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Pembroke Mall to get makeover
Hanging out at the mall may soon take on new meaning in Virginia Beach. Within a few years, Pembroke Mall could be home to thousands of apartment dwellers as part of a $200 million makeover of the vintage 54-acre retail property announced in November 2021. “All we’re doing is changing with what the customer desires,” [[...]
Power plays
Virginia’s largest electric utilities are deploying an array of technologies as they decarbonize, digitalize and decentralize their power grids to meet the state’s and their own clean energy goals. Richmond-based Dominion Energy Inc. and Charleston, West Virginia-headquartered Appalachian Power are expanding their so[...]
Coalfields Expressway: Mostly unfinished and unfunded
Progress on a proposed 115-mile federal highway to improve transportation connectivity between Southwest Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky has been crawling in the commonwealth. Authorized by Congress in 1995, the Coalfields Expressway (CFX) — U.S. Route 121 — would run from U.S. Route 23 in Pound to Inter[...]
Metro delays create hassles for businesses, workers
Metrorail delays played a factor in Danielle Romanetti’s decision at the beginning of the year to close fibre space, her Old Town Alexandria yarn and knitting supplies shop, an hour earlier each day. “We now close at [7 p.m.] instead of [8 p.m.], just so staff can get home in time to eat a proper […]
Rising to the challenges
Last summer, as I was eating dinner at a Norfolk bar with a group of my Lead Virginia classmates from far Southwest Virginia, one of them asked what decision makers in Richmond thought about their region. “Most of them don’t think about it at all,” I replied bluntly and not a little sadly. During my […]
Embedded finance
Several years ago, Blue Ridge Bank President and CEO Brian Plum began to notice a movement across the broader economy. “We live in a world where data has value,” Plum says. “It only made sense that over time, [as] you would see more sellers or other service providers that have built out platforms to try […]
AeroFarms plants roots in Cane Creek Centre
AeroFarms won’t harvest the first crops at its new Cane Creek Centre facility until summer, but the company is already expanding. In December 2019, the Newark, New Jersey-based indoor agriculture company announced it would invest $42 million and create 92 jobs in the 136,000-square-foot facility building in the industrial [...]
Hitting a brick wall
Casey Renner has worked in four states over the course of her teaching career, and she’s never liked a school more than Arlington County’s Wakefield High School, where she teaches science and special education. But she has also never had as much difficulty finding housing near work as she has during her 17 years teac[...]
SW community colleges to create wind manufacturing workforce
The presidents of four community colleges in Southwest Virginia signed a memorandum of understanding Wednesday to establish a wind manufacturing workforce development partnership. “Today’s MOU signing is meaningful because it demonstrates our resident and abiding interest in collaborating. Our four community college [...]
VFCCE names Ben Davenport chairman
Davenport Energy Inc. Chairman Ben Davenport is the next chairman of The Virginia Foundation for Community College Education, the Richmond-based foundation announced Tuesday. In 2016, Davenport and his wife, Betty, invested $1 million through VFCCE to create a pilot program with four community colleges that provided early childh[...]
Bermuda insurer to establish U.S. HQ in Henrico
Bermuda-based Hamilton Insurance Group Ltd. will invest at least $415,000 to establish the U.S. headquarters of its subsidiary in Henrico County, a project estimated to create more than 70 jobs, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Friday. Hamilton’s wholly owned subsidiary, Hamilton Select Insurance Inc., is a commercial insurer[...]
Peraton receives $254M State Department award
Herndon-based Peraton Inc. has been awarded a five-year, $254 million contract to support the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service’s cybersecurity operations. The federal contractor announced the award Thursday. Under the contract, Peraton will provide cyber support, including incident management, threat analysis and penetration testing. Peraton will also help the department protect its global IT infrastructure [&h[...]
