The big dig
With construction beginning this fall to expand the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel (HRBT), relief is on the way for travelers weary of sitting in traffic jams along one of south-eastern Virginia’s most congested corridors. The $3.8 billion expansion is the largest project in the history of the Virginia Department of Transportatio[...]
Is Trump good for business?
President Donald Trump entered the White House in 2017 with no political experience but a lifetime spent in business. Nearly four years later, with the incumbent Republican president up for reelection against Democrat Joe Biden, a former vice president who has been in politics for 50 years, Virginia voters are asking themselves:[...]
Moving the needle
A few years ago, Nadine Marsh-Carter and the staff of the small adoption agency she runs decided that to better represent the children they worked with, they needed board leadership that better reflected their clients. Founded 120 years ago, the Children’s Home Society of Virginia began with a focus on finding families to adop[...]
Virginia 500
Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Virginia 500 — The 2020 Power List. Read more about the power list and how we assembled the Virginia 500. Below you will find links to each of the 20 categories featuring the state’s top business leaders. Living Legends Agriculture Arts | Entertainment | Sports Economic Development[...]
(Re)open season
RELATED STORY: Busch Gardens set to reopen Aug. 6. Reclining against the Williamsburg greenery, the 180-foot-tall steel serpent awaits anyone brave enough to test their mettle against it. Measuring 3,300 feet in length and boasting a top speed of 73 miles per hour, it shares the name of a Roman temple dedicated to the gods: [&he[...]
The front line
Before the pandemic, disaster meant something different to most people — even hospital workers. “It’s preparing for worst-case scenarios,” says Dr. Sandy Simons, an emergency room physician at Bon Secours Richmond Community Hospital. “When you talk about disaster medicine, you train for a bomb going off.” A single [...]
Sorry, we’re CLOSED
“April is the cruelest month,” T.S. Eliot wrote, but for the hospitality and tourism industries, the cruelty began in March. With conferences and conventions canceling reservations amid the pandemic, hotels and convention centers across the commonwealth have temporarily shut down operations, furloughing and laying off wo[...]
Unconventional times
After recent visits to Savannah, Georgia, and St. Louis, Missouri, Pete Kingwill is bringing the annual Police Fleet Expo to Richmond in August. The Chicago-area-based meeting planner has been scouting locations in Virginia and North Carolina for a while now, knowing that the Southern states checked many of the boxes for what’[...]
On deck
There’s massive work underway in the Hampton Roads maritime industry, with much more on the horizon. The region is hiring, big-time. But are there enough qualified candidates to fill the jobs? Regional leaders want to get ahead of the question, they say, considering the window of opportunity and what’s at stake for the area�[...]
Working in the time of coronavirus
It was the week everything changed. On Saturday, March 7, Virginians woke up to learn that the novel coronavirus sweeping around the world had spread to the Old Dominion, with the news that a U.S. Marine at Fort Belvoir in Fairfax tested positive for COVID-19. By the following Saturday, Gov. Ralph Northam had declared a [&hellip[...]
Changing times
Town houses and apartments, storefronts and restaurants, grassy medians, pocket parks, sidewalks everywhere. Doesn’t this look a lot like a downtown? Picking up his mail in slippers and shorts on a brisk January day, Tandy Harris pauses to consider the question. “It does,” he agrees. “It’s got all the bells and whistle[...]
Planting the flag
• Amazon’s twin towers coming in 2023 • HQ2 “base camp” office opened in September • 400+ workers hired; 24,500+ to go In November 2018, Virginia won big — really big — when Seattle-based Amazon.com Inc. chose Arlington County as one of two locations where it would build operations for its planned East C[...]