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Youngkin sets veto record as energy, AI fuel gridlock

Summary

  • Gov. sets Virginia veto record with more than 400 over his term
  • 158 bills vetoed in 2025 session, including cannabis sales and wage hikes
  • Growing and data center power demands spark energy policy fights
  • Tariffs and Trump budget cuts shape state spending priorities
  • 2025 elections could shift balance on energy, business and DEI policy

Few observers of the expected any groundbreaking legislation to emerge from this election year session, and for the most part, they were right.

And Gov. Glenn Youngkin certainly did his part to keep that from happening as well. In the last full year of his term, the Republican firmly cemented his record as the Virginia governor with the most during his term — more than 400 total. This session alone, he killed 158 bills and amended 159 others. He made 205 amendments and eight line-item vetoes to the state’s budget in 2025, although the Democratic-controlled legislature rejected most of those budget revisions.

Among the major headlines this session was Youngkin’s $900 million in spending cuts to maintain a cushion in case of financial repercussions related to President Donald Trump’s federal spending slashes and tariffs. Most of the expenditures cut from the biennial state budget were for one-time capital projects at universities, Youngkin said. Meanwhile, he approved a Democrat-backed plan to issue $1 billion in income tax rebates to eligible Virginians.

Bills Youngkin signed into law this year include the creation of a Virginia sports grant program that will be administered by the Virginia Tourism Authority and a bill requiring to petition the Virginia State Corporation Commission by Dec. 1 for approval of a pilot program to test “virtual power plants,” a voluntary network of small-scale energy resources like residential solar panels that could supply energy during times of peak demand.

Many of the governor’s vetoes were expected, with Democrat-backed measures like recreational marijuana sales, minimum wage increases and gun control measures dying at the Republican governor’s desk. Less predictably, though, Youngkin vetoed a measure to create a regulatory framework for blockchain-based businesses and instead advocated for a state study of the issue.

He also vetoed a bill that would have let local governments considering data center proposals require developers to conduct site assessments that take into account water sources, parks, historic sites and forest land. He also cut $2.7 million in funding to market Virginia to business developers, saying it isn’t the time to increase discretionary spending.

Explaining his data center veto, Youngkin wrote that the bill “limits local discretion and creates unnecessary red tape. While well-intentioned, the legislation imposes a one-size-fits-all approach on communities that are best positioned to make their own decisions.”

And with a quiet fizzle, so died the final piece of surviving data center legislation in this year’s short GA session, even though and its impacts are hot topics in localities across the state, no longer just in Northern Virginia. Many proposed face intense public opposition, although county and city governments are often open to courting the projects because they bring in much-needed tax revenue. Some state legislators, meanwhile, have been pushing for more statewide regulations around data centers.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed more than 400 bills during his gubernatorial term, setting a new state record. Photo by AP Photo/Steve Helber

Power gridlock

“Data centers have become the whipping boy for a lot of people, as if every single one of us with our cell phones and our cars and everything else aren’t benefiting from those data centers,” says Greg Habeeb, chair of Gentry Locke’s Government and Regulatory Affairs Practice Group and president of Gentry Locke Consulting. A former Republican state delegate, Habeeb is involved in lobbying for renewable energy interests.

A nationwide discussion about data centers and their potential harms developed after the pandemic shutdown increased reliance on residential broadband access. With the 2022 introduction of ChatGPT opening the floodgates to widespread artificial intelligence use, which consumes massive amounts of energy from data centers, communities in Northern Virginia — already home to the world’s largest concentration of data centers — began to push back against building more.

Although some controversial projects have received approval, including the massive Prince William Digital Gateway, local officials have begun to enact limits on future data center projects, even in Loudoun County’s “Data Center Alley” in Ashburn, which has more than 30 million square feet of data centers in operation.

Data centers provided nearly $900 million in local tax revenue for Loudoun last year, covering nearly the entire operating budget for the county. Nonetheless, in March county supervisors approved new restrictions on building data centers on land close to residential neighborhoods.

“The question really is, ‘Where do those data centers go?’” Habeeb says. “Where are they best suited? What should the tax policy [and] energy policy be around them? I think that will be a massive conversation next session. It’s really become an energy conversation. We’ve got new projections on load growth, and it’s just a reality: We are going to hit a crisis point if demand, if load growth continues at the projected rates.”

PJM, the regional power grid operator serving 65 million customers in 13 states, including Virginia, anticipates “significant growth” in demand for electricity in the next 20 years, according to its 20-year forecast report released in January. It anticipates summer peak demand to increase by 70,000 megawatts to 220,000 megawatts by 2039. Currently, PJM generates about 183,000 megawatts, the study says.

That means if energy use continues to climb, “and we don’t have significant new generation” of electrical power, “that crisis may be in the form of higher electric rates,” Habeeb says. “It might be in the form of blackouts. It might be in the form of a bunch of new generation [facilities] that people don’t want to look at. But the status quo is not going to exist. You can’t keep load growth going the way it is without energy policy being affected substantially.”

Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington, says that candidates running for seats this year in the House of Delegates are hearing from voters about the issue of data centers, AI and energy generation.

“Candidates will go to the voters, and the voters have to weigh in … and then we’ll see after the dust settles in November,” Farnsworth says. “I don’t know that you can really see a clear plan on the data center question, right? Different localities are going to feel very differently. In Northern Virginia, there’s enough economic activity that there may not be a lot of pressure to expand data centers, but in other parts of the state, the economy is much more stagnant. There’s going to be a great deal of interest in figuring out a way to bring about economic activity.”

Another energy bill that would have given the state more power over localities in approving solar projects died in session. Solar farms and rural land use is a hot-button issue in parts of Virginia, and many localities have placed caps on utility-grade solar that effectively block many new solar projects.

Meanwhile in Richmond, Democratic lawmakers are concerned that this trend will keep the state from achieving its goal of producing two-thirds of all electricity from solar or wind by 2035, as mandated by the 2020 . They aimed to gain some power over the process via the failed bill.

Supervisors in rural counties and environmental activists banded together to oppose the bill, saying it would undermine localities’ voices in determining land use. Republican legislators, especially those in rural districts, also lined up against the measure.

Despite the controversy, the issue is bound to return in 2026, says Chris Saxman, executive director of Virginia FREE, a nonprofit that provides nonpartisan political information to the state’s business community. A Republican former state delegate, Saxman says interest groups are “looking into if we operate under the notion of local control and local decision-making authority. That’s something that’s still sort of a bedrock principle of Virginia.”

Saxman adds that the VCEA, which was passed before the pandemic and the advent of generative AI, “was written without the knowledge of how expansive data centers were going to be and how much energy they were going to require. And because that changed, it defies sanity that they wouldn’t go back and redo the math on VCEA. But in a political context, you can’t ‘because it’s weakening the laws.’ No, it’s just updating to reality. No one wants to do that in this country anymore.”

Up in the air

Habeeb, Saxman and Farnsworth agree that most questions about 2026 legislation will come down to this fall’s elections, which will determine political control of the House of Delegates and who will be the next governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.

As of June, polling placed former U.S. Rep. , the Democratic nominee, ahead of GOP candidate Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, but Habeeb cautions that it’s still early days and that at this point in the 2021 gubernatorial campaign, “very few [people] had heard of Glenn Youngkin.”

If Democrats maintain control of the House and Spanberger wins, expect to see many of the bills vetoed by Youngkin to return in 2026, Farnsworth says, along with others that died in the legislature. And if Earle-Sears prevails, expect to see a continuation of many of Youngkin’s priorities, although she would still face opposition from the Democratic-controlled state Senate, Habeeb says.

Regulation of retail sales of cannabis, changes to Virginia’s right-to-work laws and a minimum wage bump to $15 an hour are all Democratic priorities that would likely come up if the party sweeps this fall’s elections.

A Fairfax County casino bill that failed in 2024 and 2025 may make a return to the legislature as well, even with major local opposition to a casino. Previous bills have received some bipartisan support because the legislation gives Fairfax residents the opportunity to vote on a referendum and settle the issue for themselves. Sen. David Marsden, the 2024 bill’s chief patron, said on a radio show in May that he thinks a casino bill could pass the legislature in 2026.

In a few cases, the outcome of the lieutenant governor race could be significant, as the Virginia State Senate is narrowly controlled by Democrats with a 21-19 majority, and the LG’s tiebreaker vote occasionally determines a bill’s fate.

In a bit of political theater this session, Democrats forced Earle-Sears to take a tiebreaking vote on a bill guaranteeing a woman’s right to access contraceptives, and the lieutenant governor voted to kill the measure — a decision Virginia Democrats have brought up multiple times this campaign season to highlight her conservative social views.

Partisan games are par for the course, Saxman says, and as a result, the commonwealth suffers, he thinks. “Things have gotten so hyperpartisan politically over the years that the nuts and bolts … of business, what attracts investment, what maintains investment … is not second nature anymore,” he says. “We’re not attracting businesspeople to the legislature. People are graduating from college and going into politics and working on campaigns and have no working knowledge of the economy or business.”

In the end, he says, there is a “fundamental lack” of knowledge among state legislators needed to pass effective bills, especially from a business standpoint.

“There are bills that are put in that are just stupid and political in nature and are harmful to business,” Saxman adds, “and they’re very difficult to combat once you get into that partisan lane.”

ODU internships boost student success, employer ties

Summary
  • ODU aims for every student to complete at least one internship by 2027
  • office launched in 2023 to streamline work-based learning
  • Partnerships with 700+ employers build career pipelines in key sectors
  • Students benefit from paid placements and career-aligned experiences

As a creative writing major at , Kayla Boney says she knows jobs in her field after graduation may be “one in a million.”
An internship with Teens with a Purpose, a Norfolk-based youth creative arts nonprofit, showed Boney, a 20-year-old rising junior, that her pursuits in the humanities, while challenging, can result in meaningful — and paid — work.
Boney, a Norfolk native and an aspiring screenwriter, volunteered with the organization while attending high school. But it was through an on-campus encounter with representatives from ODU’s Monarch Humanities Internship Academy, part of the university’s Monarch Internships and Co-Op Office founded in 2023, that she learned she could be paid and also earn academic credits to intern there.
President , who has led ODU since 2021, says the idea to launch an office solely dedicated to connecting students to internships or other work-based learning opportunities came from conversations with business leaders in the community during his first year on the job.
“I would come back to campus and have that realization … [that] we don’t have the right now as it stands,” he says. “We didn’t have the infrastructure to spin up quickly and address some of those concerns and needs that they have, and that’s why we launched this particular operation and made the investment.”
Boney spent two semesters interning with Teens with a Purpose, helping with school-based workshops and using her creative writing skills to help write and edit the organization’s annual anthology.
She also helped prepare local teens with their submissions to the Youth Poet Laureate program, which the nonprofit helps run. In return, Boney says she felt the positive impacts the program makes in her community and also learned that writing and editing can be in-demand skills.
“There’s not one place, one big place, that doesn’t have some type of editor or writer,” says Boney, who is again working with the organization this summer. “Always writing and editing and helping young people kind of make their pieces better, it has taught me a lot of fundamental skills I never would have thought I would have learned anywhere else, and it just made it more fun.”
Boney is one of about 2,500 students that ODU has tracked through its Monarch Internships and Co-op Office. Launched in 2023, the office is building on an ODU goal to have each of its approximate 24,000 students, including more than 17,000 undergraduates, complete one internship, work-based learning program or co-op experience by 2027.
A rendering of ODU’s future biological sciences building, set to be completed by 2028 Rendering and photo courtesy Old Dominion University

Nearly 70% of graduating seniors in 2024 reported having an internship, up from 61% the year prior, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Of those interns, 59% reported being paid for their work. Those who are compensated fare better than those who are unpaid. According to NACE, paid interns received a starting salary of more than $68,000, up from a little more than $53,000 for those that were unpaid.

Further, one out of every two interns in the 2022-23 academic year accepted full-time employment from their placement, according to NACE.
“Employers, students, faculty, they realize that when you host an intern during their degree program, then you’ve got first shot at great talent,” says Barbara Blake, who has led ODU’s internships office since its inception.

Duty and responsibility 

Hemphill says ODU’s internships office is the first of its kind in the state, and the university has convened two meetings with business and industry leaders and faculty stakeholders, including one that drew Gov. Glenn Youngkin as a speaker, as it looks to address gaps in industries including health care, engineering, data sciences and more.
“There’s so many different gaps that we have that we want to look at how we are helping to meet that need and fill that void,” Hemphill says. “We have a duty. We have a responsibility to look at how we are working with our partners in business and industry to help them be successful, and they cannot do that without a strong workforce and we have a duty to help them address those challenges.”
To address regional employer needs and keep ODU moving forward in the digital age, the university launched the School of Data Science and the School of Supply Chain, Logistics and Maritime Operations in 2023. The university has also added certificates centered around the growing field of artificial intelligence, including in cyber defense, supply chain and logistics, and health care. It’s also seeking to expand research across the institution, including in AI, health care, maritime, cybersecurity, data science and coastal resiliency, each of which are ODU strongholds. The university recently provided $500,000 in seed funding for seven AI-related research projects, Hemphill adds.
“A lot of our focus has been around applied research, because we know applied research can truly impact our region and the nation and so we’re excited about the opportunity that we have in that space,” he says.
ODU received R1 research designation for the first time in 2022, placing it among the nation’s elite research universities, and reaffirmed that classification this year.
The university, which has an operating budget of about $980 million, spends about $100 million on research annually, Hemphill says. And like every other university, it is watching closely the impact of the ‘s cuts to federal research grants, including those previously approved.
Old Dominion has seen about  $10.7 million in lost federal funding, including $6.5 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was targeted by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. “We have to be intentional about making sure that we’re positioning ourselves to move forward and continue to focus in on the areas that we have the ability to grow our research,” Hemphill says.
Meanwhile, the president has been busy integrating the formerly independent Eastern Virginia Medical School under the university’s new Macon and Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences umbrella.
Following the 2024 merger, the Brock hub includes five schools and colleges, comprising more than 50 academic majors, to form the largest health sciences program in the state. It also includes ODU’s partnership with Norfolk State University to form the Joint School of Public Health, which Hemphill says will better position the region to address health disparities among residents.
“We’re comfortable being the largest health sciences operation in the commonwealth, but we aren’t going to just stand there in that comfort. We’re going to look at how we grow to meet some of the nursing shortages and look at some of the physician assistants’ shortages and so on that we have,” he says. “That was a key area of focus for us.”
In April, ODU broke ground on a $184 million biological sciences building, which includes labs, a 120-seat lecture hall, an orchid conservatory, classrooms and other facilities and represents the university’s largest capital construction project to date. It’s expected to be completed in spring 2028.
Also this summer, ODU is launching a $30 million, three-year initiative to upgrade about 180 classrooms with new technologies, including augmented and virtual reality, to bring immersive learning opportunities to campus. Hemphill sees digital transformation, not only for students learning in person but for the university’s approximate 8,000 online learners, as necessary for ODU and its students’ success. Currently, students can’t register for classes and see advisers via their cell phones, he adds.
“When you think about this new digital age and the impact that AI is having on the world,” Hemphill says, “we have a duty and a responsibility to position students to be successful, and we’re doing that.”

Positioned for success

Since launching the internships office, Blake has led a team of faculty to build a central database through which ODU will track internships and other work-based learning opportunities. This means moving from a siloed system for students in certain majors to centralized tracking. Blake says she expects that infrastructure to roll out in time for the fall 2025 semester.
While the goal of the office is to help students land an internship or experience that can lead to valuable full-time employment after graduation, it is also emerging as an important economic development tool for Hampton Roads, a region that is already working hard to attract and retain top talent. Blake says her office has worked with at least 700 businesses — from Fortune 500 corporations to mom-and-pop operations — to build a “one-stop shop” to link interns with employers, including helping some employers that don’t have money to pay an intern to find grants to do so.
In the old days, interns often worked for free, and that served as a gatekeeper for less affluent students who needed summer and after-school jobs to make ends meet. To help students get experience in their fields, no matter their financial background, ODU and many other universities have applied for and won funding to subsidize with participating workplaces.
In 2024, The announced a $5 million grant for ODU to develop the Monarch Humanities Internship Academy, which will place 750 humanities students in internships over five years, including providing stipends for interns.
 The office also has also partnered with the Hampton Roads Workforce Council, which in 2024 received a $6 million U.S. Department of Labor grant to develop an apprenticeship hub. ODU, which has received about $500,000 of that money, is focusing on building an apprenticeship pipeline around maritime logistics and supply chain, cybersecurity and in K-12 education, Blake says. The State Council of for Virginia also awarded ODU a two-year $100,000 grant to pilot the Federal Work-Study Internship Program, which started last fall.
Paid internships in Hampton Roads range from about $14 to $24 an hour, with some interns with engineering backgrounds making up to $28 an hour, Blake says, and some employers may have simultaneous needs, including for interns with engineering, accounting and technical writing backgrounds.
“How do I have those needs met?” Blake asks. “They can come to us. We write up the prospectus. We draw in the faculty. We work on the student placement end, and that has been the most exciting work, because the employers absolutely love it.”
Building on that success, ODU has partnered with Boyd Gaming, which is building Norfolk’s casino resort, as well as freight forwarding company CV International, the Hermitage Museums and Gardens, Chesapeake Care Clinic, the Virginia Asian Chamber of Commerce and other workplaces. At one defense sector employer that Blake declines to name, ODU provided 47 student workers in 2024, far outpacing the five students it originally agreed to.
In addition to helping students gain experience, this helps employers, says Shawn Avery, president and CEO of the Hampton Roads Workforce Council. From the maritime, cyber, IT, health care and hospitality industries, local businesses have been “clamoring” for talent, he says, and that includes interns. That also helps keep talented young professionals in Hampton Roads, he notes.
“If an individual has a job before they graduate, they’re more than likely to remain in the region, and a lot of people do transition from internships directly into the job,” Avery says. “This partnership with ODU has really been game-changing.”

ODU at a glance

Founded
Old Dominion University was founded in 1930 as a two-year college to train teachers and engineers as an extension of William & Mary and Virginia Tech. It gained independence in 1962 as Old Dominion College and began offering master’s degrees in 1964 and doctoral degrees in 1971. It was renamed Old Dominion University in 1969.

Campus
ODU has seven academic colleges, plus Eastern Virginia Medical School, the Joint School of Public Health and three schools focused on cybersecurity, data science and logistics. Its 337-acre Norfolk campus is bordered on two sides by the Elizabeth and Lafayette rivers. The school also operates regional higher education centers in , Portsmouth and Hampton. ODU is designated an R1 Research Institution.

Enrollment*
Undergraduate: 17,746
Graduate: 5,397
First professional: 600
In-state: 19,559
International: 749

Employees
1,169 full-time faculty
5,504 total faculty and staff

Tuition and fees**
In-state undergraduate tuition and fees: $12,750
Out-of-state undergraduate tuition and fees: $33,780
Room and board: $13,988***

* Fall 2024 enrollment statistics
** 2024-25 rates
*** Varies: number based on silver meal plan
and a shared dorm room

OurView: Our name is United S., and we’re addicted to undocumented labor

Amid all the recent protests, debates and debacles regarding illegal immigration and the second ‘s heavy-handed response to it, one truth seems to be getting lost: America is reliant on undocumented workers.

In its October 2024 study, “Mass Deportation: Devastating Costs to America, Its Budget and Economy,” the left-leaning American Immigration Council found that undocumented laborers made up 4.6% of the country’s labor force in 2022, exceeding the nation’s roughly 4% unemployment rate.

That same year, households with undocumented workers paid $46.8 billion and $29.3 billion in federal and state taxes, respectively.

The study further noted that “U.S.-born workers could not fill all the jobs of undocumented workers even if they tried to. The country is heavily reliant on an undocumented workforce in industries like construction, agriculture, and hospitality.”

Some 1.5 million U.S. construction workers, or about 13.7%, are undocumented laborers, according to the study. Similarly, nearly 13% of agricultural workers and more than 7% of the nation’s hospitality workers are also undocumented.

Most of us have probably heard accounts of undocumented laborers working in meat plants and fruit orchards, or as construction workers or janitorial staffers, sometimes hired through third-party services.

And that doesn’t even take into account immigrants who have been legally filling workforce gaps through programs for migrant farm workers and seasonal nonagricultural workers at places like golf courses, hotels and amusement parks.

But it’s not just the business community that’s got a jones for foreign labor. Go into any suburban neighborhood and you’re likely to find Hispanic people doing landscaping, housecleaning and day labor projects. It’s pretty much a given that no one is inquiring about their immigration status.

And this is hardly a new situation.

Going back to 1993, there have been at least five Cabinet secretary nominees who withdrew their names from consideration after it was revealed they paid undocumented people for domestic work. These range from the “nannygate” scandal that torpedoed two of President Bill Clinton’s attorney general nominees to incidents involving two of President George W. Bush’s nominees for the secretaries of labor and homeland security to President Donald Trump’s first labor secretary nominee in 2017.

My point isn’t to shame anyone who already paid a price for a mistake or to slam hardworking people who likely fled gang violence, political persecution and extreme poverty, risking dangerous border crossings to pursue the dream of a better life.

I’m simply saying there’s a reason this keeps happening.

And now’s the time to say the quiet part out loud: These undocumented immigrants are largely performing hard jobs that American citizens aren’t as interested in doing, and we as Americans don’t want to pay higher prices for those services.

This time around, the second Trump administration has led its messaging around deportations by emphasizing arrests of the worst of the worst — gang members, murderers and human smugglers.

But the fact is, immigration officers have targeted people across the spectrum of the undocumented people in the U.S., a group totaling more than 13.7 million, or about 4% of the nation’s total population. And that’s led to stories of armed and masked agents snatching people off city streets and from courthouses, sparking uproars like the one in a Missouri small town over the April arrest of a popular local waitress and mom of three who came there 20 years ago from Hong Kong and had been living here through temporary status renewals. She was later released.

In mid-June, after Trump called in the Marines to help quell anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles and more than 5 million protesters gathered for nationwide “No Kings” protests, federal officials announced ICE would pull back from worksite raids on hotels, restaurants and agricultural operations. That move was apparently sought by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on behalf of farmers and hospitality businesses facing labor shortages.

But following backlash from MAGA purists, and after ordering ICE to step up enforcement in Democratic-run cities like New York and Chicago, Trump swiftly reversed the policy.

That’s his prerogative as chief executive, but we need to acknowledge that the nation’s dependence on isn’t fake news.

South Hill, Mecklenburg team on new industrial park

Summary

  • , Mecklenburg form to develop new 67-acre .
  • $12.4M in water/sewer upgrades planned as part of capital project.
  • Site aims to attract industries beyond .
  • operates or builds 11 data centers in the county

South Hill and officials want to ensure the region’s economic future doesn’t hinge entirely on data centers.

This spring, county supervisors and town council members agreed to form the Regional Industrial Facility Authority.

Regional authorities allow local governments to share costs and revenue from industrial commerce sites. Mecklenburg County already partners with Greensville County and Emporia on the Mid-Atlantic Advanced Manufacturing Center and with Brunswick County on the Roanoke River Regional Business Park.

The goal of launching the Route 58 Activation Corridor RIFA is to develop a new industrial park on the edge of South Hill, the largest of six towns located in Mecklenburg.

The facility will sit on 67 acres purchased April 1 by the Mecklenburg County Industrial Development Authority for $1,000 per acre, according to Angie Kellett, the county’s director of .

It will take at least a couple of years before the park is ready for tenants, says Kellett. A five-year capital project plan adopted in April as part of South Hill’s budget process includes $12.4 million for extending water and sewer lines to the new industrial park, according to Town Manager Keli Reekes. The utilities will also serve around the former Park View High School, which closed in 2022.

The town and county will share the utilities’ cost, though grants are expected to cover some of the expense, Reekes says.

After the state approves the RIFA’s creation, leaders of the member localities will have decisions to make, including whether to build a shell building on the site and how to market the new industrial park.

County and town officials hope the new industrial park will attract opportunities beyond data centers, which currently dominate the region’s business landscape, Reekes and Kellett say.

As of last fall, Mecklenburg County had a dozen data center sites either operating or under construction — including 11 owned by Microsoft, according to reporting by The Mecklenburg Sun.

Microsoft is Mecklenburg County’s second largest employer, according to a state community profile updated in 2025.

“Microsoft — we’re very glad to have them here,” Reekes stresses.

That said, the region’s leaders want to attract new industries to the industrial park. “We are looking to diversify,” she says.

Virginia Beach anticipates bright tourism summer

Three Dog Night ushered in a new era for The Dome in in May, belting hits like “Joy to the World” to excited fans and driving the summer entertainment season on the Oceanfront.

Next on tap is the launch of the Wavegarden surf lagoon, which is expected to open this summer, according to city officials. Both The Dome and Wavegarden are major pieces of the $350 million Atlantic Park, the long-awaited entertainment complex led by Virginia Beach-raised music and fashion superstar Pharrell Williams and Virginia Beach’s Venture Realty Group, his frequent development collaborator.

The two new venues are also bright spots for the resort city even as tariffs buffet other key economic engines in Virginia Beach.

“The beach is busy,” says Amanda Jarratt, the deputy city manager who was tapped as interim economic development director after Christian Green resigned in June due to family issues. “We started our busy season much earlier this year than in previous years.”

In February and March, more than 10,000 athletes hit town on back-to-back weekends for three NCAA Division I conferences’ track championships at the Virginia Beach Sports Center. That venue and others are making Virginia Beach more of a year-round destination than before, Jarratt notes.
Also, responding to the cancellation of Something in the Water’s late April music festival, the city quickly staged Vibe Check, a replacement festival that drew a crowd of 1,000 to see rapper Waka Flocka Flame, and the third annual Jackalope Festival followed up with a strong showing in late May.

The extreme sports showcase will return to the beach for the next three years, planners say.

Jarratt says she expects the city to attract about 14 million visitors this summer, the same as last year.

The deep blue sea

The forthcoming Wavegarden lagoon has drawn headlines since it first was mentioned in 2018 as a project spearheaded by Pharrell Williams and using Spanish wave-making technology that then had not been used in the United States, although a California surf park has since opened. As of mid-June, developers said the surf lagoon has been filled with water, and it is expected to open mid-summer, although they would not give a specific opening date.

Plans to open Virginia Beach’s Wavegarden were delayed due to financing obstacles and a delay in construction in 2023 caused by elevated levels of arsenic and iron, an issue that has since been fixed. Known as Atlantic Park, the $350 million project sits on the 10-acre site that formerly housed an earlier version of The Dome, between 18th and 20th streets.

The public-private partnership is supported by $125 million in city funding for two parking decks and improvements, and the city owns the venue. Ultimately, Atlantic Park is expected to include 100,000 square feet of restaurants and retail, 10,000 square feet of office space, 20 surf bungalows and 300 apartments on its 11 acres.

Meanwhile, two outdoor cafes — Mi Vida and The Grill — have opened, and Jarratt says there are talks ongoing with an ice cream shop and a men’s retailer to come in.

“The retail and restaurants will come online throughout the summer into the early fall, and then we anticipate the multifamily units being available in the fall of this year,” Jarratt says. “This is Virginia Beach’s largest public-private partnership in history. Because it’s opening in phases, we won’t see the full economic impact until after 2026.”

In 1994, the old Dome was torn down after Three Dog Night performed the final show at the geodesic concert hall in 1993.

The new Dome, which employs 209 people, has a capacity of about 3,500 attendees, similar to Chrysler Hall, and room for another 1,500 people when the doors are open to an outside viewing area. Live Nation is in charge of scheduling events and promised to stage 100 shows this year at The Dome, and Jarratt says the city is anticipating closer to 200 events next year.

Vincent Magnini, a professor of management at Longwood University, is contracted to perform an economic analysis after the 2025 season to ensure The Dome is on track, she says.

“We’re really excited about not only The Dome, but the entire project,” Jarratt adds. “It’s truly going to be transformational for the Oceanfront.”

Beyond the beach

While the city’s biggest attraction is the beach, Jarratt says sports offers a new focus and opportunity. “We’re really working to be a 12-month destination.”

Central to that is the Virginia Beach Sports Center, a $68 million project opened in October 2020 near the Virginia Beach Convention Center. The 285,000-square-foot indoor facility is one of the largest of its type on the East Coast, with 12 basketball courts that can be converted into 24 volleyball courts and a 200-meter hydraulically banked indoor track, all with enough seats for more than 5,000 spectators.

After a 2023 audit revealed the original operator of the venue, Eastern Sports Management, was millions of dollars in debt and had failed to pay promoters, the city purchased ESM’s contract and installed Sports Facilities Cos., a Florida firm that manages similar venues in other tourist destinations.

Volleyball tournaments, softball tournaments, cheerleading competitions, dance competitions and wrestling tournaments have filled the center in recent years.

“Focusing on events like that really does weatherproof our weekends,” Jarratt says, adding that the city was also looking not only at recruiting tournaments, but providing other activities for athletes’ family members with downtime.

Focusing on drawing more domestic visitors is even more important today since Virginia Beach traditionally draws a significant tourism dollar from Canadian visitors. With President Donald Trump’s provocations against the nation’s neighbor to the north, including threatening tariffs and proposing making Canada the “51st state,” some Canadians are declining to visit the U.S. as tourists.

In 2023, Canadians spent $38 million in Virginia Beach, according to a city study. As stated in a May New York Times story, the number of Canadian travelers to the U.S. by plane dropped 19.9% in April, and car travelers declined by 35.2% compared with April 2024.

“We’ve seen a slight decline in our Canadian booking,” says John Zirkle, president of the Virginia Beach Hotel Association and corporate director of operations for Harmony Hospitality. “We’re a drive-to destination for a lot of the people in Canada, so we’re hoping that they don’t take politics out on us. We’re just here to provide a great experience.”

So far, the city’s labor force has not suffered from federal policy, though, Jarratt and Zirkle say. Most foreign students who work at the Oceanfront in the summer already had obtained their J-1 visas before Trump took office. As of May, there were no major labor shortages in Virginia Beach’s hospitality industry.

As for tourists from Virginia, federal worker layoffs and cutbacks affecting government contractors may put a crimp in visitor numbers, Zirkle says, but upscale, branded properties are performing better than lower-end hotels.

“We’ve got something for everyone,” Zirkle says. “But not everyone can afford to go all the time.”

The city’s leadership troubles have continued, though, with economic development director Christian Green’s resignation after less than four months on the job in June due to “pressing family matters,” according to the city. He joined Virginia Beach in February, succeeding Chuck Rigney, who resigned abruptly last July following scrutiny of his travel expenses. Jarratt, who was interim director after Rigney’s departure, is back in the role a second time.

The energy sector

Tariffs are a challenge for Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, potentially increasing the cost of the $10.7 billion project by $500 million if levies remain in effect through 2026, according to Bob Blue, the Fortune 500 utility’s chair, president and CEO, speaking during a May earnings call. He said that as of early May, Dominion had incurred about $4 million in tariff costs, and that would likely grow to about $120 million if tariffs extend through the end of the second quarter.

Residential customers, however, would see a relatively small increase of about four cents on their monthly bills, Blue anticipates. “It’s difficult to fully assess the impact tariffs may [add to] the project’s final cost. … Let me be clear, CVOW remains one of the most affordable sources of energy for our customers.”

Costs aside, CVOW is moving along on schedule and is set to be complete in late 2026, says Dominion spokesman Jeremy Slayton. As of May, 96 of the 176 monopile foundations had been installed, and construction of the 2.6-gigawatt wind farm was 55% complete.

Wind energy projects, especially offshore, have hit headwinds under Trump, who is opposed to efforts to shift electricity production to renewable methods. But as Dominion said earlier this year, it received all of its federal permits for CVOW before Trump took office.

Closer to shore, Globalinx completed construction this spring on four marine bore pipes that extend into the Atlantic Ocean from a Sandbridge parking lot, part of a project to increase the number of subsea fiber cables entering the state.

With tech experts predicting higher demand for data centers due in part to the boom and related internet use, these cables will bring more data flow to Virginia.

Currently, three ultra-high-speed transatlantic cables connect Virginia Beach to Brazil, France and Spain and come to Virginia Beach’s Corporate Landing Business Park. The addition of other is expected to increase subsea data flow into the state by more than 400%, says Greg Twitt, founder and president of Globalinx.

“We need to be ahead of the AI race and subsea cables are creating the capacity. We need to put that infrastructure in now,” Twitt says. He notes that 97% of internet traffic moves through oceanic cables, and 70% of the world’s traffic moves through Loudoun County’s data centers.

Meanwhile, other data centers across the state have been approved and are under construction. Proposed data center campuses also face opposition, including in nearby Chesapeake, where hundreds of residents spoke against a planned data center in Great Bridge. Some Sandbridge residents voiced opposition against Globalinx’s project as well, but Twitt says there aren’t many options for alternate subsea landing locations.

“The only place to date that’s been good for subsea cables to come into Virginia is Virginia Beach,” he says. “So, it’s a great initiative, but it really is a Virginia initiative more than anything, and the need to have that traffic go all the way up to Ashburn is incredibly important.”

Subsea cables also will deliver ultrafast internet access to Hampton Roads, a capacity attractive to businesses, Twitt notes. Two of the incoming conduits already have committed tenants, but Twitt says he is not ready to disclose them. The cables will also attract more terrestrial telecom carriers, increasing competition in the area, a benefit to local consumers, he adds.

But the biggest benefit is building for the future, creating reliability and resilience to attract tech companies that see opportunities where cables land, Twitt notes. “What we’re doing is building infrastructure for the big guys.”

Virginia Beach at a glance

The annual Neptune Festival takes place at the end of the summer on the Oceanfront. Photo by Joey Wharton, courtesy Virginia Tourism Corp.

Virginia’s most populous city and the 43rd largest in the United States, Virginia Beach encompasses 310 square miles, with 38 miles of beaches along the Atlantic Ocean and Chesapeake Bay. A major East Coast tourism destination, Virginia Beach features a vibrant resort area on its Oceanfront. Along with tourism, major industries include defense, bio and life sciences, advanced manufacturing, maritime and logistics, IT and offshore wind energy. It’s also home to Naval Air Station Oceana, the East Coast base for the Navy’s strike fighter jet squadrons. Regent University and Virginia Wesleyan University are based in Virginia Beach, along with campuses for Tidewater Community College, Old Dominion University and State University.

Population
455,000
Top employers
Naval Air Station
Oceana-Dam Neck Annex
Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story
Sentara Health
GEICO
Stihl
Major convention hotels  
The Founders Inn and Spa
40,127 square feet of meeting space
245 rooms
The Cavalier Resort*
70,875 square feet of meeting space,
547 rooms
Holiday Inn Virginia Beach – Norfolk
22,000 square feet of meeting space,
307 rooms
Wyndham Virginia Beach/Oceanfront
16,247 square feet of meeting space,
244 rooms
The Westin Virginia Beach Town Center
11,266 square feet of event space,
236 rooms
Major attractions
Virginia Beach’s 3-mile Boardwalk in the city’s Oceanfront area attracts tourists from around the world. Virginia Beach Town Center is a centrally located, major mixed-use development with hotels, restaurants, shopping and offices. Visitors also enjoy the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center, which features live animal habitats and the six-story 3D National Geographic Theater. Other attractions include First Landing State Park, Cape Henry Lighthouse and the Military Aviation Museum.
Notable restaurants  
Becca Restaurant & Garden
American, contemporary, beccavb.com
Heirloom
Farm-to-table. heirloomvb.com
Orion’s Roof
Asian-fusion, orionsroofvb.com
Steinhilber’s
American, steinys.com
Tides Coastal Kitchen
Seafood, tidescoastalkitchen.com
Waterman’s Surfside Grille
American, watermans.com
Yiannis Wine & Food
Seafood, steaks, yianniswineandfood.com
*The Cavalier Resort includes three hotels: The Historic Cavalier Hotel, Marriott Resort Virginia Beach Oceanfront and Embassy Suites by Hilton.

Frederick prepares for data center development

Summary

Increasingly, data center developers are eyeing sites in parts of the commonwealth outside Northern Virginia, the largest data center market in the world.

Members of the Frederick County Board of Supervisors decided to put a game plan in place before those developers come to call.

“We wanted to be ready,” says Wyatt Pearson, planning and development director for Frederick County, which sits about 80 miles northwest of Washington, D.C., in Virginia’s Shenandoah region outside Winchester.

At an April 9 meeting, board members unanimously approved amending the county code to provide specific regulations for data centers. Previously, data centers were permitted in most county zoning districts as a by-right use, meaning board members didn’t get a vote.

Currently, Frederick has a single data center, called the Middletown Data Center. It’s a 43,400-square-foot operation.

“Because they’re so small, and because of where they’re located, we’ve never heard anything as far as concerns or issues with them,” Pearson says.

Last year, board members asked county staff to draft regulations for data centers in case bigger, louder operations set their sights on Frederick.

In preparation, county staff studied ordinances around the state, looking particularly closely at Loudoun, Fairfax and Prince William counties. Additionally, Frederick County consulted with Alexis Kurtz, a noise control engineer who is a principal at Washington, D.C.-based Trinity Consultants.

Under the amended ordinance, most zoning districts in Frederick require data center developers to seek conditional use permits, which requires going before the board. The county does have a technology manufacturing district where data centers could be built as a by-right use, but no land currently has that zoning, so developers would still need board approval.

Before getting that OK, a data center developer must now conduct site assessments evaluating the operation’s impact on water, agriculture, noise and other matters.

Once in business, data centers can test and operate generators only during weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. A noise study will also be required one year after a certificate of occupancy is granted and every five years after that.

Before voting in April, Frederick County Board Chair Josh Ludwig said the amendment to the ordinance may not cover everything to ensure data centers coexist peacefully with neighbors, but it’s a start.

“That way we have some protections established,” he said.

Southwest fish farm fights the currents

Pure Salmon won’t be purely salmon, but the proposed farm in still plans to raise fish by late 2028 or early 2029, company officials told local leaders.

Karim Ghannam, co-founder and chief investment officer of Singapore-based private equity firm , which backs the project, told the Board of Supervisors during an April 7 meeting that the farm will raise instead of Atlantic salmon. Ghannam, who spoke to supervisors through a video link, cited high costs as a reason for the switch, saying the change was “mainly driven by inflation and construction pricing in the U.S.” Steelhead are similar to salmon in appearance and flavor and are cheaper to raise, company officials said. That’s because the facility won’t have to process saltwater, spokesperson Lala Korall explains.

The menu change is the latest chapter in a project that will occupy 200 acres straddling Russell and Tazewell counties and could bring more than 200 jobs to a region charting a post-coal mining economic future, company officials have said.

Since being proposed in 2013 following a trip by Del. Will Morefield, R-Tazewell, to Israel, the fish farm has faced delays due to ownership changes, terrain challenges, sinkholes and rising costs. Local leaders initially expected fish to be produced by 2025, then by 2028. Some site preparation has occurred, and construction — which will start with the laying of 20 miles of underground pipes — should start later this year, with the first fish coming 3 1/2 years later, Pure Salmon Chief Operations Officer Paul Inskeep said.

Morefield told Russell County leaders that 8F, which took over the company from original owner AquaMaof in 2019, has spent $80 million so far on the project, and plans to spend a total of $300 million. will invest $4 million in water and sewer , and Russell County recently approved $423,000 to finish an access road to the site.

Morefield remains confident the facility will be a huge economic boon to Southwest Virginia despite the delays and lengthening timeline.
“It’s a transformational project,” he says. “It will attract other industries to the region and set a precedent for other companies. … We desperately need jobs. One cornerstone project can really start a movement that will only be positive for this area. For [8F] to stay committed is very encouraging.”

 

Officials envision new life for shuttered state campus

Summary

  • closed in 2020, costing the region 1,600 jobs and $87M.
  • plan envisions housing, retail, and light industry.
  • Site includes 98 outdated buildings, many with asbestos.
  • State allocated $6M for demolition to attract developers.

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-area leaders want to see a second act for about 386 acres that were once home to the , a sprawling state campus that housed people with intellectual and developmental disabilities for decades until the state shut it down in 2020.

The center’s closing also dealt an $87.1 million regional economic blow, according to Megan Lucas, CEO and chief officer of the Lynchburg Regional Business Alliance.

“When the training center closed, we lost 1,600 jobs,” Lucas says. “We lost contracts the state paid for to support the residents of the training center, including food services, laundry services, maintenance of the complex, security and health services. The people who worked at the training center lived in the area, and spent money on housing, groceries and various services. The closure of the training center was a significant economic loss.”

The center’s closure ended a dark chapter of eugenics-driven policies that began 110 years prior and included decades of forced sterilizations in the early 20th century.

In 2022, the alliance, and other partners released a redevelopment plan for the CVTC, envisioning the property being transformed into a mixed-use walkable neighborhood with room for light industrial use, commercial buildings, including restaurants, and housing, including multifamily and single-family homes.

Real estate and investment management firm JLL is selling the CVTC property for the state. The property listing describes the facility as “a prime redevelopment opportunity with extensive James River frontage and views of downtown Lynchburg.”

In March 2024, the state listed CVTC for sale, but didn’t attract the right buyer, according to Lucas. “We found in that first round that qualified developers weren’t responding because the site is filled with 98 buildings that are outdated,” she says.

The complex includes numerous buildings, totaling more than 900,000 square feet, built between 1912 and 1989, but because most contain asbestos, they won’t be candidates for preservation. In fiscal 2023, the state earmarked $6 million to help the property’s eventual developer with the demolition cost.

To make the property more desirable, this year the state agreed to give the $6 million instead to the Virginia Department of General Services to perform demolition work on the complex’s oldest buildings. “Any day now they’re going to start,” Lucas says.

 

Post GreenCity, Henrico tries again

Summary

  • Henrico opens new call for arena-anchored development plans
  • project collapsed amid lawsuits and unpaid land fees
  • Selected proposal expected by December; land transfer set for Jan. 2026
  • Property zoning allows mix of retail, hotel, residential, and office space
  • Legal dispute continues over $1M repurchase and property title

Following the collapse of the $2.3 billion GreenCity project, released in May a new call for developers to submit plans for an arena-anchored development.

Developers must submit their plans by July 28, and supervisors are expected to approve the chosen plan in December. After that, the 93-acre property would be conveyed to the winning development team in January 2026, with a 17,000-capacity arena expected to open in 2028.

The request for interest came while the developers of the failed GreenCity project are being sued by the Henrico County Authority and , the company that was set to operate the GreenCity arena.

In 2022, the county agreed to sell the property to the developers for $6.2 million, and the sale took place on Feb. 28, 2023.

After paying the county $1 million on time, the developers failed to pay the remaining $5.2 million due Feb. 28, the county’s complaint says, and the developers went into default March 13. At that point, Henrico said it would exercise its repurchase option on April 15, paying back the $1 million to the developers in return for the land.

But in a separate lawsuit, ASM Global claimed the developers owed an ASM subsidiary more than $1.5 million, and a Henrico County Circuit Court judge issued a summons to the EDA in April, seeking to garnish the $1 million repurchase fee. The developers filed a motion to vacate the judgment, and they’ve “refused to convey the property to the EDA … unless ASM agrees that the EDA may pay some or all of the repurchase price to [the developers] rather than to ASM,” Henrico says in its complaint.

, executive director of the Henrico Authority, confirmed May 27 that the county has not yet received the land.

Despite the legal turmoil, “I think there’s a high level of excitement to get this restarted,” Bickmeier says.

The property is zoned as a conditional urban mixed-use district that would allow development of an arena, office and retail space, hotels and residential units, giving prospective developers creative freedom, Bickmeier says.

Construction of residences on the adjoining 110 acres, known as Scott Farm, is set to start later this year, under the development of a Markel|Eagle Partners subsidiary, the county says.

$35B Capital One-Discover merger closes

Summary

  • closed its $35.3B Discover acquisition in May 2025.
  • The deal creates a credit card giant and passed federal approval.
  • Capital One agreed to $425M settlement, $265B in investments.
  • did not challenge merger despite concerns.

McLean-based Capital One Financial completed its $35.3 billion acquisition of Services in May, finalizing the merger of the credit card giants announced last year.

On April 18, Capital One received approval from the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to purchase Illinois-based Discover. The deal was announced in February 2024, and in December, shareholders at both companies approved it.

“This deal brings together two innovative, mission-driven companies that together are poised to deliver breakthrough products and experiences to consumers, businesses and merchants,” Capital One Founder and CEO Richard D. Fairbank said in a statement.

The all-stock acquisition, Capital One’s largest ever purchase, was under regulatory scrutiny. Two Capital One cardholders filed a federal class action lawsuit against Discover and Capital One in July 2024, claiming the megadeal would violate antitrust law, but the case was paused in October 2024, pending further action by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

In July 2024, Capital One committed to spend $265 billion over five years on lending, philanthropy and investment if the deal went through. Just before the closing of the deal, Capital One agreed to pay $425 million to settle with customers who were suing the bank, accusing it of cheating them out of higher interest rates applicable to the 360 Performance Savings account.

At the last minute, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, wrote to the Department of Justice, calling on its antitrust division to block the transaction.

“ and , which have enjoyed a duopoly, have a long history of alleged coordination, resulting in higher fees for customers and merchants,” Warren wrote. “Capital One has stated that it will move some, but not all, of its credit card volume to the Discover network, meaning it will be negotiating its interchange fees as a credit card issuer with Visa and Mastercard, while separately setting interchange fees on its own network. That is a recipe for coordination among the three networks.”

Gail Slater, the DOJ’s antitrust czar, determined that she didn’t have enough evidence to challenge the deal in court, according to media reports.

Three former Discover board members now serve on Capital One’s board of directors, as it expands from 12 members to 15. Capital One also intends to continue offering Discover-branded , in addition to Capital One cards.