A 20-unit apartment property in Norfolk sold for $3.1 million on March 20.
Located at 1314 and 1318 Little Bay Ave., the property has 20 one-bedroom units that are each 600 square feet. The units were built in 1970.
Tidewater View sold the property to Nouveaux Little Bay. Justin Ferguson, Altay Uzun, Theo Jolley and Jack Carroll with Marcus & Millichap‘s Hampton Roads and Richmond offices represented the seller.
A Days Inn in Salem sold for $3.1 million on March 26.
Located at 1535 E. Main St., the two-story hotel has 70 rooms. It was built in 1974.
Evergreen Hotels purchased the property from Devkison LLC, according to property records. Milin Mehta, Chase Dewese, Jack Davis and Joce Messinger with Marcus & Millichap‘s Charlotte Uptown and Charleston offices, in North and South Carolina respectively, represented the seller. Brian Hosey assisted in closing the transaction.
A 17-unit apartment property in Portsmouth sold for $2.4 million, Marcus & Millichap announced Tuesday.
Built in 1987, Effingham Green Condos has 17 two-bedroom, one-bathroom units across two buildings on 2 acres. The property is located at 1007 Green St.
Capps Equity sold the property to Nouveaux Effingham. Justin Ferguson, Altay Uzun, Theo Jolley and Jack Carroll with Marcus & Millichap’s Hampton Roads and Richmond offices represented the seller.
The pace of sales in Virginia’s housing market picked up in February, increasing 3.5% over February 2023, according to Virginia Realtors data released Tuesday.
In February, there were 6,733 home sales in the commonwealth, 228 more sales than this time last year. At the end of the month, there were 16,004 homes on the market, up by 1,446 active listings from a year ago — a 9.9% increase.
New listings also increased in February, totaling 9,729, which is up 1,395 new listings, or 16.7%, from February 2023. The increase is the largest influx of new listings Virginia has had since summer 2021, Virginia Realtors Chief Economist Ryan Price said in a statement. Additionally, about 64% of cities and counties around Virginia had more listings on the market in February than this time last year, indicating an increase in supply.
“This increase is a welcome signal to buyers, but inventory levels are still tight, and market conditions remain very competitive in most parts of Virginia,” Price said in a statement.
Homes in Virginia were on the market for a median of 15 days last month, down one day from the 16-day median reported in February 2023.
Home prices continue to rise as demand remains high. The statewide median sales price in February was $384,576, up more than $14,500, or 3.9%, from last year.
Pent-up demand and tight (though improving) inventory levels will likely “keep the market competitive as we head into spring, and prices will remain on an upward trajectory across most of the state,” Tom Campbell, Virginia Realtors’ 2024 president, said in a statement.
The Virginia housing market had 7,356 pending sales last month, up by 546 pending sales from last year, an 8% increase.
Mortgage rates moved slightly lower this week. For the week ending March 28, the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 6.79%, down 0.08% from the previous week, and the four-week average was 6.82%, according to Freddie Mac data.
“February’s uptick in pending sales and new listings indicates renewed interest from sellers and move-up buyers,” Virginia Realtors CEO Terrie Suit said in a statement. “If mortgage rates drift downward later this year, as they are expected to, we could see even more sales volume growth across Virginia.”
In a relatively short time, Josh Thomas has seen the Prince William County district he represents in the Virginia House of Delegates transform from farmland and residential neighborhoods to massive buildings filled with the digital infrastructure that stores, processes and distributes huge amounts of information across the global internet, from cloud computing for businesses to streaming media for home entertainment.
“This use of land is changing the character of the district,” says Thomas, a Democrat who was elected to his first term in the General Assembly last November. “Farmland is becoming industrial. That’s something residents didn’t sign up for. We need some type of guardrails.”
Thomas’ district is slated to become home to the Prince William Digital Gateway, which, if completed as planned, would be the largest data center complex in the world. The Prince William County Board of Supervisors approved the project to build the campus of more than 30 data centers on 2,100 acres next to the Manassas National Battlefield in December 2023 following a contentious 27-hour public hearing. One of the selling points of the potentially $40 billion project was the anticipated $500 million in annual local taxes it could eventually generate for the county, which already has 8.3 million square feet of data centers.
Regionally, 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.
Data centers have brought significant economic benefits to state and local coffers. According to the Data Center Coalition, the industry invested $37 billion in the commonwealth over just the past two years.
About 30% of Loudoun’s local budget comes from data centers, and officials estimate the industry will pay about $900 million in real estate and business personal property taxes for fiscal 2025, which begins July 1. “Our area is kind of used to [data centers] at this point and understands the benefits to schools and roads,” says Sen. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Loudoun.
And even more data centers are on the way.
“Virginia continues to distinguish itself as one of the most dynamic and important locations in the world for digital infrastructure that enables our innovation economy and meets the growing collective demands of individuals and organizations of all sizes,” says Data Center Coalition President Josh Levi.
Amazon Web Services, which invested $35 billion in Virginia data centers between 2011 and 2020, announced in 2023 that it plans to invest another $35 billion by 2040 to develop multiple data center campuses across Virginia.
The rampant growth of the data center industry has prompted a backlash from a range of environmental, conservation, historic preservation, climate advocacy and neighborhood groups up and down the Interstate 95 corridor.
This has resulted in some contentious local battles, often with political consequences. For example, in Prince William, Democrat Deshundra Jefferson, an opponent of unregulated data center growth, unseated the board’s incumbent at-large chair, Ann Wheeler, in a 2023 primary, largely over Wheeler’s support for the Digital Gateway project. County residents in January filed a lawsuit seeking to walk back the lame-duck board’s December 2023 approval of the Digital Gateway, just weeks before the new board took office on Jan. 1.
And in King George County, three outgoing supervisors voted in December 2023 to approve a $36 million tax rebate and tiered tax breaks for a $6 billion Amazon.com data center complex. But in January, a newly reconfigured five-member board — headed by a new chairman who had voted against the project — voted to renegotiate with Amazon, and also accepted the resignations of the county administrator and county attorney, although it was not clear that the resignations were connected to the Amazon deal.
Opponents argue data centers strain the state’s electric grid, consuming up to 50 times more power than typical commercial users, leading to increased costs for ratepayers. They also contend that data centers consume significant amounts of water, and negatively impact the character of nearby natural, historical and cultural resources and residential neighborhoods with noise pollution from massive HVAC units.
Advocates for data centers counter that the industry has endeavored to reduce centers’ environmental impacts and is willing to work with communities on the best placement for the facilities.
In response, Thomas and his General Assembly colleagues on both sides of the political aisle sponsored a multitude of bills in this year’s session seeking to place limits on data center development. Proposed legislation included requiring compliance with energy efficiency standards for tax credits, buffers between data centers and parks and residences, site assessment impacts on historical, agricultural and cultural resources, as well as water usage and carbon emissions and shifting the costs of additional electric demand to data centers.
None of the bills were approved, with most handed off to be included in a study of data centers’ impacts in Virginia by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, the state’s watchdog agency. JLARC plans to release that report late this year. Legislators welcome JLARC’s intensive look into data centers but are determined to keep up pressure on the industry and plan to submit more bills tackling data center development in the 2025 session.
“People in Prince William have not been heard by the industry,” says Thomas, who sponsored three bills during the 2024 session dealing with the placement of data centers. “If we can get at least one reform-related bill out, the tide will start to turn.” One of his bills, HB338, encouraging localities to perform site assessments at their discretion before approving data centers, was the only data center-specific measure to make it through crossover when bills introduced in one chamber cross over to be voted on in the other. A Senate subcommittee continued the bill to the 2025 session.
“I knew it would be a tough fight, but I was surprised by the immense power that the data center industry wields in Richmond,” he says. “The industry has vehemently fought any data center-specific bill. Their tactic is the JLARC study — [to] wait and fold all the bills into that.”
Thomas believes HB338 made it as far as it did because it proposed a standard set of data points, including impacts on carbon emissions and water quality, for localities to consider when approving data centers. An amendment weakened the bill from mandating to encouraging site studies. Still, he is heartened by bipartisan support for increased statewide regulation of data centers. The issue impacts both Democrats and Republicans, he says. “Northern Virginia has grown and pushed out farther and farther, so there are Republican areas that could be next.”
A House subcommittee also tabled a data center reform bill from another Prince William delegate, Republican Ian Lovejoy, that would have prohibited data centers within one-quarter mile of schools, parks or residential areas. Lovejoy, who was elected last November to represent western Prince William County, says data centers are being built adjacent to residential neighborhoods in his district. “These areas have been rezoned from residential to light industrial to allow data centers to go there. It violates Urban Planning 101 in that you don’t put industrial uses adjacent to residential areas.”
Both Thomas and Lovejoy stress that they’re not opposed to data center development in Virginia but believe safeguards are essential.
“The goal is not to kill the data center industry,” Lovejoy says. “Data centers in appropriate locations get overwhelming support, but we need to have reasonable bumpers in place so a balance is struck between the industry’s needs and its neighbors’ needs.”
Levi says the industry supports the JLARC study: “We remain committed to continuing to work collaboratively with legislators and other stakeholders to ensure positive economic, environmental and social outcomes while building and supporting Virginia’s 21st century economy.”
Thomas, who plans to submit more data center bills in 2025, including revisiting those tabled this year, is especially concerned about the environmental impacts of data centers. “If you turn on 35 to 37 data centers over the next 10 years, each one uses an immense amount of power,” he says. “Dominion Energy cannot give us a straight answer on whether they can provide that power with clean or renewable energy.”
About 95% of all new power plants Dominion Energy is building over the next two decades will be carbon-free — including “offshore wind, solar, battery storage and advanced nuclear” — while about 5% will be natural gas, states Aaron Ruby, manager of media relations for the utility. (See related energy story.)
Dan Holmes, legislative director for Clean Virginia, a clean energy advocacy group, believes unchecked growth of data centers could impact the state’s mandate to attain 100% renewable energy generation by 2050. He points out that Dominion Energy anticipates energy demands
doubling over the next 20 years as more data centers are built.
“That will have severe consequences,” he says. “It impacts future retirements of power plants and interconnection problems with renewables. Those are huge challenges.”
Increasing numbers of residents are demanding answers as local governments rubber-stamp data centers, Holmes says. “It’s hard for local governments to say no to massive data centers because of the [tax] revenue they bring. They’re offered huge revenue opportunities but are not prepared to address the large questions and are not experts on energy or the infrastructure these centers require. Some localities are just now understanding the challenges after they’ve approved these things.”
Gregory A. Riegle, a partner with McGuireWoods law firm, has represented data center developers and operators for 25 years and says the industry has evolved to embrace green technology and aesthetically pleasing designs.
“Localities are increasingly identifying places where the industry would be a good fit and defining locations where it would be welcome and [could] balance the benefits of the industry with the impacts to the locality,” he says. “The industry is willing to have a dialogue with communities to get the right use in the right place.”
Riegle believes the JLARC study will bring stakeholders together to address concerns. “It’s good that they are taking time to look at [the issue] cohesively,” he says. “More time may lead to a more informed process.”
However, he warns against the General Assembly taking a one-size-fits-all approach by implementing a uniform set of regulations. “Ultimately, localities have to decide what’s best for their community. What makes sense for Loudoun County is different from what makes sense in Henrico County. You have to trust local governments to balance the issues because ultimately local elected officials are responsible to their own community.”
In Loudoun, state Sen. Subramanyam worries about long-term impacts from data centers, including the possibility that the infrastructure may one day become obsolete. And if that happened, he asks, “where does that leave our communities if they become so reliant on data centers for revenue? Right now, with the advent of AI and the need for data storage, data centers are needed more than ever, but we’ll see what happens in 10 to 20 years.”
Subramanyam believes JLARC’s findings will provide support for this session’s tabled bills proposing data center regulations, including bills he sponsored requiring data centers to commit to energy efficiency standards and to use renewable power sources to qualify for sales tax exemptions, as well as making the industry financially responsible for additional power lines needed for their facilities instead of putting the burden on all ratepayers.
“Data centers, while bringing a lot of revenue to the counties they are in, take up a lot of power,” he notes, adding that he’s concerned consumers could see their utility bills double in the next decade as more data centers come online. “We want to make sure data centers are offsetting the cost of building additional power infrastructures.”
However, Dominion forecasts that its residential customers’ monthly bills will increase by less than 3% annually over the next 15 years. “For a typical residential customer, that would mean an increase from about $133 a month to about $174 a month over a 15-year period,” says Ruby. “That’s lower than the normal rate of inflation.” He adds that Dominion’s residential rates are 18% below the national average and 34% below the mid-Atlantic average.
While there is often a partisan divide over renewable energy, Subramanyam contends that Democrats and Republicans want to retain green spaces and undeveloped areas. “That desire is on both sides when it comes to conservation and ensuring that in any sort of business development, the people who live in that community are getting a good deal.”
Meanwhile, grassroots groups say they’ll continue to sound alarms about data center developments. The Virginia Data Center Reform Coalition, composed of more than 40 environmental, conservation, historic preservation and climate advocacy groups and community and homeowner associations, has vigorously campaigned for statewide data center regulations. “This was a good start,” says Julie Bolthouse, director of land use for the Piedmont Environmental Council, a leader in the coalition. “Unfortunately, it’s going to take longer than we hoped, but many people are becoming aware of these impacts.”
Bolthouse was especially encouraged that legislators from both sides of the aisle came together to support data center reforms. “We’re seeing a lot more legislators that have heard about the issues and have a vague understanding that data centers use a lot of energy and water, but definitely a whole lot more education is needed.”
The JLARC study will provide concrete details about those usage rates, she adds. “There’s never been a hard look at impacts to the environmental and infrastructure grid. The impacts are already piling up, and changes are needed right now to address them. “We’re going to keep sharing what’s going on and keep raising awareness that costs are piling up if the state doesn’t take action.”
Action will come, adds Lovejoy. “The data center issue doesn’t know Republican from Democrat. It affects our constituents, so we have no choice but to find common ground.”
Editor’s note: This story has been corrected and updated from the April 2024 print issue version, which contained incorrect information related to the King George County supervisors’ election and a proposed Amazon.com data center complex.
People shopping for a new car or truck often hesitate to buy an electric vehicle because there aren’t many public charging stations.
However, that situation will improve in Henrico County, which was awarded about $1.45 million in January through the U.S. Transportation Department’s Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant Program. The funds, along with a $363,200 county match, will be used to provide 38 EV charging ports at seven publicly accessible facilities.
“We do have 69 EV charging stations in Henrico, but they’re not in areas that are necessarily publicly available,” says Cari Tretina, chief of staff to the county manager. “What our grant application focused on was the areas that were underserved but also would best meet the [grant] metrics.”
She says it will take 12 to 18 months to work through the grant process and find a company that will ultimately install the stations and operate them on a revenue-sharing basis.
The recommended locations are Tuckahoe Area Library, Fairfield Area Library, Henrico County Government Center, Eastern Government Center, Eastern Henrico Recreation Center, Henrico Sports & Events Center and Short Pump Park.
Henrico is the only locality in Virginia to receive one of the 47 grants awarded this year through the program’s community charging track. The feds’ priorities are rural areas as well as low- and moderate-income neighborhoods with low ratios of private parking or high ratios of multiunit dwellings.
Virginia passed a law in 2021 requiring every new car sold in the state to be fully electric by 2035, and public EV charging stations are essential to increasing buyers’ acceptance of plug-in electric vehicles. The Richmond area, which includes Henrico, has 503 charging stations, according to PlugShare, an app that tracks public charging stations.
Adding seven stations in Henrico is “huge” and will help dealers market EVs, says Ralston King, vice president of legislative affairs for the Virginia Automobile Dealers Association. The VADA is doing everything it can to promote EVs, he adds, and the National Automobile Dealers Association just created a sales training and certification program for dealerships.
By 2030, an estimated 500,000 EVs will be on the roads in Dominion Energy Virginia’s service territory, up from 100,000 out of 7 million vehicles now. Dominion will be able to meet the demand because it factors that into its forecast for infrastructure needs, says Kate Staples, the utility’s electrification director.
Blue Ridge Regional Airport in Henry County has completed a larger apron for airplane parking and will soon extend its 5,002-foot runway to 6,000 feet — long enough to accommodate executive jets. A new terminal is also planned as part of a package of about $30 million in upgrades for the airport, according to Jason Davis, the airport’s managing director.
“We have multiple companies in the area that utilize what we have,” Davis says, “and we have to be able to meet the needs of those clients.”
The area’s biggest draws are Primland Resort, a 12,000-acre destination luxury resort and corporate retreat in Patrick County, and Martinsville Speedway, which hosts NASCAR Cup Series races and other events. Executives and clients of the area’s biggest employers also rely on the airport for transportation, says Davis.
The general aviation airport, which accommodates private and recreational aircraft, sees an average of 33 airplanes performing 66 takeoffs and landings each day, according to Davis.
Bad weather, however, sometimes means planes must divert to the Roanoke or Greensboro, North Carolina, airports. That’s a deterrent to busy executives and cuts into jet fuel sales, the airport’s top revenue source, Davis says.
Upgrading the airport “not only enhances accessibility for our guests but also elevates the overall experience,” says Primland’s general manager, Rajiv Malhotra.
The airport’s new apron, completed in October 2022, can now accommodate 25 to 35 jets, about triple the previous number, according to Davis. That project totaled $8 million, he says.
Work to shift part of Airport Road to make way for the runway extension began in October 2023 at a cost of about $5 million and should be finished this summer. Work can then begin on the runway extension, which will take about two years to complete and cost around $13 million, Davis says. He’s hoping to obtain 90% of the runway extension’s funding from the Federal Aviation Administration, 8% from the Virginia Department of Aviation and the rest locally.
The project’s final step will be to replace the airport’s circa-1987 terminal with a larger, modern facility that will include a pilot’s lounge, a conference room and Simply Suzanne’s Café, the airport’s restaurant.
“The new terminal will be a big improvement,” says Mark Heath, president and CEO of the Martinsville Henry County Economic Development Corp. “We consider it our front door for people who are traveling by plane.”
The Lynchburg region has seen the slowest job growth of any metro area in Virginia over the past three years, according to economic analyses, and it typically has a higher unemployment rate than the state average. But there’s more to the story, some officials say.
For instance, the Lynchburg region saw 23 inquiries from economic development prospects in 2023, and half of those companies made site visits, says Megan Lucas, CEO of the Lynchburg Regional Business Alliance.
While she acknowledges that none of those businesses have chosen Lynchburg for their projects yet, the level of activity is an indicator for future growth, says Lucas, who joined the alliance in 2016 and before that was head of the Region 2000 Partnership, an economic development organization serving Lynchburg and the surrounding counties of Amherst, Appomattox, Bedford and Campbell.
“The more we generate awareness and RFPs, the more we generate capital investment and jobs, so that’s really important,” she adds. “When I began here 10 years ago, those numbers were at zero. It is a united front of local economic developers, municipalities and our private-sector investors that are making this happen.”
And, more importantly, the past year has brought some major economic development announcements that are expected to bring hundreds more jobs to the Lynchburg region within a couple years.
Lucas is particularly bullish about “the thriving urban core with a dynamic rural ring” that characterizes the region, but she cautions that breakneck economic growth is not necessarily the most beneficial goal for the area.
“We will continue to see slow, steady growth, marching forward,” she says. “We believe in smart growth and are open to focusing on smart growth principles and strategies. We are not throwing the barn doors open and screaming for everybody to come in in a fast, unorganized manner.”
Positive signs aside, the Lynchburg metro- politan statistical area’s unemployment rate was 3.4% in November 2023, exceeding the state’s rate of 2.9%, according to the Virginia Employment Commission.
Lynchburg’s unemployment numbers aren’t a surprise. Over the past four years, the region has experienced major job losses across its three largest employment sectors: education and health; trade, transportation, and utilities; and manufacturing.
Joe Mengedoth, a regional economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, reports that manufacturing employment in the Lynchburg area has grown only 3.5% above pre-pandemic levels, while education and health services employment is 1% below where it was in February 2020. Sectors that have been flourishing most throughout the commonwealth — information technology and professional and business services — are underrepresented in Lynchburg, leaving the city and its surrounding localities unable to reap the rewards of that growth.
“[The] Lynchburg metro area is the slowest to recover since the pandemic,” Mengedoth says.
However, there’s a wrinkle even in the stats from the state and Old Dominion University’s Dragas Center for Economic Analysis and Policy, which produces the annual State of the Commonwealth report on Virginia’s economic outlook.
Lynchburg’s largest employer, Liberty University, is not included in employment statistics produced by the state, because of a religious exemption that allows the private evangelical Christian university to not participate in unemployment insurance. Employers paying that insurance, however, submit regular data that the U.S. Bureau of Labor uses to track jobs numbers.
Dragas Center director Robert McNab, who is also chair of ODU’s economics department, says Dragas’ economic report, which doesn’t include Liberty’s 8,000-plus workers in Lynchburg’s employment data, still captures Liberty’s activities in other ways and paints an accurate portrait of Lynchburg’s important trends.
Liberty officials, however, beg to differ. Liberty General Counsel David Corry, who previously served on the Lynchburg Regional Business Alliance board, says the university has been trying to get the state to count Liberty employees in their statistics, which would improve the city’s employment numbers.
“It made the Lynchburg region look terrible for a long time because our employees were never counted,” Corry says. “We look poor, we look underemployed, and that just wasn’t the reality.”
While the state hasn’t changed the way it collects employment information, Richmond-based Chmura Economics & Analytics included Liberty’s employment data in a December 2023 study conducted for the regional alliance. In that report, Lynchburg’s employment level stood at 111,696 in the third quarter of 2023, about 1,800 jobs below its pre-pandemic peak. Those results would double the region’s growth rate, according to Chmura Economics CEO and Chief Economist Chris Chmura.
Lucas agrees that “we need to do everything we can to make sure that regional data includes our largest employer. Liberty is our region’s economic engine. … As it relates to communicating an accurate regional economic picture, their data needs to be included.”
Lynchburg’s slow economic growth is best understood in the context of the state’s economy, McNab says. ODU’s 2023 State of the Commonwealth report found that Virginia’s economic growth was slower compared with North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida, and that Virginia’s growth is mostly centered in larger population centers along interstates 95 and 64, at
a distance from Lynchburg.
“The problem we’re seeing in the commonwealth is that people, incomes and activities are increasingly concentrated in the urban crescent of Northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads,” he says. “It’s really hard to move the needle when the economic center of gravity of Virginia continues to move towards Fredericksburg.”
Although McNab’s data showed Lynchburg with a 3.6% unemployment rate in December 2023, a 0.1% increase from December 2022, this isn’t the bad news it may seem at first, he says, because total nonfarm employment also rose 0.5% in the same period.
“This is a point of good news for Lynchburg,” McNab says. “It makes me suspect that real GDP growth in Lynchburg ticked up in 2023 because we see growth in the labor force and individual employment. And that tends to suggest that economic activity picked up.
“Across the commonwealth, we have relatively low unemployment rates, and we have had job growth in 2023 across metro areas, including Lynchburg,” he adds. “We’ve also seen rises in real wages and a recovery in median household incomes from the bout of inflation in 2022. This suggests to me that the prospects for growth in 2024 are broad.”
Other good news for the region included several major economic development announcements last year, led by nuclear energy company Framatome’s planned $49.4 million expansion in Lynchburg, which is set to create an estimated 515 jobs, announced in December 2023.
Centra Health launched a $500 million modernization of its Lynchburg hospital campus in May 2023, with a completion date set for fall 2027, and also in May 2023, power transformer manufacturer Delta Star announced a $30 million expansion of its corporate headquarters and plant in Lynchburg that is expected to create 149 jobs. And last October, lithographic print and custom envelope manufacturer Parkland Direct said it plans to expand its Bedford County facility, a $10 million investment creating an expected 41 jobs.
The Centra and Delta Star projects are on track and on budget, Lucas says, while Parkland Direct has not yet started construction, although it’s hiring more staff now.
These announcements came on the heels of earlier growth, including CloudFit Software’s recent completion of its $5 million renovation of downtown Lynchburg’s historic Carter Glass building to serve as its headquarters, bringing 78 jobs to the city. Also, Liberty University has revamped the River Ridge Mall, which it owns, through a $60 million renovation begun in 2019 — in contrast to many enclosed malls nationwide that have languished in recent years.
Also, says Lynchburg’s director of economic development, Marjette Upshur, there are more projects in the pipeline.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced last September that Lynchburg’s Economic Development Authority would receive a $500,000 state grant to transform a one-story former A&P grocery store downtown at 400 12th St. into a four-story, mixed-use building containing 10,000 square feet of retail space and 28 apartments. According to Upshur, residential tenants are expected to move in beginning in April or May, and the commercial space is scheduled for completion around September.
“We are currently working on several active competitive projects due to our efforts in site development and partnering with the private sector to market existing industrial and commercial buildings,” adds Upshur.
The LRBA also led a consortium to apply for a $500,000 grant last fall from the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s Tech Hubs program. The group didn’t win the grant, but Lucas notes, “we are continuing to build out our strategy” for creating the Nuclear Industrial Technology Commercialization Hub, or NITCH. The alliance has applied for a GO Virginia grant to assist with the initiative, which focuses on beefing up the area’s nuclear manufacturing industry and its workforce.
GO Virginia’s Region 2 allocated $240,192 to the alliance in March 2023 to create The Center for Entrepreneurship, which centralizes entrepreneurial support services at the alliance’s downtown Lynchburg office. Surrounding localities dedicated $187,035 in matching funds to support the project.
“At the Lynchburg Regional Business Alliance, our focus is commerce and free enterprise,” Lucas says. “We spend our time in that space working for the good of all businesses and industries that want to grow and be successful here. We always come down on the side of free enterprise and capitalism.”
The LRBA’s approach and the region’s relatively slow post-pandemic economic recovery have caused a minor amount of hand-wringing, and Bedford County conservative activist Isaiah Knight requested last September that the governing bodies of Lynchburg and Bedford and Campbell counties defund the alliance because its website once had a page devoted to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), although it has since been taken down, according to a September 2023 report in Cardinal News. Lucas explained at the time that the page was removed because many of its links were broken.
Last year’s kerfuffle did little to dampen the organization’s determination to continue its mission to promote business in Lynchburg, and most local officials remain in support of the alliance.
Asked about diversity initiatives earlier this year, Lucas emphasized LRBA’s broad-based outreach: “We have round-tables, meetings and a diverse membership in the Lynchburg Regional Business Alliance. We have diverse engagement. We walk the walk and talk the talk. It’s part of our philosophy, and we are engaged in commerce for everybody.”
Deputy Editor Kate Andrews contributed to this report.
Settled in 1757 on the James River in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Lynchburg lies at the intersection of U.S. routes 29 and 460 alongside neighboring Amherst, Bedford, Campbell and Appomattox counties. Lynchburg’s economy is dominated by education, health care and manufacturing. It is home to Liberty University, the city’s largest employer, as well as Randolph College, University of Lynchburg, Virginia University of Lynchburg and Central Virginia Community College.
Population
79,287 (2022)
Top employers
Liberty University
Centra Health
Lynchburg City Schools
City of Lynchburg
Framatome
Major attractions
Visitors can soak up history and culture at the free Lynchburg Museum; Point of Honor historic plantation; and Old City Cemetery, a 27-acre historic public garden. Families can head to Amazement Square children’s museum. Outdoors lovers will enjoy the James River Heritage Trail along the James River. Westward in neighboring Bedford County, visitors can find waterfront recreation at Smith Mountain Lake and great hiking and views at the Peaks of Otter.
Top convention hotels
Bella Vista Hotel & Suites 164 rooms, 7,200 square feet of event space
The Virginian Lynchburg, Curio Collection by Hilton 115 rooms, 6,753 square feet of event space
Hilton Garden Inn Lynchburg 126 rooms, 2,880 square feet of event space
La Quinta Inn & Suites by Wyndham Lynchburg at Liberty Univ. 120 rooms, 1,539 square feet of event space
Courtyard by Marriott Lynchburg 90 rooms, 637 square feet of event space
Boutique/luxury hotels
The Carriage House Inn Bed and Breakfast 49 rooms, 8,400 square feet of event space
The Craddock Terry Hotel & Event Center 44 rooms, 4,000 square feet of event space
Acorn Hill Lodge 10 rooms, 1 meeting room
Notable restaurants
Shoemakers American Grille American
shoemakersdining.com
The Water Dog Bar and grill
thewaterdog.com
Isabella’s Italian Trattoria Italian
isabellasitalian.com
The Dahlia Seafood
thedahlialynchburg.restaurant
RA Bistro American
rabistro.com
Kate Austin had a job waiting for her when she graduated last year from Christopher Newport University with a bachelor’s degree in business administration.
“I love it,” she says about her work as a tax associate at Keiter, a certified public accounting firm in Henrico County.
Unlike two of her friends, who are still looking for work — one with a degree in marketing and the other in graphic design — Austin, 22, is gainfully employed within her chosen career path.
“Outside of accounting, it’s very hard to find jobs, so I am very lucky,” she says.
While the tech industry is busy laying off workers, accounting firms are hustling to find people to fill their ranks, an ongoing problem.
According to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the staffing shortage of CPAs has been brewing for more than a decade, driven by an aging workforce and fewer young professionals entering the industry. In April 2023, the institute reported that 75% of CPAs working then were expected to retire in the next 15 years. What’s more, the number of CPA exam candidates dropped 36% from 2010 to 2021.
Upping the ante to entice more people into accounting jobs, firms are offering higher wages, flexible work options and financial assistance to pass the notoriously difficult professional licensing exam.
Austin took accounting classes in high school and worked as an intern during college, cementing her future. She had a full-time job offer before starting her senior year of college.
Although her goal is to become a CPA, Austin needs to complete extra college credit hours and pass the Uniform CPA Examination. Keiter has reimbursed her for study materials to take the exam. In the meantime, she plans to pick up extra coursework at a community college.
“It’s not unusual to hire people who haven’t passed the exam,” says Gary Wallace, managing partner at Keiter, adding that in the past, however, workers were typically hired only after earning the extra credit hours. Now, Wallace says, “we are more flexible.”
Keiter has one office, where most of its 200 employees work, except for 15 remote workers across four states, including Virginia.
“We have been very aggressive in hiring,” Wallace says. Keiter employs two full-time recruiters: one for entry-level associates and the other for experienced CPAs.
Wallace tells students contemplating accounting careers that it’s “a great profession that offers job security and the opportunity to learn a lot about business.” He notes that the heads of two Virginia-based Fortune 500 companies — CarMax President and CEO William D. Nash and Markel Group CEO Thomas S. Gayner — are CPAs.
The staffing shortage has been challenging for years, says Stephanie Peters, president and CEO of the Virginia Society of CPAs (VSCPA). “We’re seeing a little more stability,” she says. “It’s less of a crisis of capacity, but still critical.”
The number of newly issued CPA licenses in Virginia has slid about 35% since 2008, when 1,434 licenses were issued, compared with 940 licenses in 2023, according to the Virginia Board of Accountancy. During the same time period, the number of first-time CPA exam takers in the state fell nearly 49%, from 1,823 to 931 candidates.
Despite the drop in Virginians becoming CPAs, licensing requirements remain basically the same. CPA candidates must pass a four-part, 16-hour exam within a 30-month period (extended from 18 months in December 2023). They also must accumulate 150 college credit hours, the equivalent of a master’s degree (30 more hours than needed for a bachelor’s degree). Starting this year, CPA candidates will also choose a specialty category within the exam: tax, audit or information technology.
About half of all first-time test-takers fail the exam.
“The CPA exam is really difficult to pass,” says Gary Thomson with Richmond-based Thomson Consulting. “Your first couple years [in the workforce] are consumed with not only trying to learn a new job but getting the CPA exam passed.”
Austin hopes to complete her exam by 2025 and accumulate the necessary course credits by 2026.
The accounting industry staffing shortage stems not only from fewer students pursuing degrees in accounting — a problem exacerbated by a persistent false image of accounting as boring or nerdy — but also by the wave of retiring baby boomers, shrinking the pipeline at both ends.
The problem is so acute that some public companies have disclosed potentially weakened internal controls in their financial reports, including Raleigh, North Carolina-based Advance Auto Parts (formerly based in Roanoke). The car parts provider said it had identified a potential material weakness in its internal financial controls because of accounting staff turnovers during the fiscal quarter ending April 22, 2023.
The short supply has led to high demand.
According to a January report of the top remote jobs in the nation from hiring site FlexJobs, more companies were advertising remote jobs for accountants in 2023 than any other position, with employers willing to pay $100,000 to $200,000 salaries for more experienced workers.
In Virginia, the mean salary for entry-level accountants was $51,121, according to the Virginia Society of CPA’s 2020 Compensation & Benefits Survey, which was conducted before more recent wage spikes. “Salaries increase from there,” the report states, “with first-level supervisors making a mean of $75,110 and partners a mean of $210,780.”
The payoff comes from working a few years and gaining experience, industry experts say. But all levels — from entry to experienced — are seeing wage increases.
The profession has awakened to higher wages, Thomson says. “Payrolls are up 38% over the last three years.”
Respondents worked in tax services, followed by audit, consulting and outsourced accounting or bookkeeping (a growing field in response to shortages)
“A lot of accounting firms are offshoring work,” says Peters. Most offshore workers hail from India, South Africa and the Philippines, she adds, and firms are putting safeguards in place to protect clients’ financial information.
While the accounting industry is seeking to fill employment gaps, it is also wrestling with “the age-old ‘all-they-do-is-taxes’ assumption,” according to a 2023 Stockton University report.
“A major challenge we are working on is the image that the profession is boring,” Peters says. “That image isn’t true, and we are trying to counter it with new messaging.”
Dozens of programs have been implemented in the past couple years at the state and national levels — including a VSCPA scholarship program — to attract more students into the profession.
Jennifer Wold, managing partner in Virginia for Forvis, one of the nation’s largest public accounting firms, says accounting is a noble occupation. “It is just as prestigious as other marquee professions such as law and medicine.”
However, it is misunderstood.
“We have not done a very good job of explaining what accounting is all about,” says Royce Burnett, professor and chairman of the School of Accountancy at Old Dominion University.
“Trust me, accounting is not about math,” he says. “It is about connecting the dots. It’s taking data, transforming that data into information and providing that information to stakeholders so they can make value-oriented, social- and business-related decisions.”
Accountants are not solely number crunchers as they were in the past, experts say. Technology has taken over a lot of the grunt work. Rather, today’s accountants are data analyzers, business consultants, risk advisers, financial records managers and tax preparers.
Entry-level salaries may be low compared with what workers might see in other sectors, such as technology, “but they grow exponentially compared to other majors,” Burnett says.
The message is difficult to convey when college graduates see their peers in other jobs initially making more money, though.
“The historical perception of the type of work and how we work — 70 to 80 hours a week during the peak tax season — is not necessarily the coolest picture to someone in high school,” Thomson says.
“It’s much more advisory in nature,” Thomson says. “Being a CPA is like being a priest or rabbi for a firm. You know the inner workings and become trusted advisers and, in many cases, close family friends.”
Accounting firms are heavily invested in technology, automation and process improvements, which may be more attractive to younger workers and help bridge productivity gaps among a reduced workforce. Artificial intelligence in particular will play a part in the industry going forward, experts say.
It may redefine roles, but it will not replace CPAs, Peters says. AI will be used in accounting to gather more information and analyze large amounts of data.
“It will help with expectations of regulators and others who want more and better information,” she says. However, “you still need human beings to make judgments, look for anomalies and make sure programs are doing what they are supposed to be doing.”
The question remains, nevertheless, about where the industry is going to find those human beings.
Academia is reaching out to students who may be looking at other career fields, Burnett says, even to liberal arts and STEM students. “We are engaging in ways never done before to reach individuals and go beyond traditional business students.”
Mark Lehner, who grew up in Chesapeake, had his sights set on becoming a lawyer. As an undergraduate at Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, he sought courses to develop skills in preparation for law school. He vacillated between taking engineering classes or general business classes but settled on something more technical — accounting. He hasn’t looked back.
“I enjoy the logic of it, the puzzle-solving,” he says. In effect, he applies financial rules in a business setting as opposed to legal rules in a courtroom.
Lehner, now 24, graduated in 2021 with 150 credit hours for his bachelor’s degree in accounting; he then passed his CPA exam in less than a year. He works as an audit associate for Forvis in Norfolk. “I enjoy the analysis,” he says. “There is an art to business.”
For many, the barriers to becoming a CPA are daunting, considering the extra time and cost on top of a college education and, in many cases, a heavy student debt load.
“The economic price to get 150 hours can be a barrier when you compare it to other industries,” Thomson says.
Rather than tacking on a fifth year of college as many did in the past, candidates often can work for a firm while taking classes.
Lehner took a different approach. He crammed as many credit hours as he could into each semester. “It was a packed schedule, but you get into the rhythm.”
Forvis, which employs about 6,000 people in 38 states, hired 500 people nationwide in January, including 350 interns — who will stay with the firm through mid-April during the busy tax season — and 150 associates.
Wold credits Forvis’ stepped-up recruiting efforts and rapid growth among the reasons for its success in attracting talent. Created from the 2022 merger of BKD CPAs & Advisors and Dixon Hughes Goodman (DHG), Forvis is acquiring Paris-based Mazars’ U.S. operation in June to become Forvis Mazars, a top 10 global professional services network.
However, Wold allows, recruiting still “is not easy in this environment” of heated competition for top talent. Forvis has particularly relied on internships as an outreach vehicle to give students an opportunity to experience public accounting firsthand while the firm can evaluate their performance and build a relationship with them.
“Our goal,” Wold says, “is for everyone to be successful and return to campus with a full-time job offer of employment after graduation.”
McLean-based Capital One Financial announced plans in February to buy Discover Financial Services for $35.3 billion in an all-stock deal that would mark Capital One’s largest ever acquisition and make it the nation’s biggest credit card lender.
The transaction is expected to close in late 2024 or early 2025, according to the banks. At close, Capital One shareholders would own about 60% of the combined company, and Discover shareholders would hold approximately 40%.
However, the deal must receive federal regulatory approval to move forward, and the Biden White House has fought consolidation of large corporations, including the proposed $3.8 billion merger of JetBlue Airways and Spirit Airlines, which was called off in March after the airlines lost an antitrust lawsuit. Although it’s the first bank merger of this size proposed during President Joe Biden’s term, he enacted an executive order in 2021 encouraging federal agencies with authority over banks, including the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., to update their guidelines on banking mergers “to provide more robust scrutiny.”
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said in a statement following the Capital One-Discover announcement that “a rubber-stamped merger that makes powerful financial companies even bigger and more powerful will do nothing for families.” From both sides of the aisle, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, and U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, urged the Biden administration to block the deal, with Hawley charging it would grant Capital One “unprecedented powers to extort American consumers.”
If the merger goes through, Capital One would use Discover’s credit card payment network to process transactions, instead of relying on Visa and Mastercard platforms. Also, with Discover’s banking business included, Capital One would have more than $450 billion in deposits.
“From Capital One’s founding days, we set out to build a payments and banking company powered by modern technology. Our acquisition of Discover is a singular opportunity to bring together two very successful companies with complementary capabilities and franchises, and to build a payments network that can compete with the largest payments networks and payments companies,” Capital One Chairman, CEO and founder Richard Fairbank said in a statement.
Illinois-based Discover has a market value of about $27.6 billion. Capital One has a market capitalization of about $52.2 billion and reported $34.25 billion in 2022 revenue.
Deputy Editor Kate Andrews contributed to this story.
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