Page 2406 – Virginia Business

Just a few minutes away from Middleburg’s main drag on West Washington Street, one of the newest luxury resorts in the U.S. is taking shape. Sheila Johnson’s $100 million plus, 168-room Salamander Resort & Spa in on schedule to open Aug. 29, just in time for Labor Day weekend.

It’s situated behind Johnson’s gourmet store, Market Salamander, down a long and winding drive that transports visitors to what looks like an equestrian estate. A grand lawn and circular drive set off the resort’s exterior of stucco, slate and fieldstone. While the outside is finished, workers still are toiling on interior finishes.

“We’re coming down the home stretch. It’s about 85 percent complete,” said Prem Devadas, president of Salamander Hotels and Resorts, Johnson’s hospitality company that owns a portfolio of several properties. Once the resort opens, it will employ about 300 full- and part-time workers, he adds.

During a recent hard-hat tour, Johnson and guests maneuvered around cables, ladders and bins of sand that construction workers use to set the stone in place on many of the property’s terraces.

Set amid 340 acres in Loudoun County’s rolling horse country, the Salamander Resort and Spa was named by Forbes magazine as one of the Top 20 Most Anticipated Hotel Openings in the world in 2013. According to Devadas, the resort already has booked eight weddings and small and large conferences.

One amenity that sets this resort apart: Guests can bring their horses. Designed to complement the traditions of Middleburg — where Johnson has lived since 1996 — the property includes an equestrian center with a 22-stall stable, a practice ring and miles of trails with views of the Bull Run Mountains.

Johnson, a well-known philanthropist and entrepreneur, doesn’t horse around when it comes to perks for people, either. “People who have enjoyed The Homestead and the Greenbrier, they will find that level of luxury and even more,” she says.

The 260,000-square-foot property includes a library, billiards room, wine bar, small retail shop, grand ballroom and conference rooms and a signature dining room with a 42-foot, peaked roof that will offer views of the horsing area outside.

Then there’s a 23,000-square-foot spa with fountains and a 14-foot, tiled glass and stone waterfall feature that drops into a whirlpool tub. It sits below a ceiling outfitted with hundreds of tiny white lights to evoke a starry sky. The price for all this luxury? Rates during the peak season will range from $425 to $575 per night for a 540-square-foot guest room. Prices for larger suites will go from $775 to $3,500 per night.

Along the tour, Johnson and Devadas show renderings, which illustrate what rooms will actually look like when the work is done. Johnson is particularly excited about the kitchen area. It will be a culinary teaching area, she said. “You’ll be able to look into the main kitchen. We want to offer cooking classes. We will have monitors, and they can watch the meal being made for the day.”

Johnson, CEO and founder of Salamander Hotels and Resorts, founded the company in 2005, shortly after her divorce from Robert Johnson. They were the founders of Black Entertainment Television (BET), which was sold to Viacom in 2000 for about $3 billion.

Originally, Johnson had hoped to open the resort in 2010. A series of obstacles, including the recession, the construction of a new wastewater facility for Middleburg that could accommodate the spa’s water needs as well, and the reinstallation of most of the resort’s custom windows, delayed the opening.

“It’s been a long journey,” says Johnson. To read more on how her project evolved, see the June issue of Virginia Business, which feature an expanded story and interview with Johnson.

IT employment continues to rise

Despite slow growth in employment throughout the U.S. in March, information technology employment remained strong in March.

The number of IT jobs was up 0.34 percent in March from the previous month, hitting a total of 4.4 million, according to Alexandria-based TechServe Alliance, a collaboration of IT, engineering staffing and solutions firms and suppliers.

On a 12-month basis, March IT employment was up nearly 5 percent.

In addition the March numbers, the TechServe Alliance revised its February growth figure upward from 0.38 to 0.71 percent.

On Friday, the Labor Department announced that U.S. employment grew by only 88,000 jobs in March, the smallest increase in nine months and far fewer than analysts had expected.
The unemployment rate dropped from 7.7 percent to 7.6 percent, but the labor force participation rate, the percentage of the working-age population involved in the labor market, declined to 63.3 percent, its lowest level since 1979.

“While I know the overall jobs report disappointed most observers, I am pleased to see that IT continues on a steady growth trajectory,” Mark Roberts, the CEO of TechServe Alliance, said in a statement. “Based on the data and anecdotal reports I hear from my member companies, demand for IT talent remains very strong with shortages in many skill sets. We continue to believe the sector will remain a bright spot in the economy throughout 2013.”

U.Va. takes first place in first Up to Us competition

Five students from the University of Virginia won a national competition focused on raising awareness about the nation’s debt crisis.

The U.Va. team took first prize in the Up to Us competition—a first-of-its-kind, six-week challenge to engage students on college campuses across the country on the problems posed by the federal government’s long-term debt.

The U.Va. group was among 10 university teams who took part in the competition. Organizers said the independently developed campaigns resulted in a number of student events, conversations with members of Congress and social media actions related to the nation’s fiscal challenges.

The competition was sponsored by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U), and Net Impact.

“The Up to Us competition proves that students can play an important role in addressing our nation’s economic challenges,” former President Bill Clinton said in a statement. “The young people who participated in this competition brought passion, energy and creativity to solving one of our most urgent issues, and raised awareness in their own schools and communities.”

The panel of competition judges included Erskine Bowles, a former White House chief of staff and former co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform; Chelsea Clinton, a board member of the Clinton Foundation; Alan Simpson, a former U.S. senator and former co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform; and George Stephanopoulos, anchor of ABC‘s “This Week” and “Good Morning America.”

They singled out the U.Va. team for the impact of its innovative campaign.

The U.Va. team members are Lena Shi, Joshua Lansford, Alan Safferson, Ryan Singel and Amara Warren. The second-place team from Brown University and third-place finishers at the University of Texas–Austin also scored high for their creative and thought-provoking campaigns.

The students from U.Va. will be recognized by President Clinton at this year’s CGI U meeting on April 5-7 in St. Louis and will be awarded a $10,000 cash prize. In addition, team leaders from the other nine teams will be recognized at CGI U for their work.

Each of the Up to Us teams engaged their campuses in a broad discussion about the nation’s fiscal health, altogether holding 55 campus events focused on the debt, delivering hundreds of letters and petition signatures to Congress, fostering thousands of interactions between students and leading people to take more than 28,000 actions to learn more and make their voices heard through social media.

Student teams from the following universities participated for the competition:

• American University
• Brown University
• Georgetown University
• New York University
• Rutgers Business School–Newark
• University of Miami
• University of Michigan
• University of Minnesota–Twin Cities
• University of Texas–Austin
• University of Virginia

NII Holdings sells Peru business

Mobile communications company NII Holdings has agreed to sell its Peruvian operations for $400 million.

The move comes as the Reston-based firm focuses on its resources in Mexico and Brazil. NII Holdings offers mobile communication services in Latin America and operations under the Nextel brand in Brazil, Mexico, Aregentina, Peru and Chile.

NII will sell its Peruvian operations to Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaciones S.A., based in Chile.

The sale is expected to take place in the second half of 2013. NII is planning to use the holdings to invest in its next generation networks in Mexico and Brazil.

“The sale of Nextel Peru is an important step in the evolution of our business and aligns with our strategic goal of increasing value for stockholders through focused investments on our new next generation network deployments,” said Steve Shindler, NII’s chairman and interim chief executive officer. “The proceeds that we generate through this sale allow us to prioritize investments in our largest markets that offer the greatest opportunity for strong, long-term returns.”

Cuccinelli to recuse office in Star Scientific tax suit

Dweck Properties buys Archstone Crystal Towers in Arlington for $322 million

Dweck Properties has purchased Archstone Crystal Towers in Arlington from Equity Residential for $322.2 million.

According to the Washington, D.C. office of Jones Lang LaSalle’s Capital Markets, which represented Equity Residential, the deal announced on Thursday for the two, 12-story, 912-unit multifamily towers breaks the record for the largest sale of a single multifamily property in the Washington, D.C., region.The units went for about $352,344 each.

Archstone Crystal Towers, built in 1968, sit on nearly 10 acres of land. The property underwent a comprehensive renovation in 2002 and $8.7 million worth of capital improvements during the last five years.

The community is located less than a mile from The Pentagon and the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City and is a block from the Crystal City Metro Station. Amenities include a swimming pool, 24-hour sport club, rooftop deck and business center.

Managing Directors Al Cissel and Scott Melnick led the Jones Lang LaSalle team in the transaction.

Genworth mortgage unit to pay $4.5 million to settle federal investigation

The mortgage unit of Henrico County-based Genworth Financial Inc. has agreed to pay $4.5 million to settle an federal investigation of alleged kickbacks paid by mortgage insurers to mortgage lenders in exchange for business.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) said Genworth U.S. Mortgage Insurance (Genworth USMI) was one of four mortgage insurers to sign consent orders. Together, the four will pay a total of $15.4 million in penalties.

As part of its investigation, CFPB had filed complaints against the four companies, but the company and the agency noted that complaints did not represent a finding or ruling that the defendants had violated the law.

CFPB alleges kickbacks were paid to the lenders through “captive reinsurance arrangements.” Many insurers buy reinsurance to cover their risks in case of unexpectedly high losses. CFPB says that when mortgage lenders sets up a subsidiary to provide reinsurance to the mortgage insurers, it becomes a “captive” arrangement because the lender both originates the loan and provides reinsurance.

The federal agency said kickbacks paid to lenders could inflate the cost of mortgage insurance paid by borrowers. Mortgage insurance typically is required when homeowners borrow more than 80 percent of the value of their homes.

Rohit Gupta, the president and CEO of Genworth USMI, said the company followed guidance from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in developing its captive reinsurance arrangements.

“HUD indicated that these arrangements are permissible if certain requirements are met,” he said. “Genworth followed the guidance, and had the arrangements tested by independent third parties to verify that the HUD requirements were met. Further, consumers paid the same amount for the underlying insurance whether or not their loan was part of a captive reinsurance arrangement.”

The executive said Genworth USMI agreed to the settlement so it could focus of its business and “resolve the uncertainties inherent in such a review and any possible resulting litigation.”

In addition to paying penalties, Genworth USMI and the other mortgage insurers agreed to refrain from any new captive reinsurance arrangements with mortgage lender affiliates for 10 years. The settlement, which will be recorded in the first quarter of 2013, is not expected to have a major impact on Genworth USMI’s financial results.

The three other mortgage insurers involved in the enforcement action were: Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corp., Radian Guaranty Inc. and United Guaranty Corp.

The investigation, begun by HUD’s Office of Inspector General, was transferred to CFPB in July 2011.