April 2022 top five
The top trending major business stories on VirginiaBusiness.com from Feb. 15 to March 14 were led by news that Washington Commanders owner Dan Snyder bought Virginia’s most costly home, once part of George Washington’s Mount Vernon. 1 | Dan Snyder owns Virginia’s most expensive house The owner of the Ashburn-based Wash[...]
Compounding interest
The Roanoke Valley enjoyed a constant stream of nibbles from prospective corporations considering the area in 2021, according to John Hull, executive director of the Roanoke Regional Partnership, which promotes development in four counties and three cities. “I don’t think we’ve ever been this busy in terms of interest and [...]
Retaining walls
With COVID-19 limiting travel and site visits for companies considering coming to Hampton Roads, economic development officials focused on shoring up existing businesses in 2021. That strategy appears to have paid off, judging by the number of companies expanding throughout the region. “2021 has been a banner year for us,” s[...]
Code red
Although many business sectors focused on moving on from the COVID-19 pandemic once vaccines became broadly available in 2021, Virginia’s health care industry has remained heavily burdened by continuing caseload surges and extreme staffing shortages. In September 2021, Gov. Ralph Northam voiced frustration at a news conference[...]
The great rethink
As we enter Year 3 of the COVID-19 pandemic, the overwhelming question has become less, “When will we return to normal?” and more, “What do we want ‘normal’ to look like?” A year ago, as COVID-19 vaccines became more broadly available, many of us thought life in 2022 would be a lot more like 2019. […]
Thinking big
At Virginia’s largest publicly traded companies, the past year has been a constant exercise in challenging the status quo. Some major changes could be seen at the consumer level, as Dollar Tree Inc. raised its namesake base price point to $1.25, and Capital One Financial Corp. eliminated overdraft fees for its banking customer[...]
Chambers of commerce
STATEWIDE Asian American Chamber of Commerce Tysons (571) 633-9754 asian-americanchamber.org Virginia Asian Chamber of Commerce Ashland (804) 344-1540 aabac.org Virginia Chamber of Commerce Richmond (804) 644-1607 vachamber.com Virginia Hispanic Chamber North Chesterfield (804) 378-4099 vahcc.com CENTRAL VIRGINIA Altavista Area Chamber of Commerce Altavista (434) 369-6665 altavistachamber.com Amelia County Chamber of Commerce Amelia ([...]
Stronger together
Bank acquisitions and mergers, particularly among Virginia’s community banks, continued apace in 2021. Banks sought scale for efficiency and flexibility, as well as to acquire resources in anticipation of potential new government regulation. “The recurring theme in bank mergers is scale,” Bruce Whitehurst, president and CE[...]
A sampling of Virginia’s major road projects
HAMPTON ROADS Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel Expansion Project Construction on the $3.8 billion Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel (HRBT) expansion — the largest highway construction project in Virginia’s history — began in October 2020. The project will widen the four-lane segments of the 9.9-mile Interstate 64 corridor in Norfolk [...]
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 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 is inv[...]
Signs of promise
A second year of COVID came and went, but 2021 proved more fruitful and less uncertain for businesses in Northern Virginia, where vaccination rates were the highest in the commonwealth. Work on Amazon.com Inc.’s $2.5 billion-plus HQ2 East Coast headquarters in Arlington County is forging ahead, and economic development officia[...]
Eyes on the future
In 2021, a year marked by continuing pandemic uncertainty and overloaded health care systems, philanthropists and corporations gave generously, supporting construction and research projects at Virginia universities and hospitals. Following 2020, a year that saw record-breaking donations to Hampton, Norfolk State and Virginia Sta[...]