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Counties collaborating on industrial park
In the coming months, the rubble of a demolished furniture factory on a roughly 70-acre property in Chilhowie will be hauled away to make room for an industrial park. Smyth County is teaming up with Bland and Washington counties, forming the Pathway Regional Industrial Facilities Authority to create Pathway Park, which will feat[...]
Harder, better, faster, stronger
On March 20, 1922, the U.S. Navy commissioned its first aircraft carrier: the USS Langley. A century later, the Navy is hosting centennial events around the country, including in Norfolk, where the USS Langley was converted into the Navy’s first carrier from the USS Jupiter, the Navy’s first electrically propelled ship. The [...]
Tilting toward windmills
Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy S.A.’s October 2021 announcement that it will build the nation’s first offshore-wind blade factory at Portsmouth Marine Terminal (PMT) has put Hampton Roads on a trajectory to become a supply chain hub for the country’s nascent offshore-wind energy industry. The Spanish wind turbine company [...]
Sound investments
Let’s simply call it a magazine publisher’s reality check. When news reports of supply chain disruptions and record backups at West Coast ports began to appear last year, I immediately thought, “What’s going on at the Port of Virginia?” When I leave downtown Norfolk, it is almost always via the Midtown Tunnel. Emerging[...]
For the Record May 2022
CENTRAL Henrico County-based Altria Group Inc., parent company of tobacco company Philip Morris USA, has agreed to buy power from a wind energy development in Texas. Altria says the purchase is aimed at offsetting emissions from electricity demand at all of Altria’s U.S. operations. Announced in April, the deal is Altria’s first virtual power purchase […]
Amazon be nimble, Amazon be quick
When it comes to building warehouses and distribution centers, one company has sought out Virginia over and over again: Amazon.com Inc. The e-commerce giant began opening facilities in Virginia in 2006 and since then has opened more than 30 facilities in the commonwealth, with more on the way as it seeks to shrink the time [&hel[...]
The Royals of Regent
Although Lynchburg’s Liberty University has grabbed plenty of headlines in recent years, Virginia Beach-based Regent University can more than hold its own as a politically influential private Christian institution. Founded and still run by the 92-year-old televangelist and culture warrior M.G. “Pat” Robertson, Regent now h[...]
Primed for affordable housing
Virginia Housing CEO Susan Dewey says Amazon.com Inc.’s $2.5 billion-plus HQ2 East Coast headquarters under construction in Arlington created a “launching pad” for awareness of the link between adequate, affordable workforce housing and economic development. Although Amazon expects to pay its 25,000 HQ2 employees generousl[...]
Ridge View banks on Roanoke region
Drawn by the Blue Ridge’s “blue-collar atmosphere,” a new bank has set up shop in the Roanoke region. Ridge View Bank, a division of Pennsylvania-based CNB Bank, opened for business in October 2021 and plans to be headquartered in the city of Roanoke next year. “We’re not ready to disclose the exact location yet,” sa[...]
Private accounts
One of Terrell Strayhorn’s first assignments as Virginia Union University’s provost was to win final approval for graduate programs seen as a key mechanism for enrollment growth. It was the early months of the pandemic, he recalls, and the Richmond university was also “knee deep” in the reaffirmation of its accreditation[...]
Richmond casino sites are up for grabs
With a future casino at least temporarily off the table in Richmond, two of the three land parcels that hopeful developers had been eyeing as future casino sites are back on the market, while the third will remain a movie theater. In spring 2021, city officials selected Urban One Inc.’s proposal to build a $565 […]
