Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Bacon Bits: Economic Development Edition

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James A. Bacon
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High-tech bonanza. 

Virginia has captured almost $16 billion in capital investment through economic development since Governor Ralph Northam took office 16 months ago, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “It’s probably the biggest 16-month period in state history,” said Stephen Moret, who came on board as CEO of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership in early 2017. The investment includes two massive projects — Amazon’s $2.5 billion HQ2 project and Micron’s $3 billion expansion — which the state began pursuing during the McAuliffe administration. Another $7.4 billion came from projects, mostly data centers, that companies did not want to announce.

Rejuvenate rural areas by investing in cities. “Micropolitan areas” — rural communities with small urban centers, have rebounded to near pre-recession employment levels, observe Amy Liu and Nathan Arnosti with the Brookings Institution in a New York Times op-ed. They write: “In an economy where private investment flows to places with dense clusters of prized assets, the best rural policy may be supporting the development of small and midsize cities across the country, improving rural residents’ access to jobs, customers, training programs and small-business financing.”

Here in Virginia, what might such a policy look like? Outside the Golden Crescent, focus investment in Roanoke, Charlottesville, Blacksburg, Danville, Bristol/Abingdon, Winchester, Harrisonburg, Staunton (and perhaps Lexington and Farmville) in the hope that they can build enough critical mass to compete in the knowledge economy. That’s hard news for Virginia’s lagging small mill towns, but no one wins from squandering scarce resources.

Virginia Tech regroups after biocomplexity raid. Virginia Tech is closing its Biocomplexity Institute about nine months after the University of Virginia recruited its executive director with a 15% pay increase and a $30 million startup package, reports the Daily Progress. Tech’s biocomplexity chief took 37 million full-time research faculty with him to found a similar initiative at UVa. The researchers generated a total of $102.5 million in research contracts at Tech. Of that amount, $26.9 million is being transferred to UVa. Tech will reconstitute its biocomplexity program under the umbrella of the Fralin Life Sciences Institute.

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10 responses to “Bacon Bits: Economic Development Edition”

  1. Mom Avatar
    Mom

    We always told those Hokies that they would work for us someday.

    1. TBill Avatar
      TBill

      Clearly the data centers, Amazon and perhaps medical is NoVA’s industry trend.

  2. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    Is there something particularly unique about Virginia for data centers that gives us a leg up on other states or are we just competing to get our share?

    In terms of rural. Just spent a few days in and around Mouth of Seneca/Seneca Rocks and paid particular attention to their economy.

    No internet. No cell phone coverage. Lots of Cattle and poultry and rustic tourist cabins. Folks Camping. Young folks paddling rivers and rock climbing. Did not see any coal mining and little timbering -most of it was cut some time ago to build houses in places like Washington DC.

    If you’re a kid over there and you don’t want to farm or do tourism – you better head for an educational institution and an urban area and plan on coming back when you retire.

    I don’t think the rural economy is “dead” but it just won’t support many people and places like Petersburg are just shells of their original selves when coal and timber were the big economy. No solar panels and no turbines in this area that I saw.

    1. TBill Avatar
      TBill

      Apparently data centers are a natural development for NoVA. I assume AOL being out there set the stage. Hearsay would be that government (military/etc) needs cloud so it must be located reasonably close to Beltway. Loudoun offers good schools and more open spaces for the development, but still apparently good bandwidth thanks to AOL starting out there, but that was before my time. Cheaper electricity than Maryland. Dulles IAD is there.

      1. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        Isn’t that area served by NoVec electric cooperative?

        1. TBill Avatar
          TBill

          I don’t know elec supplier(s) in that region…but why does it matter?

          1. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            In terms of arrangements to buy solar would it be easier/better with electric cooperatives like NoVec than Dominion?

            Could a data center contract with a 3rd party solar provider instead of going through the utility provider if it was not Dominion?

            Didn’t Amazon do that by setting up solar on the Eastern Shore with the A&B Cooperative?

            Final question – in terms of data centers that want solar – is it easier or harder to do that in Virginia?

        2. TooManyTaxes Avatar
          TooManyTaxes

          Depends where in Loudoun County the data center is located.

          https://www.scc.virginia.gov/pur/elec/el_map.pdf

  3. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    so… the question is the same – is it any easier to set up a solar arrangement at a data center with NoVec than Dominion or is it the same so that it really don’t matter WHERE in Loudoun, i.e. there is no advantage to locating where NoVec is… ???

    How about the rest of Virginia? Is it any easier for a company to set up 3rd party solar with non-Dominion suppliers?

  4. djrippert Avatar
    djrippert

    Why are the data centers in NoVa? Because a group of businessmen from NoVa saw the future and founded one of the first internet peering exchanges (MAE-East). The actual peering exchange was originally in a building in Tysons Corner. Once there was a place to get onto the internet it became economical to locate close to that point to reduce telecommunications costs and network latency. Loudon County understood this and trenched conduit with a particular emphasis in Ashburn. They also streamlined the process of getting the regulatory clearance to build data centers. Now, all the ingredients were present – a peering exchange, conduit already in the ground ready for companies to pull fiber and an accommodating local government. Not quite “build it and they will come”. More like “make it easy to build and they will build”.

    Other peering exchanges were built in the region – such as Equinix / Ashburn which competed with MAE East. All of this created a data center “cluster” since the people who knew how to design, build and run data centers were often in Northern Virginia.

    Momentum fed on itself and the ball just kept rolling.

    But it started humbly. As internet architect Steven Friedman said, “A group of network providers in Virginia area got together over beer one night and decided to connect their networks.”

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