Category: Economic development
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More HQ2 Madness
Amazon has listed a job posting online for an economic development manager to locate in the Washington metropolitan area, spurring a new round of speculation that the technology giant may locate its second headquarters facility in the region. According to Inside NOVA, job responsibilities include “working directly with state and community economic development, workforce and…
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The Underground Saga Continues: I-66
The saga of expensive underground transmission continues: Now comes the Dominion Energy Virginia 230-KV line along I-66 which is needed for an Amazon facility and the growing data center industry. The State Corporation Commission has signed off and reports in the order a cost of $170 million or more to build it. Every step in…
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Boost Virginia Film Incentives? Bad Idea.
The state of Georgia is throwing $500 million a year down a film-subsidies rat hole. Virginia throws only $14.3 million down its own film-subsidies rat hole. If we want to stay competitive with Georgia, we need to up our game and flush even more cash down our rat hole. Essentially, that is the argument of…
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Back In Top 5, The Challenge Is To Stay There
Corks are popping all over Richmond as the business network CNBC announced this morning that Virginia is back in the top five of its annual survey of best states for business, ranking number 4. It is the only state in the top five east of the Mississippi. The full Virginia report is here. The photo on…
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Huzzah for Middle-Aged Startup Entrepreneurs
Many communities are obsessed with making themselves attractive locations for Millennials on the theory that recruiting and retaining skilled and educated young workers will boost the entrepreneurial economy. Come to think of it, I might have contributed to that line of thinking. But maybe localities should be appealing to an older crowd. Successful start-up entrepreneurs…
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Prosperity Bomb
What if Amazon dropped, to borrow a phrase gaining currency these days, a “prosperity bomb” on Washington, D.C., by selecting the District as the location of its HQ2 project? Martha Ross with the Brookings Institution worries about the implications of creating 50,000 jobs and pumping $5 billion in investment into a city already marked by huge racial disparities…
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Virginia’s Competitive Advantage in Green Power
Solar power is looking better and better by comparison to wind power, and that’s a good thing for Virginia. In Germany, a global pioneer of wind power, hundreds of wind turbines are experiencing metal fatigue and other issues as they pass their 20- to 25-year design lives — and they are literally falling apart. Turbines…
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State to Support Shipyard Hiring of 7,000
Governor Ralph Northam announced this morning a partnership with Newport News Shipbuilding to support the hiring of almost 7,000 people, including the creation of 2,000 new jobs, over the next five years. These new hires will support shipyard contracts to build components for new Columbia-class submarines in addition to existing work such as construction of…
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Could Amazon Fixation Cost Virginia $1 Billion Micron Expansion?
Will a fixation with winning Amazon.com’s massive HQ2 project cost Virginia a $1 billion expansion of the Micron Technology, Inc., plant in Manassas? It could, says a Wall Street Journal article today: When semiconductor-maker Micron Technology Inc. approached economic-development officials in Virginia about a tax-incentive package for a $1 billion expansion of its Manassas site, it got the…
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CyberX Not Just an Amazon.com Subsidy
Virginia economic development officials have kept their lips tight about the incentive package Virginia is extending to Amazon.com, Inc., to induce the e-commerce giant to locate its second headquarters in Northern Virginia. My concern has been that the Commonwealth might attempt to outbid other states in dangling obscene tax breaks and subsidies to attract the…
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Fairfax Snags Bechtel Headquarters
It aint’ Amazon HQ2, but it’s still a pretty big deal. Bechtel Corp., the global engineering and construction firm, announced its intention yesterday to move its headquarters from San Francisco to Reston. The Reston office, which had relocated from Frederick, Md., in 2011, has functioned as the de facto “operational headquarters, with CEO Brendan Bechtel…
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Coming to a Military Near You: Robots, Drones and Artificial Intelligence
On Sept. 26, 1983, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov was on duty in bunker Serpukhov-15 outside Moscow when sirens began blaring and a red backlit screen flashed a warning. The Soviet Union’s new Oko satellite-early warning system had detected what appeared to be an intercontinental ballistic missile launch from the United States. Then another. Then three…
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Rolls-Royce Revs Its Engine (Factory)
The Rolls-Royce Crosspointe facility outside Petersburg is growing, demonstrating once again that economic development projects are hard to predict but can reward patience. A story posted at the Times-Dispatch reports another batch of new jobs may bring the total close to 400 this year. When it was announced in 2007, the first plant built from…
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Awkward Questions for Roanoke’s Health Sciences Campus
The Virginia Tech Carilion health sciences campus is emerging as the new economic growth engine for Roanoke. The impact of the campus on the state’s economy will grow from $214 million today to $465.2 million within eight years, according to a study issued by the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. The addition…
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I’ll Take Apple over Amazon Any Old Day
Amazon.com Inc. isn’t the only West Coast technology giant shopping for a new community to build a large corporate campus. Apple Inc. is looking to make a big investment as well, although it hasn’t drawn nearly much attention to itself. As with the Amazon project, Northern Virginia appears to be in the running. From a…