For the Record – September 2019

EASTERN VIRGINIA
Newport News-based Huntington Ingalls Industries has agreed to pay $159,050 in back wages and interest to settle allegations of hiring discrimination at its Gulf Coast shipyard. The allegations that Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi, discriminated against 80 black applicants for helper/laborer positions date from November 2011 through October 2012. In the settlement agreement, the company did not admit wrongdoing, nor has it been found in violation of federal law. (The Virginian-Pilot)

Norfolk-based Meredith Construction is leading a proposal for a large development in the Lamberts Point area of Norfolk featuring a bowling alley, brewery, restaurants, and retail and office space. Five buildings on the western side of Hampton Boulevard between West 24th and West 26th streets would be renovated, and five more would be built for the project. Meredith has owned the property for almost 40 years, CEO Peter Meredith says, and negotiations with tenants are underway. The project is expected to be completed and open in the fourth quarter of 2020 at the earliest. (The Virginian-Pilot)

What might be the last video rental store of its size on the East Coast is set to close. The Naro Expanded Video Archival Library, an institution in Norfolk’s Ghent neighborhood, announced it was closing in August. The store converted from a business to a nonprofit in 2016, relying on fundraisers like one on Kickstarter in 2017 that raised $45,288, which kept its doors open another two years. Other efforts didn’t raise enough money, the board of directors said. So far, the plans are to keep the video collection intact and available to the public, ideally at an academic or cultural organization. (The Virginian-Pilot)

Describing the upgraded Port of Virginia as the “most modern, efficient and most productive in the Western Hemisphere,” state officials, port executives and Gov. Ralph Northam announced the completed $320 million expansion of the port’s Virginia International Gateway (VIG) facility in Portsmouth. It now has the largest cranes on the East Coast, plus an 800-foot expansion of the berth to accommodate as many as three ultra-large vessels at once. The port system’s overall goal is to expand capacity at VIG and the Norfolk International Terminals by more than 40% in the next year. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Three Hampton Roads defense contractors — Chesapeake-based Prism Maritime LLC, Virginia Beach’s VT Milcom and Fleet Support Group LLC, a unit of Hun­­­­­tington Ingalls Industries in Virginia Beach — are among six companies that will share in a  $2.45 billion contract for high-tech Navy systems that could provide work for the next 10 years. The other three firms are in Fairfax County, and work is expected to be finished by 2024, although it could be extended to 2029. (Daily Press)

SHENANDOAH VALLEY
Amid a vast embezzlement scandal, the Front Royal-Warren County Economic Development Authority is running more than eight months late with its fiscal year 2018 audit. The EDA’s executive director, Douglas Parson, said that a study by Cherry Bekaert, the firm investigating the authority’s finances, didn’t provide everything they need to complete the audit, which is usually presented in January. In the meantime, the EDA’s accountant and bookkeeper are working with an auditing firm, but results may not be in until October or November, Parson said. (Northern Virginia Daily)

The Graham Packaging Co. facility in Harrisonburg is closing its doors Sept. 4, according to the Virginia Employment Commission. The plastics production business plans to lay off 115 employees. In 2004, when Owens Brockway Plastics in Harrisonburg was sold to Graham Packaging with 30 other manufacturing facilities, the plant employed 419 people. (Daily News-Record)

Members of the Harrisonburg Electric Commission say they’re going to continue discussing solar power, which has seen rapid expansion locally. Customers who install solar panels receive credits on their energy bills, despite recent concerns that future solar users wouldn’t reap the same benefits beginning in 2020. But commissioners say they plan to discuss more ways for the utility’s customers to use renewable energy at their Sept. 24 meeting. (The Citizen)

The Supreme Court of Virginia overruled the Circuit Court of Augusta County’s decision to uphold the county’s property-tax assessments against the McKee Foods Corp. location in Stuarts Draft. The state’s high court said the county’s assessor failed to adjust the property’s value for depreciation when it assessed the plant at $28.5 million for the 2011, 2012 and 2013 tax years and at $31.7 million for the 2014 tax year. McKee argued the assessment should have been closer to $15.1 million. The county will seek a new trial. (The News Leader)

A new store in downtown Staunton, Nature’s Bliss, sells hemp-derived CBD oil, made legal under the 2018 Farm Bill. Previously, hemp was considered a Schedule 1 drug because it was in the same family as marijuana, despite the fact that hemp isn’t intoxicating. As of July 1 in Virginia, anyone selling CBD products must register with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. (The News Leader)

Money constraints have delayed the opening of the Staunton Innovation Hub from this summer to 2020. The co-working project received a $25,000 Virginia Main Street grant, shared with the Staunton Downtown Development Association, for an Innovation Hub square. Peter and Alison Denbigh, local entrepreneurs, purchased two buildings in December 2017 for $840,000 for the project, which will offer classes, seminars and office space, as well as co-working areas. (The News Leader) 

CENTRAL VIRGINIA
In July, the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority finalized buying approximately 40 acres in Hanover County for a new headquarters and distribution center. ABC purchased the property from Riverstone Properties, the real estate arm of Richmond businessman William H. Goodwin Jr.’s Riverstone Group. The state liquor monopoly plans to leave its current nerve center in 2021, a move that will make room for Virginia Commonwealth University to acquire the state property off Arthur Ashe Boulevard and potentially partner with the Richmond Flying Squirrels to build a new baseball stadium. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

Atlanta’s loss is Richmond’s gain, as real estate research firm CoStar Group is shifting dozens of jobs from one capital city to another. The Washington, D.C.-based company is adding 100 jobs to its Richmond office as a result of changes at its Apartments.com unit, which it purchased in 2014. CoStar plans to cut 173 employees from Apartment.com’s Atlanta home base, according to a WARN notice filed with the Georgia Department of Labor. The move to add 100 multifamily sales jobs to CoStar’s Richmond division would bring its local employee headcount to 950, the company said. (Richmond BizSense)

Dominion Energy Virginia has announced plans to spend about $33 million to build four electric power battery storage projects at three sites in Central Virginia. The pilot projects, totaling 16 megawatts, would be the utility’s first use of battery storage technology. Dominion executives said that the projects will test different applications for battery storage, which is increasingly seen as a way to improve the resiliency of the electrical grid and better integrate renewables such as wind and solar. (The Associated Press)

LeClairRyan, once the state’s fifth-largest law firm, announced in early August that it was shutting down after 31 years. By the time of the announcement, several LeClairRyan attorneys had already exited for other firms, led by the departure of co-founder, name partner and former CEO Gary LeClair, who joined Williams Mullen. The firm’s gross revenues have declined from $163 million in 2015 to $122.5 million last year. Its staff has also decreased from a peak of more than 350 attorneys to fewer than 190 attorneys. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Texas-based True Health Diagnostics LLC, a blood-testing company operating a laboratory formerly run by the now-defunct Health Diagnostic Laboratory, has filed for bankruptcy protection and has laid off some of its employees in downtown Richmond. The company warned that it may be forced to close its operations entirely. True Health said the job reductions were necessary because the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has suspended all Medicare payments to the company, according to a letter sent to the Virginia Employment Commission’s rapid response unit and the Richmond mayor’s office. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

The real estate company Joyner Fine Properties has been acquired by Virginia Credit Union. The Henrico County-based real estate firm, which has been in business since 1973, will keep its name, brand and employees, but it becomes part of the largest state-chartered, member-owned financial cooperative in the state. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

SOUTHWEST VIRGINIA
Appalachia Town Manager Fred Luntsford presented a proposal to extend the Wise County town’s boundary to the foot of the Powell River Trail, which would include the former Bullitt mine site and other areas that could be used for future economic and recreational development. The town already maintains the area, but the land lies outside its corporate limits, Luntsford said. Penn Virginia, a land-holding company, owns some of the property. The town would need approval from the Wise County Board of Supervisors to expand its boundaries. (The Coalfield Progress)

In a three-day auction of properties owned by bankrupt coal producer Blackjewel LLC, Kopper Glo Mining LLC bid successfully on Black Mountain and Lone Mountain mines on the Kentucky/Virginia border, including part of Wise County. Kopper Glo will pay $7.55 million in cash, as well as royalties with a net present value of $9.1 million, while Coking Coal LLC bid $50,000 in cash and royalties of $2.41 million for Wise’s Pardee Mine. Bristol, Tennessee-based Contura Energy bid $33.75 million for two mines in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin — which it sold to Blackjewel in 2017 — and the Pax Surface mine in West Virginia. (Bristol Herald-Courier)

Bristol is no longer on the Virginia comptroller’s list of most fiscally distressed localities, which the city topped in 2017 because of its high level of debt and problems with its solid waste landfill. A new report, released in June, shows steps that city leaders and the state took have succeeded, with improved grades in 12 ratios used to determine Bristol’s financial position and fiscal strength. In the past two years, the city has limited borrowing and spending, set up reserve accounts, increased cash on hand and no longer borrows money to pay bills between real-estate tax collections. (Bristol Herald-Courier)

A $500,000 grant is funding Southwest Virginia’s first large-scale solar project, which is projected to generate more than 3 megawatts of clean energy for the Mineral Gap Data Center, operated by DP Facilities Inc. on 22 acres in Wise County. The county’s Industrial Development Authority won the grant from the Abandoned Mine Land Pilot Program, which is supported by federal dollars and administered by the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy. The solar farm, located next to the data center in the Lonesome Pine Regional Business and Technology Park, will be installed by Charlottesville-based Sun Tribe Solar. (Bristol Herald-Courier)

When it comes to horses, Greg Dutton of McClure knows a lot about them and what it takes to get them moving. His new business, Misty Mountain Bit LLC, is already selling the bits he makes globally. Dutton sells his products from a mobile trailer he takes to various horse shows. Misty Mountain Bit, currently the only company selling U.S.-made gaited horse bits, was recently approved for a $10,000 seed capital matching grant from the Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority. The business was established in February when Dutton purchased the equipment and inventory of Grissom Bits. (The Dickenson Star)

The Cumberland Forest Project, run by The Nature Conservancy, has acquired surface rights to 153,000 acres of forest in far Southwest Virginia known as Highlands-Lonesome Pine. Most of the acreage falls in Dickenson County, and county officials have met with the conservancy’s Clinch Valley program director to find out what the acquisition will mean locally. According to county administrator David Moore, timbering will continue on the land, along with the planting of replacement trees. The property was acquired from an investment fund managed by The Forestland Group. (The Dickenson Star)

Wise County has put in a request that the Pound River be designated as a Virginia Scenic River, following the lead of Dickenson County, which also requested the designation by the state Department of Conservation and Recreation. Both sides of the river have now been assessed, and if the Pound is recommended as a Virginia Scenic River, the Dickenson County Chamber will ask a local legislator to present it during the 2020 General Assembly session. (The Coalfield Progress)

As former Blackjewel employees contend with lost jobs and bounced paychecks, a former coal executive has donated $250,000 to the Southwest Virginia Workforce Development Board to assist 125 workers who have signed up with the Virginia Employment Commission. Each family will receive $2,000 from the Richard and Leslie Gilliam Foundation, which is also assisting miners in Kentucky. Blackjewel filed for Chapter 11 protection July 1 in a West Virginia bankruptcy court, but the company’s last payments to employees in late June bounced. (The Coalfield Progress)

Norton’s Sugar Hill Cidery had a soft opening in August, on land owned by the Norton Industrial Development Authority. The business, owned by Greg and Jennifer Bailey, occupies the front of the property, with the city’s farmers market operating from the back. The Baileys expect to employ six full-time and 24 part-time workers in the cidery, which will include a restaurant and sell its own craft beers. Norton received a community development block grant for downtown revitalization that includes the construction of an area for outdoor seating and a fire pit. (The Coalfield Progress)

Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin visited Abingdon in August to discuss educational and workforce development opportunities with Southwest Virginia leaders. Ignite, United Way of Southwest Virginia’s initiative to prepare young people for the workforce, connected 38 students to internship opportunities with local employers this summer. Fewer than half of high school graduates in the region move on to college, military or technical training, according to Travis Staton, president and CEO of the United Way of Southwest Virginia. That is a big concern, Barkin said, as is the growing skills gap in Virginia’s labor market. (News release)

LewisGale Medical Center in Salem opened its new helipad in August, a $3 million project that took 16 months for Charles Perry Partners Inc. to complete. The rooftop helipad includes a three-story elevator shaft with access to the emergency room, operating room and another floor with office and storage space. Flights by medical helicopters are expected to increase, officials say. (WSLS 10 News)

The owner of the Marketplace shopping center in Christiansburg has requested a permit for a farmers market, according to town documents. Developer Walt Rector took over the site — across North Franklin Street from the New River Valley Mall — and is in the midst of giving the property a significant overhaul. The Marketplace’s request has no affiliation with the farmers market that the town of Christiansburg has operated since 2015 on Hickok Street, town officials said. (The Roanoke Times)

The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality ordered work to cease on a 2-mile section of the Mountain Valley Pipeline in eastern Montgomery County, but a citizens group monitoring construction said that DEQ’s action doesn’t go far enough. Mountain Valley Watch members called again for a full stop-work order on the entire  301-mile natural gas pipeline project. DEQ inspectors found an imminent and substantial risk to water quality on the site near U.S. 11/U.S. 460, requiring work to stop until the problems are corrected. (The Roanoke Times)

Roanoke College will be able to move forward with a series of campus upgrades, thanks to a $250,000 grant from the Richmond-based Cabell Foundation and from other donors. The grant came with a challenge that the school raise an equal amount in matching gifts, which the college recently met. Projects include classroom renovations and new technology, a humanities center at the Fintel Library and updating the Bast Center’s lobby and fitness studio space. (The Roanoke Times)

Sears is closing its store in late October at Roanoke’s Valley View Mall, where it is an anchor tenant. The Sears auto center at the mall was set to close in late August, according to a news release from Transform Holdco LLC, which acquired some Sears and Kmart stores when Sears Holding Corp. filed for bankruptcy. The Roanoke store is one of 26 locations closing this fall, but it is the only one in Virginia so far. It’s unclear how many local employees will be affected. (The Roanoke Times)

The Virginia Tech Foundation is awaiting approval from the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors on $104.1 million in requested bonds, which would be among the county Economic Development Authority’s largest bond issuances since 2000. The bonds would fund properties the foundation plans to build, mostly in Roanoke and Blacksburg, including buildings proposed for the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center. However, the county is expected to earn only $141,461 in annual real estate tax revenue from the foundation’s Blacksburg properties because the foundation is a nonprofit, tax-exempt entity. (The Roanoke Times)

NORTHERN VIRGINIA
Amazon continues to dominate real estate around Arlington and other Northern Virginia localities, as its plans for the $5 billion HQ2 East Coast headquarters move forward. Maryland-based developer JBG Smith Properties has submitted plans to Arlington County to add nearly 1,000 more housing units in its RiverHouse community at the edge of National Landing, where two 16-floor apartment buildings stand. The new buildings would have 750 rental units, ranging in size from studios to three-bedroom units, according to JBG Smith, plus a central courtyard and about 30,000 square feet of retail space at street level, including a potential daycare center and medical office. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Amazon Web Services has inked a deal to lease a 270,000-square-foot office building in Herndon, owned by Griffin Capital Essential REIT Inc., according to multiple sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. The building, known as South Lake at Dulles Corner, is about 2 miles from One Dulles Tower, which AWS also leased in full. Griffin, based in California, disclosed the lease to a Fortune 100 company in a news release but did not identify the tenant. (Washington Business Journal)

Capital One, the McLean-based bank with a popular credit card business, announced in July that a hacker stole about 100 million credit card applications. A criminal complaint against a Seattle computer programmer, Paige Thompson, says that 140,000 Social Security numbers and 80,000 bank account numbers also were exposed. She was a systems engineer at Amazon Web Services for a year and a half until fall 2016, according to an online résumé. The hack appears to be one of the largest data breaches ever to hit a financial services firm. (The Washington Post)

Tysons-based Gannett Co. Inc. was acquired for $1.4 billion by GateHouse Media LLC, creating the largest newspaper group in the country, both by titles owned and circulation. Together, the companies own 265 daily papers — including Gannett flagship publication USA Today in Tysons — with a combined circulation of 8.7 million, as well as hundreds of weekly and community papers. The new company will retain the Gannett name, and its assets include The News Leader in Staunton, Virginia Lawyers Weekly in Richmond and The Progress-Index of Petersburg. (VirginiaBusiness.com and The Washington Post)

Loudoun County supervisors approved a $2 billion industrial center in Leesburg, adding to the county’s cluster of data centers. The 95-acre Loudoun West is set for the east side of Sycolin Road, north of the Dulles Greenway and south of Cochran Mill Road. Among the changes to the initial proposal, Leesburg-based NuVu Real Estate has increased the total area of tree conservation area around the perimeter of the property from 575,000 square feet to 651,000 square feet, an increase of 1.74 acres, and modified its commitments to transportation improvements. (Loudoun Times-Mirror)

SOUTHERN VIRGINIA
The e-commerce and technology company Amazon has announced plans for a solar farm in Pittsylvania County. The farm, which is projected to begin producing energy sometime in 2020, will produce 45 megawatts of renewable energy capacity, which translates to roughly 100,000 megawatt hours every year. The energy produced will be used to power Amazon Web Services data centers, according to the announcement. (Danville Register & Bee)

Through the first half of 2019, the economy of Halifax County has expanded by nearly 500 jobs even as the official unemployment rate has bounced around the 4% mark. In June, the local jobless rate climbed to 4.3%, up from 4% in May, as the active labor force grew at a rate faster than new jobs were created. Notwithstanding those trends, however, Halifax County has seen an upswing in jobs since the beginning of the year, with 14,995 employed workers as of June. In January, that figure stood at 14,502. (SoVaNow.com)

The Harvest Foundation is expanding its economic development efforts with an incentive pool to fund projects in Henry County and the city of Martinsville. Its initial $5 million infusion will be used as grants in Henry County and Martinsville on a case-by-case basis for economic development initiatives, such as creating new industries and jobs and expanding existing businesses. “The demand is rising for higher-paying, living-wage careers in Martinsville and Henry County,” Allyson Rothrock, president of The Harvest Foundation, said in a statement. “Our community members are increasingly better-educated and acquiring additional skill sets that support the growth of advanced manufacturing and highly technical trades.” (Martinsville Bulletin)

Pittsylvania County is the tobacco capital of Virginia, with no other county coming close in terms of production. Production in Pittsylvania County and throughout the United States, however, is on a significant decline while profit margins grow thinner and thinner. According to a March report from the National Agricultural Statistics Service and the United States Department of Agriculture, Virginia farmers across the state intended to set 17,000 acres of flue-cured tobacco, which is a nearly 20% decrease from the previous year. (Danville Register & Bee)

The Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously in July to approve a strategic plan to help guide the county. The plan is a map or timeline for ways leaders can improve the county in four main categories: economic development, financial stability, strategic partnerships with education providers and citizen engagement. (Danville Register & Bee)