Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Richmond purchases former shopping center for $1.025M
The Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Richmond purchased the former Eastlawn Shopping Center in Richmond’s East End for $1.025 million and will convert it into a center for the clubs’ programming, the organization announced Monday. The youth nonprofit purchased the facility from the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority in 2019 using funds from the […]
Newport News Redevelopment and Housing Authority names vice chairman
Kenneth D. Penrose Jr. has been elected as vice chairman for the Newport News Redevelopment and Housing Authority for the 2020-year term, commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer announced Jan. 28. Penrose has been with Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer since 2000. He currently serves as vice president of commercial sales and […]
Recruitment pitch
The lowest U.S. unemployment rate in 50 years isn’t slowing down the companies honored as this year’s Best Places to Work in Virginia. The winners find plenty of applicants are attracted to their good pay and supportive cultures. For example, Burns & McDonnell, a global architecture, engineering and construction company [...]
Colonial Williamsburg hires Fleet
Former Philip Morris USA President and CEO Cliff Fleet took over as the ninth president and CEO of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation on Jan. 1. Virginia Business reported in September 2019 that Fleet’s predecessor, Mitchell Reiss, was stepping down after five years at the helm of the historic tourism foundation. Colonial Wi[...]
The Land of OZ
Anybody up for pickleball? Barrett Worthington and Megan Charity hope so. Business partners based in Charlottesville, Worthington and Charity are among Virginia’s opportunity zone pioneers. They hope to build an $8 million entertainment complex called Rally, containing a restaurant, beer garden and courts for pickleball — a [...]
A larger rotunda
Alita Robinson, a second-year University of Virginia student from Delaware, delivers a personal message when she calls potential donors seeking support for financial aid programs. “I always tell people the only reason I’m at U.Va. and have these opportunities … is because I got a scholarship,” says Robinson, who plans to[...]
Tax revenues trending up
Charlottesville’s consumer tax revenues continue to grow. The city’s meals tax alone brought in more than $12.2 million last year — up 3.66% from the year before. Sales tax dollars have also increased by 2.21%, approaching $11.9 million. Lodging tax revenue, at $5.7 million, shot up by almost 10% in a year in which the [&h[...]
Financial losses
When one of Caroline County’s two banks, Virginia National Bank, shut its doors six years ago, Gary Wilson, the county’s director of economic development, wanted to do something about it. He launched a widespread effort to find a second banking institution to open a branch in Caroline, which is sandwiched between Fredericksb[...]
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[...]
Walking out the door
During her 13 years of practicing law, Christy L. Murphy has been called “honey” and “sweetie” by older men when they were adversaries in legal cases. “This is an old boys’ network,” says Murphy, 40, a partner at Bischoff Martingayle in Norfolk. “It’s hard to get people out of the mindset.” Law firms are mode[...]
The recession that wasn’t
What if they held a recession and no one showed up? Last summer, economic experts began ringing warning bells of an impending downturn, as evidenced by an inverted yield curve of short-term Treasury bills vs. long-term Treasury notes. And when one combined the inverted yield rate, said to be perhaps the most accurate predictor o[...]
Space race
Charlottesville is experiencing a building boom that will expand its premium commercial office space by 500,000 square feet in the next two years. “That’s a ‘wow,’” says Chris Engel, Charlottesville’s economic development director. “That’s a big number. We’ve never experienced that before.” It also gives Char[...]