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Henry County partners with developer on shell building

Henry County leaders moved in late 2023 to expand the county-owned Patriot Centre Park by approving construction of the park’s fourth shell building.

“We have to give the world a reason to look at ,” says Henry County Administrator Dale Wagoner. “We do that by building high-quality industrial sites and shell buildings.”

But the county ran into a hurdle: The cost of constructing a 100,400-square-foot building suited for a manufacturer had more than tripled since the county last built one in 2014 for $3.2 million.

“The $10 million price tag was an issue,” Wagoner says.

-Henry County Corp. President and CEO helped find a solution — a with South Carolina-based real estate developer . The project marked the first time Henry County worked with a private developer to construct and market a spec industrial building.

The county transferred a 20-acre parcel to MDT, which paid to construct the building. Completed in February, the shell building is the developer’s first foray into constructing an industrial facility in Virginia.

“It wasn’t a decision we took lightly. We did our due diligence,” says MDT Senior Vice President Brian Nash. “The infrastructure present in Martinsville was attractive, as well as the manufacturing base in the region.”

Though MDT is new to Virginia, Wagoner says the board was impressed by the company’s work on similar structures in the Carolinas.

“They have a proven track record of getting clients in quickly,” Wagoner says.

The precast, tilt-up concrete structure has 32-foot, 6-inch ceiling heights, four dock-high doors and one drive-in door. The building can be expanded to more than 400,000 square feet.

As for a shell building Henry County put up in 2014 at the Patriot Centre, rubber automotive products manufacturer Fukoku Korea announced plans in March to invest $18.9 million to establish a there. That building had remained vacant after German sink manufacturer Schock GmbH announced plans to build an $85 million manufacturing facility there in 2021. The company later abandoned its U.S. expansion plans, prompting Henry County to repurchase the shell building in 2024.

Wagoner did not expect the new shell building to remain on the market long. As of May, the building had already been shown several times.

“We’ve had a lot of interest,” Wagoner says.

Portsmouth advances waterfront redevelopment plans

Portsmouth is moving forward with plans to transform a long-underused stretch of its downtown waterfront, seeking a private development partner for what city leaders describe as a “once-in-a-generation” project.

The roughly 6-acre site along the , owned by the city’s and located near the city’s historic district, has remained largely unused since a former Holiday Inn was demolished in 2008.

City officials are now working to change that. Earlier this spring, issued a request for qualifications, the first step in a two-phase process to select a master developer. That phase closed in early May, and the city is currently reviewing submissions and preparing to shortlist development teams.

The RFQ asked developers to demonstrate experience with comparable mixed-use projects, as well as the financial capacity and vision to complete a project of similar scale.

The city plans to issue a request for proposals later in June and narrow the field of developers in the weeks that follow, with officials aiming to select a development partner by November.
A joint committee of city officials, staff and EDA members will review the proposals, with the final selection requiring approval from both the EDA and .

“This is top priority No. 1,” says, calling the effort a “transformational” project that could redefine the city’s waterfront and “bring people back downtown.”

Officials say they are seeking a high-density, that combines housing, a hotel, retail and dining, office and public gathering spaces designed to draw both residents and visitors.

Director says the city is looking to bring the property to its “highest and best use,” noting the site is not currently generating tax revenue. He adds the city wants the new use of the property to contribute to the city’s economy and also make the city’s waterfront “a destination” for residents and visitors.

Recent market analysis suggests the site could support more than 300 residential units, a hotel with at least 150 rooms, and 60,000 square feet of retail space, Donahue says.

Public input gathered from city residents earlier this year highlighted strong demand for more activity along the waterfront, including dining, entertainment and accessible public space.

“We need reasons for people to come,” resident Katherine Dickenson said at a public input meeting in February.

 

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Dulles ramps up airport expansion work

After a record-breaking 29 million passengers traveled through Washington Dulles International Airport in 2025, the airport appears poised to raise the bar once more.

“It looks like we’re going to be over 30 million this year, and we’re prepared for that,” says , Dulles’ airport manager.

Helping matters is the 435,000-square-foot scheduled to open Sept. 30. The concourse will add up to 14 gates serviced by , which has a hub at Dulles.

Concourse E is part of a $7 billion overhaul of the sprawling airport, located 25 miles outside Washington, D.C. It comes as Dulles and Reagan Washington National Airport, which are overseen by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, have come under federal scrutiny.

The January 2025 crash between a jetliner and an Army helicopter near Reagan killed 67 people and has led to Congressional and federal investigations, as well as decreased passenger numbers. Later in the year, President Donald Trump and U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy criticized Dulles’ people movers, which are set to be phased out under the MWAA’s update of the airport. Meanwhile, the issued a request for information with a January deadline that could double down on current revitalization plans. In February, a DOT official said the department is meeting with United and MWAA about possible expansion.

Golinowski says “regular conversations” are ongoing with the agency. “I think at the end of the day, they just want us to expedite our master plan, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”

That 20-year master plan forecasts as many as 90 million annual passengers after full build-out. Next, Dulles will begin construction on an additional tier that will add up to 2.8 million square feet to the 64-year-old airport by 2040.

Concourse E will open just months after a partial government shutdown mired airport travel nationwide as unpaid Transportation Security Administration employees called out of work.

Terry Clower, director of George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis, says he expects “nominal” impacts to regional air passenger numbers. Other factors, including gas prices, inflation and the National Guard’s presence in Washington, D.C., could impact summer leisure travel, he cautions.
“What will be the word for the summer vacation season?” Clower asks. “It will probably be back to the staycation that we talked about during the pandemic.”

 

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Richmond advances plans for City Center redevelopment

Mayor wants the torn down this year to make way for a transformation of a roughly 10-acre area downtown.

Development plans for that area, the City Center Innovation District, include a new transit hub, housing and retail spaces.

“I’ve lived here for 26 years,” Avula says, “and this part of the city has never been activated.”
Richmond officials say the city lost out on roughly 200 events worth $257 million at the since the 7.36-acre Coliseum site was shuttered in 2019 because, they argue, the city needs more hotel rooms within a 10-minute walk. Richmond Authority Director Angie Rodgers presented the Richmond Region Tourism estimate to earlier this year as part of a renewed push to make the City Center plans a reality, after they were adopted in 2022.

“We have been looking at City Center as a corridor to Broad [Street],” Rodgers told a city council committee in February. “Part of the problem we’re trying to solve is how do we get people to move between these two very active bookends.”

For Avula, City Council’s decision in February to extend an EDA deadline for the Coliseum project and allow it to be redeveloped in parts was “probably the most tangible manifestation” of support for his vision of City Center as “a destination in and of itself, a neighborhood that has high-density residential and has lots of other reasons for people to come and be downtown.”

Proposals for the Coliseum’s demolition were expected to be announced by the Greater Richmond Convention Center Authority in May.

Next door, a permanent GRTC bus transfer hub is planned at 500 N. 10th St. that could feature residential and commercial uses in two towers. Following the transfer of the property from the city to the EDA, a request for proposals is expected to be issued this summer, and a developer could be selected by the end of the year.

“There’s still perceptions that parking is really difficult down here” at City Center, Avula says, “so part of this next year is activating the space in temporary ways like having pop-up activities or gatherings to get people in the rhythm of coming downtown and realizing downtown is cool, downtown is safe, [and] there are great reasons to be downtown.”