Since joining Roanoke County in 2022, Poe has been responsible for real estate development, business retention and expansion and key community partnerships, Franklin County said in a statement. She succeeds Beth Simms, who left the Franklin County post in October 2023 after more than two years to become Patrick County’s administrator.
“Franklin County has made key public investments that position the county for growth,” Poe said. “I’m excited to put my passion for economic development to work helping the county take advantage of the opportunities ahead.”
Poe previously worked as a business manager for Roanoke Regional Airport and as an economic development specialist for Downtown Roanoke Inc. She also worked in real estate and property management.
“Dani is the experienced leader needed at a critical juncture in Franklin County’s progress,” Franklin County Administrator Christopher Whitlow said. “It was clear during the interview process that she understands the county’s value proposition and knows how to leverage the county’s advantages to create jobs and investment, develop its workforce and continue to enhance livability.”
Poe is the 2024 chair of Leadership Roanoke Valley and graduated from Radford University, where she studied sports and fitness administration and management, according to her LinkedIn page. Next month, Poe will graduate from the University of Oklahoma’s Economic Development Institute program.
Located about 10 miles south of Roanoke, Franklin County was estimated to have 55,549 residents as of 2023, according to the U.S. Census.
On Tuesday afternoon, workers at the Port of Virginia‘s Virginia International Gateway facility in Portsmouth unloaded cargo that had been scheduled for the Baltimore Harbor before a container ship struck and destroyed the Francis Scott Key Bridge in a fatal accident that has left the shipping channel closed for at least several weeks to come.
“The ship was already in Virginia for a normally scheduled port of call and was headed to [Baltimore] afterward,” Port of Virginia spokesperson Joe Harris said in a statement to Virginia Business. “The accident happened, [and] the [Baltimore] cargo was offloaded here.”
The port expects these diverted volumes of cargo to increase. “It is, however, too early to discuss specific impacts to our operation,” Harris said.
Speaking to press during a bill-signing ceremony Tuesday, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin pledged to assist Maryland during the disaster with everything from additional port capacity to emergency search and rescue services, saying the “entire commonwealth’s capabilities are at the ready.”
If assistance is requested, Virginia emergency resources available to Maryland include the Virginia State Police, the Virginia Department of Emergency Management and the Virginia Department of Fire Programs, according to a spokesperson for the governor.
On Wednesday afternoon, rescue workers recovered the bodies of two of six road construction workers killed in the accident in which the Singapore-flagged container ship Dali collided with the Key Bridge around 1:29 a.m. Tuesday, shortly after the ship lost power and its pilots issued a mayday call. National Transportation Safety Board investigators and other federal officials continued looking into the cause of the crash Wednesday, as the Biden administration pledged federal support to rebuild the bridge, calling on Congress to authorize hundreds of millions in funding likely needed for the bridge’s replacement, an undertaking that could take at least a year.
It’s unclear, Harris said, how many additional vessels and what volume of cargo the Port of Virginia will ultimately see, especially since no one knows how long the Port of Baltimore will remain closed to all ship traffic. All vessel traffic in and out of Baltimore’s port has been suspended until further notice, Maryland’s transportation secretary announced Tuesday morning.
Ocean carriers will decide how Baltimore-bound imports and exports will be diverted to other ports, Harris said, adding that ships presently in transit with cargo bound for Baltimore will likely unload in the ports of Virginia, Philadelphia, or New York and New Jersey.
“Our effort today is continuing to communicate with the ocean carriers and cargo owners to let them know that we have ample capacity to handle additional cargo and vessels,” he said.
The increased traffic won’t impact the Port of Virginia’s service levels, according to Harris. “This is a modern, 21st century port that has a significant amount of experience in handling surges of import and export cargo.”
Virginia Business Editor Richard Foster contributed to this story.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article listed an incorrect summary of cargo diverted to the Port of Virginia and an incorrect estimate for the replacement cost of the Key Bridge. The story has been corrected and updated.
The Washington Wizards and Capitals NBA and NHL teams are staying put in the District of Columbia and will not be moving to Alexandria, according to announcements from Washington, D.C., and Virginia officials Wednesday. These events put the final nail in the coffin of a controversial $2 billion Alexandria arena proposal touted by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
“We’re going to be together for a long time,” Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser said at a news conference Wednesday evening, joined by Monumental Sports & Entertainment CEO Ted Leonsis.
Bowser said that she and Leonsis had just signed an agreement to keep the teams in Washington through 2050, in exchange for D.C.’s pledge to pay $515 million over the next three years to upgrade and modernize Capital One Arena in downtown D.C.
According to Leonsis, he and Bowser continued discussions regularly after his and Youngkin’s December 2023 announcement of the proposal to create a $2 billion arena and entertainment district in Alexandria — a nonbinding deal that was opposed by some Virginia Democratic lawmakers and Alexandria residents.
Youngkin, whose efforts to build the arena were blocked by Virginia State Senate Democrats during the General Assembly session, said in a statement Wednesday afternoon that “personal and political agendas drove away a deal with no upfront general fund money and no tax increases, that [would have] created tens of thousands of new jobs and billions in revenue for Virginia.”
He also referred to the possibility of 30,000 new jobs and $12 billion in economic activity that the deal could have brought to the state, which “just went up in smoke,” according to the statement.
“This should have been our deal and our opportunity,” the governor continued. “All the General Assembly had to do was say, ‘Thank you, Monumental, for wanting to come to Virginia and create $12 billion of economic investment. Let’s work it out.'”
The proposed sports arena and entertainment district faced significant pushback from state Sen. Louise Lucas, the powerful chair of the Senate Finance & Appropriations Committee, who prevented the Virginia State Senate from voting on a measure to create a state authority that would control the project’s approximate $1.3 billion in public funding.
Answering a reporter’s question about what had happened with the Virginia negotiations and opposition among state lawmakers, Leonsis didn’t speak specifically about the state Senate’s roadblocks or any other missteps among state officials.
But D.C. officials “did everything right from December on. And when I looked at the other side of the board,” Leonsis said, referring to Virginia, “some of them weren’t scoring as high, and they weren’t together.
“We are an incredibly valuable company,” he added. “Forbes just said we’re worth $6 billion. That would make us one of the 10 most valuable companies in Virginia, one of the 10 most valuable companies in Washington, D.C., [and] we should be treated with that kind of respect. The city [of Washington] treated us that way. And that really was what the game changer for us.”
Leonsis said at the news conference that he would talk about Virginia at a later time, but he complimented Youngkin as “a good man,” who was aware of his ongoing negotiations with Bowser.
At the news conference, held Wednesday evening at Capital One Arena, Leonsis said that in recent months, he and Bowser met nearly weekly on the “main couch in the lobby at the Waldorf, and I would jump up and run to the bar and get some drinks, and we would talk about what’s the vision for the city.”
The option of more space
Another key factor in D.C.’s negotiations with Monumental was the recent closure of a shopping mall near the current arena. Washington, D.C., officials and the mall’s owner offered to let Monumental expand into about 200,000 square feet of that space, Leonsis said. The 12 acres on the Potomac River, where the arena would have been part of 9 million square feet of new multiuse buildings, was part of that proposal’s appeal, he added.
Lucas opposed the amount of public spending on the arena — saying that schools and toll relief should be higher priorities for the state — and tweeted Wednesday afternoon, “As Monumental announces today they are staying in Washington, D.C., we are celebrating in Virginia that we avoided the Monumental Disaster! Thank you to everyone who stood with us in this fight!”
Other Virginia Democrats took Lucas’ side in the battle, and some were put off by the governor’s apparent lack of interest in compromising on their party’s priorities, including a $15/hour minimum wage starting in 2026 and setting up a recreational cannabis retail structure in the state.
Matt Kelly, CEO of Bethesda, Maryland-based developer JBG Smith, which would have developed the entertainment district, released a statement Wednesday, blaming the project’s failure on “partisan politics and, most troubling, the influence of special interests and potential pay-to-play influences within the Virginia legislature.
“The scheming and special interests that plagued this opportunity in the Virginia legislature will no doubt cause future employers and the next Monumental to question whether their opportunity will get a fair hearing,” Kelly’s statement continued.
“This opportunity also brought with it the potential to add tens of thousands of jobs and needed housing units, including 1,000 units of affordable housing preservation in Alexandria which we had pledged as part of the arena proposal. Traffic and transportation investments, including possible Metro funding, are also likely gone. Instead, the existing surface-parked, single-story shopping center on the site will remain through the remaining 20-year term of the Target lease, and development on the remaining land will likely be far less dense. To say we are disappointed is an understatement; we are disgusted with the backroom-dealing and opaque scheming that took place as this played out.”
Last week, JBG Smith pledged to double the number of preserved workforce-priced affordable residential units near the complex from 500 residences to 1,000, an attempt to save the deal, and previously, the governor put forward a $322 million Hampton Roads toll relief proposal, a priority for Lucas.
In February, George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis found in a study requested by JBG Smith Properties that the project would include the construction of 5,405 workforce-affordable housing units, more than twice the 2,250 affordable housing units the City of Alexandria aims to have by 2030.
The Democratic-controlled House of Delegates passed the authority legislation in a bipartisan vote during the General Assembly’s regular session, but the bill faced a roadblock in the Senate. Some Alexandria residents also opposed the project over costs, traffic and infrastructure stress.
Ted Leonsis, founder, CEO and chairman of Monumental Sports & Entertainment, owner of the Washington Capitals and Washington Wizards, speaks at a Dec. 13, 2023, news conference in Alexandria announcing a plan to invest $2 billion in a new arena and accompanying entertainment complex in Potomac Yard. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin is at left. Photo by Will Schermerhorn
Big numbers touted
In December 2023, Youngkin and Leonsis, with Mayor Wilson on hand, announced the 9 million-square-foot entertainment campus project as close to a done deal, saying it could create up to 30,000 jobs for Virginia over several decades. With a 2025 groundbreaking, the arena was expected to be completed by 2028 on an accelerated construction schedule, and an economic and fiscal impact report conducted for the city anticipated up to $7.96 billion in annual economic output for the state if the arena was open by 2028.
However, in March, The Washington Post reported that a separate economic analysis commissioned by the Youngkin administration and not released publicly had assumed fans would pay $75 for parking and that a new luxury hotel would book rooms at $731 a night, with the state using parking fees, ticket taxes and other revenue in order to pay off $1.5 billion in debt.
Earlier this month, Bowser said the District’s offer to fast-track a $500 million deal to update the teams’ current arena and keep them in Washington, D.C., was still on the table, after Virginia legislators omitted the authority wording from their budget amendments — a decision Youngkin called a “colossal mistake.”
“As stewards of the city’s economic health and development, city leaders believed the Potomac Yard entertainment district opportunity was worthy of community discussion and [city council] consideration,” Wilson said in a statement Wednesday. “We negotiated a framework for this opportunity in good faith and participated in the process in Richmond in a way that preserved our integrity. We trusted this process and are disappointed in what occurred between the governor and General Assembly.”
The 2024-26 state budget negotiations between state lawmakers and Youngkin remained the final avenue to create the state authority by including it in the finalized budget in April, but Wednesday’s events closed the door entirely on the proposed arena move.
Strasburg-based First National has entered into a definitive merger agreement to acquire Prince George-based Touchstone Bankshares in an all-stock transaction worth approximately $47 million, First National announced Tuesday.
The parent companies’ merger combines community banks First Bank and Touchstone Bank to create a bank with expected total assets of about $2.1 billion, $1.5 billion in loans and $1.8 billion in deposits. The resulting company is expected to be the ninth largest Virginia community bank by deposits.
The combined company will have 30 branch offices across Virginia and two branches in North Carolina.
“We are thrilled to have found a partner with an equally long history of serving and supporting local customers and businesses in their communities,” First National President and CEO Scott Harvard said in a statement. “Combining our companies will help ensure that we continue to be part of the fabric of the communities we serve. … We are incredibly excited about this opportunity to expand our Richmond metro presence with the addition of seven branches in the market, and we look forward to welcoming the entire Touchstone team into the First Bank family.”
In the metro Richmond area, where it’s expected to have eight branches, the combined company’s deposits are expected to exceed $350 million.
According to the terms of the agreement, Touchstone shareholders will receive 0.8122 shares of First National stock for each share of Touchstone stock. Based on First National’s closing stock price of $17.55 on March 22, the deal’s approximate aggregate value is $47 million, or $14.25 per share of Touchstone stock.
“First National is a like-minded partner that shares our culture of supporting our communities by focusing on building meaningful relationships and personalized service to their customers,” Touchstone President and CEO James Black said in a statement. “We are enthusiastic about the opportunity to partner with First National in a transaction that we believe offers significant opportunities to our clients, communities, employees and shareholders.”
The companies’ boards of directors have unanimously approved the merger agreement. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter, subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals.
First National and First Bank will appoint three Touchstone directors to join the existing nine directors on each board. Black will join First Bank as an executive vice president and south region president.
Founded in 1906 as Bank of Dinwiddie, Touchstone currently has 12 branches across the metro Richmond area, south Central Virginia and northern North Carolina. As of Dec. 31, 2023, Touchstone reported total assets of $658.7 million, gross loans of $508.8 million and total deposits of $542.2 million.
First National is the holding company of First Bank, which opened in 1907. The company has 20 bank branches throughout the Shenandoah Valley, Central Virginia and the Roanoke Valley, as well as a customer service center in a retirement community and a loan production office. First Bank also operates First Bank Wealth Management and owns First Bank Financial Services, which invests in investment service and title insurance providers.
RICHMOND — Virginia’s plan for a recreational cannabis market includes a way to help micro businesses, formerly known as the social equity license, get involved with what is anticipated to be a multimillion dollar business — if the plan survives the governor’s desk.
An applicant must meet certain criteria to qualify, including having at least 66% ownership and direct control of the business.
The applicant must either have been convicted or adjudicated of a prior misdemeanor violation for marijuana to qualify.
The applicant could also qualify if they lived at least three of the past five years, or attended at least five years of public school, in a historically economically disadvantaged community.
Another qualification would be if the applicant received a federal Pell Grant or attended for at least two years a college or university where an average of at least 30% of the students are eligible for a federal Pell Grant.
Any veteran of the U.S. armed forces would qualify if they met the 66% ownership and direct control qualification.
The Virginia Cannabis Control Authority board of directors will regulate the application process. The board will also determine what percentage of license fees can be waived and promote participation in the loan program despite the ability to pay such fees, according to the bill.
Either the director of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or a majority of the members of the Cannabis Equity Reinvestment Board, will sign off on the disbursement of funds.
The General Assembly approved $1.8 million each year, which will transfer to the Cannabis Equity Business Loan Fund in July, if the governor does not appoint a director of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, according to the budget. The governor renamed it the Office of Diversity, Opportunity, and Inclusion in 2022.
“The program will be funded by 100% of the licensing fees collected by the authority in the first year,” Krizek said in a Senate committee meeting for Rehabilitation and Social Services. “After that time, the program will be supported by 60% of the tax revenue from retail sales of marijuana.”
The equity fund will foster business ownership and economic growth within communities that have been affected by the prohibition of cannabis.
“The marijuana market bills are the most promising that we’ve had since 2021,” said Chelsea Higgs Wise, executive director of Marijuana Justice. “It includes the equity portions and includes repair for communities and includes certain funds and this is what we’ve been promising Virginia.”
The loan fund was created by the 2021 General Assembly and given $3 million to help develop an adult-use retail market, the CCA stated in an email. The 2023 General Assembly returned the $3 million back to the general fund, since the recreational cannabis market was not reenacted.
“We have an equity fund already established in statute,” said Sen. Barbara Favola, D-Arlington, at the committee of Rehabilitation and Social Services. “But it needs to be funded to make sure that our micro business really do have access to capital so they can start their cultivation and be able to get to the market.”
The CCA will collaborate with a community development financial institution that provides credit and financial services for disadvantaged communities to help manage the fund.
“We’re really hoping that it will be people of color, folks from certain communities that will be able to take advantage of entering the business and the setups that we’ve put into place,” Higgs Wise said.
Cannabis tax will be 8% and the revenue is estimated to be $6.41 million in 2025 and increase to $77.1 million by 2030, according to the bill’s final fiscal impact statement.
The state will add a 1.115% tax, and a locality can add an extra tax up to 2.5%.
The CCA stated that it could not respond to questions about potential licensing costs, because no adult-use cannabis market exists. Applications would start in September if the bill is signed.
The current application fee for a medical cannabis pharmaceutical processor permit is $18,000. The initial permit fee is $165,000 and the annual renewal fee is $132,000, according to the CCA.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin has stated many times that he’s not interested in signing the adult-use market legislation. He has issued 80 vetoes as of March 26, although some are duplicate bills. When asked about the cannabis bill on March 14, Youngkin told a Virginia Mercury reporter that he would read it and that it is a long bill.
Youngkin has until April 8 to take action on all bills that cleared the General Assembly. The legislature will reconvene on April 17 to review his changes, but Democrats do not have the super majority needed to overturn a veto.
Capital News Service is a program of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Robertson School of Media and Culture. Students in the program provide state government coverage for a variety of media outlets in Virginia.
The Aerospace Corp., a nonprofit government contractor that bills itself as running the nation’s only federally funded research and development center “committed to the space enterprise,” officially relocated its headquarters from El Segundo, California, to Chantilly on Thursday.
The organization, which provides technical expertise in space-related science and engineering, has no plans for “significant relocation” of its more than 4,600 current employees, according to a news release, and the 2,800 employees currently in El Segundo will remain there.
According to an Aerospace spokesperson, the company has more than 750 employees based in Chantilly plus 1,000 employees based in various locations in the Washington, D.C. area.
“By shifting our headquarters to the Washington, D.C., metro region, we will deepen our ties with key decision makers and stakeholders, and reaffirm our commitment to working side-by-side with our partners as they carry out our nation’s critical missions,” Steve Isakowitz, Aerospace’s president and CEO, said in a statement.
As the space industry has changed in recent years — including growth in U.S. government and commercial space investment, the establishment of the U.S. Space Force in 2019 and the reinstatement of the U.S. Space Command, which is responsible for preparing military operations in space — Aerospace’s technical support has shifted “from traditional functions to emerging needs,” according to a news release.
“Aerospace has taken a leading position navigating through this change as we accelerate our efforts to outpace the threats we face in space,” Isakowitz said.
Aerospace provides technical solutions for space mission needs and research and strategic analysis on national policy related to space, and it tests, analyzes and troubleshoots rocket and satellite systems. The organization’s customers include the U.S. Department of Defense, the intelligence community, NASA and other civil agencies.
Aerospace is investing $100 million in its engineering, research and laboratory capabilities at its main engineering and technology campus in El Segundo. The company also has major locations in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article listed an incorrect number of employees working for Aerospace in California. This story has been updated with the correct number.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with information about Aerospace’s Virginia and Washington, D.C., workforce.
After a container ship struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore early Tuesday, causing the bridge to collapse and possibly claiming multiple lives, ships bound for the Port of Baltimore will be diverted to other ports, primarily the Port of Virginia and the Port of New York and New Jersey.
The Virginia Port Authority, which oversees the Port of Virginia, issued a statement Tuesday morning, saying that the container vessel that hit the Key Bridge at approximately 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, called at Virginia International Gateway‘s terminal and left March 22 for Baltimore, its next scheduled port of call.
“Our operating team is already working with ocean carriers whose vessels were due to call Baltimore and offering the capability of our port to discharge cargoes as requested,” Port of Virginia spokesman Joe Harris said in a statement. “The Port of Virginia has a significant amount of experience in handling surges of import and exportcargo and is ready to provide whatever assistance we can to the team at the Port of Baltimore.”
Danish shipping company Maersk confirmed in an email that it chartered the Dali container vessel — owned by Grace Ocean and operated by Synergy Group — that collided with the Key Bridge. As of 10 a.m. Tuesday, six people who were repairing the bridge at the time of the collision were unaccounted for, according to The Washington Post.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said the ship lost power and issued a mayday call shortly before crashing into the bridge, which immediately fell, the Post reported. The ship was traveling at eight knots at the time of the collision, Moore told reporters.
According to an email Tuesday from Rachel Shames, vice president of pricing and procurement for CV International, a Norfolk-based international logistics and transportation company, the collision is expected to create a temporary increase in cargo volume at other East Coast ports, including Norfolk’s terminals.
“The full impacts of this disaster are not yet known, but it’s likely that nearby East Coast ports, including Norfolk, Philadelphia, New York and others will absorb cargo traffic from Baltimore in the short term,” she wrote. “This sudden increase in volume may strain operations at other ports.”
All vessel traffic in and out of Baltimore’s port has been suspended until further notice, Maryland’s transportation secretary announced Tuesday morning, though the port is still open and trucks are being processed within marine terminals.
Maersk sent its customers an email notifying them of the collision and said that due to the bridge collapse, ships will not be able to reach the Baltimore port “for the time being. In line with this, we are omitting Baltimore on all our services for the foreseeable future, until it is deemed safe for passage through this area. For cargo already on water, we … will discharge cargo set for Baltimore in nearby ports. … Delays may occur, as they will need to discharge in other ports.”
“I think there is definitely a concern that we will see some congestion on the East Coast now, because other ports are having to absorb traffic,” Shames said later in an interview with Virginia Business.
She said that the impact of the port’s temporary closing “could end up rippling down to Wilmington, [North Carolina], Charleston [South Carolina] and Savannah, [Georgia],” although, she noted, “Norfolk is probably the most practical place to absorb most of the capacity. You want to keep the cargo that was supposed to go to Baltimore…as close as possible to Baltimore.”
Shames also noted that Baltimore’s port is the top U.S. port for the import and export of automobiles, light trucks, wheeled farm vehicles and construction machinery, which often move on specialized vessels and not in containers.
The Port of Virginia’s Newport News Marine Terminal has facilities that accommodate vehicles, including ramps that allow workers to load and unload rail cars and ships, but not on Baltimore’s scale, Shames said. “There is capacity at [Newport News Marine Terminal] … but not a lot, nothing like what Baltimore can do. It will not be as simple as just shifting. Unfortunately, I think we are going to be looking at congestion, and I just don’t know how long. That can mean delays for cargo [and] probably extra costs. It’s a ripple, a domino effect.”
Wider channels
Earlier this month, widening of the Port of Virginia’s shipping channel was completed, allowing two ultra-large container vessels to pass at the same time. The shipping channels are now up to 1,400 feet wide in some areas, although the completed deepening of the commercial shipping channel and the Norfolk Harbor to 55 feet and the ocean approach, set to be 59 feet deep, has been delayed until fall 2025, the port announced.
David H. Sump, a Norfolk-based maritime attorney with Willcox Savage and a former Coast Guard officer, says it’s too soon to tell what exactly happened to the ship in Baltimore, but after he watched a video of the collision, he noted, “This vessel appeared to lose power. It appeared to go dark for about a minute,” shortly before crashing into the bridge. If there were a power outage on the ship, “you don’t have control of the vessel during that time. It’s floating. The momentum of the vessel was proceeding, [and] there may not have been anything the pilots could have done.”
The Dali, with 22 crew members on board, had made its scheduled import deliveries to U.S. ports and was likely heading back to Asia when the collision occurred. No Maersk crew and personnel were on board the vessel, according to an email from Maersk to customers.
Sump and fellow maritime attorney Deborah Waters of the Norfolk-based Waters Law Firm note that large container ships in Maryland and Virginia are required to have local ship pilots on board when the vessels are moving in and out of rivers, bays or harbors — basically guiding them safely past structures such as bridges or other ships. “Pilots are the expert navigators of the local waters,” Sump said.
Local pilots often require five years of training in Virginia to be licensed to navigate vessels in tighter quarters. Sump acknowledges that ultra-large container vessels stopping at the Port of Virginia’s major terminals — the Norfolk International Terminals and Virginia International Gateway — do not go near or through bridges like the Key Bridge in Baltimore, although ships moving up the James River to the Richmond Maritime Terminal would encounter bridges.
Frank Rabena, vice president of the Virginia Pilot Association, told Virginia Business that this improvement and the port’s other recent infrastructure changes allow the port to assist in a situation like this. “The Port of Virginia is already prepared,” he said. “We are already in that position to handle pretty much any ship that comes our way.”
In terms of local impact, Rabena said, it’s too soon to tell what will happen.
“We’re not sure how shipping companies would reroute cargo,” he said. “That will unfold in the next couple of days.”
In 2022, the Port of Virginia processed more than 3.7 million 20-foot-equivalent units at its terminals, and cargo tonnage was up 11% from 2021. For fiscal 2022, the port generated $124.1 billion in output sales, $41.4 billion in Virginia labor income and $5.8 billion in state and local taxes and fees.
David White, executive director of the Virginia Maritime Association, said he’s already had some members reach out to offer assistance, but it’s going to take a little while to understand how the industry can best help. “It’s going to be a prolonged incident,” he told Virginia Business.
“Right now, it’s just so early, everyone’s minds are focused on the search and rescue,” he added. “We stand by as needs are identified to facilitate the capabilities our member companies have. … It’s just still too early, but we are ready, as those needs are identified, to reach out to our members [and] to get information to our members, so they know how they can … support our maritime friends in Baltimore.”
Construction has started on a new master-planned community in Chesterfield County‘s Midlothian area that will bring hundreds of single-family homes, town houses, apartments and commercial space.
Glen Allen-based developer HHHunt and real estate investment firm GrayCo are developing The Aire at Westchester. The 334-acre tract is at Route 288 and Midlothian Turnpike on the western edge of the Westchester Commons shopping district.
GrayCo is the landowner and HHHunt is the managing partner for the master-planned community, which has been in the works for years. Construction is underway on the first phase of the project, which will include 196 condos and 204 town houses, said Jonathan Ridout, vice president of real estate development and general manager of HHHunt Communities. The commercial areas are in the preliminary design phase, and HHHunt is working on deals with commercial retailers.
Site development could take 12 to 18 months and vertical construction would start in about 18 months. The town houses and condos could be ready in about two years, Ridout says. The commercial space could come online independently, he said, with around 180,000 square feet of commercial space, including office space and restaurants. There is a lot of flexibility in the zoning, he said, to adapt plans to market conditions.
A greenway will bisect the different parcels of land, and the development will include parks and trails.
In total, the development is expected to have about 2,200 residences, including 330 single-family homes on the back portion of the property, but the timing on that piece of the project is flexible, Ridout said.
“We want to create something that resembles a lifestyle center,” he said.
The zoning also allows a hotel, and there’s a possibility for 50,000 to 60,000 square feet of office space.
“Midlothian is one of the most desirable parts of Chesterfield County,” Ridout said. “This becomes a real hub where you can have higher density, different uses, people — it can be an attractive project.”
The project has been in planning for years, with GrayCo hiring David Smith of Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer to identify a development partner. Smith started working with GrayCo in October 2017, HHHunt came on in about 2020, and the land was rezoned in 2021.
Pembroke Square will begin the next phase of demolition Monday on the former Pembroke Mall in Virginia Beach, as part of a $200 million mixed-use redevelopment project.
The roof and columns of the mall‘s structure will be removed at the northeast entrance, north of Kohl’s on the Constitution Drive side of the former mall. A portion of the mall’s interior was already been demolished in preparation for the next phases of development.
“Over the last several months, we have been doing selective demolition inside, basically scraping out the contents of the area we will be demolishing,” said Ramsay Smith, asset manager for Pembroke Square Associates and president of Pembroke Realty Group. “It doesn’t look like we’re making progress, but in fact, we are.”
What begins Monday is the demolition of the actual structure itself.
A senior living community that’s part of the redevelopment, Aviva Pembroke, at the corner of Jeanne Street and Constitution Drive, is under construction with plans to open this October. Aviva Pembroke will be seven stories with 153 units. It is expected to have 121 independent units, 20 assisted living units and a dozen memory care units. The building has been topped out, and the company is sequencing exterior finishes right now, Smith said.
The second phase of the redevelopment project will include a Tempo by Hilton hotel in partnership with The Landmark Group that will open in 2025. Plans for the hotel were scaled back to seven stories last year and it’ss under a full redesign, Smith said. Developers reconsidered the hotel plans after interest rates shot up and construction costs escalated. Smith said ground could break on the hotel possibly in December, but more likely in the first quarter of next year. It will have 163 rooms and take 22 to 24 months to build.
There’s also a residential portion of the project, and like the hotel, the plans for that apartment building have been scaled down from 12 stories to seven stories. Predevelopment work is being completed before developers finish a new design. Development of the apartments is running about six months behind schedule, Smith said, and a groundbreaking is likely to take place in mid-2025, with a 22- to 24-month schedule for construction. The yet-to-be-named building will have 272 apartments and an adjacent parking garage with 611 spaces, instead of being located under the building as originally planned.
Another area of the property could handle an office tower, Smith said, but plans for that are on hold amid a decline in office demand, so it would need to be a build-to-suit opportunity.
Pembroke Square Associates first announced plans for the redevelopment of the aging mall’s 54 acres in November 2021. Groundbreaking for its first phase took place in December 2022.
Amid ongoing bad press over production problems and fallout from a high-profile January incident in which a 4-foot wall panel blew out of a Boeing 737 Max 9 jet cabin in mid-air, Boeing announced Monday that its president and CEO, Dave Calhoun, would step down from his position leading the embattled Arlington County-based Fortune 500 aerospace company and defense contractor by the end of 2024.
Additionally, Boeing Board Chair Larry Kellner will not stand for re-election during the company’s April 18 annual shareholders meeting. The board has elected a new independent board chair, Steve Mollenkopf, to succeed Kellner. The former CEO of semiconductor manufacturer Qualcomm, Mollenkopf will lead the board in selecting Boeing’s next CEO. Kellner, who has chaired Boeing since 2019, joined the board 13 years ago, and Mollenkopf has been on the board since 2020.
Boeing’s board elected Steve Mollenkopf to serve as its next board chair on March 25, 2024. (Photo courtesy Boeing)
As part of the management shakeup, Boeing Chief Operating Officer Stephanie Pope has been appointed to lead the company’s Boeing Commercial Airplanes business unit, replacing BCA President and CEO Stan Deal, who retired from Boeing effective Monday.
“It has been the greatest privilege of my life to serve Boeing,” Calhoun wrote in a letter to employees. “The eyes of the world are on us, and I know that we will come through this moment a better company. We will remain squarely focused on completing the work we have done together to return our company to stability after the extraordinary challenges of the past five years, with safety and quality at the forefront of everything that we do.”
In a statement, Mollenkopf said, “I am honored and humbled to step into this new role. I am fully confident in this company and its leadership – and together we are committed to taking the right actions to strengthen safety and quality, and to meet the needs of our customers. I also want to thank both Larry and Dave for their exceptional stewardship of Boeing during a challenging and consequential time for Boeing and the aerospace industry.”
Following the blowout, the FAA conducted a six-week examination of the company’s 737 Max jet production process, including 89 product audits. According to The New York Times, Boeing failed 33 of the audits.
The FAA halted expanded production of the 737 Max, and customer United Airlines has approached competitor Airbus. Boeing reported that it had net-zero orders for new commercial aircraft during January.
The writing was on the wall for Calhoun, with one industry veteran telling Reuters in February, “I can’t see how the CEO can survive and how he should survive.” Last week, Boeing board directors, including Kellner, said they would conduct a “listening tour” with their largest airline customers — sans Calhoun — Bloomberg reported.
Following the Alaska Airlines incident on Jan. 5, all Boeing 737 Max jets were grounded temporarily in the U.S., although flights were allowed to resume later in the month. In February, the company announced it would rework 50 undelivered 737 Max jets after finding mistakes in drilled holes in the fuselage of some of them, Reuters reported.
Meanwhile, some Alaska Airlines passengers filed a $1 billion lawsuit against the airline and Boeing, and Boeing’s chief financial officer said in March at a Bank of America conference that the company would burn between $4 billion and $4.5 billion in the first quarter of the year because of lower delivery volume and pressure on working capital, according to Reuters.
There was more financial fallout over recent weeks, as some travelers changed plans to avoid flying on Boeing planes and air carriers said they would be cutting back flights this summer and seeking alternatives to 737 Max planes they had already ordered.
Also in March, a former Boeing quality manager-turned-whistleblower, John Barnett, was found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. Although he left the company years earlier, Barnett had called attention to safety concerns regarding Boeing 787 jets under construction in South Carolina, where he started working in 2010. Several former Boeing employees alerted authorities to a series of quality control problems at Boeing plants dating back several years, according to a Washington Post story. In December 2021, the Senate Commerce Committee produced a report following the two deadly 737 Max crashes in October 2018 and March 2019, documenting metal shavings and tools left on jets in production.
A Virginia Tech alumnus, Calhoun has steered Boeing through strong headwinds since becoming its CEO in 2020, including the aftermath of the deadly 737 Max crashes off the coast of Indonesia and in Ethiopia, which together claimed 346 lives. Following the January Alaska Airlines incident, Calhoun said Boeing will “cooperate fully and transparently” with federal investigators in the most recent probe.
Calhoun previously held C-suite positions at Blackstone, Nielsen Holdings and General Electric.
Boeing, which moved its headquarters to Arlington from Chicago in 2022, has about 170,000 employees worldwide, including 400 workers in Arlington.
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