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Playing defense

What’s in a name? Perhaps a lot if you’re riding on the coattails of Co. and Corp.

The May and June 2022 announcements that contractors Boeing and Raytheon would move their corporate to generated plenty of buzz, but they didn’t dazzle like the 2018 announcement of Amazon.com Inc.’s multibillion-dollar HQ2 East Coast headquarters coming to . That may be, at least in part, because the Boeing and Raytheon announcements didn’t come with similar headline-grabbing capital investment or job-creation figures.

What the headquarters moves did do, however, is instantly make Virginia the center of the contracting universe. With Boeing and Raytheon joining Northrop Grumman Corp. and General Dynamics Corp., Virginia is now home to four of the world’s five largest defense contractors and aerospace companies. (The largest, Lockheed Martin Corp., is based in nearby Bethesda, Maryland.)

The news also brought validation that the Washington, D.C., region is a marquee location for tech, aerospace, defense and adjacent industries.

“Anytime you get a major corporation locating your headquarters in town, that’s a bragging point. It seems to matter,” says Terry Clower, director of George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis. “I don’t have a formula that tells you what the economic value of that is, but it’s one that … it makes sense, because it’s deepening and broadening your corporate network infrastructure for the region.”

And Arlington economic officials hope to build on these big headquarters wins.

“They’re kind of like the equivalent of the home run,” says Arlington Director Ryan Touhill, who started in the role in November 2022, about the headquarters moves.

Neither Boeing, which was previously headquartered in Chicago, nor Raytheon, which called Waltham, Massachusetts, home, have discussed much about their moves publicly other than a desire to be located closer to government clients and industry partners.

Raytheon has about 130 corporate staffers in Rosslyn, a number that hasn’t increased, though the company has “slightly expanded its footprint,” says spokesperson Chris Johnson, who also cites the region’s multiple international airports as a factor for its move. And, while Raytheon CEO Gregory Hayes won’t be relocating to Virginia, Johnson has previously said Hayes is expected to spend a lot of time here.

Similarly, Boeing already had about 400 employees in Arlington’s Crystal City area, and its move didn’t involve any major job relocations. According to the , Boeing’s relocation brought 150 new jobs and $5 million in investment. Connor Greenwood, a company spokesperson, could not confirm the accuracy of those figures, nor did the company respond to questions about plans for a research and technology hub it pledged to establish with its move.

Nevertheless, home runs like these headquarters moves can help Arlington hit economic development singles, doubles and triples by helping the county draw smaller, emerging companies that “benefit from the things that the larger companies attract,” Touhill says, adding that the county is “seeing a good amount of aerospace interest.”

In the wake of Boeing and Raytheon’s announcements, Arlington economic development officials increased outreach to target companies and industries, says Michael Stiefvater, acting director of Arlington Economic Development’s Business Investment Group. “We’ve done a bit of a campaign to reach out to companies in the aerospace and defense industry following those announcements,” he says.

Along with positive publicity from the announcements, the county has heard “good things” in its communications with site selectors, brokers and companies, Stiefvater adds. While that hasn’t translated into immediate deals, he chalks that up to uncertainty in the post-pandemic office market environment.

The county has, however, received “quite a few” requests for proposals from consultants, “which is a nice change,” Stiefvater adds. “It was really quiet, basically since the beginning of the pandemic through this fall, in terms of corporate headquarters deals.”

Those RFPs haven’t yielded results the county can announce yet, but Stiefvater says they’re a signal that “we’re in competition.

“I’m imagining, you know, Boeing, Raytheon certainly probably played a role in catching people’s attention and hopefully got us on the short list or a final list.”

Filling in

Industrial real estate is a hot commodity in .

“It’s hard to find available space of anything that’s above 15,000 to 20,000 square feet,” says Jonathan Belcher, executive director of the Virginia Coalfield Authority (VCEDA), which represents Lee, Wise, Scott, Buchanan, Russell, Tazewell and Dickenson counties and the city of Norton.

Leaders in the area had discussed putting up industrial spec buildings — structures erected with a goal of attracting tenants after . But then inflation hit. “It’s just become so cost-prohibitive,” Belcher says. Until prices go down, he and other Southwest Virginia economic leaders have had to look “more closely at what existing inventory there is in an area.”

New Jersey-based custom resin and vinyl fabric manufacturer Ronald Mark Associates Inc. (RMA) looked to existing inventory for its new Virginia operation. In November 2022, RMA announced plans to invest $13.5 million to establish a manufacturing operation at the former Komatsu plant in .

Executives at Komatsu, a manufacturer of construction, mining, forestry and industrial heavy equipment, announced in January 2021 their plans to close the Bluefield facility, which produced underground mining products. According to news reports, 120 workers lost their jobs.

In late January, RMA President Michael Satz said he had just hired a production manager who would help him hire 28 more employees. “If Komatsu had over 120 people on staff, hopefully we can find some of those people and bring them back.”

Manufacturing and shipping

In another example of repurposing existing buildings, Signco, a Chicago-based custom sign manufacturer, announced plans in March 2022 to invest $650,000 to establish operations at the former MC Signs facility in Bluefield. Timothy Danielson, director of economic development for , said the company had 21 employees working at the Bluefield operation by early December 2022. “It’s another great addition to the manufacturing base in the area,” Belcher says.

Chilhowie also had big manufacturing news last year.

In June 2022, Illinois-based Scholle IPN, a flexible packaging supplier, announced plans to invest $31.1 million to expand its operation in the town by 73,000 square feet to accommodate new manufacturing lines. The company also plans to add 800 feet of new rail track to support the inflow of resin.

Kendra Hayden, economic development project manager for Smyth County, said in early December 2022 that the company had laid a concrete pad for the . 

Construction should be completed by late summer or early fall, according to Jake Tabor, business retention and expansion manager for the Mount Rogers Regional Partnership, a nonprofit regional economic development organization.

In Washington County, construction is underway on a 251,000-square-foot distribution center for FedEx Ground. The facility is expected to create 250 jobs, according to Jason Boswell, director of community development for the county.

The warehouse is expected to be operational in 2023, a spokesperson for FedEx said in a statement to Virginia Business.

Tech talent

Southwest Virginia also attracted technology employers in 2022.

In August 2022, Paymerang LLC, a Chesterfield County-based payment and invoice automation company, announced plans to create 50 jobs in software development, payment operations and cloud engineering in Wise County. The new positions will be housed in Big Stone Gap’s downtown coworking space.

As of early December 2022, the company had hired about a dozen of the new employees, according to Will Payne, managing partner of consulting firm Coalfield Strategies LLC, which leads business development for , a public-private business attraction and marketing campaign for Southwest Virginia that assisted with Paymerang’s move to Wise County.

In October 2022, two Tazewell County residents announced plans to locate a data center hosting and cryptocurrency mining business called Blackstone Data Services LLC at the county’s Bluestone Business and Technology Park.

“We think it will be successful,” Tazewell County Administrator Eric Young says of the project. “Hopefully other data centers will come out into rural areas.”

Co-founders Seth White and Craig Earls have installed two mobile data centers at the park. These centers house technology used for bitcoin mining, a process where high-performance computers solve math equations to validate bitcoin transactions.

White and Earls are working with Appalachian Power and county officials in the hopes of increasing the amount of power available at the technology park. As of December 2022, Blackstone Data Services had 1.5 megawatts of power available to use, according to Earls. Ideally, they’d like access to 10 to 12 megawatts. That will likely require a substation to be built, he says.

“We’re a small company right now,” adds White. “We’ve got aspirations to grow beyond that — assuming we can get more power.” 

 

Surgical precision

Like many other businesses, systems are constantly consolidating and forging partnerships to create synergy.

In 2022, one of Virginia’s longest awaited agreements finally crystallized: a merger between and . The creation of Eastern Virginia Health Sciences Center at — folding the medical school into the university — was included in a bill sponsored by Sen. Louise Lucas during the 2023 Virginia General Assembly, and the measure was passing through the legislature as of deadline for this issue, allocating at least $10 million in state funding toward startup costs.

After Gov. Glenn Youngkin signs off on it, the merger would be required to take place by July 2024, and strategic financial plans, governing expectations and suggested metrics for improving community health care would be due to Youngkin and legislative leaders by Aug. 1.

Before the bill was filed, though, the news of an impending deal came trickling out. In July 2022, ODU hired Dr. Alicia Monroe as chief integration officer and senior adviser to ODU President Brian O. Hemphill, with the stated task of developing a plan to “integrate ODU and in 2023.” Last August, Aubrey Layne, Healthcare’s executive vice president of governance and external affairs, said he, along with ODU and EVMS officials, had met with Gov. Glenn Youngkin to discuss the merger, which would also involve Sentara.

This move wasn’t totally unexpected, as the two schools had entered into agreements with Sentara and Norfolk State University in late 2021, including the collaborative ONE School of Public Health.

But it’s a sea change compared with 2020 and early 2021, when EVMS and Sentara officials were in a standoff over a proposed merger that the medical school’s leadership opposed. Founded in 1973, EVMS is a rarity as a public medical school unaffiliated with an undergraduate university, which would change when it becomes part of ODU. With a change in leaders at EVMS, ODU and Sentara in 2021 and 2022, though, the possibility of a merger grew.

Leaders from all three institutions say that collaboration will help improve local health care, share staff and other resources, and raise more money from donors.

In addition to the EVMS-ODU merger, health care systems around the state marked a few changes of the guard. Former Sentara Health Plans President Dennis Matheis became Sentara’s new president and CEO, replacing the retiring Howard Kern in September 2022. Dr. Michael Dacey, Riverside Health System’s former chief operating officer, was promoted to become CEO with Bill Downey’s retirement at the end of 2022.

Bon Secours named a new market president, Mike Lutes, in August 2022, just before the health system was the subject of a New York Times exposé. The September 2022 story revealed how the hospital system had benefited financially from a federal prescription drug program that allowed clinics in low-income neighborhoods to buy medications at steep discounts, charge insurers full price and keep the proceeds. Although the extra money was intended by federal lawmakers to be reinvested in impoverished hospitals — in this case, Bon Secours’ Richmond Community Hospital — the system instead used the money to invest in hospitals in wealthier areas around Richmond, as well as return money to its Cincinnati corporate .

Richmond Community made $110 million in 2021 revenue, a typical amount for the small hospital, which treats 1,500 patients a year. From 2013 to 2022, Bon Secours invested about $10 million in capital improvements at Richmond Community, in addition to investing $8 million in the hospital’s East End neighborhood. Executives have defended the system’s spending practices, which are legal. In January, Bon Secours opened a $16.5 million medical office in Richmond Community’s neighborhood, and system officials have said it will track health progress in the city’s East End over the next three years.

Meanwhile, a General Assembly bill that would have created greater transparency over how much health care systems profit from the federal drug discount law died quietly in the House of Delegates in January. Bon Secours opposed the measure. 

A titanic win

After enduring the exodus of companies like Burlington Mills and Daystrom Furniture over the past two decades, is celebrating its biggest announcement in decades — the arrival of Virginia’s first demonstration facility.

Last fall, Charlotte, North Carolina-based , a minerals company, announced an $82.1 million investment to establish the nation’s first 100% recycled titanium metal powder manufacturing facility in a 50,000-square-foot building in the Southern Virginia Technology Park in South Boston. The three-year project will be developed over two phases. Phase one includes $12.5 million for building – and production-related machinery and tools, as well as hiring
41 full-time employees. That will be followed by a $69.6 million investment to expand the facility to 100,000 square feet and increase the to 108 full-time workers in phase two.

anticipates having the facility outfitted by the second quarter, with operations beginning in the fourth quarter. The company plans to source 100% renewable energy to make 100% recycled titanium for use as an alloying component in advanced industries such as automotive, , aerospace, electric vehicles and 3D printing.

“This is a highly valued and high-growth industry,” says IperionX founder and CEO Anastasios “Taso” Arima.

Halifax County was chosen for the titanium demonstration facility after an extensive nationwide search, he says. IperionX needed a 50,000-square-foot existing building with a ceiling tall enough to accommodate overhead cranes. The company was looking for an area with strong infrastructure, a skilled workforce and renewable power. Cooperation from county and state officials also helped seal the deal. 

“What we saw in South Boston ticks all the boxes,” Arima says. “This area has a lot of potential with defense applications, and Danville Community College is less than an hour away to train people to operate the type of equipment we have.”

IperionX’s goal is to develop a U.S. of sustainable, low-cost titanium metal for advanced manufacturing. Currently, 100% of titanium metal is imported from overseas, with China as the biggest source.

“The United States is vulnerable to overseas titanium metal supply chains,” Arima notes. “With this commercial facility, we will be solving a critical supply chain for the U.S.”

IperionX is poised for future growth in the region.

“This is just a start. As we see success in building our business in Southern Virginia, we will see a lot more potential for significant growth. We hope this grows into a large titanium metal producer globally with what we plan to do in Southern Virginia over the next five years,” Arima says. “From titanium metal powder, we can make traditional products like bars and plates. It’s also used in the rapidly growing 3D printing industry.”

That’s the type of news Halifax County has been waiting decades to hear. “There has not been a manufacturing announcement of this size in almost 25 years,” says Kristy Johnson, executive director of the Halifax Industrial Authority. “We consider it a great project that is building on our manufacturing legacy.”

The region is prepared to provide equipment operators, accountants, engineers, process technicians, electricians, welders and other skilled workers for IperionX. “We’re working with all the regional workforce training programs to recruit workers,” Johnson adds. “We have a lot of good synergy across the region.”

The Institute for Advanced Learning and Research in Danville offers training in skills ranging from advanced technology to cybersecurity and partners with Danville Community College to provide training in advanced manufacturing through the newly opened Center for Manufacturing Advancement. The U.S. Navy opened its Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence at the center in October 2022 as a platform to expand the military’s industrial base.

“Danville Community College has a very strong training program for additive manufacturing, and the Department of Defense investing more money to train people for the future in additive manufacturing is a big bonus,” Arima says.

Calvin “Ricky” Short, chairman of the Halifax County Board of Supervisors, is eager to see those jobs come to fruition and boost the area’s economy. “We’ve been waiting a long time for a company like IperionX to come to Halifax,” he says.

“We are tickled to death to have IperionX come to Halifax County and bring in more jobs. Hopefully, it will bring in more industries and encourage more people to remain in the county.”  

 

DroneUp takes off

‘s LLC is riding the leading edge of the unmanned aerial vehicle industry wave.

Founded in 2016, the company, which specializes in commercial delivery, flight services and software, has grown its ranks from three to 530 employees. Retail giant Inc. is a new partner, and DroneUp is close to completing a $7 million at its .

In an August 2022 news conference with Gov. Glenn Youngkin, DroneUp announced it was taking off in a big way, adding 655 jobs as part of an expansion that will include establishing a $20 million drone testing, and research and center at in Dinwiddie County. DroneUp plans to add 510 jobs in Virginia Beach and 145 positions at the Richard Bland center.

“Virginia is extremely fortunate that we have DroneUp here because they have really put the industry on the map as far as the drone technology goes and package delivery,” says Tracy Tynan, director of the Unmanned Systems Center at Virginia Innovation Partnership Corp., a state- affiliated nonprofit that supports emerging companies and technologies in the commonwealth through grant programs and strategic initiatives.

DroneUp’s “growth has been amazing,” says David Bowles, executive director of the Virginia Institute for Spaceflight & Autonomy at Old Dominion University. “They’re a model, I think, of what you can do.”

DroneUp CEO Tom Walker says the pandemic was one factor in DroneUp’s recent growth. During lockdown, when people couldn’t congregate or travel, drones offered a remote solution for ongoing needs.

“When COVID-19 first hit, it was a very, very unfortunate thing for society and for the nation, but it was a very positive thing for our industry,” he says. “We still needed to do roof inspections and cell tower inspections and infrastructure inspections. … We were able to deploy drones to do those inspections that traditionally they’d not used them for.”

DroneUp’s recently inked deal with Walmart is another contributing factor to the company’s growth, Walker says. A contract to build out Walmart’s drone delivery network was announced in December 2021 and package delivery was offered at three Walmart locations in the retailer’s home state of Arkansas. In May 2022, DroneUp and Walmart announced plans to expand drone delivery services to reach 4 million homes across six states with drone hubs operating from 34 U.S. Walmart sites. Three hubs are located at Virginia Beach Walmart locations, with a 1-mile delivery range for up to 10-pound packages. Walmart has a minority stake in DroneUp, as well as two seats on DroneUp’s board.

The DroneUp Flight Academy at Richard Bland College is already preparing the next generations of the company’s flight engineers. As of December 2022, Richard Bland had trained 170 full-time DroneUp employees.

Richard Bland President Debbie Sydow says she’s excited the college is part of DroneUp’s pipeline. Trainees are not only prepped to make deliveries for DroneUp but they also earn 12 college credits in courses such as  Small Uncrewed Aerial Systems I and II, Components & Maintenance, and Remote Pilot Ground School.

“These students are getting prepared to do a specific job, but they’re also accruing college credit and hopefully continuing to build their list of credentials that allow them to continue to grow in this field,” Sydow says.

The college’s rural location offers plenty of open sky for drone training, Walker says, as well as available classroom space and student housing. “It had all of the facilities we needed.”

A delivery hub has been set up at the school and 1,000 workers are expected to graduate by the end of this year.

Sydow says having DroneUp on campus aligns with similar partnerships the school already has with advanced manufacturers. Walker says it has also created an opportunity to expose currently enrolled students to a new industry. Discussions are underway on how to expand DroneUp’s training program to existing college students.

“We’re looking at all those ways that we can really turn this into a major resource [for Virginia] that will go well beyond the kinds of uses that are part of what DroneUp is doing now,” Sydow says. “And DroneUp is fully supportive of that.”

A time to build

The Partnership had more activity than “anyone anticipated in 2022,” says Jay Langston, the partnership’s executive director.

During the calendar year, the partnership saw close to $140 million in investment and 520 jobs. 

In Fishersville, Amazon.com Inc. is building a $120 million, 1 million-square-foot nonsortable fulfillment center, which handles bulky or large items such as patio furniture, outdoor equipment or rugs. The building, 85% complete as of late January, is expected to be finished this spring, according to Langston.

“I’ve been in this business for 38 years and never had a project like that come in so fast,” he adds. “It was the right place and the right time. Augusta County did a superb job working with consultants and engineers. It was a huge team effort.”

Additionally, Rockingham Cooperative in will invest nearly $17 million to upgrade and expand its grain handling and feed operations, adding up to 20 jobs.

“This is a major investment because of the growth of agriculture in the region,” Langston says. “We have four of the top five agriculture top-producing counties in Virginia in this region.”

Augusta County

Augusta County’s economy held strong with the February 2022 announcement of Amazon’s nonsortable fulfillment center.

With 21% of the county’s workforce in manufacturing, “job openings in that sector, particularly, continued to grow,” says Rebekah Castle, the county’s director of economic development and marketing. “There continues to be great potential for growth with growing job openings and programs like Blue Ridge Community College’s Job Starter, paid providing the skills … needed to be successful starting a job in advanced manufacturing.”

“Active and productive” are the words Brian Shull, Harrisonburg’s economic development director, uses to describe the city’s economic development in 2022.

Farmer Focus completed on its organic chicken packaging facility, a $65 million-plus project in northern Harrisonburg, in February 2022.

“This project led to enhanced business interest in surrounding greenfield sites,” undeveloped land that can be used for commercial or residential development, Shull says. 

Lauf Cycling, an Icelandic high-end bicycle manufacturer, selected Harrisonburg for its U.S. headquarters, including a showroom and distribution center. The company made the announcement in April 2022 and signed a five-year lease for a 6,500-square-foot shell building in downtown Harrisonburg at 156 E. Washington St., which the bike maker plans to build out. Lauf’s projections call for hiring approximately eight employees in three years. Capital investment figures for the facility build-out have not been released.

“Harrisonburg has such a strong cycling and outdoor recreation culture,” Shull says. “Lauf quickly recognized this asset and wanted to be part of it.”

Harrisonburg Innovation Hub (HIH), a coworking center, is expected to open in the former Wetsel Seed building downtown late this year. The HIH team purchased the 25,648-square-foot building for $2.88 million and expects the purchase and renovation costs to total $4.5 million. The space will offer up to 60 offices, rooftop event space and an AV production studio, developers say.

In addition, Blue Ridge Rubber & Industrial Products Co., an industrial rubber hose fabricator, is investing $700,000 to expand its Harrisonburg manufacturing facility on Acorn Drive, near Eastern Mennonite University.

Thanks to increased tourism spending and James Madison University’s first year in the Sun Belt Conference, Harrisonburg also experienced a healthy bounce in hospitality sector tax revenue in 2022. Compared with 2021, Harrisonburg saw a 15.8% jump in meals tax revenue, a 12.1% rise in lodging tax revenue and a 9.2% increase in sales tax revenue.

The past year was the most productive year Rockbridge County had seen in economic development over the last five years.

“In addition to establishing an office of economic development, the county started developing its first strategic economic development plan to guide future economic development efforts,” reports Brandy Flint, the county’s director of economic development. “We have two new commercial construction projects underway and two more to start next year.”

The estimated value of all 2022 commercial building permits, including new construction and renovations, was “approximately $18.6 million,” she adds.

The conversion of a Modine Manufacturing Co. warehouse into a manufacturing plant was a $7 million project that kicked off in 2021, with work completed in November 2022. “That project has continued into 2022 with an increased scope of work and additional employment,” Flint says, noting the plant’s projected 60 jobs has increased to 73 because of an increase in sales.

Rockingham County

Rockingham County’s growth in 2022 was a balance of new and existing business expansions and announcements.

“The county is fortunate to have such a diverse economic base of manufacturing, food and beverage and service-related businesses throughout the community,” says Joshua Gooden, the county’s economic development and tourism coordinator.

In 2021, Veronesi Holding S.p.A. selected the county to become the first North American location for its cured meat processing facility located in Innovation Village @ Rockingham. The Italian company broke ground in February 2022 on the facility, which is anticipated to be completed this spring. The plant is expected to bring 150 jobs to the county.

Meanwhile, Gooden says, the $6.5 million of Virginia Industrial Plastics Inc.’s plant in Rockingham, a project that was expected to create 92 jobs, has been delayed. The project was announced in 2021.

Shenandoah County

Shenandoah County saw a dramatic increase in the number of leads and interest in properties throughout 2022, says Jenna French, the county’s director of tourism and economic development.

“Our industrial development authority entered into an option-to-purchase agreement on a 21-acre parcel in the Northern Shenandoah Business Park in Strasburg, and one of our larger parcels of industrially zoned land recently sold in the Toms Brook area,” she says.

Shenandoah crossed the finish line with one of its larger tourism projects, a $109 million wellness and nature resort known as Simply Shenandoah, which is slated to break ground this spring and open to guests in 2024. The deal is expected to create 125 jobs.

“With tourism being the second largest industry in our county, this is a welcome addition that fills a unique niche for the county, offering a higher end experience and additional lodging opportunities,” French says.

Waynesboro

Waynesboro’s economic development wins were a bit smaller than those in other localities, but Greg Hitchin, the city’s director of economic development and tourism, notes, “We opened five businesses this summer, and all are doing well.”

Also, the Virginia Museum of Natural History’s Waynesboro campus is moving forward, with the design phase set to end in June 2023. Contingent on General Assembly funding, groundbreaking is tentatively scheduled for 2024, with a spring or summer 2026 opening. The city expects the museum to draw more than 65,000 visitors annually.

In Winchester, one of 2022’s major economic wins was the redevelopment of the Winchester Towers property, with Lynx Ventures LLC leading a mixed-use project with 175 residential units and a structured parking facility, as well as retail and dining space.

“Combining the housing with the services enhances socialization and provides the businesses with ready consumer activity. It’s a win-win for all involved,” says Winchester Mayor John David Smith Jr.

The city’s economic development authority leveraged the state’s enterprise zone program to facilitate an $11 million expansion of Continental AG, generating 67 manufacturing jobs as well as other investments. The authority didn’t provide incentive details.

In December 2021, TFC Poultry LLC announced it would invest $31.5 million to establish its second U.S. production facility in Winchester at the former Sunshine’s Pride Dairy facility, which was expected to open by April. The project is anticipated to create 111 jobs.

Trex Company Inc., one of the major brands of composite decking, is building a $7 million, 64,000-square-foot global headquarters and adding 200 employees. (See related story.) Announced in January 2022, construction is underway with completion anticipated in the third quarter of 2023.

Paying it forward

In the last year, Virginia philanthropists continued making generous donations toward research, while others maintained their longstanding support of art museums.

Leading the pack were two nine-figure donations for medical research. In February 2022, , who built his expertise researching and treating liver disease, donated $104 million to Virginia Commonwealth University to help establish the previously announced Stravitz-Sanyal Institute for Liver Disease and Metabolic Health and to establish two endowed chairs at ‘s School of Medicine. Stravitz is an heir to the Boar’s Head Provisions Co. Inc. fortune.

In January, investor and his wife, Diane, donated $100 million to the to fund the launch of the Paul and Diane Manning Institute of Biotechnology. The university and the commonwealth are contributing $150 million and $50 million respectively to the of the facility, which will focus on research to produce new medical treatments that are expected to treat multiple diseases. Although the Charlottesville center is set to open in 2027, research work will start soon in existing U.Va. facilities.

Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, continued her support of underfunded institutions. In October 2022, she pledged $15 million to the Warrenton-based PATH Foundation, which provides grants to health-focused organizations in Fauquier, Rappahannock and Culpeper counties.

In other health-related donations, Roanoke-based health system Carilion Clinic received three $1 million gifts, including donations for cancer treatment services from Roanoke residents George Logan and Helen Harmon Logan, and from Maury Strauss, in honor of his late wife, Sheila. Carilion also received a $1 million in April 2022 from an anonymous couple to support its career advancement program.

The Carlyle Group co-founder, interim CEO and non-executive co-chairman William E. “Bill” Conway Jr. and his wife, Joanne, donated to health care workers’ education, giving $14 million in September 2022 to U.Va.’s School of Nursing and $13 million to VCU’s School of Nursing later that month.

In April 2022, U.Va.’s Virginia Athletics Foundation received a $40 million anonymous bequest from a former student-athlete, the largest in its history, as part of its $5 billion capital campaign.

During James Madison University’s fundraising campaign that raised more than $251 million, the university received its largest-ever cash gift, $5 million, from 1982 alumnus Paul Holland and his wife, Linda Yates. JMU announced the gift in October 2022.

In June 2022, VCU received a $5 million donation to create three endowed funds for its Department of Theatre in the School of Arts from Charlottesville resident James H.T. McConnell Jr. Virginia Tech also received a $5 million donation last year, when Reston-based Bowman Consulting Group Ltd. founder and CEO Gary Bowman committed $5 million in October 2022 to its College of Engineering to expand sustainable land learning initiatives.

In the art world last year, familiar names continued their support of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Chrysler Museum of Art. In March 2022, longtime philanthropists Jim and Frances McGlothlin of Bristol, Virginia, donated nearly $60 million to the VMFA, a gift that includes 15 works by Norman Rockwell, John Singer Sargent, Andrew Wyeth and other American artists. The donation — the couple’s third major gift since 2010 — also supports the museum’s . Construction of a new 170,000-square-foot wing is set to start in late 2024, according to the museum.

Hampton Roads native Joan Brock, whose late husband, Macon Brock, co-founded Dollar Tree Inc., donated $34 million to the Chrysler Museum, including 40 works of art and two endowed curator posts.

The gift was announced in May 2022, and Brock said in an interview last year with Virginia Business that she considers the work of curators especially important. “They’re the ones that go out into the field, looking for art, looking for shows, espousing the benefits of the Chrysler Museum.”

 

A sampling of Virginia’s major road projects

HAMPTON ROADS

Expansion Project

Work continues on Virginia’s largest highway construction project, the $3.9 billion Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel () expansion. The contract ends in November 2025, but the contractor — , a joint venture led by Inc. — was about 11 months behind in January, according to the Virginia Department of Transportation. hasn’t changed the contract completion date and says the department “will continue to work with the contractor to mitigate any production delays.”

The project will widen the four-lane segments of the 9.9-mile Interstate 64 corridor between Norfolk and Hampton to six lanes on land and eight over the water with twin two-lane tunnels. Marine work laying bases for bridge trestles is ongoing.

Crews will use a $70 million custom-built tunnel boring machine (TBM) to carve out underwater paths. In June 2022, contractors finished excavating 118,000 cubic yards of soil for the TBM launch pit. In fall 2022, workers reassembled 170 pieces of the TBM on the South Island in the pit. Work on the receiving pit on the North Island is ongoing, and VDOT anticipates boring will begin in spring.

NORTHERN VIRGINIA

Improve 95

As part of the Improve 95 plan to address congestion, the state government entered into a $1 billion public-private partnership with Transurban, an Australian toll-road operations company with its U.S. in Alexandria. The $565 million Extension (Fred Ex) project will extend Interstate 95 express lanes about 10 miles south to Exit 133 in Stafford County. Transurban will operate and maintain the lanes, charging variable usage tolls in a contract that continues until 2087. Construction on the project started in spring 2019. The project’s expected completion was initially late 2022 but became late 2023 due to construction delays.

SHENANDOAH/

improvements, Coalfields Expressway

Resulting from a 2018 study, the $2.7 billion Interstate 81 Corridor Improvement Program lists 64 planned upgrades targeting safety and reliability along the 325-mile corridor from Bristol to . It’s scheduled for completion in 2033. Improvements include interchange ramp upgrades, highway widening and auxiliary lanes. Projects are in varying stages. A recently completed project is the 0.8-mile ramp extension from Route 11 onto northbound I-81 at exit 47 in Marion that opened to traffic in July 2022. VDOT traffic engineers estimated that the extension could reduce crashes by up to 77%.

The 115-mile, $4 billion Coalfields Expressway — U.S. Route 460/121 — is slated to run through Southwest Virginia and southern West Virginia, boosting commerce and tourism. About 50 miles of the proposed expressway would run through Virginia. Construction is underway on a $207 million 2-mile section of U.S. Route 460 that will extend from near Route 604 to the existing Route 460 in Grundy, with an expected completion date in December. The federal government’s fiscal 2023 spending bill allocated $7 million to VDOT for CFX design and construction, which the state plans to use to widen the 2-mile section to four lanes. Construction is set to start in March and end in December 2023.   

Take a load off

One thing Brian Dail noticed as he spent a day and a half in February 2020 participating in step van manufacturer ‘s new hire training in Loudon, Tennessee, was the physical strain.

After the first hour, he told his colleagues, “‘Gosh, I’m not used to being on my feet. I’m ready to sit down.’”

But Dail wasn’t going through onboarding as a new hire. He’s managing director of customized training operations for the Virginia Economic Partnership’s Virginia Talent Accelerator Program, a discretionary incentive program that provides free customizable recruiting and training services for eligible businesses locating or expanding in Virginia. Dail went through Morgan Olson’s onboarding training so that he and his team of five could begin to develop customized training for the 703 hires needed for the manufacturer’s Danville-area assembly plant. (Announced in late 2019 with an initial $57.8 million investment, the Morgan Olson factory is located in a former Ikea furniture plant just over the city line in Pittsylvania County’s Ringgold area.)

Dail wasn’t the first to notice the amount of standing time required of Morgan Olson’s assembly workers: “Consequently, that’s some of the feedback that they were getting,” he recalls.” People weren’t used to the physicality of it.” In response, Dail’s team developed a tailored training program that addressed the concern by progressively reducing classroom time and increasing lab time in order to condition trainees for the demanding work. 

Morgan Olson opened the plant on time in June 2020, despite the then-raging COVID-19 pandemic.

“I attribute a lot of it to the state,” specifically VEDP, says Morgan Olson President and CEO Mike Ownbey. “Their training people came to our plant in Tennessee and saw how we manufactured trucks, and then they went back and set up training cells. … We closed on the plant and started producing trucks less than 90 days later.”

The talent accelerator completed its obligation, training the Morgan Olson plant’s 703rd employee in August 2021. The plant reached full production in July 2022 but is temporarily down to 500 people due to chassis supply chain issues, Ownbey says. Morgan Olson plans to build staffing back as the chassis shortages improve.

The Virginia Talent Accelerator Program helps the commonwealth compete for projects like the Morgan Olson facility and the jobs that come with them, by alleviating companies’ concerns about securing a trained workforce. From fiscal year 2020 through January 2023, the talent accelerator helped secure more than 10,000 jobs in Virginia, according to VEDP.

The program is a collaboration between VEDP and the Virginia Community College System. With company input, VCCS develops credential and industry certification programs to create a talent pipeline aimed at meeting future workforce needs after the VEDP program ends. 

Doing the heavy lifting

“Virginia has long had an incentive that provides basically grant funding to offset the recruitment and training costs for [expanding or relocating] companies … but we did not have what some of our top [competitor states] provided, which is a full-service, customized recruitment and training solution,” says VEDP President and CEO Jason El Koubi. The talent accelerator has filled that gap for Virginia.

Since its launch in 2019, the talent accelerator has committed to assisting 29 projects, which are in various phases.

Global company GlaxoSmithKline, for example, has completed its expansion, hiring 150 scientists in as part of a $16.7 million build-out of its consumer research center announced in 2019. Shipping and logistics company CMA CGM Group hired about 400 employees, largely to expand its Hampton Roads operations, with the help of the talent accelerator. Group, meanwhile, is in the early stages of the program for its $1 billion Chesterfield County facility, projected to create more than 1,760 jobs over the next 10 years. In August 2022, VEDP and VCCS staff visited Lego’s facilities in Mexico while conducting a needs analysis. They were set to return in February to film training and marketing videos.

VEDP helped Lego hire 15 salaried employees as of February. Lego plans to hire about 60 production employees by June with VEDP’s assistance, and about 500 employees by the end of the year. They will work in Lego’s temporary facility, packaging kits produced elsewhere, until the permanent facility opens in 2025 and production begins.

Clients have been pleased with the accelerator, which has earned accolades from industry publications and netted success stories to share with companies looking to locate new projects or expand existing assets in the commonwealth.

“We buy a lot of companies and do this all the time, and the state of Virginia is by far the best that I’ve dealt with … in terms of workforce development,” Ownbey says.

The recruiting and training materials and processes developed by VEDP’s talent accelerator team had a noticeable effect on Morgan Olson’s workforce. The Tennessee facility had an attrition rate above 50%, according to VEDP, but the Danville-area facility has a rate of about 10% to 15%. 

“It was because we did that firsthand experience, and we put ourselves on the other side of the table, as I like to say, as a new hire,” Dail says.

Offering options

To be eligible for the talent accelerator, a company must have considered multiple states for its project. For or distribution facilities, a project needs to create 25 jobs in its first year. For other projects, like information technology firms, corporate headquarters or call centers, a project must create 50 jobs within its first year. Wages for these jobs must be at or above a locality’s prevailing average wage, or 85% of the average wage if the community has an unemployment rate above the average statewide rate and/or a poverty rate greater than the statewide average rate.

VEDP Senior Vice President Mike Grundmann was recruited from a similar program in Georgia to run the Virginia Talent Accelerator Program. Photo by Shandell Taylor

As an alternative to the talent accelerator, companies can choose to participate in VEDP’s other job-based incentive program, the three-year Virginia Jobs Investment Program (VJIP). It provides cash grant reimbursements for associated human resources costs after a company has had new employees on the payroll for at least 90 days. About 225 to 275 companies participate in VJIP each year. Virginia allocates $4.67 million to VJIP annually, and VEDP can carry over any unused funds.

As for the talent accelerator, VEDP aims for it to commit to training for about 3,000 to 5,000 announced jobs each year. Last year, job creation announcements exceeded that goal. For fiscal 2023, the General Assembly allocated $9 million to the talent accelerator. VEDP can request additional funding for a large project through a General Assembly commission if needed.

Former VEDP President and CEO Stephen Moret spearheaded Virginia’s talent accelerator, replicating a successful custom workforce training program he and El Koubi created in 2008 for Louisiana before both came to Virginia.

To head up Virginia’s talent accelerator, Moret hired Mike Grundmann, a VEDP senior vice president, from Georgia’s training program, QuickStart, which the Louisiana program was modeled after.

“Part of the advantage we have here in Virginia … is … because we had a group of people involved in designing it from the very beginning who all had deep familiarity with some of the other leading existing programs, namely those in Georgia and Louisiana,” El Koubi says.

In Business Facilities’ 18th Annual Rankings Report, released in 2022, Louisiana took first place in the state rankings for the 13th consecutive year. However, Virginia placed No. 2 for the second year, two spots above Georgia. Area Development magazine, another industry publication, ranked Virginia second for workforce development programs in 2022, with Georgia coming in first in 2021 and 2022. Virginia tied with Louisiana for second place in 2021.

These rankings matter, Grundmann explains: “It gets us in the mix on more projects. Site selection consultants read these publications, and when they see a state that has that kind of ranking … it helps us get considered for projects that we might have been overlooked for in the past.”

VEDP has recruited and trained more than 2,000 people through the talent accelerator since training sessions began in 2020, although the 4-year-old program is currently committed to training 10,000 hires. By comparison, Louisiana’s 15-year-old FastStart program has trained more than 6,100 people since 2019, according to Louisiana Economic Development spokesman Mark Lorando.

Getting to work

The talent accelerator team begins by conducting a needs analysis for clients. Once a company and VEDP agree on the scope of work, VEDP staff begin designing and developing recruiting and training materials as companies build their facilities and install equipment.

To aid clients with recruiting workers, VEDP creates materials such as advertisements, websites and promotional videos. For BlueStar Manufacturing LLC, which in October 2021 announced plans to build a $714 million medical glove factory in Wytheville, VEDP staff built the company’s website and included a place for potential job applicants to sign up for email updates about employment openings. Blue Star has said it plans to create 2,500 jobs by 2028.

VEDP’s talent acquisition team leverages multiple recruiting tactics to aid its clients, including social media, mailings, Google Ads and a cloud-based technology that can post to about 25 job boards at once, says Steve Youll, VEDP’s managing director of talent acquisition. 

Kris Weidling, chief human resources officer at Civica Rx — a pharma company building its $124.5 million North American headquarters in Petersburg — praises VEDP’s talent acquisition team.

“Really,” he says, “we think of them as an extension of the HR group, since we don’t have a lot of people … [and] they’re saying, ‘What do you need to recruit and bring people here? And let’s help you with that until you get up to scale.’”

VEDP has assisted Civica with career fairs, helping create banners and pamphlets. The company had hired about 70 people as of January and expects to hire all 186 headquarters employees by 2025.

The Community College Workforce Alliance is developing programs to help sustain pharmaceutical manufacturing companies’ workforces, says CCWA Associate Vice President Dana Newcomer. Photo by Matthew R.O. Brown

With a company’s approval, VEDP begins pre-hire trainings, which are two- to three-hour sessions comprised of hands-on activities for potential hires and time with instructors who detail the company’s culture, says Dail. His team provides assessment data from the hands-on activities to companies to aid in hiring decisions.

Lego and VEDP are currently planning and developing pre-employment assessments for production workers, though Lego staffers will train the first batch of production workers this summer at the company’s production facility in Monterrey, Mexico.

VEDP’s staffers “have a really good grasp of what we do, and they can do it so quickly and so succinctly that we will definitely have our training ready by the time we start to hire,” says Nancy Frank, plant manager for Tyson Foods’ $300 million Danville-area facility in Ringgold, which is expected to create nearly 400 jobs and reach full production by the end of the year.

After a company has made its hiring decisions, VEDP moves into post-hire training. For Morgan Olson, VEDP secured space at Danville Community College and structured trainings so that classes of about 12 to 16 people would break into groups and rotate between the classroom and the shop floor, where teams of two would practice riveting. The hands-on practice also taught new hires how to communicate over the noisy work around them.

Dail and his team guided about 45 job candidates through pre-hire trainings weekly through 2020; Morgan Olson hired about 30 of those people each week, he says.

Resources abound

New-hire trainings often involve VEDP-created illustrated job aids, simulations, 3D animations and videos demonstrating processes or equipment. Any proprietary materials that VEDP creates for a company through the talent accelerator become that company’s property. As companies near job creation benchmarks, VEDP trainers begin turning training materials over to the company, with guidance on future usage.

“After the first conference call I had with [VEDP’s training team], my face was beaming and I’m like, ‘This is the best call ever,’ because there were so many resources offered that just really met all of our needs,” Frank says.

VEDP’s talent accelerator team also offers assistance with organizational development, including leadership skills. These trainings, too, are customizable. The team can create programs ranging from half a day to 160 hours, says Laura Boone, VEDP’s managing director of organizational development services. Morgan Olson used leadership trainings of varying lengths for each level of management at its Danville-area plant. Boone’s team also consults with new companies, helping them create materials such as employee handbooks or performance management systems.

After VEDP trains the last new hire from a company’s initially announced hiring benchmark, VCCS helps sustain the company’s workforce by creating a talent pipeline.

The talent accelerator onboards a company’s initial staff, and community colleges then take “more of the long-term view of continuing to bring in qualified applicants later on,” says Dana Newcomer, associate vice president of sector strategies and programs for the Community College Workforce Alliance (CCWA), a joint workforce training division of Brightpoint and Reynolds community colleges.

Course customization

Part of an emerging pharmaceutical manufacturing hub in Petersburg, VEDP talent accelerator clients Civica and AMPAC Fine Chemicals are partners on a $354 million federal contract to create domestic sources of pharmaceutical drugs and ingredients at risk of shortages. In 2021, AMPAC announced it would create 156 jobs in a $25 million facility expansion.

In August 2022, CCWA launched a two-semester career studies certificate course at Brightpoint, which it developed in about nine months with the companies’ input. VEDP identified a technical education and training consultant and paid a portion of his fees to help CCWA.

“The talent accelerator helped get us started by introducing us to the company, introducing us to the company’s workforce needs, identifying resources that we needed to get started with that program of study and curriculum design, and then loaning us a consultant for a period of months to help us get started with writing that curriculum,” says CCWA Vice President Elizabeth Creamer.

Students are learning sanitation and formulation techniques, equipment maintenance, standard operating procedure, good documentation practices and lab safety, says Cornelia Kavungo-Johnson, Brightpoint’s pharmaceutical manufacturing program director and an associate professor. Brightpoint hired her to be the full-time pharmaceutical manufacturing professor in May 2022.

CCWA is also working on a roughly 135-hour pharma manufacturing technician certification that would fall under Virginia’s FastForward program, a short-term training program for high-demand industries offered through local community colleges. As of January, CCWA was close to submitting the program to FastForward for approval and expects to begin offering it to the general public in March.

To the south, Danville Community College offers industrial maintenance, machining and similar certifications from the National Center for Education and Research, some of which Tyson Foods identified as training it wanted for its employees, says Danville Community College President Jerry Wallace. “We might offer a standard NCCER training, but we also try to make sure that we customize when an employer needs a specific one for their workforce,” he says.

Client satisfaction with the program has added to economic development officials’ arsenal, growing the list of reasons a company should pick Virginia to locate or expand facilities.

“The thing that allowed [Louisiana’s] FastStart and the [Virginia] Talent Accelerator Program to get to the top so quickly is that every single company that used the program was delighted,” Moret says. “Then we used those folks [and] leveraged their testimonials, basically, to help make the case for the program.”

Morgan Olson, the Virginia talent accelerator’s first client, certainly seems to be a satisfied customer.

“I couldn’t be happier with the training I received and the workforce there,” Ownbey says. “The state’s the best I’ve dealt with, and I’ve dealt with a lot.” 

A ‘golden unicorn’

Chesterfield County Director Garrett Hart and Managing Director Matt McLaren had no idea which global client a site selection consultant was representing when the county was approached in November 2021 to discuss a potential major economic megaproject.

“All we knew is that they were in , and it was around a $700 million project,” and that the company wanted to include a large a solar energy component and for the project to be carbon-neutral, Hart recalls.

And he also knew that Chesterfield was one of a handful of localities short-listed by the global client company during its seven-month nationwide site selection search.

During their first in-person visit, the client company’s executives didn’t speak to anyone, Hart says, because “they didn’t want us to hear their accents.”

Finally, during one of the last virtual meetings, each member of the mystery client’s team changed their screen background, one by one. A figure was behind each executive.

“And then, someone had the Lego emblem behind them,” Hart says. “That’s when we knew who they were. It took a few minutes for us to speak again. To have one of the most beloved toy manufacturers making toys in Chesterfield was beyond my comprehension.”

The deal would go on to be announced by Gov. Glenn Youngkin in June 2022: The Billund, Denmark-based plans to invest $1 billion over a 10-year period to build a 1.7 million-square-foot, carbon-neutral manufacturing facility on a 340-acre site at the county’s Meadowville Technology Park, creating more than 1,760 jobs. 

“This is not just the unicorn; it’s the golden unicorn of economic development,” Hart says.

The Chesterfield factory, which will include molding, processing and packing operations plus a high bay warehouse, will be Lego’s seventh manufacturing factory worldwide, and the only one in the United States. Lego produces as many as 36 billion of its brightly colored plastic toy bricks annually. 

“They are currently designing the building and working with a lot of groups to figure out how they can best design the building for the future,” says Hart. “They are considering building designs such as mass timber , rainwater collection, and an onsite solar farm to lessen their carbon footprint.” (That extends to planting replacements for the 4,500 trees that were cleared from the factory site.)

The county plans to finish work on the site’s pad in March, and Lego “would like to be in production at the end of 2025,” Hart says.

The toy company has also leased a building in the Interchange Walthall Industrial Park, housing its temporary offices.

As of February, Lego had hired 15 salaried positions for the Chesterfield facility, and planned to make 60 production hires by June. Lego will send the first group of workers to train at its Mexico production facility in July, according to Karra McCormick, Lego’s head of talent operations in the Americas. And the toymaker plans to hire 500 workers at Chesterfield within a year.

Until its new campus is complete, Lego will assemble toy kits in its temporary facility, using bricks manufactured at other facilities. “They will be available to purchase at Christmas,” Hart says.

The area’s community colleges and the Virginia Talent Accelerator Program, a initiative created by the in partnership with the Virginia Community College System and other higher education partners, helped put Chesterfield over the top to secure the Lego megaproject.

Lego also loved the site and its central East Coast location.

“We would not have been in the competition if we didn’t have Meadowville and a site that was project-ready,” Hart says. “Having ready sites is important.”

Lego is already planning a visitor center for its new site and aims to be part of the local community. “They want to be very visible to everyone,” Hart adds.

Discussing their goals for the new factory, Lego executives said that “they wanted their employees and the company to be successful,” McLaren says. “They wanted to understand what our community was about, what issues our community faced, and if they could be of help. This company and their facility will be a wonderful highlight of our community and region.” ν

Assistant Editor Katherine Schulte contributed to this story.