Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

VCEDA seed grants sow small business growth

Adam Patterson knew if his fashion design company was going to thrive in his hometown of Big Stone Gap, he needed capital — and a new sewing machine.

“Mine was so old, sewed crooked stitches,” says Patterson, founder of Jones-Hurst Designs.

Patterson received a $10,000 grant in September from a program that has been a boon for entrepreneurs in a seven-county corner of Southwest Virginia. The money allowed him to buy a shiny new Husqvarna Viking Designer Epic 2 sewing machine, on which he sews custom-made clothing out of recycled denim. It also allowed him to move his business from weekly pop-up locations to a storefront.

Since launching in 2017, VCEDA’s Seed Capital Matching Fund has awarded $1.8 million to 194 , creating nearly 700 jobs in locally owned businesses across varying fields, including restaurants, coffee shops and businesses providing services like drone photography or leatherworking. are geared to startups in , alternative , information , construction trades and tourism.

“We felt like this was the missing component in ,” says Jonathan Belcher, VCEDA’s executive director. “There were no grant programs to spur small business growth in the region.”

More than 90% of the businesses survive their first two years, well above the national rate. 

The program’s economic impact has been notable. A 2021 study conducted by Virginia researchers found that VCEDA’s first $1 million in local seed generated $34.2 million in economic impact. Additionally, the program delivered $9.4 million in wages.

Applicants for the grants first work with the Small Business Development Centers at Mountain Empire and Southwest Virginia community colleges to develop business plans, conduct market research and come up with matching funds in the form of cash, loans or equity. Individual grants are capped at $10,000.

When Henry Morris lost his job in wholesale food sales during the pandemic, he and his wife, Renee, used a $6,500 seed grant to open Henry’s Produce and Market in Duffield. The funding helped them purchase a walk-in refrigerated cooler where they store apples, peaches and other produce in bulk. The business has grown from one employee to six.

“We work six days a week, and they are long, hard days,” Renee Morris says. “I ask Henry all the time if he’d like to go back to his old job, and he says, ‘Not a chance.’”  

Defense tech startups close major funding rounds

Venture capital firms are betting big on two Northern Virginia-based contracting that are promising high- solutions to military challenges. In August, McLean-based Defcon announced had raised $44 million in led by San Francisco investment firm Bessemer Venture Partners. The same month, Parry Labs in Alexandria raised $80 million in its first institutional , led by Capitol Meridian Partners.

That both are headquartered in NoVa should come as no surprise, says Defcon AI CEO Yisroel Brumer, a quantum physicist who spent 15 years at the Pentagon before becoming a founding partner of Defcon AI’s parent tech incubator, Red Cell Partners. “The quality of senior leaders in the area is outstanding,” he says. 

Red Cell launched Defcon AI in 2022 to address the Department of Defense’s need to field operational at scale to maintain advantages on the battlefield. Defcon’s first product is Artiv, an operational mission planner for contested logistics environments.

“There is a challenge integrating real operational defense expertise with real revolutionary software engineering. There’s a lot of organizations that have one of those two things. Very few organizations have both of them,” Brumer says. “And that’s what Defcon was really stood up to do: to bring in four-star generals, operators, people who deeply understand defense operations and the kind of revolutionary software engineering you see in Silicon Valley and create a culture where the two could talk to each other, which is actually the hard part and where the pain is.”

Meanwhile, Parry Labs was co-founded in 2015 by defense sector veteran-turned-entrepreneur John “JD” Parkes, who previously worked as airborne mission lead in the DOD’s Office of Strategic Capabilities.

“We wanted to make integrating and installing and implementing new software and systems on military applications significantly cheaper and faster. Today we call that or call ourselves a digital system integrator,” Parkes says. “What we’re focused on is delivering zero-trust environments over-the-air updates, really good standardization of data, and then easy accessibility to these environments for mission and safety critical environments.” 

The two companies are contributing to a record-breaking year in which startups in the U.S. raised $2.5 billion by August, according to data from Crunchbase.com. That figure surpasses the 2023 total of $2.1 billion and is on track to surpass 2022’s record high of $2.6 billion.

Roanoke City Council approves zoning changes — again

A do-over in the Star City is done. At least for now.

On Sept. 16, voted 6-1 to adopt zoning amendments that will allow greater density and eliminate single-family-only housing

City Council adopted similar zoning amendments in March, but several city homeowners, including Republican mayoral candidate David Bowers and former City Attorney Bill Hackworth, filed a lawsuit charging that city officials did not follow proper procedures prior to the vote. The suit remains pending, according to Maynard Sipe, the plaintiffs’ attorney.

Roanoke officials responded to the lawsuit by starting over and reopened discussion on the matter through the summer. In August, Roanoke’s planning commission reversed course, opting by a 3-2 vote not to recommend the changes. But City Council, which isn’t bound by the commission’s vote, adopted the proposal at its September meeting following lengthy public comment.

Several Roanoke homeowners filed a second lawsuit Oct. 16 at Roanoke City Circuit Court charging that Roanoke City officials failed to provide a sufficient summary of the zoning amendments in public notices about public hearings for this round of zoning amendment adoption and other issues.

Roanoke isn’t alone in eliminating single-family zoning, according to Alexander von Hoffman, senior research fellow at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.

“The idea is that by allowing demand to flow freely without the constriction of the zoning regulations, you’d be able to get increased housing … [and] produce more units that are less expensive,” von Hoffman says.

In September, a circuit judge overturned changes that eliminated single-family zoning in Arlington County, citing procedural issues and other problems. A lawsuit challenging Alexandria’s move to end single-family-only zoning appears headed for court.

Roanoke’s previous single-family-only residential zones were a holdover from the city’s Jim Crow era, according to acting Assistant City Manager Chris Chittum, who announced plans to retire in October. Paired with the city’s urban renewal projects that tore down historically Black neighborhoods to make way for Interstate 581, the civic center and a post office, Roanoke became one of the most segregated cities in America. “‘s pretty insidious how well it’s worked,” Chittum says.

The rewritten zoning code makes it easier for developers to build multiunit parcels in residential neighborhoods. It also made other changes, including reducing the amount of lot area required for dwellings.

But don’t expect Roanoke to change drastically overnight. The city issued 98 residential building permits in 2023, and it expects to see fewer than 40 additional units annually following the changes.

“The way our housing market is,” he says, “every single unit that we add is helpful.”  

Editor’s note: This story has been updated from the print version. 

Staying nimble

Cvent’s goal is “getting the friction” out of meeting and event planning, says McNeel Keenan, vice president of product management for the Tysons-based global event marketing and management company.

To do that, Cvent offers software products that handle registration, check-in, budgeting, marketing, speaker and exhibitor management for in-person, hybrid and virtual events. Hotels use tools such as Cvent Passkey to manage room blocks and Cvent Diagramming to manage multiple large events.

These products can streamline many time-consuming tasks, like responding to request for proposal (RFP) applicants, Keenan says. However, Cvent’s -powered tools “help craft a faster response,” he notes. Also, the company offers an annual user conference that includes training camps, tours and meetups.

This year marks Cvent’s 25th year in business. In 1999, CEO Reggie Aggarwal started the company with six employees, and became profitable for the first time in 2004. Four years later, the company started the Cvent Supplier Network of venues. Then in 2013, Aggarwal took the company public, but in 2016, the company was purchased by Vista Equity Partners and taken private again.

With the pandemic came an important shift for all meeting planners and other industry professionals, including those at Cvent. The company began hosting virtual and hybrid events on a new virtual event platform launched in August 2020, and at the end of 2021, it went public for the second time. At the end of 2023, Cvent had about 4,800 employees and 22,000 customers worldwide, and it was back to in-person events.

And the deals weren’t yet done; in 2023, private equity firm Blackstone purchased Cvent for $4.6 billion, and in 2024, Cvent made several significant purchases.

In January the company acquired Jifflenow, which schedules and manages B2B appointments, and iCapture, which captures website visitor information for leads.

In June, it acquired Reposite to power the Cvent Vendor Marketplace, a network of more than 40,000 vendor offerings. 

And in September, Cvent bought Splash, an event marketing company that Keenan says is geared to “simpler, field marketing events,” such as lunches, dinners and parties that take place alongside larger trade shows.

Smooth sailing

Aggarwal said in a statement that the company’s M&A strategy is driven by customers, “and we hear all the time that our customers want one platform, seamless data flow and an improved attendee and customer experience. Each of our recent acquisitions has been a strategic move to address these needs and expand our capabilities to better support our tens of thousands of customers.”

Organizations want the flexibility to run a mix of formats and event types, which optimizes their budgets, “something that is even more compelling in an uncertain or challenging macroeconomic environment,” according to Aggarwal.

is the next frontier in events management, “but candidly, I think we’re still a ways away from seeing what it can really do for our industry,” he says. “Cvent focuses on the practical application of AI across its platform because we want to make it easy for all of our customers to harness the power of AI in their day-to-day lives.”

The company has already rolled out
20 AI-related initiatives — including predictive modeling for registration planning, personalization tools, AI-powered event diagramming and chatbots.

In-person events continue to be the priority, Aggarwal says. The reason is simple, he added: 65% of planners say in-person events are more valuable to their stakeholders now when compared with 2019.

New York investment platform CAIS used Cvent’s software to support its 2023 Alternative Investment Summit. Photo courtesy CAIS

“That said, virtual events and hybrid events are still core aspects of a successful total event program,” Aggarwal notes.

Coming out of the pandemic, Keenan says, organizers have learned that a hybrid event can require the work of running both a virtual event and an in-person one.

As a result, “ambitions are pared back,” he says. “Now planners are making the conscious decisioning to dial it back a bit. They’re thinking of their budget. People are asking what makes sense, and so we’re seeing more balance.”

Since the pandemic, organizers also have learned that “people now expect the content to be recorded. You can capture it and get more value,” he says.

Zero to 60

CAIS, a New York-based alternative investment platform for independent financial advisers, “has gone from zero to 60” using Cvent products, according to Andrew DePaul, its senior vice president of marketing.

“Our first event with Cvent three years ago was basically a trial run, an internal meeting in Brooklyn,” DePaul says, but there was plenty of work on the line, because CAIS held more than 100 events in 2022.

So far, DePaul says Cvent’s products have helped boost attendance at its 2022 and 2023 Alternative Investment Summit; the third summit was scheduled in October, and “I think we will break records,” DePaul says.

What helps event planners break attendance records is what Keenan calls the “bespoke experience” Cvent offers. The big thing, he says “is to enable organizers to personalize the experience” for each attendee.

In CAIS’s case, the Attendee Hub app, which connects attendees to all the content, networking and sponsors the event has to offer, is especially helpful, according to DePaul. “Through Hub’s one-on-one feature, people can see everybody else attending. They can connect and have a meeting on their own. We’ve ramped it up and we’re seeing better engagement. We definitely will be all-in again next year.”

CAIS is making plans to take its summit on the road and has been hosting smaller scale events such as round table dinners. Cvent’s products are useful for small events — and for small businesses, DePaul says. “They’re good at working with you, so you’re buying the things you need. You don’t have to do a whole package.”

Two products coming online soon are aimed at smaller users, such as nonprofit organizations.

Cvent Essentials, which is in beta, is a pared down version of the Cvent platform that is designed for occasional users and has templates to support various types of meetings with different support and resources.

Also in the works is Event in a Box, a check-in and badging program that can be used for events with up to 250 attendees.

Cvent’s wide variety of products was on display at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in southern France.

No, Keenan says, “we were not running the film festival itself,” but big sponsors such as Spotify and TikTok find new markets for themselves at Cannes by “running their own events on the side.” That’s where Cvent comes in.

Energy storage projects slated for Greensville, Pittsylvania

Two projects proposed for would help augment the area’s power capacity, diversify the region’s tax base and boost the regional economy, industry representatives say.

Virginia wants to build a liquified storage facility on more than 20 acres that the -based Fortune 500 utility owns next to its natural gas power plant, straddling the line with , according to a June filing with the Virginia State Corporation Commission. The $548 million facility, which would open in late 2027, would employ 400 construction-related workers and culminate in six full-time jobs, bringing $17.5 million to the local economy, and boosting combined county tax revenues by $35.5 million over 25 years, according to Dominion.

The storage facility would provide backup fuel supply for Dominion’s Greensville and Brunswick power stations during periods of extreme weather or peak demand, enough to power 700,000 homes in the region for up to four days, says Dominion spokesperson Jeremy Slayton. He points to Winter Storm Elliot, which in December 2022 knocked out power for millions of electricity customers along the Eastern Seaboard, as well an early 2021 deep freeze in Texas that led to hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars in economic losses.

“We see those types of incidents happening, and we know that we can’t allow that to happen for our customers,” Slayton says.

Separately, in July, North Carolina-based Strata Clean Energy received approval from the Danville-Pittsylvania Regional Industrial Authority to lease 85 acres at the 3,528-acre Southern Virginia Megasite at Berry Hill to build a lithium-ion battery storage facility on an up-to-4-acre pad that would connect to an Appalachian Power substation.

Strata Director of Development Adam Thompson says the project, which would employ only a handful of workers, is in a “holding pattern” while officials work to attract other customers to Berry Hill, but construction could start in 2026.

Although both projects won’t create many permanent jobs, those positions will likely be well-paying for the region, says Bryan David, program director for the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. Localities in Southern Virginia are working “as hard as [they] can to transform the economy” by diversifying their tax bases, he says, and “these types of investments are incrementally one more step toward that goal.”  

Construction begins on Carilion Taubman Cancer Center

Of the donors, health professionals and area leaders who turned out for Wednesday’s for the Carilion Taubman Cancer Center, Orion Moses, age 9, commanded the most attention. 

Doctors diagnosed Moses, who lives in Elliston, with leukemia at age 5. After enduring three and a half years of chemotherapy, he is now cancer free. 

“I think that the people at Carilion and the clinic are very kind,” he told the crowd who gathered under a tent on the Carilion Health Sciences and Campus in on Wednesday. “They took really good care of me … I am really glad they get this new building. I know will help other patients fight and win.”

Carilion has raised $74 million toward its $100 million fundraising goal for the cancer center set to be completed in 2027, Nancy Howell Agee, Carilion’s CEO emeritus, announced Wednesday. 

Former Advance Auto Parts CEO Nicholas Taubman, a past U.S. ambassador to Romania, and his wife, Jenny, gave $25 million to the project, which will bear their name. 

A man in a suit and a woman wearing green wear white construction helmets.
Former U.S. Ambassador Nicholas F. Taubman and his wife, Jenny. Photo by Beth JoJack

Carilion employees raised an additional $1 million for the building, following in the footsteps of Agee, who, along with her husband, Steve, kicked off fundraising for the effort with a $1 million gift in 2019. 

As Agee showed off a rendering of the facility to Wednesday’s attendees, she noted her brain doesn’t work in feet or yards. 

“People say to me, ‘How big is it going to be?’ I say, ‘Well, big enough,’” said Agee, who was succeeded by Steve Arner as president and CEO of at the beginning of October. 

Big enough, it turns out, is a six-story building. 

HDR, an employee-owned design firm with headquarters in Nebraska, worked with Carilion oncology teams to design the 257,000-square-foot building, which Agee described as “innovative” and “easy for patients to access.” The facility, she added, will provide “a beautiful environment for collaboration, hope and healing.” 

An illuminated staircase, visible from I-581, will be lit up in different colors to signify different types of cancers.  

“For instance, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and our beacon, if it was here today, would be shining pink,” Agee explained.

Currently, Carilion treats about 3,500 patients for different forms of cancer each year, according to the . 

The Carilion Taubman Cancer Center will replace a 41-year-old building on South Jefferson Street. Blue Ridge Cancer Care, which partners with Carilion to provide medical and radiation oncology services at the existing facility, will continue to provide care in the new facility. 

“Beautiful buildings are important, but it’s what each of you do, who work in this building, that makes all the difference,” Agee said. 

The goal, Agee said, is for the new cancer center to be named a National Cancer Institute-Designated Cancer Center, a designation for facilities that “meet rigorous standards for transdisciplinary, state-of-the-art research focused on developing new and better approaches to preventing, diagnosing and treating cancer.”

The new facility should allow for more patients to be treated. Carilion’s oncology program will expand to include new services, including nurse navigators who will work to shorten the time between a patient’s cancer diagnosis and treatment.

The center will also bring advanced technology, clinical trials and medical practitioners of different disciplines to a single location, according to the health system.

Agee noted that Virginia is deepening its commitment to cancer research. “Together, we’re advancing care and research, while also driving important throughout our region and the Commonwealth,” she said. 

Del. Terry Austin, R-Botetourt, was among the attendees at Wednesday’s service. 

“It’s a great day in the Valley,” said Austin, who also sits on the Carilion Clinic Board of Directors. When Austin was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2018, he received treatment through Carilion Clinic, the University of Virginia and the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. 

From his experience, Austin said he saw firsthand that Carilion and Blue Ridge Cancer Care have professionals with the skills to fight cancer. “We just need the proper facility to do it in,” he said. 

Powhatan approves $2.7B data center campus

Powhatan County has approved an estimated $2.7 billion campus on 119.9 acres partly bordering Chesterfield County.

The county’s board of supervisors voted 3-2 during its Oct. 28 meeting for a rezoning and a conditional use permit allowing the proposed development to move forward.

The developer, Newport Beach, California–based Province Group, estimates that its capital investment at full buildout would be $3 billion, but county staff estimates the full investment would be $2.7 billion based on Richmond region square footage values. The project buildout is expected to take five years at minimum.

The data center campus, located at 1318 Page Road, would have three detached data centers with a combined 1.525 million in floor area square footage, as well as six supporting structures. About 20% of the property — roughly 24 acres — will be designated open space.

The conditional use permit that the board approved will allow the developer to build structures up to 75 feet high, rather than being capped at a height of 45 feet.

The development would create 150 to 200 on-site jobs and up to 600 indirect jobs, according to a presentation from the applicant during the board meeting, although a Mangum Economics study projects would create 165 direct jobs.

Based on the Mangum study, data centers on the property would directly pay $17 million in taxes to the county by 2034, and the county’s total annual tax revenue, including indirect taxes from activity the data centers support, would be $21.5 million.

Harold L. Ellis III and Christina W. Ellis own the land. They previously proposed a mixed-use development including up to 249 units for the property, which the county board of supervisors rejected in 2019.

The Planning Commission held a work session for the data center campus proposal in May. It recommended denying the rezoning and conditional use permit in its Sept. 3 meeting.

Several county residents who spoke during the public hearing period and a supervisor said they were concerned that the project had no end user and has a provision for numerous possible other uses.

In its proffer, the developer outlined an 18-month period during which the only approved land use would be the data center campus, but after that period, the property could be used for data centers or for one or more of the 45 permitted uses it listed.

To secure an end user, “we need to go to market,” Province Group CEO Mark Kerslake said to the county board. “In order to go to market, we need our approval. The users — occupiers, as we call them — have many sites being thrown at them. They won’t engage unless we have zoning approval.”

In response, Powhatan Supervisor Mark Kinney said the $17 million tax revenue projection depends on the project being fully built out.

“The $17 million is projected, and that’s if all three buildings are built out, they get a user that wants all three [and] all three buildings are packed to capacity with servers. Well, you know what comes after ‘if’ — ‘but,’” he said. “But what if they get a smaller user and there’s only one building, and [the user] only uses half the server capacity of that current building? Well, then your revenue goes down.”

In Northern Virginia, around 300 data centers are sprawled across Loudoun, Prince William and Fairfax counties, with the majority in Loudoun. The Ashburn area in Loudoun is home to the world’s largest concentration of data centers, a zone known as Data Center Alley, through which passes more than 70% of the world’s internet traffic. The Prince William Digital Gateway, if completed as planned, would be the largest data center complex in the world.

Central Virginia, though, is also seeing increased data center development. Henrico County is home to QTS Data Centers’ network access point, as well as Meta data centers. QTS also purchased 622 acres from Hourigan after the land was rezoned to light industrial.

Data center opponents argue the centers strain the state’s electric grid. has previously estimated that Virginia data centers’ demand for electricity will jump from the 2.8 gigawatts it was in 2023 to 13 gigawatts by 2038.

The approved Powhatan data centers would use an anticipated 300 megawatts of electricity at full capacity. Dominion will supply the facility, which will require building a substation.

According to a Dominion letter to the county’s manager, the Fortune 500 utility expects distribution line upgrades to take about 18 months, for an and upgrade of the existing substation to take about three years and for the construction of a new substation and transmission line to take about four years.

Earlier this month, Dominion Energy Virginia and Amazon.com announced they’d entered into an agreement to explore potential development of small modular nuclear reactors at North Anna Power Plant in Louisa County that could bring “at least 300 megawatts of power to the Virginia region.”

Electro-Mechanical launches $16.5M expansion in Washington County

— an electrical equipment manufacturer headquartered in — will invest $16.55 million to expand in , announced Tuesday. 

“Electro-Mechanical’s significant in Washington County demonstrates the strength of Southwest Virginia’s sector and business climate,” Youngkin stated in a news release.

The company plans to add a 200,000-square-foot facility in Washington County, creating over 109 jobs, according to the governor’s office. Electro-Mechanical hopes to complete the expansion in 2025, according to spokespeople for the company. 

Electro-Mechanical also has three manufacturing facilities in Bristol, one in Canada and another in Mexico, they noted. About 520 of the company’s 700 employees work in Bristol.

“We are excited to once again be expanding our Bristol, Virginia, operations,” Howard Broadfoot, president and CEO of Electro-Mechanical, said in a statement. “We have experienced tremendous growth in our business over the past several years and this additional manufacturing capacity will allow us to better serve our customers for years to come.”

Electro-Mechanical’s roots date to 1958 when Frank Leonard opened an electrical apparatus repair shop on Bristol’s Williams Street, according to a company timeline.

Initially, the business primarily served the textile industry, but when a major client went out of business in the late 1960s, Electric Motor Repair and Sales refocused its business on serving the region’s mining industry. In 1971, the company changed its name to Electro-Mechanical and launched Line Power, a division providing electrical distribution and control apparatus.

Electro-Mechanical purchased Federal Pacific Transformer in 1986 and moved the company from Chicago to Bristol. That division offers dry-type transformers and medium-voltage switchgear.

Graycliff Partners, a New York investment firm, purchased Electro-Mechanical in 2021. The next year, Electro-Mechanical acquired Mirus International, a Canadian manufacturer of specialized power quality improvement products.

Graycliff Partners sold Electro-Mechanical to funds managed by California’s Oaktree Capital Management in March.

Virginia competed with Tennessee for the Electro-Mechanical expansion. The Virginia Partnership worked with Washington County to secure the project for Virginia.

Youngkin approved a $300,000 grant from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund, a state incentive to spur economic development, to assist Washington County with the project. Additionally, Electro-Mechanical is eligible for state benefits through the Virginia Enterprise Zone Program, a state and partnership designed to promote job creation and investment. The Virginia Talent Accelerator Program, created by VEDP in collaboration with higher education participants, will provide recruitment and training services. 

John C. Asbury tapped to lead American Bankers Association

The has elected John C. Asbury, president and CEO of -based , as the organization’s chair for 2024-25. 

“Through his bold leadership and dedicated service to our industry, John has proven that he is just the right person to step into this critically important role,” Rob Nichols, president and CEO of the ABA, said in a news release Tuesday. “His tremendous background and experience at banks of all sizes will be an asset as ABA works to ensure that all banks can continue to meet the needs of their customers, clients and communities in an increasingly challenging regulatory environment.”

The American Bankers Association represents the banking industry, which is composed of small, regional and large banks that together employ approximately 2.1 million people, safeguard $18.8 trillion in deposits and extend $12.5 trillion in loans.

With more than 35 years of experience in banking, Asbury has led Atlantic Union since 2016. A native of Radford, Asbury launched his career as a commercial credit officer at Wachovia Bank & Trust and went on to serve  in a variety of executive roles including as president and CEO at New Mexico’s First National Bank of Santa Fe.

Previously, Asbury was chairman of the Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America and the Virginia Bankers Association. He serves on the Port of Virginia Board of Commissioners, where he currently chairs the port’s growth committee. He has a degree in business from and a MBA from William & Mary. 

has 129 branches in Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina.

Earlier this month, Atlantic Union announced its $1.6 billion purchase of Maryland’s Sandy Spring Bank. The merger agreement would create a combined bank with $39.2 billion in assets as of Sept. 30.