Sterling-based Flight Adventure Park CEO Steven L. Yeffa has been named chairman of the International Adventure and Trampoline Parks Association’s board, the family entertainment venue company announced in early May.
“We are thrilled to have Steve elected as our chair,” IATP Executive Vice President Bethany Evans said in a statement. “His vision and leadership is exactly what the IATP needs to continue driving the indoor adventure and trampoline park industry forward.”
Yeffa made the jump from vice chair of the IATP Board of Directors, a position he had held since fall 2020.
“It’s a tremendous honor to be elected as chairman of the IATP,” Yeffa said in a statement. “Our board is an incredible group which has worked tirelessly over the past two years, undoubtedly the most difficult and challenging periods our industry has ever faced. … Our collective mindset will continue to work toward ensuring our members are positioned for success and are equipped with what they need to assure the health and safety needs of their guests are met.”
Founded in 2012, IATP provides resources, education, training and regulatory and media support to owners and operators in North America, Asia, Australia, Central America, Europe, South America and the United Kingdom.
Flight Adventure Park has eight locations across the U.S. and owns and operates five locations branded as iSaute in Canada. The company’s indoor parks include trampolines, dodgeball, ninja warrior courses, virtual reality games and other activities.
Leidos Inc., the Reston-based Fortune 500 government contractor, has received a nearly $24 million contract from Naval Sea Systems Command to install, integrate and maintain the Navy‘s AN/SQQ-89 Surface Ship Undersea Warfare combat systems, according to a Department of Defense announcement last week.
The contract includes options that could bring the total award to nearly $292 million, with work continuing through May 2027. Work will be performed in several locations, including 41% in Norfolk.
The Navy’s AN/SQQ-89 Surface Ship Undersea Warfare combat system is used on the service’s surface combatants to locate and engage incoming enemy submarines.
According to DOD, 98% of the contract is for the Navy, while 2% combines purchases for the governments of Australia and Japan.
The Chrysler Museum of Art, in Norfolk, announced Tuesday that Hampton Roads philanthropist Joan Brock has donated $34 million, including 40 works of art and two position endowments. The gift will also support the expansion of the Perry Glass Studio.
Joan Brock, a longstanding supporter of the Chrysler Museum, was the first woman to preside over the Chrysler Museum Board and served as a museum docent. Her late husband, Macon Brock, chaired the museum’s 2014 capital campaign and the couple’s support funded the museum’s 2014 expansion. Macon Brock cofounded Dollar Tree Inc., where Joan also worked for decades.
The artworks from the Macon and Joan Brock collection span nearly 100 years of American art, from just after the Civil War to the mid-20th century, according to the Chrysler Museum.
“The Brock Collection is one of the most significant private collections of American art assembled in the 21st century,” Corey Piper, the Brock curator of American art, said in a statement. “Major paintings and works on paper by the most important artists of the late-19th and early-20th centuries chart a broad history of American art of the period and will allow the Chrysler to tell new and more compelling stories of our nation’s artistic history.”
The gift includes 29 paintings by artists such as John Singer Sargent, John La Farge, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, George Benjamin Luks, George Bellows, Childe Hassam, Marsden Hartley, Sally Michel and William McGregor Paxton. Among the 10 works on paper are two works by William Merritt Chase, two by Winslow Homer and a watercolor by Charles Ephraim Burchfield. A glass sculpture by Debora Moore is also included.
“In addition to their historical importance, the works in the Brock collection stand as superlative examples of exceptional quality, a testament to Macon and Joan’s astute eyes. While their love of American painting guided their pursuits, they also demonstrated great foresight in the construction of a collection for the public’s benefit. The gift of the collection will elevate the stature of the Chrysler’s American art holdings and programs, making it a national leader in the exhibition, study, and appreciation of American art,” Piper said.
John Singer Sargent’s Olives at Corfu is one of 29 paintings from the Macon and Joan Brock collection donated to the Chrysler Museum of Art in May 2022. Image courtesy Chrysler Museum
The collection adds 15 artists not previously represented in the museum and fills in key gaps in the museum’s collection, the museum noted in a news release. Nineteenth-century works from the Hudson River School, American Impressionism and the Aesthetic movement, as well as 20th-century American Modernism pieces, are in the collection.
A selection will be on view in a winter 2023-2024 exhibition at the museum. The presentation will also have a publication of a comprehensive catalog of the collection, with essays written by the museum’s curators and scholars of American art.
“I could not be happier to make this gift to the Chrysler, and to the Hampton Roads region that has been my home for most of my life,” Joan Brock said in a statement. “I have great esteem for the institution, its leaders and the talented team of professionals who work there. Our collection has brought us true joy and I’m hoping museum visitors will be inspired as we have by these great artists.”
In addition to the works of art, Joan Brock has made a gift to endow the director’s position, currently held by Erik Neil, the museum’s director since 2014. A second endowment will underwrite a new position that will support the curatorial team’s research and development of exhibitions and presentations of the museum’s permanent collection.
“I am deeply honored by Joan’s extraordinary generosity and her and Macon’s longtime commitment to the Chrysler,” said Neil, the newly named Macon and Joan Brock director. “Their gifts have been transformational for the museum. This is the largest expansion of our American art collection since Walter Chrysler’s gift in 1971. The art and the endowments help us grow and contribute immensely to our institutional strength.”
In addition to the Chrysler Museum, the Brocks have supported many organizations in Virginia, including Longwood University, Old Dominion University, Randolph Macon College, Virginia Wesleyan University, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the Sentara Brock Cancer Center and the United Way, among many others.
“It’s incredibly exciting that a collection of this importance will be added to the museum’s collection. We are immensely grateful to the Brocks for their remarkable gifts, which help ensure the museum’s vitality for many years to come,” Chrysler Museum Board Chairman Brother Rutter said in a statement.
But it’s top of mind for U.Va. officials who have pledged to support the development of 1,000 to 1,500 affordable housing units in Charlottesville and Albemarle County over the next decade.
To jump-start the effort, U.Va. is offering land on three parcels owned either by the university or the U.Va. Foundation, which manages the university’s financial and real estate assets. Select developers will be chosen to build affordable housing communities on the properties under long-term ground leases. In turn, the developers will be responsible for designing, financing, building, promoting and maintaining the communities. No money from university donors, nor any state funds, will be used on the projects, according to U.Va.
When the affordable housing plan was announced in 2020, and then delayed by the pandemic, then-U.Va. Rector James B. Murray Jr. laid out the guidelines: “This is housing for teachers, policemen, firemen, social workers, people that earn a wage but cannot afford to live in our community.”
He added, “While many of the university’s own employees may qualify, this is not just for them. We’ve made a conscious decision that we are doing this for the community. We’re not doing it for U.Va., so it’s going to be first come, first served, and there will be no priority for U.Va. employees.”
U.Va.’s affordable housing initiative will be conducted in tandem with local government efforts by Charlottesville and Albemarle County to increase affordable housing. Several higher education institutions, including Ohio State University, Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania, also are addressing affordable housing in their communities.
“I believe strongly that U.Va. and our neighbors in Charlottesville and Albemarle County are linked together and our fates are tied together. Increasing the supply of affordable housing is one part of that,” U.Va. President James E. Ryan said during a May 2021 Zoom meeting with community members.
“We aren’t the first ones to address this,” says Pace Lochte, U.Va.’s assistant vice president for economic development. Lochte also serves as co-project manager for the affordable housing initiative.
“We come at the end of a long line of other organizations that have very successful projects: Habitat for Humanity, the Piedmont Housing Alliance and others. There have been a ton of people who have been doing this work for decades. We want to contribute to the solution,” Lochte says.
Besides working to add more affordable housing in the region, Lochte says, the university is seeking opportunities to house more university students on U.Va.’s campus — known as “the Grounds” — in order to free up space in the local housing market.
Currently about 62% of U.Va.’s nearly 17,300 undergraduates (as of fall 2021) live off campus, typically in the community, contributing to the economy but also straining the amount of available affordable housing.
Lochte
Lochte emphasizes that none of the affordable housing that would be built under the U.Va. initiative would be for students.
A growing need
Lochte also readily acknowledges that the housing initiative faces myriad hurdles.
“It’s a very challenging environment in many regards,” she says. “As a nation, we have rising interest rates, we have supply chain issues, we have an increasing need [and] we have constructions costs going up.”
The need for affordable housing has been building in the Charlottesville region, as well as at the university itself, for years.
In its affordable housing plan, the city acknowledges that, like many other U.S. cities, Charlottesville “is in an affordable housing crisis.”
During Charlottesville’s first-ever housing summit in 2018, city officials presented data showing that one out of five Charlottesville residents earned less than $23,000 a year, but most of the city’s available housing required an income two or three times that amount.
Historically speaking, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, in the 1940s the maximum affordable rent for federally subsidized housing was set at 20% of income, which rose to 25% of income in 1969 and 30% of income in 1981.
Over time the 30% of income threshold also became the standard for owner-occupied housing, and it remains the indicator of affordability for housing in the United States.
The 2018 Charlottesville housing summit pointed out the pain lower income residents experienced when seeking housing in the Charlottesville/Albemarle region:
23% of Charlottesville’s renter households were spending more than half their household income for housing.
Among the 13 large apartment complexes in or just outside the city, monthly rents averaged $1,384. To afford that rent, a single person working a minimum-wage job would need to work 147 hours per week.
Average rents in the region’s competitive apartment buildings had climbed 18.1% since 2012, rising by 9.4% in 2017 alone.
Since 2010, the city has invested $46.7 million in affordable housing, according to a data presented at a City Council meeting earlier this year. Those expenditures have resulted in 1,600 affordable housing units either being constructed or preserved, and 2,300 households receiving assistance.
According to Charlottesville’s compre- hensive plan, the city and Albemarle County are expected to add 15,000 additional households by 2040.
“We need 3,000 to 4,000 additional affordable housing units over the next 10 years,” says Alexander Ikefuna, interim director for the city Office of Community Solutions.
He notes that the city’s current comprehensive plan has a goal of earmarking $10 million per year for the next 10 years toward affordable housing, with the goals of increasing the number of subsidized affordable homes by 1,100 homes (on top of an existing stock of 1,630 actively subsidized homes); preserving 600 existing subsidized affordable homes; and stabilizing 1,600 to 2,000 owner and renter households facing housing instability.
Only 38% of U.Va.’s 17,300 undergraduate students live on campus, adding to the demand for local affordable housing options. Photo by Meridith De Avila Khan
‘We are the community’
In Albemarle County, a comprehensive regional housing study in 2019 found that more than 10,000 county homeowners and renters are paying more than the recommended 30% of their income for housing, and the gulf is expected to widen over the next 20 years.
“It’s gotten worse faster than I think any of us expected,” says Stacy Pethia, Albemarle’s housing policy manager.
According to U.S. Census data, median household income in the Charlottesville/Albemarle region is $59,598, with 23.1% of people living under the poverty line.
“What it means at the moment is that more people qualify for affordable housing,” Pethia says, noting that the area median family income is what is used to determine who qualifies to rent or buy an affordable housing unit.
HUD has estimated that a modest two-bedroom apartment rents for an average of $1,264 per month in Albemarle. “This amounts to an average wage of $24.30/hour ($50,544 annually),” says Pethia. “The most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor’s … [employment and wages] survey suggests that approximately 54% of workers earn less than that amount.”
Affordable housing has long battled against a stigma, Pethia says. “Most people, when they hear ‘affordable housing,’ they think of public housing that is run down, and they associate it with high-crime areas and high poverty. That’s not what it is. We should all have affordable housing.”
U.Va. itself has had affordable housing problems, with respect to its lower-wage employees.
In February 2019, the university reported that nearly 2,400 U.Va. employees earned less than $15 an hour — or $30,000 a year — while a two-bedroom apartment in the region rented for $15,900 anually. Soon afterward, U.Va. announced that it was raising its hourly minimum wage from $12.75 to $15, starting in January 2020.
“As a university, we should live our values — and part of that means that no one who works at U.Va. should live in poverty,” Ryan, U.Va.’s president, said when announcing the minimum wage increase.
As part of its efforts to make more affordable housing available in the community, the university is studying a proposal to expand on-campus housing for second-year students.
The university’s support of affordable housing is part of U.Va.’s “Great and Good” strategic plan, which includes a Good Neighbor Program that outlines the university’s intention to work with area stakeholders with a goal of making the region “a just and sustainable community” by addressing issues such as affordable housing, living wages and access to health care.
In December 2021, U.Va. designated three properties the university and foundation could offer as development sites for affordable housing: the current location of U.Va.’s Piedmont Housing off Fontaine Avenue; the corner of Wertland and 10th streets; and portions of U.Va.’s North Fork research park on U.S. 29 North.
The Piedmont Apartments, historically reserved for faculty members and short-term leases, are situated near the Fontaine Research Park at 115 and 117 Mimosa Drive, less than a mile from U.Va.’s Central Grounds and the U.Va. Medical Center.
Under the affordable housing plan, the existing apartment buildings and ranch houses on the Piedmont property, except for a historic structure on the site, would likely be replaced with new development.
“We will look to the developer(s) selected through a competitive process to tell us what is possible in terms of affordability,” a university spokesperson said via email. “We expect the development to be mixed income, serving people at many levels of affordability.”
Announcing the proposed affordable housing sites, Ryan said, “Economic growth over many decades has had a profound effect on housing in the Charlottesville-Albemarle community, and we are committed to working with community partners to create more housing intended for local workforce and community members who have been priced out of the local housing market.”
According to U.Va.’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, Charlottesville’s population has increased 7.2%, or more than 3,000 residents, over the past decade, with a 2020 population of 46,555. Albemarle County has grown from about 99,000
in 2010 to 112,000 in 2021, a 13.5% jump. Meanwhile, U.Va.’s enrollment has risen from 23,907 in fall 2012 to 26,026 in fall 2021.
This type of growth has put increased strain on the demand for housing of all types, including affordable housing.
“One in three jobs in our region are attributed to U.Va.,” Lochte says. “We are the community, and the community is us. It’s not like we’re a separate island. We’re facing the same things.”
PROFILE
Founded Sometimes called Mr. Jefferson’s university or just The University, U.Va. was founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819. Its first board of visitors included Jefferson and fellow U.S. Presidents James Madison and James Monroe.
Campus With roughly 1,240 contiguous acres around its UNESCO World Heritage Site campus or “Grounds,” U.Va. is known for its distinctive Jefferson-designed Rotunda building located on The Lawn, the school’s 4.5-acre grass quad where graduations are held. U.Va.’s other major holding is the University of Virginia’s College at Wise, a four-year liberal arts college in Southwest Virginia.
Enrollment
About 17,300 undergraduate students
About 8,700 graduate students
About 2,300 international students
32% minority enrollment
68% in-state undergraduate students
Employees Approximately 4,300 faculty, 16,300 staff and 10,000 UVA Health employees
Academic programs Notable for its medicine, law and nursing schools, U.Va. offers more than 120 majors across 12 schools.
Tuition, fees, housing and dining* Includes average room and board, plus books and other expenses.
In-state residents: $35,582
Out-of-state residents: $72,004
*Note: Costs are for first-year students and may differ depending on year and academic program.
Dr. Allison Cotton, a psychiatrist in Reno, Nevada, co-founded the national Physician Support Line in March 2020 to provide peer mental health support to physicians. She says their impulse to apologize shows the need for the service.
“They’re apologizing for using a resource which is literally created for them because somebody else might need it more than them,” she explains.
During the COVID-19 pandemic’s early days, doctors called about feeling exhausted and overwhelmed, which later evolved into sorrow over losing patients.
“When I take calls, a lot of the comments that I hear are things like, ‘I don’t think I can take losing another patient,’” Cotton says. “The ruminating thoughts that they have are things like holding people’s hands while they die alone, having to then tell the families, over and over and over again.”
Another thing Cotton has heard “numerous times” she says, “is having husband, wife and adult child all in the ICU altogether, and then they all just are gone, so watching generations of families pass away.”
Now, she gets more calls from people who are leaving medicine and are heartbroken about it.
Health care professionals in Virginia have experienced the same pain and stress. The pandemic exacerbated the existing burnout problem in health care, which in turn worsened the labor shortage as people left the industry for lower-stress jobs. In late May, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy released an advisory titled Addressing Health Worker Burnout.
“As the burnout and mental health crisis among health workers worsens,” Murthy wrote, “this will affect the public’s ability to get routine preventive care, emergency care and medical procedures.”
Health care systems rushed to respond, implementing wellness programs and peer support groups, as well as offering counseling to employees.
“We can’t be all that we want to be to everybody,” says Dr. Sandy Simons, who, prior to the pandemic, in 2015, sought treatment for depression. An emergency medicine practitioner at Bon Secours‘ Richmond Community Hospital, Simons was featured on the cover of Virginia Business’ July 2020 issue for a story about front-line health care workers in the pandemic.
Having previously established boundaries between her work and personal lives, Simons was able to appreciate her contributions during the pandemic. She feels that physicians can compartmentalize well.
“We’re generally, for better or for worse, pretty good at turning it off when we come home,” she says. “But I think for me the big thing in the pandemic was that when I came home, you didn’t have all of the ways that you typically decompress: the gym and seeing friends and seeing family.”
Health systems recognize their employees’ struggles.
“They’ve been running a marathon like it’s a 40-yard sprint,” says Paul Hudgins, senior vice president and chief human resources officer for Roanoke-based Carilion Clinic. “Like other health care organizations’ staff … they’re tired and fatigued, and they’ve done an incredible job self-sacrificing in many ways during this entire pandemic.”
Medscape’s Physician Burnout & Depression Report 2022 found that 47% of physicians said they felt burnt out in their jobs in 2021, up from 42% in 2020. A March 2021 study published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing found that 34% of nearly 19,000 nurses studied were experiencing emotional exhaustion because of the pandemic.
Cotton says that doctors calling the hotline have expressed shifting emotions and frustrations, including a sense of personal failure and anger at their hospitals, politicians and even themselves “for any number of things — for not setting better boundaries, for neglecting [their] children and living away from them for six months.”
Instead of “burnout,” some doctors including Cotton, prefer the term “moral injury,” referring to instances when a workplace asks employees to oppose their values, such as requiring them to spend an unreasonable amount of time away from their families.
The problem of physicians’ stress gained national attention following the suicide of Dr. Lorna M. Breen, who killed herself in April 2020 at her family’s Charlottesville home.
The head of emergency medical services for several New York-Presbyterian system campuses in New York City, Breen “was a victim of this guilt that you feel when you can’t see more patients, you can’t work another hour, you can’t go another 10 minutes without eating or using the restroom,” Cotton says. “My personal belief is that this moral injury contributed to her ultimate suicide.”
Stigma and silence
Health care professionals face a deep-rooted professional stigma against seeking help for — let alone discussing — their mental health struggles.
“There is a culture in medicine of ‘It’s not about you anymore.’ … There is a shared understanding that as a physician, you will make sacrifices so that your patients get the best treatment possible,” Cotton explains, including missing significant family events or otherwise straining personal relationships.
About 20% of physicians reported to Medscape that they worried they would be shunned by colleagues if they sought help for depression, and 43% of physicians said they would not seek help for depression for fear someone would disclose it to the medical board.
State medical license applications often ask whether the applicant has sought treatment for a mental illness. In Virginia, applicants must disclose whether they currently have a mental health condition that affects their abilities to perform the obligations and responsibilities of their professional practice safely and competently.
Consequentially, many Virginia physicians falsely assumed that if they sought help for a mental illness, a therapist or colleague might be legally compelled to report them to the state board, says Clark Barrineau, the Medical Society of Virginia’s assistant vice president of government affairs and health policy.
“Rather than seek that help, and particularly put that risk on themselves, they said, ‘I just won’t,’” Barrineau says.
In September 2021, the Virginia Board of Medicine released a brief meant to dispel that misconception, telling doctors, “Get help if you need it.” Practitioners aren’t required to self-report.
Wellness focus
Along with increasing pay and benefits — including parental leave — to combat the existing labor shortage, health systems in Virginia have fortified employee assistance and wellness programs.
“We really feel that having the right culture is the best way to retain staff and attract staff,” says Toni Ardabell, chief of clinical enterprise operations for Inova Health System.
Bon Secours, Carilion Clinic, Inova and Sentara Healthcare offer emergency assistance funds for employees in need. Virginia Commonwealth University Health offers crisis packages that, depending on an employee’s needs, can range from child care assistance to temporary housing.
Sentara placed employee assistance program counselors into its hospitals so that they are accessible to employees and can connect providers to free counseling for stress management, caregiver fatigue and more. Carilion Clinic has also increased its number of EAP counselors.
Pediatric emergency director Dr. Lisa Uherick developed Carilion’s “Healthy People Heal People” initiative, implemented in October 2020, which boosts the system’s emergency medicine team with supports like wellness workshops and an “adopt a front-line team” program.
Prior to the pandemic, Bon Secours was already offering employee wellness programs, like LifeMatters, a 24/7 program providing resources such as confidential counseling, legal and financial consultations. In May 2021, the system launched Called to Shine, an employee recognition program. Supervisors award employees points that can be redeemed for items varying from T-shirts to NFL game tickets.
“It’s really about that teamwork, collaboration and making people feel like we’re giving them something different and we’re a family,” says Cassie Lewis, chief nursing and quality officer for Bon Secours’ Hampton Roads market.
Inova employees make rounds with a “thank you cart” with goodies for clinical staff. Both Inova and Bon Secours offer quiet spaces for employees to take breaks, and several health systems now have mobile apps to help employees build resiliency to stress. At VCU Health, therapy dogs sometimes pay a visit.
Peer support
Aside from apps and formal programs, peer support has also become important at Virginia health systems.
In May 2020, Bon Secours started Caring for Colleagues, a confidential peer support group for physicians and advanced practice clinicians that allows a participant to call or text a volunteer. Carilion’s Healthy People Heal People program includes peer support groups, and VCU Health expanded its Stress First Aid training systemwide in February 2021.
UVA Health combined existing trainings in 2017 to form its Wisdom & Wellbeing program, which teaches resiliency skills, works to reduce unnecessary work stressors and provides Stress First Aid training.
“We can’t just say, ‘Suck it up and go back to work’ anymore,” says Scott Austin, nurse manager of the UVA Health COVID-19 unit. “We can’t just keep saying that to health care workers.”
During summer 2020, Austin contacted a Wisdom & Wellbeing co-founder. In addition to ever-changing COVID protocols, his nurses faced significantly increased workloads as other staff stayed out of the unit.
“They went from just being bedside nurses, doing their assessments and giving medications and being there for the patients, to adding in being housekeepers, being dietary folks, being phlebotomists,” he says. One technique Austin learned is texting his nurses to gather, pause and talk about their feelings when they’re in the “orange” on the system’s stress continuum, which ranges from green to red.
During 2020 and 2021, Austin saw more than 10 nurses leave his unit, although not all exited purely in response to COVID-related stressors. As of April, no nurses had left the unit this year, an outcome he attributes to the Wisdom & Wellbeing program.
Grief counseling
In addition to other well-being efforts and programs, some Virginia health systems have added bereavement support for health care workers who have lost loved ones or patients. Bon Secours, a Catholic-affiliated health system, has clergy circulating on “compassion rounds,” and UVA Health’s chaplaincy is open 24/7. Carilion has chaplains on call who can be paged to arrive within 30 minutes to assist caregivers.
In 2021, Inova hired more behavioral health nurse practitioners for debriefs after units faced difficult issues, like someone bringing a weapon into a hospital.
Health care professionals face vitriol from upset patients. One study published in the American Association of Occupational Health Nursing Inc.’s journal in August 2021 found that 51.2% of registered nurses surveyed who cared for COVID patients experienced physical violence at least once, and 73% experienced verbal abuse.
Although the pandemic jumpstarted these programs and raised public awareness, the shift in culture among health care professionals has been slow to spark. Health care professionals are reluctant to talk publicly about the mental health help they’ve received.
“I think it is going to be kind of a generational shift,” Barrineau acknowledges. “A lot of those things are built in almost culturally to the medical profession.”
Students and residents are part of the change. VCU Health extended benefits such as caregiver leave to its residents during the pandemic, and Inova has had student wellness representatives for several years.
Bon Secours’ Simons says she disclosed to her current employer that she takes an antidepressant medication.
“I did it on my own, but I hope that in today’s environment, people feel more comfortable reaching out to colleagues or to their hospitals,” she says, “because at the end of the day, [there are] good people in health care.”
Although the nation’s commercial real estate market is still lagging for the most part, that isn’t the case in Charlottesville, where fresh new multiuse projects have perked up interest in workspaces.
The nationwide vacancy rate for office space in the first quarter of 2022 was a rather dreary 15.7%, according to Yardi Matrix, a commercial real estate research service. The picture in Virginia was only somewhat brighter, with Washington, D.C.-based CoStar Group Inc. reporting a statewide office vacancy rate in the commonwealth of 12.3% for the same period.
However, in Charlottesville, only 8.9% of office space was vacant. Making that stat more impressive is the fact that in the past 18 months or so, the city has added an unprecedented half-million square feet of new Class A office and mixed-use space to its inventory.
Just four prestigious projects — Dairy Central, Apex Plaza, 3Twenty3 and the CODE Building — are responsible for this huge expansion. They’re “a big chunk of space,” says the city’s economic development director, Chris Engel, and that’s no exaggeration, as the four properties alone increased the city’s supply of Class A office space by 63%, even though they collectively represent about 13% of Charlottesville’s total inventory of 4 million square feet of all classes of office space. All this new square footage is being absorbed quickly, however.
CBRE Group Inc. reports that 87% of the large companies it surveyed last year intend to move to a hybrid work model. And with that kind of seismic shift in the employment paradigm, demand for office space, which cratered during the start of COVID-19, has been slow to recover. A few lucky markets have bucked that trend, however, and one of the most notable in Virginia is Charlottesville.
John Pritzlaff IV, senior vice president at Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer, has been involved with leasing for three of the major new Charlottesville projects. Because so little commercial space was added to the city’s inventory during the previous 10 or 15 years, he says, Charlottesville’s office vacancy rate had sunk to a negligible 1.5% during one pre-COVID period. That helped support a resurgent post-pandemic demand for Class A space in the city, especially as a flight to quality office assets has become a major trend in the high-end commercial real estate market.
Seeing green
Although LEED-certified buildings currently account for only about 3% of all U.S. office buildings, the online office space database Offices.net reports that 80% of investors plan to add green assets to their portfolios in the coming years. Companies want to be seen as environmentally responsible, and they are seeking sustainable spaces that reflect favorably upon their corporate values and responsibilities.
“Quality” in the Class A office market today includes more than just green bona fides, however. Another expectation is that high-end buildings will include plenty of employee amenities, such as gyms, on-site food options and lactation rooms. Open spaces that encourage collaboration rather than isolation are a new must, too, and rather than being housed in the insular and isolated structures of yore, today’s office tenants want buildings with outward-facing designs intended to integrate them into the surrounding community. All four of the new Charlottesville developments check these boxes.
Located midway between the University of Virginia‘s campus and the Downtown Mall, the mixed-use Dairy Central was the first of the four projects to open, amid the height of the pandemic in late 2020. The redeveloped creamery, which offers a 23,000-square-foot food hall, 180 apartments, 50,000 square feet of office space, a 6,000-square-foot event space and a 7,500-square-foot patio, has a silver rating from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design ranking system. It’s 95% leased, Pritzlaff notes.
Closer to the pedestrian mall is 3Twenty3, which was finished in mid-2021. The nine-story, 120,000-square-foot building features a rooftop space and a large lobby, both of which can be used for events. It has several restaurants, a public plaza, electric car charging stations and covered bike racks. Pritzlaff says it is 99% leased, and tenants include a law office and software and financial firms.
The CODE Building on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall is being leased at a rate of $35 to $40 per square foot. Photo by Meridith De Avila Khan
The third project, Apex Plaza, is a 187,000-square-foot, mixed-use building with office, retail and residential space that opened in April just south of the Downtown Mall. The plaza’s wow factor is that it is the tallest cross-laminated timber building on the East Coast and one of just a few in the entire country. Although not LEED-rated, Apex includes extensive green features such as rooftop solar panels capable of generating 300 kilowatts of power and energy storage capabilities that allow it to be net zero. That status aligns with the sustainability ethos of its main tenant, Apex Clean Energy, a wind-power company. The plaza is more than 90% leased.
But perhaps C’ville’s splashiest addition to the commercial real estate market is the CODE (Center of Developing Entrepreneurs) Building, which sits on the west end of the Downtown Mall. Envisioned by owner Jaffray Woodriff, co-founder and CEO of $3 billion hedge fund Quantitative Investment Management LLC, as an incubator for technical innovation, CODE furthers his goal of turning the region into a high-tech leader. Woodriff and his wife, Merrill, donated $120 million to their alma mater, U.Va., in 2019 to establish the School of Data Science.
Opened in fall 2021, Woodriff’s 160,000-square-foot CODE Building, which is more than 90% leased, includes offices, coworking spaces, a 200-seat auditorium and ground-floor retail. It has earned a LEED gold rating in recognition of its green roof terraces, rainwater harvesting, touch-free elevator and entries, electric car charging stations, bike storage, advanced air-filtration system and “wellness” staircases that encourage fitness. In a rarity for a nine-story building, its windows even open. CODE’s lead designer, José Alvarez of the New Orleans-based architectural firm EskewDumezRipple, plans to enter this new Charlottesville landmark into The American Institute of Architects’ building of the year competition.
Bruce Miller, CEO of Investure LLC, which manages money for university endowments and nonprofits, has leased 13,000 square feet plus a 6,000-square-foot deck at the CODE Building for his 45 employees. The building, he says, reflects the values of his firm, which include stewardship, creativity and collaboration.
“We really like the health and wellness benefits and the quality location,” he says, adding that, because of COVID, “it is nice to have lots of fresh air.”
Andrew Boninti, president of CSH Development LLC, one of the CODE Building’s developers, says it was specifically designed “to react to what is important to the tenant. This is what the future is.”
Prices going up fast
Lisa Sturtevant, research leader at Bright MLS Inc. and former chief economist for Virginia Realtors, says although the cost-per-square-foot rates in Charlottesville once were below the state average, they’re now rising three times as fast as the state as a whole. “Charlottesville has been coming into its own in the past couple of years,” she says, “and landlords can ask for and get higher rates.”
Although Pritzlaff declines to provide leasing rates for the buildings he represents, it is probably safe to assume they mirror rates at the CODE Building, where Boninti says space is going for $35 to $40 per square foot. That’s far higher than the $27.78 regional average reported by CoStar, including Albemarle County and less-desirable B and C class office spaces.
Now that the four big projects have opened, Engel says, there’s nothing as ambitious in the works, and CoStar lists only 190,000 square feet of office space under construction in Albemarle during the first quarter of 2022.
J.T. Newberry, Albemarle’s business development manager, says that a couple of office buildings have been approved and are under construction north and south of town. As for the city of Charlottesville, which covers only 10 square miles and is mostly residential, “generally speaking, a lot of businesses find it easier to expand and renovate than build brand-new,” Newberry says.
Business professionals will join Emory & Henry College students this summer for a course that will suggest how blockchain technology can help entrepreneurs, ultimately aiding development in Southwest Virginia.
A collaboration between E&H’s School
of Business, InvestSWVA and William &
Mary’s Global Research Institute, the course will demystify the fundamentals of a technology with far-reaching applications for the region, says E&H Business Dean Emmett P. Tracy.
“A lot of people hear the term ‘blockchain’ and think it is something elusive or wrapped in a technology that’s inaccessible,” he says. But the five-week course beginning June 21 won’t require any technical expertise from students.
Blockchain, known for its association with cryptocurrency, is a technology for storing data in chronological “blocks” to form a transparent and immutable chain of transactions.
The course will be taught by Troy Wiipongwii, affiliated faculty member with the W&M Global Research Institute. He plans to discuss entrepreneurial applications such as how to set up a “smart” contract, which uses a program that automatically executes an agreement when terms are met. He’ll also emphasize the added security resulting from the built-in transparency of a blockchain’s shared data collection.
With traditional databases, he says, “the protocol for how that information is set up and how it is tracked and traced is still very much behind the scenes.”
InvestSWVA Director Will Payne says the course traces its origins to Project Thoroughbred, an effort to make the region the Virginia craft beer industry’s primary source of specialty grains. Blockchain technology would provide supply chain transparency to show breweries they can buy “the best grain” closer to home, Payne says. The project plans to use blockchain to track 82 acres of barley to be harvested this summer, he says.
Payne, vice rector of the W&M board of visitors, spoke as he was on a road trip with Wiipongwii and Will Clear, Virginia Department of Energy’s deputy director, to a waste coal pile to consider ways blockchain might help the state’s effort to identify and reclaim such sites. Blockchain could be used to track the location, size and attributes of each pile, Payne says.
“We see lots of opportunity to create blockchain use in the energy space,” Clear says. “We think that development or redevelopment of southwestern Virginia is really about energy and agriculture at the entrepreneurial level.”
The life of 19th century Richmond Planet newspaper editor John Mitchell Jr. — who fearlessly railed against lynching and segregation — will be showcased in a documentary debuting at the 11th annual Richmond International Film Festival on June 10.
Mitchell became editor of the Richmond Planet at 21, two years after the paper’s founding in 1882. Born into slavery, he earned a reputation as “the fighting editor,” because he sometimes risked his life working as a journalist.
Despite Mitchell’s major contributions, not much has been written about him, says Ron Carey, founder and CEO of Tilt Creative + Production, the Richmond-based advertising company that created the “Birth of a Planet” documentary. Last year, Tilt commissioned an outdoor mural by Richmond artist Hamilton Glass at its Scott’s Addition studio to honor the Planet, and the state legislature just approved a license plate recognizing the newspaper.
“There’s all this synergy happening around [Mitchell],” says Tilt senior producer Sylvester Tucker, “and we are just happy to be involved.”
Tilt’s creative team came up with the idea for the documentary to tell Mitchell’s story and also show off their craft. “We’d love to tell more meaningful stories for brands, and this was an opportunity for us to learn and get better,” says Scot Crooker, Tilt’s chief content officer.
“[Mitchell] resonated with me as an African American businessowner, because often we don’t own media companies,” says Carey. “And to have all of this amazing equipment and storytellers allows us to … do something that not many people could.”
Richmond journalist Sean Gorman partnered with Crooker to build a narrative using interviews with Mitchell’s descendants and articles from the Richmond Planet. Aside from editing the Planet, Mitchell also served on Richmond City Council and founded the Mechanic’s Savings Bank of Richmond. The bank closed in 1922, and Mitchell was accused of misusing its funds, although he was later cleared of all charges. In 1924, the bank reopened under new management, but it no longer reflected Mitchell’s dream of a Black-owned bank.
“Birth of a Planet” was filmed in 2021 while statues of Confederate leaders were being removed from Monument Avenue — a job accomplished by a Black-owned business, Team Henry Enterprises LLC. Prophetically, Mitchell once wrote of Black men: “He put up the Lee Monument, and should the time come, he’ll be there to take it down.”
Virginia Business Deputy Editor Kate Andrews contributed to this article.
In late March, Stanislas Vilgrain drove in a convoy of eight trucks from France to Ukraine for 26 hours through a snowstorm, keeping an ear to the radio for news of Russian attacks, The convoy’s mission: to deliver 400,000 meals to Ukrainians from Vilgrain’s Sterling-based business, Cuisine Solutions.
The French-born chairman of a company that manufactures sous-vide (vacuum-packed) foods, Vilgrain had heard that the Russian invasion had severely impacted Ukraine’s food supply, and he was determined to do what he
could to help.
“This is … good against evil,” he says.
That is what has compelled Vilgrain and other Virginia-based business executives to help the people of Ukraine, either by traveling there in person to assist or by sending financial donations and goods. Over the past few months, corporate aid from businesses in the commonwealth to Ukraine has come in the form of everything from money and food to medical supplies and drones.
A louder voice
Lukasz Dominiak of Smithfield Foods‘ Polish division has been coordinating food donations to Ukrainian refugees in Warsaw. Photo courtesy Smithfield Foods inc.
Vilgrain’s company typically supplies food for airlines and the military, so when he saw that the Russians were targeting Ukraine’s food supply, he wanted to make sure people there were not going hungry. He started figuring out how to get food from France, where Cuisine Solutions has a plant. He made contact with high-level Ukrainians through YPO, a worldwide association for chief executives.
Poland’s government has told food companies that it believes Ukraine needs almost 10,000 tons of food daily from abroad, The Wall Street Journal reported in mid-April.
Vilgrain traveled to Ukraine with 15 of his employees, including his chief marketing officer, Thomas Donohoe.
“I felt that … [with] me personally going as a C-level executive, it would mean a bit more” and could encourage executives from other companies to do the same, Donohoe says.
Cuisine Solutions brought 300 tons of food to help the Ukrainians: 400,000 meals of beef, pork, vegetables, chicken, French pastries and bread.
Virginia business leaders like Vilgrain say they have chosen to involve their companies in the philanthropic efforts to aid Ukraine because a corporation can have a bigger impact and a louder voice than any executive acting individually.
Mike Lowder, operations manager for Petersburg-based MST & Associates Inc., says, “Whether it’s logistical relationships or nonprofit relationships or company relationships, we have the ability to work with our customers to further the [aid] pipeline that I don’t think the average person has.” A wholesaler of surplus medical and surgical equipment, MST sent 24 pallets of medical supplies, worth about $230,000, to Ukraine at the end of April.
MST has contracts with about 50 medical facilities around Virginia. The pandemic-
generated increase in production of personal protective equipment (PPE) such as gloves, gowns, surgical masks, shoe covers, hair covers and hand sanitizer has ultimately resulted in surpluses. With a lot of extra PPE stored in their warehouses, Lowder made plans to send it to Ukraine, where it was in high demand.
“[Russia’s invasion of] Ukraine is coming at a terrible, terrible time and cost to the people there, but it’s coming at an advantageous time for us,” Lowder says. “Anything we can do to assist over there is what we are trying to do. They have an acute need and we are trying to fill it.”
Also assisting Ukraine with medical supplies has been Mechanicsville-based Fortune 500 health care logistics company Owens & Minor, which donated $500,000 in medical- grade personal protective equipment to support humanitarian relief in Ukraine and other impacted countries in March.
Finding ways to help
Other Virginia-based businesses with a presence in Europe, such as Smithfield Foods Inc., also are stepping up to help the embattled republic.
Lukasz Dominiak, Warsaw-based public relations director for the pork products manufacturer’s Smithfield Polska division in Poland, has been coordinating donations of food to Ukrainian refugees in Warsaw. Smithfield has 1,600 Ukrainian employees who work near the Ukrainian border in Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, according to the company, which is helping with relocation and employment.
For example, Dominiak says, his friends have been driving to the border and offering rides for refugees who just crossed.
“There is a special, unique relationship between the two countries on the government level and the people,” Dominiak says of Poland and Ukraine.
Operation Blessing staff member Tony Batchler Jr. entertains young Ukrainian refugees at a church in Poland. Photo courtesy Operation Blessing
Smithfield has provided $2 million in cash and in-kind donations to crisis relief efforts in Ukraine.
As the attack on Ukraine continued, many Smithfield workers and executives wanted to help right away, says Jonathan Toms, Smithfield Foods’ community development manager.
“It wasn’t just these actions we took as a company; it was individual actions our employees took — those are the things I’m so proud of,” he says.
Arlington-based Nestlé USA‘s parent company in Switzerland employs 5,800 people in Ukraine and has been helping them by giving advance payment of salaries, enabling employee transfers and supporting hubs in neighboring countries for employees and their families who have fled Ukraine.
Another Virginia-based business is aiding Ukraine by donating drones.
Arlington defense contractor AeroVironment Inc. donated 110 unmanned aircraft systems and training services to defense officials in Ukraine. Originally designed for agricultural use by farmers, the drones are easy to use and can provide aerial intelligence.
“We feel very connected to their fight and we feel very connected to the mission of helping them and we had these Quantix Recon aircraft, and so we asked ourselves [if] could we buy those … at no charge, just to bolster their defense,” recalls Charlie Dean, AeroVironment’s vice president for global business development and sales of unmanned aircraft systems. “It was something that we felt in our hearts we could do. [There was] far too much suffering going on and perhaps our donation could help.”
For some companies, assisting with Ukrainian relief efforts has been even more personal.
Norfolk-based PRA Group Inc., a global debt-buyer with 201 employees in Poland, provided $50,000 to support those employees’ efforts to aid Ukrainian refugees and send supplies to the war-torn nation. When a Canadian employee heard that PRA was helping Ukrainians, she sought the company’s assistance to help a cousin who was trying to flee Ukraine. The operations director of PRA Group Poland picked up the cousin and her 7-year-old child from the border. The two got out in the nick of time — the next day, the cousin’s hometown was bombed.
Operation Blessing, the Virginia Beach-based nonprofit arm of The Christian Broadcasting Network Inc., has been providing food and other supplies to Ukrainian refugees who have been pouring into Poland. Though the nonprofit has helped people in Ukraine and other European countries for years, the war in Ukraine has ramped up their efforts.
“There is so much need and suffering that is taking place among those people. For us, as Operation Blessing, what drives us to be involved is our faith in Jesus Christ,” says Jeff Westling, Operation Blessing’s chief of staff. “We want to serve as his hands and feet.”
Mason Pigue, Operation Blessing’s director of humanitarian relief, is in touch daily with the nonprofit’s relief teams on the ground in Ukraine. During the first 10 to 15 days after the invasion, the relief workers sheltered from the attacks, but they have remained to stay and assist those in need.
“It’s a calling,” he says. “They feel like it’s something God has led them to do.”
Pigue and Westling both have military experience and can relate to the people on the ground.
Westling has a military logistics and engineering background, so his task is to make sure that Operation Blessing is equipping, enabling and empowering their team members around the globe — in this case, in Ukraine and Europe — to make sure they have what they need. Their teams are providing food and water and shelter and even counseling services to the embattled Ukrainians.
‘Keep yourself in the fight’
Businesses large and small across the commonwealth have found ways to help Ukraine.
Herndon data analytics firm HawkEye 360 Inc. and the Arlington-based National Security Space Association have convened a group of space industry companies to assist with fundraising. Space Industry for Ukraine (SIFU), which includes Virginia companies such as Leidos and BlackSky Technology Inc., raised nearly $1 million as of the end of April, with each company donating at least $50,000. SIFU’s funds will finance a number of projects in Ukraine, such as medical treatment, delivery of food supplies and supporting transportation for evacuating civilians.
McLean-based Mars Inc., one of the world’s largest candy and pet food manufacturers, donated $12 million in cash and in-kind donations to provide basic needs for children and families still in Ukraine as well as those who have sought refuge in border countries.
Ashburn-based DXC Technology Co. is making a 200% match for employee donations to Red Cross humanitarian efforts.
McLean-based Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. is donating up to 1 million room nights to support Ukrainian refugees and humanitarian efforts in partnership with American Express Co.
Many companies, such as Herndon-based government contractor Peraton Inc., Richmond-based Performance Food Group Co. and others are donating thousands of dollars to Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit World Central Kitchen, which provides meals at a pedestrian border crossing in southern Poland.
Reston-based Fortune 500 government contractor Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) is matching employee donations up to $50,000 to support the American Red Cross’ humanitarian efforts in Ukraine, which include providing water, medical supplies, housing support and other aid.
Smaller businesses across the common-wealth are helping as well. Several Virginia breweries have joined the “Brew for Ukraine” initiative, which aims to raise money for humanitarian relief and call attention to Ukraine’s plight through beer sales. It’s raised several thousand dollars per day, organizers say.
In late April, the 88-member Rotary Club of Richmond raised $75,000 to support the citizens of Ukraine and global disaster relief organization ShelterBox USA. It is seeking additional individual and corporate donations, with the goal of matching the $75,000.
The push to raise money for Ukraine and send resources and donations has spread far and wide since Vilgrain went overseas to help.
He was encouraged by his trip and is already planning to go back. He’s been talking to anyone who will listen about his trip and Ukrainians’ need for aid. “Everybody here is concerned and it’s extraordinary to see – it’s far away, it’s in Europe,” he says.
He thinks the need to help Ukraine is resonating here because the country is a democratically elected republic that is defending itself after being invaded by a much larger autocratic government.
“It created a big movement in the U.S., in Americans, in Europeans … protecting our values, protecting what we believe in, with a country that actually defends itself. If they were not defending themselves, it would have been over in a day or two, but they defend themselves,” he says.
“I keep sending messages to friends in Ukraine and tell them, ‘Keep yourself in the fight.’ … It’s very good for the morale of the Ukrainians to see that the world is behind them.”
This story has been updated from an earlier version.
The top trending major business stories on VirginiaBusiness.com from April 15 to May 14 were led by news of the merger of Roanoke-based Woods Rogers PLC and Norfolk-based Vandeventer Black LLP.
1|Woods Rogers, Vandeventer Black law firms to merge July 1
Woods Rogers Vandeventer Black will be the state’s fifth-largest firm, with a 250-person workforce, including more than 130 attorneys. (April 20)
2|Lambert’s Point Docks in Norfolk to become $100 million maritime center
The Norfolk property will become a maritime operations and logistics center supporting the offshore wind, defense and transportation industries. (May 5)
3|Boeing plans global HQ move to Arlington
Boeing Co., the world’s third-largest defense contractor, announced plans to move its headquarters from Chicago to Arlington. (See related story, Page 12.)(May 5)
4|McLean-based Appian wins $2 billion verdict in trade secrets lawsuit
The cloud computing firm was awarded $2.03 billion, estimated to be the largest award in state court history, in its lawsuit against Massachusetts-based Pegasystems Inc. (May 10)
5|ABC telework plan diverges from Youngkin mandate
As a state authority, the Virginia Alcohol Beverage Control Authority will allow its headquarters employees more telework days than the governor will grant most
other state employees. (May 12)
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