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Frederick solar farms move forward
Frederick County is on the verge of seeing its first solar power farms. Three facilities are in the works, with another in the pipeline. That’s not to say Virginia’s northernmost county is exactly embracing fields of solar panels. “Solar farms change the character of the land from rolling fields and animals grazing in past[...]
Setting a course
Each week, MDV SpartanNash LLC, the nation’s leading supplier for overseas U.S. military commissaries and exchanges, loads 100 to 200 containers filled with everything from peanut butter to clothing aboard steamships bound for Europe, Africa, Bahrain, Kuwait and Honduras, as well as Puerto Rico and Guantanamo Bay. “In places[...]
Turning on a dime
Though many American consumers may not think about it much, trucks move just about everything they buy, use, eat, drink and wear. The U.S. trucking industry hauled 72.5% of all freight transported nationwide in 2019, according to the Arlington-based American Trucking Associations. Why should anybody care? Because the ranks of tr[...]
Port of Virginia
In fiscal 2021, the Port of Virginia set cargo records, generating more than $100.1 billion in ancillary economic impact, according to a report from William & Mary’s Raymond A. Mason School of Business in conjunction with Glen Allen-based Mangum Economics. The six-terminal system generated 436,667 jobs, $47.4 billion in Virginia gross state product, $27.2 billion […]
Rainmaker-in-chief
On Aug. 29, 2005, Jason El Koubi’s first day as research and policy director for Louisiana’s Baton Rouge regional chamber of commerce, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the state, resetting El Koubi’s and the state’s trajectory. It was a fast lesson in crisis management, but also one in economic transformation. That job was[...]
Something phishy
About seven or eight years ago, I was sitting at my desk one morning when I received an urgent text from my then-boss. She was holding a meeting, according to the text, and needed me to purchase $1,000 in electronic gift cards as a giveaway to the attendees as soon as possible. Needless to say, […]
Next stop — civilian life
“About every 15 minutes,” Shawn Avery’s phone at the Hampton Roads Workforce Council rings with an employer calling to find skilled workers to fill vacancies, he says. Avery is president and CEO of the council, which oversees federally funded workforce development programs and links employers and workers. In the presen[...]
Forward motion
Shenandoah is known for apple blossoms, but something else is popping up this spring in Front Royal: a new 340,000-square-foot warehouse logistics center. About a half-mile from the Virginia Inland Port, the center is one of roughly a dozen projects in the region built by Equus Capital Partners Ltd., a commercial real estate age[...]
Solid prospects
Detlev Peters has walked into convenience stores in the Hampton Roads area a couple of times recently to find the candy aisle shockingly empty. “Hershey’s, Reese’s, M&M’s, everything, like they would just have a clean shelf of just nothing,” marvels Peters, who graduated with a degree in maritime and supply chain m[...]
Legal review
In law firms across Virginia, power is now definitely on the side of individual attorneys, who can command larger salaries and other perks so long as they’re willing to cope with heavier workloads. As demand for legal services has soared, the number of lawyers available to perform that work has slumped, leaving even the most [[...]
Commentary: Adjusting to a new shipping reality
Ocean shipping patterns established during the first year of the pandemic have taken root, and it’s time for shippers to adjust strategies for the long term. That was the takeaway from the first in-person Trans-Pacific Maritime (TPM) Conference in three years, presented in Long Beach, California, in March by IHS Markit Ltd. (n[...]
