From the Editor: Top Projects & Real Estate Deals

Virginia Business’s inaugural Virginia Top Projects & Real Estate Deals recognition program offers a moment to pause and celebrate the extraordinary work shaping the commonwealth’s built environment — spotlighting the innovative buildings, facilities and transactions reshaping Virginia’s landscape and honoring the teams who made them reality.

Our 2026 program features 18 Top Projects, 11 Top Real Estate Deals, and seven Best of the Best company awards recognizing the outstanding contractors, architects, engineers, interior designers, engineers, brokers and subcontractors behind the work. Together, these awards reflect the remarkable depth and range of Virginia’s commercial construction and real estate activity during 2025 and early 2026.

This year’s Top Projects honorees include major endeavors like Atlantic Park in Virginia Beach. The largest public-private partnership in the city’s history, Atlantic Park introduced North America’s first Wavegarden surf lagoon alongside a new entertainment venue. And in Danville, the transformation of the historic White Mill textile complex into Dan River Falls brought new life to a site that once employed 14,000 workers and sat vacant for years.

The Top Real Estate Deals section is equally compelling, featuring deals like Chesterfield Economic Development’s work to assemble more than 1,200 acres across nine confidential transactions — land that Google ultimately revealed would anchor billions of dollars in data center investment.

Whether you’re drawn to the engineering ingenuity behind a world-class surf lagoon, the civic ambition of a converted 19th-century textile mill, or the complexity of a multiparty confidential land assemblage, this publication has something for you.

This year’s Top Projects & Real Estate deals honorees will be celebrated at a July 28 awards dinner at Independence Golf Club in Midlothian. Congratulations to this year’s honorees!

Richard Foster,
Associate Publisher & Editor, Virginia Business