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Va. community colleges and businesses help fill in-demand jobs

Virginia had about 295,000 unfilled jobs as of November 2024, according to a U.S. Department of Labor report released in January, but it’s not as simple as sending people to job interviews to fill these positions.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration notes that these are good jobs for skilled workers, but there are long-term labor shortages in several of these fields, from IT and health care to manufacturing and transportation.

That’s where the steps in, preparing people for jobs that require special skills — going back to 1964, when the Virginia Technical College System, as it was known then, started tech colleges in Roanoke and Northern Virginia. Now, with 23 community colleges and 40 campuses, VCCS had about 230,000 students enrolled in 2024.

Many are working toward professional credentials and associate’s degrees to qualify for jobs, and in 2016, the Virginia General Assembly created the nation’s first short-term, pay-for-performance training program known as .

In the nearly 10 years since, the program has turned out to be that rarity in this life — a win for all parties involved.

For students who spend six to 12 weeks in classes, FastForward can qualify them for jobs that have an average pay increase of nearly $16,000, and many have two-thirds of their tuition paid by state workforce grants, leaving the student’s cost at an average of $800. Some even receive financial aid that brings their total payout to zero.

It’s been a win for the community colleges, too, because the affordability of FastForward training attracts more students, and the program has become the fastest growing component in the community college system, with 175 different courses now on offer.

Meanwhile, businesses benefit because they have a pipeline for workers with the most in-demand skills and at most, they have to match the state’s investment in cash or in-kind contributions, as opposed to footing the whole training bill. And the state benefits as well, since FastForward graduates have gone on to contribute $6.3 billion in wages over the past nine years, a great return on the state’s investment of $96.95 million, says Randy Stamper, Virginia Community College System’s assistant vice chancellor for grants and workforce programs.

Linking up with IT

When a lot of people think about emerging career fields, information often springs to mind. IT professionals who specialize in cybersecurity, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and running data centers are all in-demand jobs, and tech companies are some of the community colleges’ most enthusiastic partners in FastForward and other workforce initiatives.

“We don’t ever want to do our own training,” says Nicholas Lee-Romagnolo, program manager for workforce and at (AWS). “Community colleges are the best place to do that.”

AWS has committed to investing $35 billion in data centers throughout the commonwealth, especially in Northern Virginia, where 70% of all Internet traffic flows through Loudoun County. Someone has to build, operate and maintain data centers, though, and there is an acute shortage of qualified workers in Virginia. AWS has partnered with Northern Virginia Community College and other systems to design what Stamper calls “deliberate and comprehensive” courses for IT jobs.

At NOVA, the AWS partnership has produced a yearlong certificate program in cloud computing and data center operations, as well as an eight-week FastForward course on fiber optics installation. The college also offers a one-day free workshop on fiber optic fusion splicing co-sponsored by Sumitomo Electric Lightwave, a fiber optics company. These programs are changed and updated often to keep pace with the swiftly evolving IT field. AWS also has supported advanced computer labs at NOVA’s Loudoun and Woodbridge campuses.

Germanna Community College, with campuses around Fredericksburg, also is an AWS partner, as the business announced plans last spring to build data centers in Spotsylvania, Caroline, Stafford and Louisa counties.

To prepare locals to fill jobs at the data centers, Germanna now offers the AWS Information Infrastructure Pre-Apprenticeship four-week program to train students on HVAC, electrical, mechanical and data center operations specifically attuned to AWS’ data centers.

Other tech giants are also working with the state’s community colleges to train future workers. offers its Datacenter Academy program at Southside Virginia Community College, and has a presence at all 23 of the state’s community colleges.

“We all know that they are excellent. It was a no-brainer to reach out to them,” says Wendy Peterson, program manager for community development, social impact and workforce development at Google Data Centers.

Peterson worked with Steve Partridge, NOVA’s vice president for strategy, research and workforce development, to design the five-week Skilled Trades and Readiness (STAR) course, which introduces people from underrepresented populations to the skills needed by the contractors that build data centers. Google Data Centers pays STAR students’ tuition and gives them a stipend while they study. Of the 47 students who have gone through the program, all 47 have received job offers.

At SVCC in Keysville, the first-ever Microsoft Datacenter Academy offers classes and on-the-job training in cloud computing and IT. Last May, the academy added a pilot project called the Critical Environment Training Lab to prepare students for careers in industrial environments.

Beyond the digital world

IT isn’t the only booming sector of the commonwealth’s economy, of course, and Virginia’s community colleges have formed a range of special relationships with businesses in other high-demand fields. A sampling of these partnerships shows just how effective double-teaming a personnel problem has been for everyone involved.

At Central Virginia Community College in the Lynchburg region, the nonprofit National Center for Construction Education and Research offers industry credential programs in fields such as plumbing and electrical work. CVCC also worked with F&B Contractors in Bedford, says Jason Ferguson, the school’s associate vice president for professional and career studies and workforce solutions, to create a FastForward heavy-equipment operator program. A bit more than a year ago, CVCC also took over worker training for Southern Air, and about 70 employees of the industrial, commercial and institutional contractor are slated to finish their training in May.

“We do customized training that works both ways,” Stamper explains. “We may create a class, and businesses send us their employees, or we may go to a company and offer them training.”

Still another successful partnership story is Germanna’s relationship with the asphalt industry, an unsung powerhouse of the state’s economy, generating nearly $2 billion annually and employing more than 10,000 people. In 2018, the college joined forces with the Virginia Asphalt Association and the Virginia Department of Transportation to start the Virginia Education Center for Asphalt Technology.

About 1,700 people train at the center every year, says Ed Dalrymple Jr., president of Cedar Mountain Stone and Chemung Contracting in Mitchells, who was involved in getting the education center off the ground. “It’s important for industry to engage with the colleges,” he says. “That way we can both meet each other’s needs.”

Perhaps one of the most notable community college partnerships with business, though, has been the one between Southside Virginia Community College and the state’s electricity providers. About 10 years ago, a whole generation of line workers was heading toward retirement, but the closest training available for potential replacements was in Georgia, says Brian Mosier, CEO of the Virginia, Maryland, Delaware Association of Electric Cooperatives.

To deal with that alarming reality, two of his association’s members, John Lee, president and CEO of the Old Dominion Electric Cooperative, and Jeff Edwards, president and CEO of the Southside Electric Cooperative, approached SVCC about starting a training program.

Mosier says that before FastForward came along, a partnership with the college had been a no-go because of the money his co-ops would have had to pony up. But with the institution of FastForward, the college offered to provide $362,000 toward a line worker training curriculum, and the electrical co-ops would only have to match it.

The co-ops ended up doing a lot better than that. “In a matter of weeks, we had almost a million dollars,” Mosier says. “I don’t know if I ever had a program where all 16 members wanted to be involved.” Dominion Energy later contributed significant scholarship dollars, as well.

Keith A. Harkins, SVCC’s vice president for academic and workforce programs, says that graduates of the 11-week program come out with five different credentials, including a commercial driver’s license.

They can expect to make $45,000 to $60,000 a year for starters, Lee says, but can make six figures “easy” through additional on-call work. Since its start in 2016, 625 linesmen and women have successfully completed the program, and classes are now waitlisted.

“It’s the epitome of a public-private partnership,” Lee says of the electric companies’ collaboration with SVCC. “I don’t know how it gets any better than that.”

 

Our View: Making Virginia grate again

For the state where the United States was born and the roots of the American Revolution were planted (see editor’s note below), it’s an ironic fact that Virginia is heavily dependent on the largesse of the federal government.

The state’s so-called “Golden Crescent” — the prosperous corridor running roughly along interstates 95 and 64 from Northern Virginia to Hampton Roads — courses with the lifeblood of government spending. It starts just outside the Beltway with a hotbed of NoVa-based . Five of the world’s six largest defense contractors have their U.S. headquarters there, making the region the state’s economic engine. For fiscal years 2022 and 2023, Virginia ranked No. 1 and 2 among states for defense spending, with federal contractors bringing in a combined $131.2 billion in defense dollars for both years.

Sandwiched in between Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads is the Richmond region, powered in a big way by state government and Virginia Commonwealth University, both of which also are dependent on a fair amount of federal funding.

And southward, bookending the Golden Crescent is Hampton Roads, home to Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval base, and Huntington Ingalls Industries, the nation’s largest military shipbuilder and the state’s largest industrial employer. It also hosts Jefferson Lab, a federal research facility, and NASA’s Langley Research Center, an aerospace facility so venerable that Orville Wright was a co-founder and the Project Mercury astronauts began their training there.

So, it should come as no surprise that ‘s fishing-with-dynamite approach to federal budget management is causing no small amount of teeth grinding and sleepless nights in the Old Dominion.

Under the aegis of Trump’s second administration, billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have been on a mission to make deep cuts in the federal bureaucracy as fast as possible.

Largely living in Northern Virginia, more than 140,000 Virginians are federal workers. And as of mid-February, less than a month into the president’s new term, Trump and Musk had moved to oust some 200,000 of the nation’s workforce of 2.3 million civilian federal employees, while issuing return-to-office mandates across all agencies.

There’s also the question of whether the Trump administration will honor previous commitments made by the Biden administration and Congress to provide federal funding to support major projects in Virginia from the $1.3 billion Microporous battery separator plant in Pittsylvania County to Micron’s $2.17 billion semiconductor plant expansion in Manassas.

Virginia officials are rightfully proud of landing huge economic development deals like these that take much work on the front end and have the potential to create thousands of good-paying jobs, with plenty of ripple effects for the state economy.

They are also duly proud of Virginia’s hard-won record as the current champion and six-time No. 1-ranked state in CNBC’s prestigious Top States for Business annual rankings.

And while we are admittedly a state stuffed with federal dollars, most Virginians would probably acknowledge that the U.S. government would stand to benefit from a bit of liposuction. But it’s awfully hard to feel confident about our state’s economic health at a moment when our doctor is wielding a chainsaw instead of a scalpel.

Editor’s note: Jamestowne was the first permanent English settlement in the New World and a bustling trade port with America’s first elected legislature by the time the Pilgrims got around to stubbing their toes on Plymouth Rock in 1620. The home state and birthplace of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Virginia is where Patrick Henry declared “Give me liberty or give me death” and where Cornwallis surrendered in Yorktown, ending the Revolutionary War. Fight me.

Northern Va. Year-in-Review: Region looks to tech, bioscience for expansion

The proliferation of data centers in Northern Virginia remains a perennial topic, and while they remained a headline among deals for the region in 2024, they were not the only highlight as parts of the region look to tech and biosciences.

Last year started on the coattails of two massive announcements that came in December 2023.

First, the Prince William Board of Supervisors approved the controversial Prince William Digital Gateway, which could result in more than $24 billion in economic investments.

The month also brought news that Monumental Sports and Entertainment CEO Ted Leonsis, owner of the Washington Capitals and Washington Wizards, proposed moving the NHL and NBA teams across the Potomac River to Alexandria’s burgeoning Potomac Yards neighborhood in a $2 billion deal, a project championed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

But by late March 2024, the Monumental deal had fallen apart under opposition from state Senate Democrats, and Leonsis announced the teams would stay in Washington, D.C. The Digital Gateway has also been mired in lawsuits as opponents try to block the project, although county circuit judges dismissed the suits, prompting plaintiffs to appeal.

Despite the Monumental deal collapse and the legal battle against the Digital Gateway, economic development officials throughout Northern Virginia say 2024 proved a great year, with much to build on in 2025.

Alexandria

Alexandria’s strategy for growth rests on health care, education and entertainment, says Stephanie Landrum, CEO and president of the city’s economic development partnership. September saw the groundbreaking of Inova Health’s Alexandria Hospital at Landmark, part of a $2 billion redevelopment of the city’s former Landmark Mall. In January, Virginia Tech’s long-awaited $1 billion Innovation Campus opened in Potomac Yards.

“We’re two and one,” Landrum says, referring to the loss of the Monumental development, which would have included a new sports arena and music venue, as well as an expected 600 jobs. Landrum says she’s continued to talk with potential users of the space and hopes a new redevelopment plan can be determined this year.

On a positive note, in December 2024 the city approved a plan to convert the 600,000-square-foot Victory Center building on Eisenhower Avenue from offices to 377 rent-controlled residential units. The building has been vacant for more than two decades and the project is part of a multiphase plan, including additional housing and retail.

Arlington County

Arlington continues to feel the effect of work from home on its office space vacancies, but that didn’t stop CoStar Group, which announced its headquarters move from Washington, D.C., to the county’s Rosslyn neighborhood in February 2024 with the purchase of 1201 Wilson Blvd.

Dubbed a “trophy office” by county economic development director Ryan Touhill, Central Place Tower’s previously public Observation Deck will now be just for CoStar’s use, a privilege the real estate data company is paying the county $13.9 million to secure.

Touhill notes that CoStar will make an investment of about $20 million and add 100 jobs, in addition to a shift of about 550 current employees from Washington. The move is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2025. In Crystal City, Venture Global LNG spent $143 million to purchase its 20-story Potomac Tower home and will expand its presence from 70,000 square feet to 95,000 square feet, Touhill says.

In December 2024, George Mason University opened its $254 million Fuse tech-hub building that will house both businesses and classes. Industry partners have started to move in, and classes on robotics, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and other tech topics will start this fall.

The hub fits with the county’s plan to continue to build out its tech industry, and it appears to be working. San Diego-based ShieldAI leased 45,000 square feet in National Landing, Touhill notes. Such moves, among many others, he adds, are a positive sign that companies are willing to invest in Arlington.

Fairfax County

Expansions of companies working in AI and space commercialization headlined in Fairfax, with quantum computing beginning to make inroads, says Victor Hoskins, president and CEO of Fairfax’s economic development authority.

In March 2024, Aerospace Corp. moved its California headquarters to Chantilly, where it has more than 750 employees, in addition to 1,000 more in the Washington metro area. Hoskins says Aerospace plans to expand its headquarters by 140,000 square feet.

Other highlights of the year included Trident Systems’ announcement in February 2024 that it would add a $3.7 million manufacturing facility to build space electronics systems for federal customers, a move that will add about 50 employees. Also, HawkEye360 opened its new Herndon headquarters in June, a 13,297-square-foot building on the same campus as its production facility, a move that is expected to create 29 jobs, according to the Virginia Economic Development Partnership.

For fiscal 2024, the county added 9,273 jobs and saw investment in nearly 1.6 million square feet of commercial office space, as well as more than 417,000 square feet of data centers.

Loudoun County

Loudoun counted 168 economic development wins in fiscal 2024, with more than $8 billion in investments and more than 5,000 jobs added or retained, says economic director Buddy Rizer. While data centers continue to be drawn to Loudoun, the county celebrated a diversity of companies investing in expansions.

In March 2024, California-based printed circuit board manufacturer TTM Technologies announced it would spend $13 million to expand its existing operations in Loudoun, adding 43 jobs. February 2024 also saw a headquarters and research and development expansion for Capra Biosciences, which produces bioreactor technologies. The company invested $3 million and will add 20 jobs, according to VEDP.

“It’s the right kind of company that we’re looking to grow, especially in Loudoun, because it leverages a lot of our strengths and kind of expands on our story,” Rizer says. With residential already growing at Rivana at Innovation Station, Rizer also expects a “major” announcement and groundbreaking at the burgeoning development in early 2025.

Prince William County and Manassas

Prince William is “all over the place,” says Trevor Johnson, deputy director for economic development and tourism. “That’s kind of the goal.”
The county is focusing on building on its reputation as a location for life sciences, and diversifying to attract advanced manufacturing, logistics and , among others.

Manassas’s biggest win came at the end of the year, when Micron announced its plans to invest $2.17 billion to expand its Manassas semiconductor manufacturing facility, adding 340 jobs. The company plans to move its manufacturing of DRAM chips from Taiwan to Virginia, and it is set to receive up to $275 million in federal funding and about $60 million from the state, subject to approval by the General Assembly and potential federal spending challenges under the new Trump administration.

In September 2024, ATCC, a developer and supplier of biologic materials, announced it would invest $55 million to expand production and add 75 employees in the county’s Innovation Technology Park, a research hub anchored by George Mason University.

Spotsylvania and Stafford counties

At least five new data center developments of about 8 million square feet are underway in Spotsylvania, says Kevin Marshall, business development manager for the county’s economic development and tourism department. Four are being developed by , which in March 2024 announced $35 billion in investments in Spotsylvania, Stafford, Lousia and Caroline counties.

Also, in March 2024, Singapore-based TES, a subsidiary of South Korea’s SK Group, opened its new IT asset recycling plant near I-95, a $175 million investment expected to add 100 jobs. The 128,000-square-foot facility used to house a Simmons Bedding mattress factory.

Stafford County, a stronghold for distribution plants, has seen that trend continue. Amazon.com’s 630,000-square-foot cross-dock facility in the Northern Virginia Gateway industrial park began operation in March 2024 and employs about 750 people.

Not to be outdone by its neighbors, Stafford has begun to feel the data center boom, says Liz Barber, the county’s economic development director. The Stafford Technology Campus was approved by the county in September 2024, allowing a 504-acre campus that could provide 5.8 million square feet of data center space across 23 buildings.

“It will go from zero to a lot within probably a three-year period,” Barber says.

Southwest Va. Year-in-Review: Regional cooperation nets manufacturing projects

Southwest Virginia is weathering the economic disruptions of the transition from coal and a pandemic-related shift to remote work by focusing on a collaborative approach to business attraction.

Teamwork is yielding results with a bump in manufacturing deals, punctuated by the November 2024 announcement that Wrap Technologies would invest $4.1 million to move its manufacturing and distribution from Arizona to Norton, bringing along 126 jobs.

Wrap makes products for law enforcement agencies, including artificial intelligence and virtual reality training platforms, body camera systems and drone . More than 40 Virginia agencies are partnered with the company.

With the announcement, Wrap becomes the second company to locate at Norton’s Project Intersection, a 200-acre industrial megasite on abandoned coal mine land that’s operated by the Lonesome Pine Regional Industrial Facilities Authority. The authority consists of Lee, Wise, Scott and Dickenson counties and the city of Norton. The localities jointly invest and receive revenue through the authority.

The Wrap deal is “a really great example of, when you work together, you can really get things done, and usually get things done a lot quicker,” says Duane Miller, executive director of the LENOWISCO Planning District Commission. “It seems that funders, both state and federal, really seem to be supportive of projects that are of a regional nature and have a lot of member localities working together to do this. Essentially, they’re getting more bang for their buck.”

The authority has already won about $25 million in grant funding for infrastructure and site development. Its first announcement came in 2021 from Atlanta-based internet service provider EarthLink, which invested $5.4 million to build a 28,000-square-foot call center expected to create 285 jobs. The company held a ribbon-cutting ceremony in September 2024.

Wrap will build a 20,000-square-foot manufacturing and distribution facility at the second pad at Project Intersection. The deal was leveraged through a $3.2 million loan from the Virginia Coalfield Authority, a Gov. Glenn Youngkin-approved $425,000 grant from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund and an $800,000 grant from the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission. Additionally, Wise County will provide a transitional space for the company to begin to locate in the region before the structure at Project Intersection
is complete.

Regional connectivity

“One of the nice things about these economic development projects where they do it as a regional event is that we don’t have that much land to build on in Southwest Virginia, so when you get various counties to come together it helps,” says U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, who represents Virginia’s 9th Congressional District.

“People drive in Southwest Virginia,” he adds. “People in Dickenson County will drive wherever they need to go, whether it’s Russell County or Buchanan County. That’s why I find it such an appealing concept.”

Coalfield Strategies Managing Partner Will Payne, who has driven multiple economic development initiatives in Southwest Virginia, credits the involvement of Youngkin, Del. Terry Kilgore, state Sen. Todd Pillion and a litany of regional partners for securing the Wrap deal.

“In any other place, people would have given up,” Payne says. “But the perseverance on both sides — the company, the state, all the local folks — it’s such a good case study. Collaboration ultimately leads to this kind of success.”

The Wrap relocation was the region’s largest announcement in terms of job numbers.

“The largest deal by investment, and a close second in number of jobs, was an existing industry expansion by Simmons Equipment,” says Jonathan Belcher, VCEDA’s executive director.

The mining equipment manufacturer announced in July 2024 it would expand its operations from Tazewell County into Russell County, investing $8.5 million to build more manufacturing operations to meet growing global demand for its soft rock machinery.

As with Wrap, state and regional officials stacked together numerous incentives to close the deal. They include a $187,500 workforce development and training grant from VCEDA, a $500,000 loan from Russell County’s industrial development authority for infrastructure improvements, a $270,000 grant from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund and the potential for tax credits for the creation of full-time jobs.

Both the Wrap and Simmons deals are examples of Southwest Virginia’s recent success with deals involving manufacturing jobs.

“What we have been seeing is a continuation of the same thing we’ve seen the last several years, in that the most activity is in manufacturing,” Belcher says. “That’s both expansion of existing manufacturing in Southwest as well as new manufacturing companies.”

Manufacturing successes

In September 2024, VFP, a maker of custom-designed enclosures for telecommunications, data centers and utility projects, announced it would spend $5 million to expand its Scott County facility with a focus on serving the fast-growing data center market. Virginia competed against Louisiana and Missouri for the project.

The same month, medical and industrial plastics maker Bird Dog Distributors received a half-million-dollar grant from Virginia Energy’s Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization program to grow its Dickenson County facility.

The following month, Electro-Mechanical, which manufactures electrical equipment, announced it would invest $16.6 million to expand its operations by adding a 200,000-square-foot facility. Virginia beat out Tennessee for the project, aided partly by a $300,000 grant from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund.

“Manufacturing tends to be the hottest area of activity, as well as small business startups,” Belcher says. “It’s been that way really since the pandemic. What’s changed since the pandemic was the level of activity in information technology or back-office projects. …
“Prior to the pandemic,” he explains, “those were always a pretty healthy share of our projects,” but demand has fallen as many workers remain remote.

While VCEDA still receives occasional queries about office space, it’s been more successful working with manufacturing operations, Belcher says. The regional cooperation continues. Two pad sites remain at Project Intersection, along with a third that’s still being developed.

Additionally, Payne and Will Clear, managing partner at Virginia Energy Strategies, are working to lay the groundwork to attract energy-related projects to build on a 65,000-acre site. The idea is to concentrate energy projects on former mine land with the goal of attracting data centers drawn by the availability of renewables in proximity to transmission lines.

“The holy grail here is to figure out how to supply a data center locally,” Payne says. “What we’re really talking about is data center sites, and we’ve got several of them, but [there’s] one main one we’re trying to work on right now with line of sight access to a gigawatt of potential generation. …
“There’s nowhere in the commonwealth where you can put all of this together on a contiguous piece of property,” he adds. “It doesn’t exist. We’re the only ones who can say that.”

Data centers have proven a difficult goal for Southwest Virginia, for a variety of reasons. With other, more populous parts of Virginia beginning to push back against the noisy-but-tax-revenue-generating developments, developers hope the region’s localities will be able to assemble the right combination of amenities and incentives.

Belcher, meanwhile, wants to continue to ride manufacturing momentum, as well as to attract technology projects such as data centers, and to seed startups that have the potential to grow into larger expansions.

LENOWISCO’s Miller agrees: “We’re probably seeing more activity than we’ve seen in a long time in economic recruitment.”

Eastern Va. Year-in-Review: Region aims to lean in on energy, defense sectors

A new plan for Hampton Roads seeks to build on the region’s strengths as a long-time maritime and defense industry center, while also focusing on the energy sector.

With 17 cities and counties, the region has struggled to work together as one cohesive unit, leaders have said over the years, but the Hampton Roads Alliance is set to launch a “regional investment playbook,” says Alliance President and CEO Doug Smith. “Two or three years ago, we really made a bit of a pivot in our approach to recruiting economic development.”

The playbook aims to refocus the region’s efforts on the energy and defense sectors — natural areas of emphasis, given Hampton Roads’ military and shipbuilding presence, as well as the burgeoning wind energy sector represented by Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind farm.

“There’s always a push to diversify, but we think it makes sense to lean in,” says Steven C. Wright, Chesapeake’s economic development director.

Chesapeake made one of the state’s biggest economic development announcements in 2024, LS GreenLink USA’s $681 million subsea cable manufacturing plant that will produce submarine cables used for offshore wind farms — the first such facility in the United States. It’s expected to create 338 jobs.

Another major announcement, this time in James City County, came from Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace, a subsidiary of a Norwegian company, which plans to invest $71 million in a missile assembly plant and create an estimated 187 jobs.

In all, the region’s top 10 economic development announcements in 2024 — ranked in terms of jobs created — promised more than 1,200 new positions and at least $1.1 billion in investment in a half dozen localities.

Smith says that the new playbook will highlight six to eight “big initiatives that the region can get behind” to attract more defense and energy companies.

The strategy is meant to address a new economic era, Smith says — an era shaped by the pandemic and geopolitical conflict, by supply chain disruptions and reshoring efforts, and by the push toward renewable energy sources.

Smith says that Australia, which he visited late last year on an economic development mission trip, will also be an important economic player in Hampton Roads.

A 2021 agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom and the U.S., dubbed AUKUS, calls for the U.S. and the U.K. to share nuclear propulsion with Australia, whose Navy is set to acquire at least eight nuclear-powered submarines built by Huntington Ingalls Industries. Smith predicts that 40 or more Australian companies would soon seek some level of representation in Hampton Roads.
Jared Chalk, Hampton Roads Alliance’s chief business officer, says that the point is to seek global opportunities for a region already well-stocked with expertise in defense and energy.

“Because of the craziness that is happening around the world, Hampton Roads has an outsized presence,” Chalk says.

James City County

In September 2024, Norway’s Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace announced it would build its first U.S. production facility in James City County, the region’s second largest economic development announcement last year, behind LS GreenLink.

The new plant is to assemble and test two types of missiles: the Naval Strike Missile used by the U.S. Navy and Marines, and the Joint Strike Missile used by the U.S. Air Force.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who met with Kongsberg executives during trade missions to Europe in 2023 and 2024, said at the time of the announcement that the company’s plan highlights Virginia’s “strategic location” for defense companies. The move was part of an expansion of missile plants worldwide for Kongsberg, which is experiencing higher demand. In addition to the James City County facility, the company is building plants in Norway and Australia.

In November 2024, the Navy awarded Kongsberg a $896 million, five-year contract to produce Naval Strike Missiles for the military branch’s littoral combat ships and Constellation-class frigates.

As of the end of 2024, Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace President Heather Armentrout said that the company still was negotiating for purchase of a site for its plant and hoped to close on the property soon. She says that construction should last through 2027, and production is to start in 2028.

Armentrout says that decision to build in James City County was prompted by the availability of workers with military backgrounds, saying the company plans “to hire a substantially veteran workforce.”

Another factor was the county’s proximity to Kongsberg’s personnel in Richmond and around Washington, D.C., she says. Armentrout herself is based in Alexandria.

Finally, Kongsberg was won over by outreach from government officials, including Youngkin, U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman and U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, Armentrout says. Youngkin approved $2.25 million in state grants to secure the project, and the Virginia Accelerator Program will assist Kongsberg in recruitment and efforts at no cost to the company.

“We just feel like we have the support of the local, state and federal officials to succeed over the long term,” Armentrout says.

Hampton and Newport News

In December 2024, Amazon.com announced the opening of a same-day delivery facility in Hampton that created approximately 125 jobs. A set of hair rollers was the facility’s first delivery, according to a statement from city officials.

In June 2024, Liebherr Mining Equipment, part of a company launched in Germany in 1949 and a presence in Newport News since 1970, announced that it planned a $73 million expansion with 175 more jobs, in addition to its existing 550 workers. On the border of Newport News and Hampton, the plant produces huge trucks weighing 300 tons and up that are used in surface mining operations.

“It is a wonderful example of two cities coming together and helping an important local business grow and stay in the region,” says Newport News Economic Development Director Florence Kingston. The plant also will have a new name, Liebherr-America, another branch of the company.
Kingston says that the Liebherr expansion indirectly fits the new regional economic development plan’s focus on energy because Liebherr is moving toward making its vehicles all-electric, as well as the company’s reliance on the Port of Virginia for distribution.

“While maritime is in our DNA, so is advanced manufacturing,” she says.

Norfolk and Virginia Beach

Although other parts of the region had larger economic development announcements in 2024, the cities of Norfolk and Virginia Beach progressed on their own projects.

Investing approximately $350 million, Amazon.com’s 650,000-square-foot fulfillment center in Virginia Beach, a five-floor facility with 55 loading docks, is expected to open late this year, and the e-tail giant’s new delivery station opened in September 2024. Set to open in May is the $350 million-plus Atlantic Park project, with music and fashion superstar Pharrell Williams and Venture Realty Group behind the multiuse development anchored by a wave pool and The Dome, a $54.8 million amphitheater.

In Norfolk, the Nauticus Half Moone Cruise Center is undergoing $12 million in renovations to handle about 300,000 cruise passengers annually, the city’s first venture into the year-round cruise business, expected to start in February. Also, the city’s long-awaited casino is under construction, with a temporary site expected to be open by this fall and the permanent $750 million resort scheduled to open in late 2027.