For the Record – July 2016

EASTERN VIRGINIA
Virginia Beach is gearing up to become a major high-speed data hub. Facebook and Microsoft plan to build an underwater cable to transmit large amounts of data from Bilbao, Spain, to Virginia Beach. Construction of the cable will start in August, with completion expected in October 2017. (The Virginian-Pilot)

Newport News-based Ferguson has acquired Bruce-Rogers Co. for an undisclosed amount. Bruce-Rogers Co. is a plumbing and HVAC equipment supply house in Fort Smith, Ark., that serves contractors in western Arkansas, eastern Oklahoma and southern Missouri. (Daily Press)

Newport News Shipbuilding is calling back 210 of the workers it laid off in early February. The recall follows another in early April, when 75 employees who had been laid off were called back. The 285 recalled employees were among 738 laid off on Feb. 3. Matt Mulherin, president of Newport News Shipbuilding, said the recall was due “to updated workload manning plans and growth work on several programs.” (The Virginian-Pilot)

Virginia Beach-based SwimWays Corp. is suing Aqua Leisure Industries and Bestway Global Holding Co. on allegations they infringed on several patents. The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Norfolk, lists examples of products that Aqua Leisure and Bestways have sold and continue to sell that constitute patent infringement, according to SwimWays. (Southside Daily)

Telefónica International Wholesale Services USA Inc. plans to build a data center in Virginia Beach that will house the first transoceanic fiber cable station in the mid-Atlantic. Telefónica, based in Madrid, is one of the 10 largest telecommunications companies in the world, with more than 320 million clients. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

The Williamsburg Lodge will join Autograph Collection Hotels, Marriott International’s portfolio of nearly 100 independent hotels worldwide, in January 2017. The Colonial Williamsburg Co., the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s for-profit subsidiary, will continue to own and operate the Williamsburg Lodge after the strategic alliance with Autograph Collection. (News release)

SHENANDOAH VALLEY
Augusta County School Board will receive more than $1 million in federal grant funding for its Head Start program, which promotes school readiness of children under 5 from low-income families through education, health, social and other services. It is one of six areas in Virginia receiving more than $17 million in funding. (News release)

Cargill is investing roughly $4 million in its equipment at its poultry processing plant in Harrisonburg including adding three robots used to stack boxes of turkey products onto pallets. Randy Batson, the plant’s general manager, said the company also is automating the plant’s ice-making equipment. Work on the upgrades is expected to be completed by the end of July. (Daily News-Record)

F&M Corp. has completed the first step of its Timberville shuffle. Farmers & Merchants Bank, a subsidiary of the company, has purchased the former Carilion Family Medicine building at 165 New Market Road and plans to move its in-town retail banking operations to that location. That move will open up space at 205 S. Main St. — now doubling as the Timberville branch and F&M Corp.’s offices — to expand its headquarters. (Daily News-Record)

Edinburg-based Shenandoah Telecommunications Co. has been named on Forbes 2016 list of 100 Most Trustworthy Companies in America. The company, known as Shentel, also was named to this list in 2013 and 2014. The list recognizes companies that consistently demonstrate trustworthy accounting and governance practices over the previous year, a release said. (News Leader)

The United Way of Greater Augusta recognized local companies, organizations and individuals at its annual awards ceremony held at the Frontier Culture Museum in May. There were three individual awards given out — Volunteer of the Year (Delia Zimmerman), Company of the Year (McKee Foods) and Nonprofit of the Year (Blue Ridge Legal Services). (News Leader)

The Valley Health System board of trustees announced that the boards of its four Virginia hospitals — Page Memorial Hospital, Shenandoah Memorial Hospital, Warren Memorial Hospital and Winchester Medical Center — will be consolidated with the Valley Health Board into one governing body. The governance and management of Valley Health’s two West Virginia hospitals, Hampshire Memorial Hospital and War Memorial Hospital, were consolidated under one board in 2014 and will not be affected. (Shenandoah Valley Now)

David Downes plans to establish the Virginia Beer Museum at 16 Chester St. in Front Royal. He said the objective is to represent the heritage of Virginia beer, stretching from Jamestown to the current craft beer renaissance. Downes said the museum hopes to have a soft opening sometime in July and plans to have a grand opening on Sept. 24 to coincide with the Brew and Blues Festival. (The Warren Sentinel)

SOUTHERN VIRGINIA
 Danville Regional Medical Center  will soon add about 20 third-year medical students from Liberty University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine in Lynchburg to its roster of educational training programs. In August, Danville Regional Medical Center — in partnership with Memorial Hospital of Martinsville and Henry County and local physician practices — will begin training the Liberty University  students. They will live in Danville and do the majority of their clinical rotations locally. (Danville Register & Bee)

 Danville  and Duke Energy official s held a reopening ceremony at the three-acre Abreu-Grogan Park in May after a $500,000 renovation. Duke had made a commitment with Danville to improve Abreu-Grogan Park recreation amenities in recognition of the city allowing the company to use the park while removing coal ash from the Dan River. In February 2014, coal ash spilled into the river from Duke’s old Dan River Steam Station in Eden, N.C. (Danville Register & Bee)

Patrick Henry Community College in Martinsville has announced a $100,000 endowment established by Kim and David Darnell in honor of Kim’s parents, retired Judge Kenneth M. Covington and his wife, Norma. Covington served as Henry County commonwealth’s attorney for 12 years and retired as a Henry County Circuit Court judge. (Work It, SoVa)

Raju Kosuri, his wife and four other defendants face federal visa fraud-related charges. The charges accuses Kosuri and his co-defendants of amassing more than $20 million by falsely acquiring visas for about 800 Indian immigrants, lying about what those immigrants would be doing — often claiming they would work for EcomNets in Danville — and charging the immigrants illegal fees for the service. Kosuri was the founder and CEO of EcomNets in Danville, which is no longer in operation. (Danville Register & Bee)

The West Piedmont Workforce Board has received $150,000 for a new program for small businesses designed to increase the skills of current employees. The funds — part of a $1 million statewide investment — will immediately be available to state workforce boards for the Incumbent Workforce Training program. Danville Community College is one of nine schools that will provide training and assignments, Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s office announced. (Work It, SoVa)

SOUTHWEST VIRGINIA
Advance Auto Parts moved up one spot on this year’s Fortune 500 list to No. 293. Advance Auto is the only Fortune 500 company headquartered in Roanoke. It recorded $9.7 billion in revenue in 2015, down 1.1 percent from the previous year. The list, compiled by Fortune magazine, ranks the top publicly traded companies in the U.S. based on gross revenue. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Crews will build downtown Roanoke’s Amtrak platform starting this fall, one year before the expected start of passenger train service. Officials have said the $9.9 million platform will sit level with the train car’s floor to permit level boarding. Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation spokeswoman Bethany Wolfe said Amtrak plans to begin service in the “fall of 2017” between Roanoke and all its Northeast corridor stops. (The Roanoke Times)

State environmental regulators have cited Norfolk-based Norfolk Southern Corp. for an oil spill that happened when two trains collided last summer in Pulaski County. The railroad agreed to pay a fine of $25,000 as part of an agreement with the Department of Environmental Quality. Another $5,232  will go to reimburse the agency for its investigation of the spill. (The Roanoke Times)

Radford University was expected to lose its Small Business Development Center in June. The decision to close the center, operated by Radford’s College of Business and Economics, was to shift that college’s funds in ways that “would more substantially benefit [the college’s] 1,500 students,” Radford spokesman  Joe Carpenter said in an email. The center received half of its funding from the Virginia Small Business Development Network and federal funds and half from the university. (The Roanoke Times)

More workers are facing layoffs at the Dublin Volvo plant. Volvo’s only North American truck-making plant plans to enact layoffs at some time in August, adding  to the hundreds of regional jobs the company already cut earlier this year. Volvo spokesman John Mies confirmed the latest rounds of layoffs via email, explaining that the latest announced round of layoffs is tied to more expected drops in truck production. (The Roanoke Times)

CENTRAL VIRGINIA
Abbott, a nutritional-products manufacturing company, is planning a $34 million expansion, a move expected to create 56 new jobs in Campbell County. Paid for in part by the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission, Abbott’s expansion will take place during the next three years. The company now has 500 employees in Altavista. (The Lynchburg News & Advance)

Blue Ridge Optics has invested $1 million in real estate and equipment to expand its operations in Bedford County, a move expected to create 15 jobs during the next three years. Blue Ridge Optics produces high-tech optic lenses used in aerospace engineering, medicine, surveillance and other military uses around the world. The company now has 22 employees in Bedford. (Work It, Lynchburg)

Bon Secours Richmond Health System has launched its Bon Secours Value Network, a self-insured program for small and medium-sized businesses in Central Virginia. Self-funded plans are usually reserved for large companies with hundreds of employees. Value Network expects to make these plans available to companies with 10 to 100 employees. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

Richmond-based Dominion Virginia Power is reassessing options for its offshore research project after being dropped from a Department of Energy program, making it ineligible for $40 million in funding. Dominion said the DOE withdrew the funding because the company could not guarantee the project would be in service by 2020. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Atlanta-based consulting firm Thought Logic has opened an office in Richmond. The 2-year-old consulting firm has leased 3,600 square feet in Shockoe Slip. It plans to start hiring this summer, with a goal of having 100 Richmond-area employees in three to five years. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

Richmond-based Union Bank & Trust has completed its acquisition of Old Dominion Capital Management Inc., a Charlottesville-based registered investment advisory firm with nearly $300 million in assets under management. Old Dominion will operate as a subsidiary of the bank from its offices in Charlottesville and Alexandria. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

Richmond-based menswear brand Ledbury is relocating its downtown headquarters and store from Shockoe Bottom to 315 W. Broad St. in the city’s Arts District. Ledbury will move into the three-floor, 11,700-square-foot space in August. At street level, the first-floor storefront will open to a 2,000-square-foot retail store, slated to open in September. The second and third floors will be reserved for the Ledbury  offices. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

NORTHERN VIRGINIA
  CSC   plans to merge with Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Enterprise Services segment, creating a $26 billion IT services company. The merger is expected to be complete by the end of March 2017, subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals. The combined company will serve more than 5,000 clients in 70 countries. The company expects its headquarters to remain in Tysons, according to a CSC spokesman. It has not been determined whether the merger will affect employment levels at the two companies. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

  Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc.   named its real estate investment trust Park Hotels & Resorts as the McLean hospitality giant’s board approved spinning off its real estate and timeshare businesses. The timeshare business will be called Hilton Grand Vacations. The company now is a step closer to splitting into three publicly traded companies. The new entities expected to begin trading by the end of the year. (Washington Business Journal)

Gov. Terry McAuliffe announced in June that a site in   Fauquier County   has been selected for a planned 120-bed  veterans care center . Construction of the new facility is planned to start in late 2017 a nd be completed in late 2019. The Northern Virginia Veterans Care Center will be the commonwealth’s third veterans care center, joining ones in Richmond and Roanoke. A fourth center also is planned for Hampton Roads. (News release)

Baltimore-based  Segall Group , a retail re al estate firm, is opening a Washington, D.C., regional office in Ros slyn. Segall Group, which was established in 2008, has also promoted Joe Fleischmann to principal and lead of the  Rosslyn office. He will be responsible for the company’s growth in the region and the expansion of its brand. Fleischmann plans to recruit several retail brokers and support staff for the office. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Walmart is seeking approval for an employee training center adjacent to its store in Fredericksburg’s Central Park. The site plan, submitted to the city by architecture and engineering firm Harrison French and Associates on behalf of Walmart Stores Inc., is undergoing internal evaluation. Walmart spokesman Kory Lundberg said three centers — in Dallas, Fort Smith, Ark., and Fayetteville, Ark. — have already opened. Walmart plans 200 of the centers in or near existing stores by the end of 2017. (The Free Lance-Star)