in deposits and gross loans of $16.5 billion. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Richmond-based Fortune 500 utility Dominion Energy closed on its sale of East Ohio Gas to Canadian pipeline and energy company Enbridge in a $6.6 billion deal, the utility announced March 7. The sale was first announced in September 2023 as part of a deal for Dominion to sell its three natural gas distribution companies. The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio approved the sale to Enbridge. The Cleveland-based natural gas company, which will now be known as Enbridge Gas Ohio, has 1,500 employees and serves 1.2 million homes and businesses in the Buckeye state, according to Dominion. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Virginia Commonwealth University plans to build a new dental school on its existing health system campus, the university announced March 4, ending its pursuit of the Public Safety Building that was the site of a failed development project VCU Health paid $73 million to exit. VCU now wants to build a dental school at 900 Turpin St. VCU’s dental school — the only one in the state — has three buildings that are more than 70 years old, and maintenance on the facilities will cost $75 million, according to VCU. The new building would house classrooms, patient clinics and laboratories, but the university needs approval from lawmakers before it can move forward with planning. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

PEOPLE

Travis Hill, former CEO of the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority and a former Virginia deputy secretary of agriculture and forestry, has joined Richmond-based Hunton Andrews Kurth, Virginia’s second-largest law firm, as of Feb. 27. Hill is a counsel for the firm’s Global Economic Development, Commerce and Government Relations Group (GECON), according to a news release, and works out of the firm’s Richmond offices. Hill stepped down as Virginia ABC’s CEO in September 2023 after nearly a decade with the authority. He served as deputy secretary of agriculture under Govs. Bob McDonnell and Terry McAuliffe. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

EASTERN

Canon Virginia laid off 55 employees from its Newport News manufacturing plant in late February. The layoffs, which constituted less than 6% of the plant’s workforce, affected salaried employees across the organization, spokesperson Rhonda Bunn said. “A very difficult decision to lay employees off was primarily due to economic challenges and overall slower growth this year,” she added. Canon’s Newport News plant employs about 1,000 people and employed as many as 2,300 in the mid-1990s, according to Daily Press reporting, but that number has declined over the years. (The Virginian-Pilot)

Newport News Shipbuilding reached the catapult testing phase in construction of the John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier, the company announced Feb. 20. Carlike structures weighing up to 80,000 pounds are being launched off the front of the ship and into the James River to test the electromagnetic aircraft launch systems, one of the much-touted technologies unique to Ford-class carriers. The testing ensures the aircraft carrier is capable of launching fighter jets. (The Virginian-Pilot)

Norfolk no longer plans to build a new arena after Military Circle Mall is torn down, and instead is seriously considering renovating two city-owned venues downtown: Scope Arena and the nearby Chrysler Hall. Despite the change, Norfolk is still seeking to redevelop the property. On Feb. 20, the Norfolk Economic Development Authority issued a new request for proposals for an architectural firm to come up with multiple adaptive reuse plans to redevelop the Military Circle property “for office, retail, residential, open space and other public amenities,” with a March 4 deadline for proposals. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

The Port of Virginia’s shipping channel is now wide enough for two ultra-large container vessels to pass at the same time, concluding a significant part of the $450 million dredging project to make the port the widest and deepest harbor on the East Coast. According to the March 1 announcement, the port expects to finish the deepening segment of the project in fall 2025, a delay from its previously announced deadline of late 2024. The dredging project began in 2019. The shipping channels are up to 1,400 feet wide in some areas, and the commercial shipping channel and the Norfolk Harbor will be 55 feet deep, while the ocean approach is set to be
59 feet deep. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

PEOPLE

Charles E. “Chuck” Rigney Sr. was named Virginia Beach’s economic development director on Feb. 2, after serving as interim director since June 2023. Rigney has worked in economic development all over Hampton Roads: in Norfolk, Portsmouth and Hampton. He joined Virginia Beach’s economic development team as a business development administrator in February 2023. One of his initial focuses as the permanent director will be to build out Virginia Beach’s economic development team, filling at least three critical vacancies, he said. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Virginia Beach real estate investment trust Armada Hoffler expects to name Chief Operating Officer Shawn Tibbetts as its CEO in spring 2025, when current CEO Louis Haddad plans to retire. Tibbetts was promoted to president on Feb. 15 and will remain COO. Daniel Hoffler, the company’s founder and executive chairman, will relinquish his chairman role in June, and Haddad will become executive chairman, while remaining CEO, until his retirement. Hoffler will continue to serve as chairman emeritus. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

NORTHERN

Virginia Democratic state senators dropped all mention of the proposed Alexandria sports arena authority in their amended 2024-26 state budget in March, leaving uncertain the fate of the $2 billion plan to move Monumental Sports & Entertainment’s Washington Wizards and Capitals NBA and NHL teams to Virginia. Gov. Glenn Youngkin has been an ardent supporter of the 9 million-square-foot entertainment campus, which he says would generate 30,000 jobs and billions of dollars in economic impact. Opposition to the project was led by Sen. Louise Lucas, powerful chair of the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee. Youngkin, who said Democrats were making a “colossal mistake” by blocking the arena, still has a chance to save the project if he reaches a deal with legislative budget negotiators before the General Assembly’s April 17 reconvened session. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Falls Church-based BAE Systems Inc., the U.S. arm of British defense giant BAE Systems, completed its $5.6 billion acquisition of Colorado-based Ball Aerospace on Feb. 16. The company first announced the deal, which it’s funding through a mix of cash and debt, in August 2023. BAE Systems will form a new business division, Space and Mission Systems, and 5,200 U.S. employees from Ball Aerospace will join the company. Ball Aerospace supplies spacecraft, mission payloads, and optical and antenna systems to the intelligence community, the Department of Defense and civilian space agencies. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

The Justice Department has begun a criminal investigation into Arlington-based Boeing after a panel on a Boeing 737 Max 9 jet operated by Alaska Airlines blew out in midair on Jan. 5, exposing passengers to the outside air thousands of feet above ground. In 2021, the DOJ settled a federal criminal charge against Boeing stemming from two fatal crashes aboard its 737 Max 8 plane, but after the January incident, the department said it was reviewing the settlement terms. Under the agreement, the DOJ agreed to drop a charge accusing Boeing of defrauding the Federal Aviation Administration in return for paying $2.5 billion to its customers. (The New York Times)

In February, Microsoft purchased 124 acres in Gainesville for $465.5 million from Loudoun County data center mogul Chuck Kuhn, marking perhaps the most expensive data center deal yet in the region. The tech giant’s new acquisition includes two parcels immediately south of where Prince William County lawmakers approved the gargantuan and controversial Digital Gateway data center campus. The price tag works out to $3.75 million per acre. (Washington Business Journal)

Tysons-based tech company MicroStrategy, the world’s largest corporate holder of bitcoin, benefited at least briefly from a price surge in the cryptocurrency, which hit an all-time high of $69,324.58 on March 5. As of Feb. 25, MicroStrategy and its subsidiaries held a total of 193,000 bitcoins, worth $13.38 billion at the peak price, more than twice the approximate $6.09 billion for which they were purchased. The company’s gamble hasn’t always been so profitable. Executive Chairman Michael Saylor, then MicroStrategy’s CEO, pursued bitcoin as an investment strategy beginning in 2020, and at points in 2022, the currency’s value fell below $20,000 per bitcoin. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

PEOPLE

Mary McDuffie retired Feb. 28 as president and CEO of Vienna-based Navy Federal Credit Union, the nation’s largest credit union with $168.4 billion in assets and more than 13 million members. Dietrich Kuhlmann, Navy Federal’s chief operating officer since 2022, was promoted to succeed McDuffie, as of March 1. McDuffie became the credit union’s first woman CEO in 2018, leading more than 22,000 employees. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

ROANOKE/NEW RIVER VALLEY

A state report released at the end of February found significant deficiencies in the cleaning of surgical instruments at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital between March and September 2023. The facility was found to be in “immediate jeopardy,” a serious indicator that patient safety was at risk. Without correction, the hospital could have lost funding from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The Virginia Department of Health recently signed off on Carilion’s detailed action plan to correct the issue, and new measures are now in place. There is no fine associated with the report. (Cardinal News)

Floyd County was awarded a $2.7 million grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration in early March to develop infrastructure to support the growth of a business park. The 170-acre Floyd Regional Commerce Center has about 59 acres still available for prospective businesses, but only 6.4 acres are graded with access to roads and utilities. The grant will help extend a road and utilities into that undeveloped area, which will take about a year. Due to the commerce center’s terrain, officials expect that area to eventually yield about 27 buildable acres. The federal grant will be matched with $680,000 of local money. (Cardinal News)

The U.S. Department of Education has fined Liberty University a record penalty of $14 million for underreporting crime on campus, including sexual assaults, in a settlement announced March 5. The amount far outstrips the department’s previous highest such fine, $4.5 million, assessed in 2019 against Michigan State University for the gymnastics sexual abuse scandal involving Dr. Larry Nassar. According to the DOE, Liberty either omitted or erred in reporting 93% of all criminal incidents that took place on university-owned property from 2016 to 2023 on daily crime logs that are required to be made public under federal law. (For more, see Page 24.) (VirginiaBusiness.com)

North Carolina-based Mack Trucks, a division of Sweden-based Volvo Group, will invest $14.5 million to expand its Roanoke County manufacturing operation, a project expected to create 51 jobs, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Feb. 9. Mack Trucks, a medium- and heavy-duty trucks producer, will add 72,000 square feet to its current facility to increase capacity for its medium-duty truck line, including “an emerging medium-duty electric truck line.” The Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with Roanoke County and the Roanoke Regional Partnership to secure the project for Virginia. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

An international environmental group has been removed from a sweeping lawsuit filed by Mountain Valley Pipeline that seeks injunctions and civil penalties against foes of the hard-fought project. Mountain Valley failed to show how Rising Tide North America was involved in protests by opponents who chained themselves to construction equipment, stood in worksites and took other actions against the natural gas pipeline, a judge ruled. The company “has only provided conclusions and vague allegations regarding Rising Tide’s support of allegedly unlawful acts by other defendants,” Montgomery County Circuit Judge Robert Turk wrote in a Feb. 23 opinion that granted the organization’s motion to dismiss. (The Roanoke Times)

The U.S. Supreme Court will not wade into a conservative group’s legal battle against what it calls the “speech police” at Virginia Tech. In an opinion March 4, the high court decided not to hear the case because Tech has discontinued an anti-bias program that was challenged by Speech First, which filed a lawsuit in Roanoke’s federal court three years ago. Speech First, a national advocacy organization, has challenged a number of university policies and programs that it says trample on the First Amendment rights of conservative students, whose views conflict with the “prevailing campus orthodoxy.” (The Roanoke Times)

SHENANDOAH VALLEY

Alexandria-based Logan’s Sausage is expanding into Strasburg with a food manufacturing facility. The company agreed in October 2023 to purchase a roughly 25-acre property in the Northern Shenandoah Business Park for $500,000. The project is still in its early stages, and Cliff Logan, the company’s vice president of operations, said the facility will not be ready to start production for at least two years. Logan’s Sausage expects to hire up to 30 workers at the facility initially and may add more later. Plant operations will be similar to those of a small butcher shop and will not include slaughter, Logan said. (Daily News-Record)

Modine Manufacturing, a manufacturer of cooling equipment for data centers, will invest $18.1 million to expand its Rockbridge County operation, creating an estimated 211 jobs, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced March 5. Wisconsin-based Modine, which had $2.3 billion in net sales in fiscal year 2023, opened its manufacturing facility in Buena Vista in 1963. It has about 11,000 employees globally. Modine currently employs 75 workers at the Rockbridge County plant and more than 300 workers at the Buena Vista plant, according to a company spokesperson. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Shenandoah Telecommunications (Shentel) has entered into an agreement to sell its portfolio of cellular towers and associated operations to Vertical Bridge Holdco for $310.3 million in cash, the Edinburg-based company announced March 1. The move appears to largely transition Shentel out of the last remnants of its cellular phone business. The Shentel Tower Portfolio consists of 226 tower portfolio sites, including 218 macro cellular towers and eight small cell sites. Shentel will keep one macro cellular tower that is not included in the sale. T-Mobile USA was the primary customer for Shentel’s cell towers. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Winchester City Council’s Planning and Economic Development Committee voted unanimously on Feb. 29 to recommend that the full council approve a rezoning request for the Ward Plaza property. Winchester Acquisition Partners, an investment group headed by McLean resident John W. “Wes” Gray Jr., purchased the 22-acre property on Valley Avenue in June 2023 and plans to redevelop the site with 453 housing units, plus retail stores, offices, parking lots and a four-story parking garage with rooftop pickleball courts. One retail store would be a grocer. Gray has not named the prospective grocery tenant but said he was confident
a lease would be signed soon.(The Winchester Star)

Third-party logistics warehousing provider WCS Logistics, a Winchester Cold Storage subsidiary, will invest $27 million to expand in Frederick County and create an estimated 15 jobs, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Feb. 20. WCS Logistics will build an 83,000-square-foot cold storage facility with the capacity for more than 13,000 pallets. The facility will include 68,750 square feet of freezer space, an 8,750-square-foot cold dock, 12 dock positions, insulated metal panel construction and a carbon dioxide cascade refrigeration system, according to a news release from Arco National Construction, the project’s design-build contractor. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

PEOPLE

The Front Royal-Warren County Economic Development Authority has lost its chairman, and two more board members announced plans to resign. EDA Chairman Scott A. Jenkins said that he would not seek reappointment when his term ended Feb. 29 because his role took too much time away from work on his family business, Mountain Home B&B. On Feb. 23, board treasurer James “Jim” Wolfe and board member Marjorie “Jorie” Martin announced they planned to resign. Martin, whose term was set to expire at the end of February 2026, planned to resign March 31. Wolfe, whose term would have expired at the end of February 2025, did not commit to a resignation date. (The Northern Virginia Daily) 

SOUTHERN 

A group calling itself Citizens for the Halifax Hospital wants Sentara Health to shelve its plans to tear down the 71-year-old hospital building and instead gift the facility to the community for a yet-to-be determined use. In a roll-out meeting in late February at Edgewood Townhomes in South Boston — fronted by Edgewood developer John Cannon and retired South Boston Town Manager Ted Daniel, the group’s spokesperson — the citizens group outlined its vision for saving what it calls an iconic Halifax County landmark. Sentara has said the new hospital will be roughly one-third the size of the original and will be built on the site of the old Fuller-Roberts Clinic, next to the existing hospital. (SoVa Now)

In March, Danville City Council voted to rezone property at 1700 W. Main St. to make way for a 204-unit apartment development and 24 single-family homes. Some residents opposed the project, saying that contaminated dirt from the former Dan River Inc. site where the Caesars Virginia casino resort is being built is being moved to the West Main Street property, posing health risks to residents. (Danville Register & Bee) 

Henry County will begin a yearlong effort to bring internet access to all its residents. March kicked off a broadband expansion project in the county that could bring more than 3,000 homes online. “Our county adopted a slogan in 2022 that we would be ‘community connected,’” County Administrator Dale Wagoner said. “We see this project as an extension of that promise.” Project contractor RiverStreet Networks is currently pursuing similar broadband construction projects in other parts of the state, including Franklin and Patrick counties. Internet access is inconsistent in Henry, where 15% of residents are unconnected. (Cardinal News)

Natural gas company Williams Cos. plans to add just over 26 miles of 42-inch-diameter pipeline adjacent to its existing Transco pipeline corridor in Pittsylvania County as part of a larger upgrade to increase how much gas the multistate system can carry. The work would be part of the company’s proposed Southeast Supply Enhancement project to add nearly 1.6 million dekatherms of gas per day — enough to supply 8.6 million homes — to the southeastern portion of the nearly 10,000-mile Transco system, which runs from Texas to New York. The Southeast Supply Enhancement would begin at an existing Transco compressor station in Pittsylvania County, where it would connect with the Mountain Valley Pipeline and continue as far south as Alabama. (Cardinal News)

PEOPLE

Alex Gottschalk was sworn in Feb. 29 as Mecklenburg’s new county administrator by Clerk of the Circuit Court Michelle Gordon. Gottschalk took over from longtime County Administrator Wayne Carter as of March 1. Gottschalk had been serving as the county’s deputy administrator for the past two years. Prior to that, he was a legislative policy and budget analyst for Virginia Beach from 2017 to 2021. (SoVa Now)

Tracy Fink has been named vice president of the Institute Conference Center and operations at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research in Danville. Fink started the job March 1, succeeding Leslie Dobbins, who retired after more than 20 years with the institute. Fink brings two decades of experience in strategic event management to the role. She was previously director of events and marketing for Mayfair Hospitality, overseeing hotels and venues in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. (Danville Register & Bee)

SOUTHWEST

Appalachian Power applied to the State Corporation Commission in January for approval to build a battery energy storage system in Southwest Virginia. Battery energy storage systems collect energy from the grid to be used at later times, like during outages. The $57.3 million project would create battery energy storage sites in Smyth and Grayson counties totaling 7.5 megawatts of capacity and improving reliability for nearly 2,800 customers on the Glade-Whitetop circuit, which is difficult to reach for repairs due to mountainous terrain. Upgrading reliability in the area using traditional methods would cost around $64 million, according to Appalachian. (Cardinal News)

Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Feb. 23 that Marion had won a $500,000 state grant to rehabilitate two buildings in the city’s downtown that were damaged by a 2021 fire. The Gospel Armory and Past Time Antique buildings will be renovated into commercial storefronts with a dozen apartments upstairs, according to Ken Heath, executive director of community and economic development for the Smyth County town. Heath said that after hazard abatement is completed at the buildings, work will begin to recruit a private developer to complete the project, which is estimated to cost $6.5 million. (Cardinal News)

Officials from S & D Hotel and CN Hotels and local officials gathered to break ground on a Home2 Suites and Tru by Hilton hotel at 390 Village Circle in Bristol on Feb. 16. The dual-brand hotel will be six stories and will include 90 longer-stay rooms and 70 boutique-style rooms. The hotel is expected to open in 2025. (Bristol Herald Courier)

The United Way of Southwest Virginia announced Feb. 20 plans to launch a new nonprofit to manage its $10 million portfolio of grant-funded workforce development programs. The new organization will be called EO, which stands for Endless Opportunity. EO will focus on implementing programs like the $23 million Regional Workforce and Child Development Hub, which UWSWVA has been building in Abingdon by converting a former Kmart. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

The Virginia Department of Energy has received a seventh round of funding for the Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization (AMLER) program. The agency is accepting applications through May 23
for proposals that achieve economic development goals in Southwest Virginia’s coalfields using land that includes features associated with coal mining that occurred before 1977. Virginia Energy oversees the grant funds, which come from the Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation Enforcement. The AMLER program has supported over 400 jobs since it launched in 2017, according to Gov. Glenn Youngkin. (News release)

PEOPLE

Ballad Health announced Feb. 26 that Cindy Elkins was selected as administrator and assistant vice president for Lonesome Pine Hospital in Big Stone Gap and Lee County Community Hospital in Pennington Gap. Previously, Elkins worked as director of pharmacy for several Ballad hospitals, including Lonesome Pine and Lee County Community. In her new role, Elkins will lead administrative operations and coordinate service line functions for both hospitals while also serving as a member of Ballad Health’s market leadership team in Lee, Wise and Dickenson counties. (The Coalfield Progress)

The University of Virginia’s College at Wise named Gary C. Johnson the college’s new provost and vice chancellor
for academic affairs on March 1. Previously, Johnson served as provost at Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, North Carolina, and as provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at Hastings College in Hastings, Nebraska. Johnson, who will start work at U.Va. Wise in June, has a doctorate in comparative literature from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
(News release)