For the Record December 2021

Roanoke / New River Valley

The latest in a series of rate increases by Appalachian Power Co. will add $3 to the monthly bill of an average residential account. Beginning in November, Appalachian was allowed to raise its bills — on an interim basis — to pay for the higher cost of coal and natural gas, which generate about 80% of its electricity. The State Corporation Commission will decide next year whether to make the increase more lasting. Under Virginia’s system of regulating large electric companies that have a monopoly on the market, the SCC considers changes to base rates every three years.
(The Roanoke Times)

Constructing wireless towers on properties that would formerly have required rezoning for approval may become a less arduous process with a proposed amendment to Bedford County’s zoning ordinance.  The amendment would especially target proposed wireless communication facilities on land owned, leased or otherwise controlled by an adjoining jurisdiction within Bedford County borders, and require a special use permit instead of rezoning. A zoning ordinance would allow wireless towers to go up faster around the county and help fast-track broadband initiatives.
(The News & Advance)

Environmental groups waged another attack in November on the Mountain Valley Pipeline, asking a federal appeals court to strike down key permits issued to the embattled project. After listening to oral arguments by attorneys, a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to issue written opinions by the end of the year. At issue are two key decisions by federal agencies: one to allow the natural gas pipeline to pass through 3.5 miles of the Jefferson National Forest, and the other a finding that the massive infrastructure would not jeopardize endangered species in its path. (The Roanoke Times)

Penn Hall, one of the last major tracts of land still owned by Appaplachian Power Co. at Smith Mountain Lake, will go up for sale by the end of December. The entire 352 acres of the property, including more than 3 miles of lake frontage, will be offered in the auction organized by Woltz & Associates Inc. The sale will include 37 parcels with 29 lakefront lots in the Glade Hill community. This will be the second major piece of land sold by Appalachian Power in recent years. In 2015, the power company, which operates the Smith Mountain Project, sold 145 acres of land near Penhook. (Lee Newspapers)

Roanoke College received a $15 million donation, the single largest cash gift in the school’s 179-year history, President Michael Maxey announced in November to the college board of trustees. Alumnus Shaun McConnon, former CEO of Massachusetts-based cybersecurity company BitSight Technologies, donated the money for Roanoke College’s new science center. The center will house the college’s psychology, biology and environmental studies majors, and one-third of all courses taught on campus will be taught in the center. Most student research will be conducted in the center. McConnon challenged the college to match the donation before Maxey retires in August 2022. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

People

Roanoke-based construction firm  The Branch Group has named Wilber W. Chen as president of its G.J. Hopkins | Lacy MEP (manufacturing, electrical and plumbing) business unit, the company announced in October. Chen comes to Branch with more than three decades of experience in the MEP transportation and heavy civil markets. He will be part of the executive leadership team and report to CEO Donald Graul. He was a senior design-build manager and original equipment manufacturer manager for Kiewit’s Water group. Chen has also been a senior vice president for Parsons Corp.’s national industrial/MEP sector. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Eastern Virginia

The Hampton Roads Maritime Collaborative for Growth and Innovation and Old Dominion University announced two maritime initiatives on Nov. 4, with the goal of strengthening economic development in the region. ODU President Brian Hemphill announced the establishment of the ODU Maritime Consortium, which will grow the university’s maritime-related degree and certificate programs. The consortium will report to the provost and the vice president of ODU’s Office of Research, and will be led by an executive director, a newly created position that will be filled through a nationwide search. Also released Nov. 4 was a report detailing ways to leverage the region’s resources to expand its maritime workforce. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

On Oct. 27, Lineage Logistics held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its new 167,264-square-foot cold storage warehouse near Portsmouth Marine Terminal. The $84 million warehouse project transformed a long-vacant BASF SE chemical factory site into a fully automated logistics facility employing more than 80 workers. The facility is designed to minimize backups, a company executive said, adding that it is the company’s most technologically advanced cold storage operation on the East Coast. (The Virginian-Pilot)

Operation Next, a federally backed advanced manufacturing workforce development program for military veterans and their spouses, announced on Nov. 9 that it has expanded to Hampton Roads. The Maritime Base Industrial Ecosystem (MIBE) will recruit service members and their spouses to enroll in the workforce development program and will guide them to attain portable and nationally recognized credentials from the National Institute of Metalworking Skills, the American Welding Society or the Smart Automation Certification Alliance. Operation Next is an initiative of LIFT, a Detroit-based nonprofit public-private partnership sponsored by
the Department of Defense. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Spanish wind turbine company Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy S.A. will invest $200 million to build the first U.S. offshore wind turbine blade manufacturing facility in Portsmouth, creating 310 jobs, the company announced on Oct. 25. A partner in Dominion Energy’s 2.6-gigawatt, $9.8 billion Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, Siemens Gamesa will locate the facility at an 80-acre leased site at Portsmouth Marine Terminal. When completed, the facility will be capable of producing blades for 100 turbines per year. A timeline for construction and completion has not been released. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

On Nov. 2, 70% of Virginia Beach voters approved a $567.5 million bond referendum to protect the city against rising seas and intensifying hurricanes. The city’s real estate tax rate will increase to fund the first phase of flood protection in the city. Virginia Beach will be able to fund new pump stations, drainage improvements and tide gates. It includes speeding up six flood mitigation projects, with completion dates extending from June 2028 to June 2031. (The Virginian-Pilot; ODU Dragas Center)

Pharrell Williams hosted an Oct. 28 business forum, “Elephant in the Room,” at Norfolk State University, focusing on economic development opportunities in the music superstar’s native Hampton Roads, as well as diversity and inclusion. Bringing together business and political leaders, the forum was about putting profit over politics, Williams said. Speaking on “Good Morning America,” Williams said he put the forum together to give the 757 an economic boost. The event came on the heels of Williams saying he might pull his popular Something in the Water Festival out of Virginia Beach, citing “toxic energy” from city officials following the police shooting death of a cousin. Williams is also co-developing the Atlantic Park surf park project in Virginia Beach and is backing a proposal to redevelop Military Circle Mall in Norfolk. (WVEC 13NewsNow)

Shenandoah Valley

Dallas-based Behavioral Health Group purchased the Staunton Treatment Center for opioid addiction, which will operate under the name BHG Staunton Treatment Center as its eighth location in Virginia. The clinic employs 11 clinicians, counselors and staff who will be able to treat more than 100 patients with opioid use disorder through an outpatient program that uses three medications approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and an office-based program using other prescription-based medicines. BHG plans to build out its facilities to implement its integrated care model, which combines medication, behavior therapy and case management services in outpatient settings. (News Leader)

Former employees filed a class action lawsuit on Oct. 26 against Hazleton, Pennsylvania-based DBi Sterling Partners Equity Advisors, arguing that the company violated the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. On Oct. 22, the company’s DBi Services division laid off at least 1,500 employees across Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and DBi Services announced three days later that it would close substantially all of its business. DBi had a contract with the Virginia Department of Transportation to work on the Staunton South project and has provided routine maintenance in the Staunton District for southern Interstate 81 and Interstate 64. (Daily News-Record; WHSV 3 ABC)

Jennifer McDonald, the former Front Royal-Warren County Economic Development Authority executive director who is facing federal charges for a series of alleged financial crimes, will stand trial Oct. 11 through Nov. 18, 2022. U.S. Western District of Virginia Judge Elizabeth K. Dillon granted a request by McDonald’s court-appointed public defender to continue the case, previously scheduled for November 2021. Also, as part of refinancing the Front Royal-Warren County Economic Development Authority’s debts, the Warren County Board of Supervisors committed on Oct. 19 to make monthly loan payments of $214,000 to the First Bank and Trust through June 2022. (The Northern Virginia Daily)

The Rockingham County Board of Supervisors did not consider the proposed 155-home, 42-acre Peak Mountain development in McGaheysville during its Oct. 27 meeting because the property owner, Karin Flagle, withdrew the request to rezone the agricultural land. The county’s planning commission had recommended that the request be denied in September. Before the commission made its recommendation, a petition against the development had received more than 200 signatures. Sean Hesse with Harman Realty Inc. said that the company felt the rezoning request needed to be delayed so that it could have more time to answer the board’s questions. (Daily News-Record)

The Shenandoah Community Capital Fund (SCCF) will receive $1 million in American Rescue Plan funding as part of the Community Navigator Pilot Program, the U.S. Small Business Administration announced Oct. 28. The program is an initiative meant to reduce barriers that small businesses, especially those owned by veterans, women, people from rural communities and communities of color, face in accessing funding. The funding will help the SCCF connect entrepreneurs in the Shenandoah Valley with government resources. Formerly the Staunton Creative Community Fund, the SCCF has supported Shenandoah Valley entrepreneurs for
14 years. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

People

Paula Stephens Lambert, a 1965 alumna of Mary Baldwin University, has given her alma mater $12.5 million, which will go mainly toward unrestricted support of the private university in Staunton, MBU announced Oct. 20. Lambert, a Dallas resident who founded Mozzarella Co. in 1982 and introduced many European handmade cheeses to the U.S. market on a commercial scale, made the gift as part of the MBU Empowers campaign. A portion of the donation will endow in perpetuity a study-abroad scholarship fund that Lambert founded in 2015. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Southwest Virginia

The Appalachian Regional Commission awarded a nearly $210,000 grant for preparatory work at a planned tourism and recreation destination center in St. Paul, U.S. Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine and U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith announced Oct. 28. The funds will go to the Heart of Appalachia Tourism Authority and will help fund site preparation and architectural and engineering plans for the 2-acre site that will host the Three River Destination Center. The center will serve a seven-county, one-city coalfield region, and its construction will help fulfill St. Paul’s master plan for an “eco-campus” that will educate students and visitors about the Clinch River. (The Coalfield Progress)

Emory & Henry College announced on Oct. 29 that it will renovate a men’s dorm to be the new home for its School of Business. Carriger Hall will replace the building’s common areas and bedrooms with breakout rooms, conference and board meeting rooms, classrooms, distance learning facilities and presentation rooms. The school expects renovations to be completed in 2022 and says the design maintains the almost-120-year-old building’s historical integrity. The school built the hall’s west wing in 1904 and added the east wing as a YMCA building in 1908. (Wytheville Enterprise)

Honaker-based New Peoples Bank held an Oct. 28 ribbon-cutting for its newest branch in a 10,940-square-foot building in downtown Bristol. The bank, which bought the building in fall 2019 for $905,000, held the ceremony with the Bristol Chamber of Commerce. Formerly a Capital Bank location, the building has been upgraded with a new parking lot, elevator and a personal banking area with an interactive teller machine. New Peoples Bank serves Southwest Virginia and also has locations in southern West Virginia and western North Carolina. It is in the process of expanding into the Tri-Cities area of Northeast Tennessee. (Bristol Herald Courier)

Pure Salmon, created by Singapore-based private equity manager 8F Asset Management, is investing $300 million to build a salmon farm that will produce up to 20,000 tons of Atlantic salmon annually and create more than 200 jobs on the Russell-Tazewell county line. Hiring is expected to start in late 2023, but construction jobs will come sooner for the building, which will be the size of 13 football fields. Virginia competed with South Carolina for the farm, which will be vertically integrated and handle the process from eggs to processing. (Cardinal News)

University of Virginia’s College at Wise is part of a multi-institutional research group receiving nearly $750,000 to research solutions for rural farmers seeking to farm healthy and organic ginseng. A total of $747,500 is available through the lead institution, Middle Tennessee State University’s International Ginseng Institute.  A. Bruce Cahoon, U.Va. Wise’s Buchanan endowed chair of biology, will coordinate soil analysis. He and his students will analyze soil samples from rural Appalachian farmers with the aim of identifying microbes that could be used to organically control ginseng fungal blight. (The Coalfield Progress)

Virginia Breeze, a public-private bus service connecting Virginia and Washington, D.C., is set to launch a new route to Bristol starting Nov. 15. The bus service’s fourth route will link Bristol to Washington, D.C., and is called the Highlands Rhythm. A daily bus is scheduled to leave Bristol at 11 a.m., with seven stops before arriving in Washington, D.C., at 6:05 p.m. Virginia Breeze intercity bus service is operated by Megabus in cooperation with the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation. (Bristol Herald Courier)

Southern Virginia

Danville officials hope to attract more industry by redrawing the geographic boundaries of a city enterprise zone, which awards incentives to businesses for locating there. Danville City Council voted in November to change the geographic boundaries of the 1,900-acre enterprise zone throughout the city, including the Central Business District, Tobacco Warehouse District, Cyber Park, Goodyear Boulevard, Dan River Schoolfield Complex, Riverview Industrial Park and the former Corning Inc. Plant. Next, the city must apply with the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development for approval of the changes.
(Danville Register & Bee)

Helpware, an international outsourcing company with U.S. operations in Kentucky, California and Colorado, will open a call center in Martinsville employing between 80 and 100 people at maximum capacity. Lester Properties Commercial Leasing Manager Andrew Palmer said the company moved into the Clocktower building at 300 Franklin St., Suite 228, in early November. Helpware was founded in 2015 and has operations in Mexico, Germany, Ukraine and the Philippines. (Martinsville Bulletin)

In November, the River District Association announced it received a $240,000 grant from the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development. The money comes from about $4.4 million to invest in 33 communities across Virginia. The North Main Street Business District Revitalization project will receive $150,000. The River District Association is partnering with the Danville Regional Foundation and the city of Danville Office of Economic Development to expand the district’s footprint. The money will help businesses, providing marketing services and funding facade improvements. (Danville Register & Bee)

Denver-based apparel and footwear company VF Corp. will create 82 jobs with a $10.2 million expansion within Henry County, Gov. Ralph Northam announced in late October. The company will make upgrades within its 500,000-square-foot facility in Martinsville to increase distribution capacity and speed. VF Corp. owns a family of outdoor, active and workwear brands including Vans, The North Face, Timberland and Dickies. The company, which has operated in Henry County since 2003, reported
$9.2 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2021, sells products in more than 170 countries and produces 300 million units of apparel, footwear and accessories each year. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Virginia won a $5 million U.S. Department of Defense grant to train workers in defense manufacturing industries, particularly shipbuilding, in Danville and Hampton Roads, Gov. Ralph Northam announced in mid-October. The grant will go to the Virginia Defense Manufacturing Community, which brings together the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research in Southern Virginia and Old Dominion University’s Maritime Industrial Base Ecosystem, over federal fiscal years 2022 and 2023. The Virginia Defense Manufacturing Community will create a K12-to-university training pipeline to help students in the Danville and Norfolk areas gain skills needed for these industries. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

PEOPLE

Mecklenburg County will have a new deputy county administrator starting in early December. In early November, the Board of Supervisors approved hiring Alex Gottschalk, who has been serving as a budget analyst for the city of Virginia Beach. Supervisors created the deputy county administrator position earlier this year. County Administrator Wayne Carter said Gottschalk’s duties will include oversight of several government departments and having certain members of the staff report directly to Gottschalk. The new division of labor will allow Carter to focus more attention on critical aspects of the county government and its operations. (SoVaNow)

Central Virginia

The merger of Charlottesville-based Blue Ridge Bankshares Inc. and Fairfax-based FVC Bankcorp Inc. will be delayed, the companies announced in early November. The two regional companies had announced the merger, which would create a $5 billion combined bank, on July 14, with an expected closing in early 2022. Following the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s identification of regulatory concerns, the financial institutions now expect the merger to close in the second or third quarter of 2022, Blue Ridge President and CEO Brian K. Plum said in a statement. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

The Henrico County-based parent company of Essex Bank will lay off 51 employees as a result of its merger with Charleston, West Virginia-based United Bankshares Inc., the parent company of United Bank. The company filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) notice with the Virginia Employment Commission on Oct. 29, notifying it of the closure at Essex parent Community Bankers Trust Corp.’s offices in the Deep Run III building. The layoffs are expected to occur from Dec. 28 to Jan. 31 and will include executive team members. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

The Henrico County Board of Supervisors in mid-October unanimously approved rezoning the 204-acre former Best Products headquarters campus into the $2.3 billion GreenCity project, a major mixed-used development that will feature a 17,000-seat arena. GreenCity, which was proposed in December 2020, is also expected to include two hotels with 600 rooms, about 2.2 million square feet of office space, 280,000 square feet of retail space, 2,100 residential units and green space and plazas. Over the next four to six months, the developers will buy the property from the county and will create a community development authority with the county. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Hampden-Sydney College announced Oct. 28 it had received donations of $11 million, $1 million and $250,000 in support of its science programs and the new Pauley Science Center under construction. The estate of the late Dr. W. Glenn Hurt gifted $11 million to the college to establish a science scholarship with summer research opportunities for its recipients. Hampden-Sydney College alumnus and trustee Trevor Boyce is contributing $1 million to the construction of the science center. The Robert Leroy Atwell and Lucy Williams Atwell Foundation dedicated $250,000 to support research opportunities for science students. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

On Nov. 2, Richmond voters rejected the referendum for the proposed $565 million ONE Casino + Resort by about a 1,200-vote margin, making Richmond the only one of five eligible economically challenged Virginia cities to turn down the opportunity to build a casino. The project’s developer, Silver Spring, Maryland-based media company Urban One Inc., acknowledged the referendum’s defeat in a statement Nov. 3, as did the city’s mayor. Billed as the nation’s only Black-owned casino and resort, the project was projected to produce an anticipated 1,300 jobs, as well as a $25.5 million upfront payment to the city government. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

PEOPLE

Virginia Economic Development Partnership President and CEO Stephen Moret will leave VEDP to become president and CEO of Indianapolis-based Strada Education Network in January. The 2019 Virginia Business Person of the Year, Moret has headed up VEDP since 2017. He was key in attracting Amazon.com Inc.’s $2.5 billion-plus HQ2 headquarters to Arlington County, a project expected to create 25,000 jobs in the largest economic development deal in state history.  (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Northern Virginia

Amazon.com Inc. will establish a new cross-dock fulfillment center in Stafford County, serving as an East Coast supply chain hub and creating 500 jobs, Gov. Ralph Northam announced Nov. 9. The 630,000-square-foot facility at the Northern Virginia Gateway industrial site in Stafford will be responsible for the beginning of a supply chain where products from third-party vendors are sorted, repacked and distributed to other Amazon distribution centers. Opening in the second half of 2022, it will be the second cross-dock fulfillment center located in Virginia. The first, a 650,000-square-foot facility in Chesapeake, will open earlier in 2022. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Fluence Energy Inc., an Arlington-based energy storage and digital application company owned by Siemens and AES Corp., raised $998.2 million from its initial public offering during Oct. 28 to Nov. 1. The company sold 31 million shares to the public at $28 each, and underwriters exercised their options to purchase an additional 4.65 million shares in full. At the end of the first day of trading, shares were trading for $35. Pricing of the IPO raised the company’s valuation to about $4.7 billion. (Energy Storage News; VirginiaBusiness.com)

George Mason University launched its Race, Politics, and Policy Center on Nov. 1. GMU Schar School of Policy and Government professor Michael Fauntroy founded the center after returning to GMU from Howard University this year. Students will be able to conduct research and work on projects for the center. American philosopher, author and political activist Cornel West will be its inaugural spring lecturer on April 14, 2022. In January 2022, Howard University professor Keesha Middlemass will speak about ex-offender reentry policies, and in April 2022, Providence College professor Tony Affigne will discuss Latino politics. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

McLean-based telecommunications company GTT Communications Inc. announced in early November that the company and some subsidiaries had filed prepackaged Chapter 11 cases. The close of GTT’s estimated $2.15 billion sale of its infrastructure division to Miami-based I Squared Capital on Sept. 16 allowed GTT to move forward on its bankruptcy cases. The Chapter 11 filing, or “reorganization” bankruptcy, allows the company to continue to operate its business. GTT’s operations outside the U.S. are not included in the filing and are unaffected. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

MicroStrategy Inc. purchased nearly 9,000 additional bitcoins in the third quarter for almost $420 million, according to a quarterly report the Tysons-based business software company filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Oct. 28. As of Sept. 30, MicroStrategy held a total of 114,042 bitcoins, valued at more than $7.7 billion, based on a Nov. 9 price of $68,000 per bitcoin. MicroStrategy reported $754 million in cumulative impairment losses, about $65 million of which was seen during the third quarter, but bitcoin has seen a  recent resurgence after its price plummeted to $35,750 in April.
(CNBC; VirginiaBusiness.com)

House Committee on Oversight and Reform Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney and U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi renewed their request for documents related to the committee’s investigation of workplace misconduct in the Washington Football Team’s organization in a statement released Nov. 5. The statement called for the NFL to lift its nondisclosure agreements. On Nov. 4, the NFL submitted responses to the documents that the committee had requested on Oct. 21, NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy said in a statement. The NFL fined the team $10 million in July after an investigation determined that the team had an environment that was “highly unprofessional,” particularly for women, but the NFL did not issue a written report. (The Hill; The Wall Street Journal)