For the Record – Eastern Virginia, May 2013

Armada Hoffler Properties Inc., the company behind Virginia Beach Town Center and one of Virginia’s largest real estate companies, has filed plans for a $201.3 million initial public stock offering. The Virginia Beach-based company, headed by Daniel A. Hoffler, plans to become a publicly traded real estate investment trust later this spring. (The Virginian-Pilot)

Members of the steelworkers union at the Newport News shipyard have voted in favor of a 52-month contract with Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc., the parent company of Newport News Shipbuilding. The new agreement will run through July 2017. The new contract will increase wages by an average of $16,400 over the term of the contract, cut employees’ health-care premiums by 15 percent and bolster workers’ pensions and promotional opportunities, union officials stated in an email.  (The Virginian-Pilot)

Tidewater Community College will offer a degree program this fall that won’t require students to buy textbooks. The project is aimed at reducing students’ expense from the rising cost of textbooks. The community college is working with Lumen Learning, a Portland, Ore.-based company, to offer a textbook-free associate of science degree in business administration. The program will use “open” textbooks and other open educational resources, known as OER. These are freely accessible, openly licensed materials. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Unilever announced a $96.2 million expansion to its Lipton Tea manufacturing plant in Suffolk, the largest tea processing facility in the United States. The consumer goods company will upgrade its Suffolk facility and purchase new production machinery. The Lipton plant has been in Suffolk for almost 60 years and employs almost 300 people in Hampton Roads. Unilever, which has headquarters in London and Rotterdam, the Netherlands, is a consumer goods company with sales in more than 190 countries. (News release)

The Women’s Business Center in Norfolk is the newest addition to Old Dominion University’s Business Gateway. The center offers counseling, networking events, training, technical assistance and mentoring to women interested in starting and growing their businesses. The Norfolk center is one of two women’s business centers opened by the U.S. Small Business Administration in Virginia in March. (VirginiaBusiness.com)