A former Kmart in Abingdon is now home to a workforce developmentand child care hub launched by EO, a nonprofit that spun off from the United Way of Southwest Virginia to oversee workforce development programs.
EO received the certificate of occupancy for the 87,000-square-foot Regional Workforce and Child Development Hub and began moving employees into the center at the end of August, a week earlier than anticipated, says Mary Anne Holbrook, EO’s vice president of development. By mid-September, all 44 EO employees had moved in. A grand opening celebration is set for the week of Oct. 21.
Construction on the hub began in July 2023.
“We’re overwhelmed with the support of the business community,” EO President and CEO Travis Staton says. “Raising $26.5 million in a year shows at a local level how a public-private partnership can be built,” he explains, emphasizing the wide-reaching support of local employers as well as advocates in state government.
The name EO, which doubles as the Latin word for “go” and an abbreviation for “Endless Opportunities,” represents the organization’s mission to serve as a “cradle-to-career” support system to prepare Southwest Virginians for career success while retaining the local workforce. Holbrook notes that operations in the hub are expected to create 100 jobs.
To help close the regional gap in access to early child care that bars some parents from working, EO’s hub includes a roughly 25,000-square-foot child care facility owned and managed by Ballad Health that opened in early September.
The hub also supports workforce development, with classrooms for early childhood education and the Career Commons, an approximately 20,000-square-foot area with learning labs where regional employers created activities for K-12 students.
“When you look into Career Commons, it is a miniature city of employers,” including a hospital, a grocery store and a bank, Holbrook says. “So, students of all ages will be able to do appropriate career exploration activities on their field trips, and those begin in mid-October with the middle school students from across Southwest Virginia.”
The hub includes a classroom for high school students who participate in Washington County’s early childhood education career and technical education program to attend lectures. The students can then complete practical hours working in Ballad’s early childhood development center. EO will also offer professional development opportunities for early childhood educators already in the field at the hub.
Hampton Roads always has plenty going on, and in this issue of Hampton Roads Business, we’ll take you on a tour around the region to check in on some of the largest and most consequential projects that are under development.
In our main feature, “Latest and greatest,” freelance writer Jim Morrison will bring you up to date on major construction projects like Atlantic Park in Virginia Beach and upgrades to Norfolk’s Half Moone Cruise Terminal, as well as ambitious improvement plans for Norfolk International Airport, and the latest on redevelopment efforts around Military Circle and MacArthur Center malls in Norfolk and Fort Monroe in Hampton. We also are keeping up with several current infrastructure projects, led by the expansion of the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, where Mary the boring machine is in action. At the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, a second boring machine is back at work after hitting an old anchor last fall, requiring the removal of the anchor and repair of parts on the machine.
This year’s issue also reports the latest on offshore wind, from progress on the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project to LS GreenLink’s plan to build a $681 million subsea cable factory in Chesapeake, the first such U.S. plant to produce cables used for offshore wind farms. Plus, we have an update on Rivers Casino Portsmouth, which will celebrate two years in business in January 2025.
As usual, Hampton Roads Business devotes ample attention to residential and commercial real estate, higher education, workforce training and local Inc. 5000 businesses, as well as providing numerous charts and lists that can help newcomers and longtime residents.
We hope you’ll enjoy reading the 2024 Hampton Roads Business guide and will find something in here that may spark an idea or introduce you to a person who can help your business.
It can take a village — or a valley — to attract a multinational corporation.
Shenandoah Valley economic and workforce development officials combined forces to entice Northrop Grumman to locate a 315,000-square-foot advanced electronics manufacturing and testing facility on a 63-acre site in Waynesboro, a project announced in November 2023.
Construction of the $200 million-plus project is well underway, according to Jay Langston, executive director of the Shenandoah Valley Partnership in Harrisonburg. A groundbreaking ceremony attended by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Northrop Grumman Chair, CEO and President Kathy Warden was held in February for the facility, which is expected to be operational by 2026.
The Falls Church-based aerospace and defense giant anticipates creating an estimated 300 jobs — mostly a variety of engineering and manufacturing positions — over the next five years.
“The Northrop Grumman model opens up a new sector in manufacturing electronic components unlike anything we’ve had,” Langston says.
Northrop Grumman employs about 95,000 employees — 6,800 in Virginia —
and reported $39.29 billion in 2023 revenue. This year, the company ranked No. 109 on Fortune magazine’s annual Fortune 500 list and No. 382 on its Global 500 list.
“Northrop Grumman has put its faith in us. It’s a big name. It’s a statement for us,” says Langston, adding that regional economic development officials plan to promote the Waynesboro facility as an example for attracting other advanced manufacturing companies to the region.
Manufacturing overall is big business in the Shenandoah Valley, employing more people than any other private sector industry, according to a December 2020 SmartAsset report.
Greg Hitchin, Waynesboro’s economic development director, appreciates the importance of Northrop Grumman’s decision to make such a big investment in the valley. “It’s a tremendous opportunity” for the city to attract “new manufacturing of this caliber,” he says.
Hitchin led a team to “work through all factors we needed to get this here. … We got a GO Virginia grant to do our due diligence work ahead of time.” That $821,000 grant, awarded in July 2021, allowed the city to perform due diligence on nine sites, totaling 1,182 acres.
In November 2023, Gov. Glenn Youngkin said he had approved an $8.5 million grant from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund to assist the city in securing the NG project, and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership’s Virginia Talent Accelerator Program is providing Northrop Grumman with employee training and recruitment services at no charge.
Hitchin believes one of the key reasons Northrop Grumman chose Waynesboro was the fact that the location had been upgraded to a Tier 4 site, a state site-readiness designation meaning that all infrastructure permit issues have been identified and quantified, and that plans for necessary infrastructure improvements have been completed and approved. Tier 5, the highest designation, is for shovel-ready sites, and “zero is a cornfield,” Hitchin says.
A new access road to the Northrop Grumman Waynesboro site is being funded by a Virginia Department of Transportation grant.
Now, he says, “the building is going up. The concrete walls are up. It changes every day. It’s well on the way to meeting its schedule.”
Students at Blue Ridge Community College study mechatronics, a training program that college officials say will provide skilled area workers for Northrop Grumman. Photo courtesy Blue Ridge Community College
Timely training
Another factor that may have helped draw Northrop Grumman to Waynesboro is access to the valley’s strong workforce development programs.
“Our mechatronics program is something that is going to be very valuable” to Northrop Grumman, as well as to other advanced manufacturing companies, says John Downey, president of Blue Ridge Community College in Weyers Cave.
Mechatronics, he explains, is the integration of mechanical systems with electronics and software. “We teach the basics. They train on the more specific,” Downey says.
BRCC is working with Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, near Northrop Grumman’s Albemarle County plant, which produces maritime systems and equipment. BRCC also is working with James Madison University, regional technical schools and even high schools on associated workforce development efforts.
That’s because Northrop Grumman and other high-tech companies don’t just need high-tech training; they also need workers trained in accounting, human resources and other professions.
“The education system in the valley provides the gamut,” Downey says. “We even train and test CDL drivers. It saves [companies] time. They can get people on the road a lot sooner.”
Key workforce development issues on the horizon are artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, Downey adds. “That’s a huge growth area for community colleges. We need to be in the forefront, helping not only big manufacturing companies but also smaller businesses in the community.”
The Shenandoah Valley is home to various kinds of manufacturing — such as food, medical and pharmaceuticals — that help keep the region recession-resistant, Downey says.
The food and beverage industry — from growing and processing to packaging and transporting — remains “by far our dominant sector” in the valley, according to Langston.
“Agriculture is so important to us, but we take it for granted in general. We want to better celebrate it,” he adds. The Shenandoah Valley is home to four of Virginia’s top five agricultural counties — Rockingham, Augusta, Page and Shenandoah — producing more than $1.3 billion annually in commodities sold, according to the 2022 U.S. Department of Agriculture Census.
Agricultural production is a huge investment and a great engine for jobs, according to Langston. “People don’t think about who is doing the construction, putting up the silos, providing the equipment. There are people who specialize in all kinds of things that are necessary to make it all work — fuel, equipment dealers, delivery truck, fertilizer, storage.”
Neil A. Houff, president of Weyers Cave-based Houff Corp. and a Virginia Crop Production Association board member, observes that farms in the Shenandoah Valley “are getting bigger and getting smaller.”
Growth is “going in both directions — large and niche. Some midsize farms are consolidating, while some are breaking into niche markets,” Houff says.
What is driving that divide, he notes, is the valley’s proximity to large populations of people of different income levels. “That makes us attractive to traditional food production and traditional farming,” while making room for niche markets such as organic farms and small vineyards.
Sustainability and humane treatment of livestock have become bigger issues in recent years, Houff adds.
Farmer Focus, a partner-owned collective of nearly 100 family farms raising humanely treated poultry, celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. The Harrisonburg-based company plans to add 300 jobs by 2025.
Overall, the poultry industry in the valley has been “pretty steady,” Houff says. The area also is a big beef production area, he says, but most of the beef grown is shipped west for processing because facilities in Virginia facilities are on the smaller side.
What’s more, many existing businesses seem to be in growth mode, Houff adds.
Dairy processing operator HP Hood announced plans this spring to invest more than $83.5 million to expand its Winchester-area facility. The project includes upgrades to production and packaging equipment, as well as construction of additional warehouse and cooler space.
In May, fast-casual Mediterranean restaurant chain Cava opened a 55,000-square-foot production and packaging facility in Augusta County. The company made an initial investment of approximately $35 million in the Verona facility, which manufactures dips and spreads.
Leiber, a German-based manufacturer, is set to invest up to $20 million to establish its first U.S. operation in Innovation Village in Rockingham County, it announced in September 2023.
The new facility, which will extract brewer’s yeast from the byproducts of beer making and process it into animal food, will reflect two aspects of the region’s agribusiness, says Joshua Gooden, deputy director of economic development and tourism for Rockingham County.
Rockingham received a $4.5 million grant from the Virginia Business Ready Sites Program in August for site development at Innovation Village. Gooden says the county plans to build a 20-acre pad site on a 165-acre property in hopes of attracting another large industrial facility.
In addition to its manufacturing draw, the Shenandoah Valley is rich in natural, historic and cultural attractions that power a thriving tourism industry, with lots of state parks, campgrounds, wineries and breweries. Langston says that the region’s abundance of open spaces was a boon to area businesses during the pandemic.
The Virginia Metalcrafters Marketplace, with roots tracing back to the late 19th century, has become an attraction on the edge of Waynesboro for visitors who want to drink and dine. What was once the Waynesboro Stove Co. became Virginia Metalcrafters, a company known for its decorative hardware, fireplace accessories, trivets and other decorative items, although that company closed in 2006.
In 2016, Basic City Beer turned the site into a tourism attraction, opening as the first occupant of what is known today as Virginia Metalcrafters Marketplace.
The self-described “microcosmic brewery” was joined by Common Wealth Crush, an urban winery. Happ Coffee relocated to the market from downtown Waynesboro, and Basic City has expanded since its opening, adding an arcade in its tap room, a speakeasy-style bar and an 800-capacity music venue. Hitchin says a coworking space will be added to the mix soon.
And let us not forget Buc-ee’s, a Texas-based chain of mega-sized convenience stores, which is building a location on Interstate 81 in Rockingham. Owned by Arch “Beaver” Aplin III, Buc-ee’s is known for its huge size and its mascot — a toothy, ballcap-wearing cartoon beaver.
The chain purchased 21.3 acres for the center for $6.6 million in September 2023. Gooden says it’s expected to open in spring 2025. The Buc-ee’s center in Rockingham will be 74,000 square feet and have 120 fueling positions.
Rails and roads
Business success in the Shenandoah Valley depends greatly on its extensive logistics and transportation network, Houff and Langston agree.
Led by the Port of Virginia’s Inland Port in Front Royal, the region’s logistics industry “is essential for us — for manufacturing, agriculture [and] the food and beverage industry,” Langston says.
But since the pandemic, he has seen a slowdown in the desire to build new logistics facilities. “If it’s not overbuilt, it’s very close. Speculative logistics is no longer out there. I’ve heard that this is a countrywide phenomenon.”
Transportation, too, is critical in the valley, which has Interstates 81 and 64 and two major rail lines — CSX and Norfolk Southern — running through it.
“The poultry industry would not exist without rail. Virginia could not support it,” Langston says. “We need corn and soybean meal from the west to feed our animals and our birds.”
Given its importance, Houff is pleased to see plans to improve rail infrastructure in the region.
The Virginia Inland Port has finished $15 million in structural improvements, including three new rail sidings, and it can handle more freight from the Port of Virginia’s ocean terminals, which are set to be the widest and deepest channels on the East Coast. What’s more, the Virginia Department of Transportation’s $3.1 billion Interstate 81 Corridor Improvement Program lists 64 planned upgrades along the 325-mile corridor from Winchester to Bristol.
“The I-81 improvements are going to be a huge plus,” Langston says. “They’ve been needed for years.”
Big Run Overlook, Shenandoah National Park
Shenandoah Valley at a glance
The Shenandoah Valley lies between the Blue Ridge and Allegheny mountains, bisected by Interstate 81. The region includes Augusta, Bath, Highland, Rockbridge, Rockingham, Shenandoah, Page and Frederick counties, as well as the cities of Harrisonburg, Staunton,
Lexington, Waynesboro and Winchester. Agriculture remains a key industry for the region, once known as the breadbasket of the South. Advanced manufacturing is growing, and the valley has numerous logistics and food and beverage industries. It’s also a hub for higher education, including James Madison University, Mary Baldwin University, Shenandoah University, Virginia Military Institute and Washington and Lee University.
Population
373,472 (2021)
Top employers
•Amazon.com•Booz Allen Hamilton
•Capital One Financial•Freddie Mac
•General Dynamics•Inova Health System •Northrop Grumman•RTX
Major attractions
The Shenandoah Valley, which was settled in the 1700s, is known for its historical and cultural attractions, including the Virginia Museum of the Civil War, the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley and the American Shakespeare Center’s Blackfriars Playhouse. The region also is home to such natural attractions as Shenandoah National Park, the George Washington and Jefferson national forests, Natural Bridge and Luray Caverns.
Boutique/luxury hotels
The Blackburn Inn and Conference
Center (Staunton)
8,400 square feet of event space, 49 rooms
The Mimslyn Inn (Luray)
Nearly 5,000 square feet of event space,
45 rooms
The Georges (Lexington)
1,700 square feet of event space,
33 guest rooms
Top convention hotels
The Omni Homestead Resort (Hot Springs) 72,000 square feet of event space, 483 rooms
Hotel Madison (Harrisonburg) 21,000 square feet of event space,
230 rooms
Hotel 24 South (Staunton) 8,500 square feet of event space,
124 rooms
Best Western Plus Waynesboro Inn & Suites Conference Center 5,500 square feet of event space,
75 rooms
Notable restaurants
Local Chop & Grill House (Harrisonburg)
American, localchops.com
The Catamount Lounge (Front Royal)
Cocktails, thecatamountlounge.com
The Shack (Staunton)
New American, theshackva.com
The Joshua Wilton House (Harrisonburg)
American, joshuawilton.com
With its 2023 purchase of Farmers Bankshares for $53 million, Suffolk’s TowneBank secured its leadership of the Hampton Roads banking market with a nearly 28% share. Truist Bank remains in second place at 23.72%, and the rest of the top five banks in the market are Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Richmond-based Atlantic Union Bank.
According to TowneBank Executive Chairman Bob Aston, TowneBank is eyeing expansion along the Interstate 85 corridor as far south as Greenville, South Carolina. In September, TowneBank announced it plans to acquire Midlothian’s Village Bank and its parent company, Village Bank and Trust Financial, for approximately $120 million. As of June 30, 2024, TowneBank’s market share is 29.95%.
In personnel news, Tyrone Noel is Bank of America’s new Hampton Roads regional president as of September 2023, replacing Francisco “Frank” Castellanos, who now oversees the greater Washington, D.C., market for Merrill. Also, in March, Lisa Morgan was named Atlantic Union’s new Hampton Roads market president, succeeding Andy Hodge.
As for the region’s largest credit unions, Langley Federal is still at the top of the pack by far, with $5.34 billion in assets in fiscal 2023, up from $5.1 billion in fiscal 2022.
Fortune 500 company CarMax will be the naming sponsor for the Richmond Flying Squirrels‘ new ballpark starting with the 2026 season, the Double-A Minor League Baseball team announced Sept. 4. The Diamond’s replacement will be known as CarMax Park. Although Squirrels President and Managing Partner Lou DiBella said that the deal with CarMax had been signed several months ago, few other details were revealed about the transaction, including the amount CarMax agreed to pay and how long the sponsorship will last. In August, the Richmond Economic Development Authority’s board approved a 30-year lease and stadium development agreement between the EDA and the Flying Squirrels. (VirginiaBusiness.com)
The Henrico Economic Development Authority is launching a global business gateway program for internationally headquartered companies seeking to establish a presence in the United States. The Henrico Global Business Gateway, which the EDA announced Sept. 10, will provide international businesses with office space for up to three staffers each in the upcoming Gather Workspaces coworking location at Innsbrook, set to open in early 2025, as well as wraparound business services. Richmond-based Gather, which has coworking properties in Hampton Roads and the greater Richmond area, is currently renovating the interior of its roughly 19,000-square-foot space at 4101 Cox Road. (VirginiaBusiness.com)
Henrico County’s LL Flooring, which declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August, has signed an agreement to sell 219 stores and other assets to F9 Investments. In its Sept. 6 announcement, LL Flooring said it planned to close 211 other stores nationwide, up from 94 stores previously announced. With this agreement, F9 Brands owner Tom Sullivan, the founder and former CEO of Lumber Liquidators and founder of Cabinets To Go, was likely to assume ownership of the 219 LL Flooring stores, the company’s name and other assets by the end of September, following approval by the Delaware Bankruptcy Court. (VirginiaBusiness.com)
NASCAR officials confirmed on Aug. 27 rumors that the Cup Series — the association’s premier series — would no longer make one of its two annual stops at the Richmond Raceway beginning next season. NASCAR removed a Henrico County track stop on the schedule, traditionally held in the spring, because it added a Cup Series race in Mexico City in 2025. The second stop at the Richmond Raceway, traditionally held in the summer, remains on NASCAR’s 2025 schedule. The three-fourths-mile track has held 136 Cup Series events thus far. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)
Goochland County-based Performance Food Group, the largest Richmond-area company on the Fortune 500 list at No. 84, is borrowing $1 billion to help pay for its $2.1 billion cash acquisition of Cheney Brothers, a privately held Florida food distribution firm. PFG announced the definitive agreement to acquire Cheney Brothers, which generates about $3.2 billion in annual revenue, on Aug. 14 and announced its plan to pay for the acquisition with internal cash resources and proceeds from a $1 billion, eight-year note bearing interest at 6.125% on Sept. 4. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)
The University ofVirginia was the first Virginia college to publish the demographic data of its first-year students after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn affirmative action, or race-conscious admissions, last year. The share of new students who are Black, as well as the share of Asian and Asian American students, declined. The only ethnic group whose numbers increased among first-year and transfer student populations was Latinos. Of the 3,989 first-year students who started class on Aug. 27, 53.9% — 2,150 students — identified as a race other than white. (The Daily Progress)
Eastern Virginia
Anheuser-Busch, which produces Budweiser, Bud Light and other beers, is investing $6.5 million into its Williamsburg brewery to uphold quality standards, improve infrastructure and drive efficiency, the company announced in August. Part of the money will go toward increasing the capacity and capability of the Williamsburg brewery’s warehouse. Located in James City County near Busch Gardens Williamsburg, the brewery has operated since 1972. It employs more than 400 people, making it one of the area’s major economic drivers. (Daily Press)
Former Del. Jay Jones, D-Norfolk, filed paperwork to mount his second run for Virginia attorney general. Jones served in the House of Delegates starting in 2018 and resigned in December 2021, a month after he was reelected to the House. The same year, he lost the Democratic primary for attorney general to incumbent Mark Herring, who then lost a close race to Republican Jason Miyares. As of early September, Jones had not officially announced his candidacy for attorney general. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)
Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace, a subsidiary of Norway’s Kongsberg Group, plans to establish its first U.S. defense assembly plant in James City County, investing more than $100 million and creating an estimated 180 jobs, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced in September. The plant will be tasked with maintaining and refreshing cruise missiles for the U.S. Navy, as well as joint strike missiles for F-35 fighters purchased by the Air Force. (VirginiaBusiness.com))
Norfolk will have a temporary casino open by November 2025 and a permanent resort in 2027 if all goes to plan, as the Pamunkey Indian Tribe and casino giant Boyd Gaming, its new corporate partner, received a fresh start on the long-delayed project from Norfolk City Council in September. Council members and the mayor voted 7-1 to approve a development agreement between the city, the tribe and Boyd Gaming, which replaces Tennessee investor Jon Yarbrough as the King William County tribe’s corporate partner. The partners have scrapped the casino’s old name, HeadWaters Resort & Casino, and plan to start construction of a temporary casino and a permanent structure in early 2025. (VirginiaBusiness.com)
A month before the Something in the Water festival was scheduled to return to Virginia Beach, founder Pharrell Williams announced the music fest had been postponed from October to April 2025. In a social media post, Williams wrote, “It just isn’t ready yet.” The Sept. 13 announcement came hours after tickets went on sale for Virginia residents. Virginia Beach City Council members said they felt “blindsided” by the postponement. (13NewsNow)
Overseas travel, stays at high-end hotels and schmoozing with industry stakeholders are some of the perks that come with being head of a large city’s department of economic development. But former Virginia Beach Director of Economic Development Chuck Rigney may have overstepped. His travel expenses are under review, as the city has opened an investigation into department travel costs that did not adhere to city policies. Over 12 months, Rigney expensed roughly $47,000 in travel and other spending, according to expense reports. He resigned July 24. Rigney said in an interview with the Virginian-Pilot, “I’m certainly not trying to hide anything.” (The Virginian-Pilot)
Northern Virginia
Amazon.com has acquired part of an industrial park slated for data center development in Manassas for $56.6 million. Minnieville Capital Acquisitions bought eight parcels totaling about 39 acres at and around the Colchester Industrial Park just north of Dumfries Road. The company, led by McLean’s Jeff Mulhausen, assembles and entitles data center land for its clients. The buyer’s Seattle address in certain Prince William County property records, is associated with a P.O. box used by Amazon. The parcels are part of a 64-acre assemblage approved for rezoning for three data centers and an electric substation.
(Washington Business Journal)
NASA’s decision to send Boeing‘s Starliner capsule home without astronauts follows years of missteps by the aerospace and defense company in its space business and raises doubts over the future of the unit, analysts and industry sources said. Taking astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station was to have been a turning point for Starliner after years of delays, technical glitches and supply chain mishaps. Starliner has cost $1.6 billion in overruns since 2016, according to Reuters. Wilmore and Williams will be brought home in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule next year, NASA decided after deeming its propulsion system unsafe for the return journey. (Reuters)
Comstock is facing a new lawsuit from a Japanese company that alleges the prominent Reston Stationdeveloper has shorted its stake in a jointly owned apartment complex to the tune of $10 million. Tokyo developer and multi asset manager Daito Trust Construction Co. and Comstock, through affiliates, developed BLVD Reston Station, an apartment tower at 1908 Reston Metro Plaza, in the heart of Comstock’s mixed-use mega-development at the Wiehle-Reston East Metro Station. Daito claims Comstock breached its contract by wrongly reducing Daito’s ownership share in the joint venture, according to its complaint filed Aug. 30. (Washington Business Journal)
The company behind the Dulles Greenway has for the first time been told it cannot raise fares again. Now some Northern Virginia leaders want to go a step further and force its owners to either lower tolls or turn the road over to the state. The toll road connects the east and west of Loudoun County from Leesburg to the airport. In 2023, the Greenway tried to raise tolls from $5.80 to $8.10 during rush hour and $5.25 to $6.40 other times. But the Virginia State Corporation Commission ruled in September that the proposed hike was unreasonable and “contrary to the public interest.” (The Washington Post)
After a lengthy and contentious debate, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors has approved a revised zoning ordinance that imposes strict regulations on data center development in the county. The ordinance requires data centers be a minimum distance of a mile from any Metro station, a 200-foot setback from any residential area, an 80,000-square-foot size limit in most industrial zones, noise studies before site plan approval, and enhanced screening and equipment enclosure requirements. The ordinance includes a grandfather clause for any projects in the pipeline before July 2024 to proceed under earlier rules. (FFXnow)
PEOPLE
Stu Shea, Peraton‘s chairman, president and CEO, has stepped down, and Steve Schorer has been named to succeed him at the Reston-based federal contractor owned by Veritas Capital, Peraton announced in September. Schorer, previously CEO of Alion Science and Technology, which Huntington Ingalls Industries purchased for $1.65 billion from Veritas in 2021, was also president of DynCorp International. (VirginiaBusiness.com)
Roanoke/Lynchburg/New River Valley
Commercial real estate firm JLL has been hired to roll out a strategy on attracting potential developers for the former Central Virginia Training Center in Amherst County. At one time the county’s largest employer, CVTC closed in 2020 after relocating its last remaining resident. The state-owned residential campus in Madison Heights served people with developmental disabilities and had a controversial history of eugenics-driven sterilizations from 1924 through 1979. It has close to 100 buildings on site. The Lynchburg Regional Business Alliance unveiled a master plan in 2022 that envisioned a mix of residential and commercial retail uses. (Amherst New Era-Progress)
A rupture of the Mountain Valley Pipeline during pressure testing in May was caused by a manufacturer’s defect in an elbow joint, a fitting used to accommodate a curve in the pipe, according to an analysis released in late August. The failure was an isolated incident, the project’s owner, EQT Midstream, said in a letter to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, and there is no risk of a similar incident in the future. The rupture occurred on Bent Mountain in Roanoke County during hydrostatic testing, when water is run at high pressure through the pipe to test for leaks or flaws before potentially explosive gas is introduced. (The Roanoke Times)
Crews will work up the last, large undeveloped piece of land at the Roanoke Centre for Industry and Technology so it will be ready if a business wants to locate there. It spans 82 acres, about two-thirds of which is suitable for building. Funding for the $10 million project comes from the state. The objective is to make the land shovel-ready for a building as large as 400,000 square feet, including securing permits, clearing forested land and smoothing out the building pad. (The Roanoke Times)
Roanoke County-based TMEIC Corp. Americas, a subsidiary of Japanese TMEIC Corp., will move its corporate headquarters to Texas early next year, but a company spokesperson said few local jobs will be affected. The new plant in Brookshire, Texas, west of Houston, will begin operations in October to make utility-scale photovoltaic inverters for solar energy systems and could create about 300 jobs there, the company said. (Cardinal News)
Following complaints from co-workers and patients’ parents over sexual and profane comments, the Virginia Board of Medicine suspended the medical license of Roanoke-area pediatrician Dr. Dalton M. Renick on Aug. 22, stating that “a substantial danger to public health or safety” warranted Renick’s summary suspension. He formerly worked for Carilion Clinic in Roanoke County and New Beginnings Pediatrics in Blacksburg, both of which issued statements noting that he is no longer employed at either practice. (VirginiaBusiness.com)
PEOPLE
BWX Technologies in September tapped Gary D. Camper to be president of BWXT Nuclear Operations Group. Based in Lynchburg, Camper will lead more than 5,000 employees at five sites across four states, all of whom are manufacturing nuclear reactor components and fuel for U.S. Navy submarines and aircraft carriers. Camper has worked for four decades at BWXT and previously served as vice president of contracts and procurement and as chief operating officer of the Nuclear Operations Group. (VirginiaBusiness.com)
President ofVirginia Western Community College since 2001, Robert Sandel steered the two-year college into the 21st century, more than doubling enrollment and overseeing more than $138 million in construction and renovations. In August, the Roanoke-based college announced Sandel’s plans to retire at the end of June. Details on the search for his replacement will be released later. (VirginiaBusiness.com)
Southern Virginia
Blue Ridge Regional Airport in Henry County has been awarded more than $6.2 million from the Federal Aviation Administration’s Airport Improvement Program to extend an existing paved runway. On Sept. 4, U.S. Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine announced $18.7 million in new federal funding for improvements to airports across Virginia, with the airport near Spencer receiving a third of the total money allocated. A total of $6.22 million was designated to add 998 feet of runway to the regional airport serving the Martinsville area, allowing access to a broad fleet mix. (Martinsville Bulletin)
In September, deli meat company Boar’s Head Provisions Co. indefinitely shut down its meat production facility in Jarratt, the source of a listeria outbreak that killed at least nine people and hospitalized 57 others. The plant has not operated since late July. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention opened an investigation earlier that month, and on July 31, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service notified Boar’s Head it was withholding its federal marks of inspecting and suspending operations of ready-to-eat products at the Jarrett facility. (VirginiaBusiness.com)
An Aug. 13 job fair in North Carolina attracted more workers for Caesars Virginia, which plans to add another 500 employees by the time its casino resort is completed at the end of this year. More than 150 job candidates attended the job fair in Browns Summit on Aug. 13 — about 35 miles south of Danville on the way to Greensboro — and more than 70 trainees were enrolled in Caesars Virginia’s Dealer Academy. Another hiring event was held at the Greensboro Coliseum on Aug. 22. Eighty-five job candidates attended, with 33 enrolled in the academy and five hired on the spot. (Danville Register & Bee)
Danville Utilities plans to build a battery storage facility at Mount Cross Road to reduce dependence on the regional electric grid. If constructed, the storage system would discharge energy into the city’s electric system during extremely hot or cold weather when electricity demand is at its highest, said Jason Grey, director of Danville Utilities. The project, expected to be up and running by April 2026 at 900 Mount Cross Road between Averett University’s North Campus and Abundant Life Church, would decrease Danville Utilities’ demand on the regional PJM grid during peak usage. (Danville Register & Bee)
RBW Sports & Classics, a United Kingdom manufacturer of hand-built electric vehicles that have designs inspired by British sports cars from the 1960s and 1970s, plans to invest $8 million to establish a manufacturing facility at Cane Creek Centre in Danville, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Aug. 22. The project is expected to create 144 jobs. Those workers will produce RBW’s first left-hand drive, electric Roadster and GT models for the U.S. market. RBW delivered its first cars in 2022 and opened its first factory in the United Kingdom in 2023. (VirginiaBusiness.com)
Shalag US, a nonwoven fabrics manufacturer, will invest $16.6 million to open a new manufacturing and production facility in Mecklenburg County, creating an anticipated 52 jobs, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Sept. 12. Founded in Israel in 1983, Shalag expanded to the United States in 2010 and manufactures a wide range of nonwoven fabric for use in products such as diapers, air filtration and cleaning wipes. The Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with Mecklenburg and Virginia’s Growth Alliance to secure the project. Youngkin approved a $117,460 grant from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund. (News release)
Southwest Virginia
A project aimed at expanding recreational opportunities at the Big Cherry Reservoir in Big Stone Gap received $2 million Sept. 4 from the Virginia Department of Energy‘s Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization (AMLER) program. The project is expected to total $3.4 million and is still in the environmental review stage. Improvements will include cleared trails, a general store, rental cabins, safari tents and yurts. The existing boat ramp and dock will be improved, too. Also on Sept. 4, the Bird Dog Distributors expansion project in Dickenson County received $525,000 from the AMLER program. (Cardinal News; news release)
On Sept. 10, Bristol, Virginia, City Council unanimously approved proposals to redevelop two shuttered elementary schools. Developers Clyde Stacy, president of Par Ventures in Bristol, and James Bunn will convert the former Stonewall Jackson Elementary School into a boutique hotel and the former Washington-Lee Elementary into residential housing. They will pay $150,000 for each parcel. Hotel construction is expected to take at least two years once the sale is complete. The developers said the 5-acre Washington-Lee site would be multifamily housing, with the first units available within two years of closing on the property. (Bristol Herald Courier)
Camrett Logistics, a third-party logistics firm based in Wytheville, is investing $575,000 to upgrade a warehouse it recently acquired in the town, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Aug. 29. The company bought the approximately 162,000-square-foot warehouse on Industry Road for $3.9 million in May and expects to create 10 jobs there. The project will include new docks, bathrooms and offices at the former Donnkenny apparel manufacturing facility, which closed in 2015. Camrett currently operates 11 facilities in Virginia, including in Pulaski County, Roanoke and the town of Bluefield, and provides warehousing and distribution services for clients including the Volvo Trucks North America plant in Dublin. (Cardinal News)
Four Southwest Virginia economic development projects have been recommended to receive a cumulative $10 million in federal Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization (AMLER) grants, Gov. Glenn Youngkin and U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, announced Aug. 19. The recommended grants for the four projects are: $4.75 million for Project Intersection in Wise County, $2 million for the Richlands Electric Diversification Project in Tazewell County, $2.75 million for the Cumberland Outdoor Recreation project in Dickenson and Buchanan counties and $500,000 for Project Wildcat in Wise County. The projects are on sites where coal was mined prior to 1977, the year the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act was passed. (VirginiaBusiness.com)
The University ofVirginia’s College at Wise will serve as the Virginia state lead on a $398,000-plus Appalachian Regional Commission grant focused on improving the use of geographic information system and geospatial technologies in land record management to foster economic development, the college announced in early September. U.Va. Wise has partnered with the University of Tennessee, the University of Kentucky and West Virginia University on the grant, which is part of the Appalachian Regional Initiative for Stronger Economies program. The University of Tennessee is managing the grant. (The Coalfield Progress)
A Sept. 1 report from the Virginia Port Authority shows that the authority and its consultants are continuing to assess the feasibility of locating Virginia’s second inland port on a site adjacent to the Norfolk Southern mainline in the Oak Park development in Washington County. A 2022 study from the Virginia Economic Development Partnership and Port of Virginia concluded that Southwest Virginia’s Mount Rogers Planning District met criteria as a potentially successful site for a second inland port. The county and its industrial development authority offered the Oak Park site. (Bristol Herald Courier)
It hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing for Chuck Kuhn lately as he tries to rezone land for flex industrial use in Leesburg and Purcellville.
The CEO of JK Moving Services and JK Land Holdings, Kuhn is one of Northern Virginia’s most prominent data center developers and land conservationists, having purchased swathes of property in Loudoun County to keep the land rural. But his reputation as a data center builder has run into growing opposition from residents who oppose more data center development in Northern Virginia.
In Leesburg, Kuhn has proposed to rezone and redevelop the 7.6-acre site of the shuttered Westpark Golf Club hotel and conference center into an 86,400-square-foot flex industrial building. The site neighbors a golf course that Kuhn sold to Loudoun County in 2022 to be turned into a public park.
Kuhn’s development proposal — approved 5-2 by the town council in July — faced scrutiny over the project’s scale and appearance, as well as truck noise levels.
Another concern was whether the building would become yet another data center; Kuhn’s team later changed the plan to exclude data centers as a permitted use for the land.
Work on the building’s site plan and design are underway, and in mid-August, Kuhn said he expects both proposals to be presented to the town for approval by late September. “We’re hoping that we’re demolishing the old building within the next six months,” Kuhn said.
Progress in Purcellville has not gotten as far.
Town council members there voted 4-3 in late July to continue gathering information before deciding on Kuhn’s application to annex and rezone land outside town to develop the Valley Commerce Center. Like Kuhn’s proposal in Leesburg, he has offered a plan that would not include a data center.
Concerns with the Valley Commerce project include water usage, location suitability and traffic increases, according to Purcellville Town Council member Caleb Stought, who voted against the application.
Kuhn’s project will add an estimated3,500 trips per day to roads “that are already prone to significant congestion and gridlock,”Stought says.
Kuhn has also filed a rezoning application with Loudoun County. In August, JK Land Holdings purchased the 25-acre Telos Corp. headquarters site in Ashburn for $60 million — and that could be a potential space to develop data centers, although Kuhn hasn’t said what he intends for the site.
Dominion Energy’s long-anticipated $9.8 billion Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project is steadily taking shape as gigantic monopile foundations are installed in the ocean floor 27 miles off the Virginia Beach coast.
This past spring, four years after two test turbines began generating power, Dominion installed the first monopile foundation for the 2.6-gigawatt offshore wind farm’s remaining 174 turbines. As of August, the 50th monopile was installed, and by the time work stops in November for the year, the Fortune 500 utility expects about half of the 272-foot, 1,500-ton cylinders to be installed.
“The project is on time and on budget,” says John Larson, Dominion’s director of public policy and economic development. “As a regulated utility, Dominion Energy went out early on and got contracts in place for all the different components. That’s one of the values of having a regulated utility develop offshore wind projects. It brings a lot of surety to our customers and makes sure we make the best decisions going forward.”
The past six months have been busy for Dominion, both in terms of building CVOW to meet the 2026 completion deadline, and in making financial deals that likely mean future investment in wind energy.
In February, Dominion reached an agreement with investment firm Stonepeak to sell it a 50% noncontrolling stake in CVOW for nearly $3 billion, a deal that will improve Dominion’s estimated 2024 consolidated FFO-to-debt by approximately 1%, reduce its overall financing needs during the wind farm’s construction and lower risks. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year, pending approval from state and federal regulatory agencies.
Then in July, a Dominion subsidiary agreed to purchase the Kitty Hawk North Wind offshore wind lease from Avangrid for $160 million. The 40,000-acre lease will be renamed CVOW-South and will be capable of 800 megawatts of offshore wind generation in the 2030s, enough to serve 200,000 customers. After receiving regulatory approval, the transaction is expected to be completed late this year.
And in August, Dominion won a 176,505-acre lease about 35 nautical miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay for a $17.65 million bid in a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management auction. That area could support between 2.1 gigawatts and 4.0 gigawatts of electricity, in addition to other wind energy generated at CVOW.
In addition, LS Greenlink USA, a subsidiary of South Korean firm LS Cable & System, will create 330 full-time jobs when it builds a $681 million manufacturing plant in Chesapeake for undersea cables used in the offshore wind industry, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced in July. Construction on the 750,000-square-foot facility is set to begin in 2025, with operations commencing in early 2028.
The Orion, a heavy lift vessel owned by Belgium-based dredging and offshore energy services company DEME Group, transports the monopiles from a staging area at Portsmouth Marine Terminal to the CVOW lease area. In late 2025, Dominion’s ship Charybdis, the first U.S.-based wind turbine installation vessel, will arrive to begin transporting towers and blades to the wind farm. Turbine components are being manufactured in Europe and will be staged at the Portsmouth Marine Terminal.
Three offshore 190-foot-by-190-foot substations also will be installed at different locations within the lease area. Sixty turbines will feed into each substation.
Larson says 800 Virginians have been working on the project, including about 650 Hampton Roads-based workers. CVOW is forecast to have up to 900 jobs per year during construction and up to 1,100 jobs annually once operations start. About 1,600 people will be employed during the project’s peak period in 2025.
The Hampton Roads Workforce Council has also partnered with Dominion from CVOW’s inception to help fill jobs and ensure offshore wind employment opportunities are promoted regionally and statewide.
“For us, it’s really about the trades,” says Steve Cook, the council’s chief innovation officer. “We’ve established a system in Hampton Roads to make sure there’s a supply of workers for all facets of the maritime industry.”
The medical school is in the early stages of planning a new 100,000-square-foot facility that would allow the school to double its enrollment to around 400.
The building, which could open as soon as 2028, will be located at the corner of South Jefferson Street and Old Woods Avenue, across Jefferson from the current 150,000-square-foot facility VTCSOM shares with the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, according to Dr. Lee Learman, the medical school’s dean. The new facility would also allow the biomedical research institute to expand within the current building.
Virginia Tech absorbed the medical school, which had previously operated as an independent institution, as a college in 2018. Learman joined VTCSOM the following year. “We took a really serious look back then about why to grow, about how to grow,” Learman says.
The school’s capacity is 49 medical students per class, but demand is much higher; the school receives about 6,900 qualified applications per year, according
to Virginia Tech.
Virginia’s 2023 budget dedicated $9 million for the project’s planning phase, funds spearheaded by Del. Jason Ballard, R-Giles County. The request estimates the total cost at $183.7 million, but Learman cautions that it’s a ballpark number. Virginia Tech will seek funding from the General Assembly for most of the money in the 2026 budget cycle. The school has selected Charlottesville’s VMDO Architects and Pennsylvania’s Ballinger for the initial design work.
Learman says the expansion will help Virginia solve a growing shortage of physicians — Virginia is short nearly 4,000 doctors, according to a March 2024 report from The Cicero Institute — by keeping Virginia natives here for medical school and beyond.
Carilion initially partnered in VTCSOM with a goal that the newly trained doctors would remain with the system, says Carilion Chief Physician Executive Dr. Tony Seupaul, “and we’re seeing that pay off in spades.”
He adds, “It’s wonderful to see because it means that not only are we doing things right, but we’ve fostered an environment … that people want to come back to.”
The Apprentice School at Newport News Shipbuilding
Founded in 1919, The Apprentice School in Newport News has graduated more than 11,000 apprentices over its long history. Part of Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding division, it offers apprenticeship programs and Associate of Applied Science degrees in 19 shipbuilding disciplines and eight optional advanced programs of study, including marine engineering. Apprentices complete 1,000 hours of coursework and a minimum of 7,000 hours of on-the-job training. as.edu
Goodwill of Central and Coastal Virginia
The Goodwill Academy of Virginia provides paid training opportunities in programs where students develop foundational skills needed to get a job and to be successful at work. Participants are assigned a job coach and often do job shadowing and internships. goodwillvirginia.org
Established by the Hampton Roads Workforce Development Board, the Hampton Roads Workforce Council oversees federally funded workforce development programs for all localities in the region. The council offers general workforce services like financial coaching, helping businesses find qualified workers and hosting workshops covering job searches, résumés, job interviews and other topics. It operates the Hampton Roads Veterans Employment Center and offers programs for people ages 14 to 24 through its NextGen programs. theworkforcecouncil.org
Old Dominion University Veterans Business Outreach Center
Program offers a variety of services for active-duty and transitioning military service members, reservists, national guardsmen, veterans and their families who are interested in entrepreneurship and small business ownership. One program offered is Boots to Business, an entrepreneurial education and training program offered by the U.S. Small Business Administration as part of the Department of Defense’s Transition Assistance Program. ww1.odu.edu/iie/vboc
Paul D. Camp Community College
The community college’s workforce development division offers options for employers and workers in western Hampton Roads. The college offers courses to gain industry credentials, professional certifications and licenses in various professions, including commercial driving, health care, welding, logistics and IT security. For businesses, the division offers customized workforce training. pdc.edu/workforce-development
Rappahannock Community College
Rappahannock Community College provides multiple skills and training programs for credentials, professional certificates and licenses across a range of industries, such as health care, welding and transportation. The college also offers career studies certificate programs that students can complete in one to two semesters, with courses in the culinary arts, HVAC, cybersecurity, criminal justice and other fields. rappahannock.edu/explore-programs/programs/short-term-programs.html
Tidewater Community College
Companies can book customized training at TCC’s campus, at the workplace or online, and TCC can provide classroom space, mechatronic and welding labs, as well as trucks or motorcycles for training needs. The college offers career readiness certificates as well as a variety of short-term workforce training courses in advanced manufacturing, health care, IT, maritime, hospitality and other fields. workforce.tcc.edu
Veteran Entrepreneur Program
Sponsored by the PenFed Foundation, a nonprofit founded by PenFed Credit Union, this accelerator program for veteran- and military spouse-owned and led companies takes place over six weeks. Participants meet for networking events, roundtables and mentorship opportunities. Business leaders hold seminars on topics like business development, sales and legal considerations. penfedfoundation.org/how-we-help/veip
Veterans Entrepreneur Scholars at William & Mary
Over the course of five weeks, current and former service members learn, on a part-time basis, the foundational skills of innovation and entrepreneurship. After identifying a startup idea and validating the market, students will take the first steps toward launching their own venture. Programs are held in person and remotely. wm.edu/offices/veterans/certificates/veterans-entrepreneur-scholars/
Veteran Startup Challenge
A part-time training initiative that runs over five weeks to train those who served the United States to create their own jobs through entrepreneurship and to begin careers in tech. Veterans, active-duty service members, reservists, spouses of those in the military, workers from the intelligence community and from the U.S. Department of Defense and Gold Star families are eligible. veteranstartupchallenge.org
Virginia APEX Accelerator
Administered by George Mason University, this program partners with public and private organizations to offer counseling and training to businesses that want to participate in the government procurement process. Counselors are located throughout Virginia, including Hampton Roads. The organization also hosts workshops and industry events. virginiaapex.org
Virginia Peninsula Community College
Virginia Peninsula’s workforce development program provides customized workforce training options for local employers and short-term career training for workers. Training program options include cybersecurity, health care, manufacturing and transportation. The college offers businesses customized training virtually or in-person locally. vpcc.edu/workforce
LS GreenLink USA spent two years on site selection, scouring much of the East Coast for the right location to build a 750,000-square-foot factory to manufacture subsea cables for offshore wind farms.
Then it landed on Chesapeake.
Patrick Shim, LS GreenLink’s managing director, cited several reasons for the company’s decision: access to the Port of Virginia, the approximately 15,000 veterans who enter the civilian workforce each year in the region, and the state, regional and local economic development support for companies like his.
“I’ve never seen anything like it in any other region out there,” Shim says.
In July, LS GreenLink, a U.S. subsidiary of South Korea’s LS Cable & System, announced it would build the United States’ first offshore wind subsea cable factory at the Deep Water Terminal Site in Chesapeake, creating an estimated 381 jobs and investing $681 million.
The port has remained a large attraction for retailers and developers looking to invest in Hampton Roads. Industrial real estate had a 2.3% vacancy rate for the second quarter of 2023, which slipped to 3.6% for the second quarter of 2024, according to Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer. But that’s still well below the national rate of 6.6%, according to real estate company JLL.
A national slowdown in imports and rising interest rates are to blame for some of that increase, says Geoff Poston, senior vice president of Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer’s industrial group. But it’s not all doom and gloom.
Hampton Roads lagged behind other markets, like Savannah, Georgia, in spec building before the pandemic, but that’s changed in recent years, and more spec buildings are coming online. This contributes to the boost in the region’s vacancy rate, but Poston notes that Hampton Roads remains “in a much healthier position than most other industrial markets.”
That includes Savannah, which posted a 7.9% industrial vacancy rate for the second quarter of 2024.
“We’ve just got through an all-time record historical industrial market, and so this is a little more normal, although the developers, you know, they’d love to have more activity,” Poston says.
The port’s draw
The Port of Virginia’s shipping channel opened to two-way traffic for ultra-large container vessels in March, reducing turnaround time by 15%, according to the port. A central rail expansion that will allow it to handle an extra 455,000 20-foot-equivalent containers (TEUs) a year, bringing the total rail capacity to 1.8 million TEUs annually, was finished in early August.
The port processed 3.5 million TEUs in fiscal 2024, a 2% increase over 2023 and the second best year in its history.
Lang Williams, an executive vice president and principal with Colliers International Virginia and vice president of the Virginia Maritime Association, says trends are reversing, and cargo is beginning to again flow more freely. Coupled with the port’s improvements, he expects the more recent lag in vacancies “will start to go away.”
That could be good news for large projects underway, including more than 3.6 million square feet spread across 11 spec buildings that are either being constructed or anticipated, Colliers reported. That’s on top of four such buildings, totaling more than 1.4 million square feet, completed last year.
Developers Matan and the Rockefeller Group are planning a 5 million-square-foot industrial park on 500 acres in Suffolk, with five spec buildings, two of which are set to be completed by the end of 2025.
“They’re having really good activity for those buildings, and maybe some other activity as well,” Deputy City Manager Kevin Hughes says. Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced in July that the City of Suffolk would receive $30.1 million to widen a 2.3-mile stretch of Route 460 to support the development.
Other high-profile projects are also continuing. Amazon.com is on track to complete a 219,000-square-foot delivery station in Virginia Beach in time for the 2024 holiday season, and a robotics fulfillment center, in an adjacent space, is set to be complete in late 2025, company spokesperson Sam Fisher says.
Also in August, the City of Chesapeake received a $35 million grant from the state’s Virginia Business Ready Sites Program to help extend utility infrastructure to the 1,400-acre Coastal Virginia Commerce Park, according to Steven Wright, the city’s economic development director. The state has looked to the megasite as a possible location for a semiconductor or microchip manufacturer. While Chesapeake is continuing to look for funding for development, Wright says it is close to reaching Tier 4 status.
“Everyone that calls is curious about what is the status of the infrastructure to support the property,” Wright says.
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