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Surf park project in Chesterfield moves forward
Phase one of what is being touted as the “world’s largest surf park” is a go in Chesterfield County, and developers and the county have emerged with environmental permits despite a gap in the state’s regulatory framework. The Lake, a 105-acre, mixed-use development between state Route 288 and Genito Road, is set to move [...]
Former Colortree factory to be taken over by new company
Tulsa, Oklahoma-based marketing conglomerate Moore DM Group will invest $31 million in reopening the Henrico County printing plant formerly operated by Colortree Group Inc., which abruptly went out of business in June, leaving 240 employees out of work. The new plant will be run as Richmond Print Group, a subsidiary of Moore DM [...]
Cyclical patterns
Last June, Volvo Group announced plans to invest nearly $400 million, add 350,000 square feet to its Dublin complex in Pulaski County — already the largest Volvo truck plant in the world — and hire 777 new workers over the next six years. Five months after that announcement, though, Volvo said it would lay off […]
Banner year
You’d be hard pressed to find an economic development official who had a better first year on the job than Jay Langston did in 2019. With Langston at the helm, the Shenandoah Valley Partnership, a regional economic development group, announced a record $1.5 billion in business investment last year, anchored by Merck &[...]
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[...]
A continuum of learning
While grocery shopping one evening in February 2019, Melissa Lubin received a phone call from Jay Langston, the new executive director of the Shenandoah Valley Partnership. A major employer in the region was looking to expand its operations, Langston told her, with more than 100 high-paying jobs and a multiyear investment that c[...]
Healthy and wealthy
Roanoke County’s main street — Electric Road (state Route 419) — is getting a big boost from the region’s largest employer. Carilion Clinic announced in September it had leased 150,000 square feet at Tanglewood Mall to accommodate Carilion’s growing children’s outpatient practices. Carilion, the Roanoke nonprofit tha[...]
Moving beyond coal
In 1923, the number of people earning a living mining coal in the United States peaked at 862,536. Now, that number is around 52,000, and many people and companies who relied on coal for income have fallen on hard times. That’s one reason the 2019 expansions of Paul’s Fan Co., which has been tied to […]
Eggs in several baskets
Southern Virginia ended 2019 with some of the largest investments the region has seen in recent years and strong economic momentum — a far cry from 15 to 20 years ago when the area experienced downfalls in employment and capital investment after the textiles industry moved operations outside the country. Last July, the positiv[...]
Followups: Amazon begins work on HQ2 site
In late January, Amazon.com Inc. began clearing the site for the first of its two, 22-story HQ2 East Coast headquarters towers in Arlington, demolishing an old warehouse at Metropolitan Park near Pentagon City. And in related news, the Crystal City Business Improvement District’s board of directors voted on Jan. 23 to change[...]
Port of call
Hampton Roads’ deep-water port continued to be a dominant factor in attracting companies to the region in 2019, especially cold storage and warehousing and logistics firms. “As we try to bring industry into this area, the port is a significant driver of our economic development,” says Doug Smith, president and CEO of the H[...]
The Hail Mary
Football isn’t the only occupation in which a wild, slim-chance pass can deliver a win. Last fall, the Virginia Economic Development Partnership and Danville and Pittsylvania County officials launched a Hail Mary economic pitch that landed a $57.89 million expansion project from Michigan-based van manufacturer Morgan Olson LLC[...]
