StartVirginia: September 2023 Heard Around Virginia
McLean-based Affect Therapeutics, a substance addiction therapy startup, raised $16 million in a Series A funding round to expand its operations and further develop its mobile app. The company delivers therapy and treatments for specific substance use disorders through its app. The company plans to use much of the money it raised to expand into […]
Talking telework
SHAWN AVERY President and CEO, Hampton Roads Workforce Council, Norfolk Prior to the pandemic, did Hampton Roads Workforce Council allow hybrid or remote work? We allowed employees to occasionally work remotely [due to] extenuating circumstances, such as car trouble, sick family members, etc. What is your policy today, and [...]
Growth industry
Prompted by shifts in consumer buying trends, Shenandoah Valley farmers are investing heavily in automated systems and cutting-edge growing processes to position themselves for the long haul in an industry that’s changing rapidly. Once dubbed the “breadbasket of the South” because of its bountiful wheat crops, Virginia’s[...]
Hazelwood Farms is set to become industrial park
A 328-acre former James City County farm is set to become the largest speculative industrial project along the Interstate 64 corridor between the Port of Virginia and Richmond. Hazelwood Farms was purchased for $12 million in April by Houston-based industrial real estate firm Lovett Industrial, which plans to develop a 2.2 mil[...]
Gathering power
While working on a cellular tower a few years back, Kyle Mullins got what he describes as the “call of a lifetime” — an invitation to work on the first two pilot wind turbines for Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project. A Navy veteran who received a telecommunications technical certification from Texas [...]
Winchester shopping center sale could revitalize area
During his time on Winchester City Council, Jeff Buettner recalls, plans to revitalize Ward Plaza shopping center were a frequent topic of conversation at every council retreat, going back as far as 1998. Now, as interim executive director of the Winchester Economic Development Authority, he believes that vision is coming close [...]
Amazon plans Spotsylvania data centers
A game changer. That’s how Spotsylvania Board of Supervisors Chair David Ross describes the annual tax revenue the county could see from data centers, including a slate of proposed Amazon.com facilities that could generate $120 million per year. “You could get rid of personal property tax on cars,” Ross says. “You could [...]
For the Record September 2023
CENTRAL VIRGINIA Richmond-based convenience store giant Arko’s revenue for the second quarter fell 3%, $2.47 billion from last year’s total, despite a 21% jump in total gallons of gasoline and diesel sold and a 12% increase in merchandise sales. According to Arko, its margin on gasoline and diesel — the difference between the price it […]
Here to stay
Rachel Miller spent half of her undergraduate studies and then a portion of graduate school learning remotely behind a computer screen. Even the first job she took that aligned with her career goals — completing contact tracing during the COVID-19 pandemic while she worked toward her master’s degree in public health — was [...]
Support system
James Madison University is where Angela Reddix says she found “my tribe, the godmothers of my children” — and also her future husband, Carl, whom she met on her first day on campus. “All those relationships came from JMU,” says Reddix, founder, president and CEO of Norfolk-based ARDX, a health care management and IT c[...]
Keeping their own counsel
Of the 1.3 million attorneys practicing in the United States — more than 35,500 of them licensed to practice in Virginia — the American Bar Association reports that more than half are based at law firms, while only about 10% serve as in-house general counsels. That disparity is not because general counsel jobs are unwanted [[...]