For the Record – Shenandoah Valley, September 2013

Farmers & Merchants Bank in Timberville has made a series of staff changes in its senior management. Neil Hayslett fills a newly created position of executive vice president and chief administrative officer. Stephanie Shillingburg was promoted to executive vice president and will continue to be head of retail services. Carrie Comer was promoted to senior vice president and chief financial officer. Josh Hale was promoted to senior vice president and appointed business development leader. (Northern Virginia Daily)

Winchester-based Howard Shockey & Sons Inc. is building a 158,000-square-foot parking garage for the National Conference Center in Loudoun County. The center is the nation’s largest residential training center, with 917 guest rooms and 250 meeting rooms. The new 493 space, three-level parking garage will be located directly across from the front entrance of the main building. According to Scott Kimble, project manager with Howard Shockey & Sons, the structure is scheduled to be completed by December. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Waynesboro-based Lumos Networks Corp. has begun 100 gigabits per second (Gbps) wavelength services in its mid-Atlantic territory. Lumos is a provider of fiber-based bandwidth infrastructure and IP services. The company said the service would allow customers to operate their own networks by constructing backbone infrastructures. The 100 Gbps wavelength service also provides the transport bandwidth for high-capacity applications such as cloud computing, on-line data storage backup, and collocation service centers, Lumos said. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

Waynesboro-based NTELOS Holding Corp. and Colorado-based Dish Network Corp. have begun a pilot project involving “fixed wireless” broadband service in rural Virginia. As part of the demonstration, NTELOS and Dish Network have activated two wireless tower test sites in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Waynesboro and Afton. Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent provided equipment and assisted in the installation. The trial relies on rooftop devices at customers’ homes that are intended to deliver significant advantage over inside-the-home antenna solutions. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

ResCare Workforce Services, based in Louisville, Ky., has been contracted to provide workforce job services to clients throughout the Shenandoah Valley. The Shenandoah Valley Workforce Investment Board Inc. in Harrisonburg announced that ResCare Workforce Services will provide all one-stop services to clients in the SVWIB’s service area over the next three fiscal years. That service area includes the counties of Rockingham, Augusta, Rockbridge, Bath, Highland, Shenandoah, Page, Frederick, Clarke and Warren, and the cities of Harrisonburg, Staunton, Waynesboro, Lexington, Buena Vista and Winchester. (Shenandoah Valley Now)

A 7-Eleven is set to open soon, at 6 Lodge Lane, in Verona. Construction has begun, and the store is set to open in the fall. The project is a retrofit for an existing 2,173 square-foot convenience store and will offer four pumping stations. A Wendy’s restaurant with drive-through is attached to the project. This will be 7-Eleven’s second store in Verona but its first location there to offer gas. (News Leader)

Officials from more than 80 different cities, counties and economic development groups came to Waynesboro for Virginia Main Street’s quarterly meeting. The focus of the program was “Bringing the Outdoors Downtown: Outdoor Recreation and Main Street Revitalization”. Group members used downtown Waynesboro as an example of a place that had fallen on hard times, but through the efforts of Waynesboro Downtown Development and the city staff, has started to make a comeback. (News Virginian)