Economic Development Authority Meeting   8/17/2021

All right, so let's call the meeting to order.

Outwithstanding any provision in the EDA bylaws to the contrary as permitted under Virginia Code section

2.2-3708.2A3 Albemarle County's Continuity of Government Ordinance, Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville's Declarations of a Local State of Emergency, the catastrophic nature of which makes it impracticable or unsafe to assemble a quorum in a single location and the resolution of this body adopted April 21, 2020.

We're holding this meeting by real-time electronic means with no authority member physically present at a single central location.

All authority members are participating electronically.

This meeting is being held in accordance with Section 6 of the county's Continuity of Government Ordinance.

All authority members will identify themselves to state their general physical location by electronic means during the roll call, which we will hold next.

This meeting is being recorded and will be uploaded to the county's website.

The public has real-time audio-visual access to this meeting over Zoom and real-time audio access over telephone, both as provided in the lawfully posted meeting notice.

The public is also invited to offer live comment during the meeting's public comment period.

Comments are limited to three minutes and must be germane to matters on today's agenda.

The public is also invited to send questions, comments and suggestions to the authority through the county's Economic Development Office at any time.

I'll do it.

Director Ray, I understand he's absent.

Director McNaughton, I understand he's absent.

Correct.

Okay.

Mr.

All right.

Matters from the public.

If anybody would like to speak, please indicate now by raising your hand.

Give them just a second.

Last time it was a delay.

All right, then we'll move on.

So approval of the minutes.

I looked over the minutes.

The only comment that I had was there was one or two places where counsel, meaning lawyer counsel, was spelled counsel with C-I-L instead of S-E-L.

So you may just want to do a quick search through there.

Any other comments on the minutes?

All right.

Is there a motion regarding the minutes?

Move to approve.

All right.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

All right.

All in favor?

Aye.

All right.

So the minutes are approved.

Yeah, I apologize.

I got in from out of town about midnight last night and was scrambling just before the meeting to find stuff.

I don't think there was... How about we postpone it for a few minutes and let me look again while we're deliberating.

Okay.

It doesn't look like there's a whole lot to talk about.

No, I know there isn't, but...

Okay, let's postpone that item and move on to new business.

I'll be happy to.

We've invited Steph Odinger to speak to you.

She is the new executive director of Seville Biohub.

There was a recent announcement where Dr. Nikki Hastings, who you're familiar with, is moving from the executive director role

into the entrepreneur in residence role.

I'm sure they'll speak a little bit about that themselves.

The staff's coming before us today to give a report out on some of their progress.

You have seen their plans before.

And as a reminder, Jennifer sent an advance copy of a request for funding.

It may be in your inbox.

I'm sure there'll be a request for action at the conclusion of their presentation.

Thank you, Roger.

Thank you, Chairman Long.

If it's OK, I'll share my screen.

Great.

And first, I'll just, so you can see me, turn it into presentation mode.

Steph Ottinger, I've been with CEVO Biohub for nearly two years in the capacity of program and communications manager role.

works closely alongside Nikki Hastings, who's a co-founder and founding executive director of the organization.

And I see her on the line.

So to Roger, following on Roger's note about our recent leadership transition,

I have recently assumed the executive director position to focus on the organization and moving it forward in terms of our community building programming aspect and Nikki has in her role as executive director served

and very deeply many new early stage ventures through our entrepreneurship and residence program.

And so she is actually staying with us in that capacity, just moving on to entrepreneur residence.

So I feel very grateful for that and think that helps really broaden our range of service to our community and region.

No, it's just been a pleasure working alongside Steph and there's nobody else who knows all the institutional knowledge and we basically built this ship through the pandemic together and she knows everything that's happening, knows all the people and the opportunity and really built our strategic plan, our two-year strategic plan so it's been an honor to enable this transition and it's been kind of the vision for

from the beginning that we wanted to find somebody to come in to help sustain the organization and Steph's the right one.

So we're just really honored and it's been a pleasure serving in the ED role and are happy to pass the baton here.

Okay, great.

In absence of any questions, I'll jump into our presentation here if I can.

Can everyone see that?

Yep.

Okay, thanks for the patience here.

Okay, growing the Central Virginia bioeconomy.

So many of you are very aware with our activities and our mission through Nikki's prior presentations to this authority.

and Board of Directors, but I'll just share a few details.

We have been a recognized leader across the state for our industry cluster development, specifically in biotechnology and life sciences.

Through our key programs, we were started in 2016 as a mission-driven organization for networking, education, and resourcing.

And so the heart of our community revolves around monthly events which used to be hosted in person.

They have shifted in recent times to online webinars.

to focus and feature many of our company's technologies and developments and sometimes outside expertise and perspectives on our industry.

Part of our Go Virginia initiative relied on focusing in on entrepreneurship.

So we currently have three entrepreneurs in residence with Nikki's addition, Paul Sartori, who has been an entrepreneur in residence with us since the program started.

and we've also brought on Bill Porter.

So we're really humming along in terms of our service to early stage concepts.

We regularly host pitch reviews for companies who are looking to hone in their storytelling and their pitch as they look for seed angel and seed funding.

We make those connections and provide ongoing counsel and advice, working with those companies as they move forward.

Obviously, being in service to the industry, we have a lot of ways to connect with us through resource recommendations, office hours, one-on-one.

And in terms of economic development, specifically in the workforce category, we launched a career board that's seeing record numbers of postings and I'll speak to that kind of job growth in a little bit here.

as well as career matching services and a CHIP internship program, which is a very unique one of a kind program that now just completed its second cohort.

As you know from our recent industry report, the biotech

Industry here in the greater Charlottesville area results in high economic multipliers.

We're now at more than 2,000 jobs and growing, which I'll highlight in a moment, with quite an amplifying effect, 300 million in wages, 1.2 billion in industry output.

As Nikki mentioned, we further refined our strategic plan into a two-year working plan.

Our three pillars are building community, as I mentioned, focusing on

Networking Connection, Knowledge Sharing and Programming, Advancing Entrepreneurship through our EIR program, and Expanding Impact.

So this is where we are working to develop favorable and positive economic development outcomes.

All of this, and as we move along that sweet spot that we're pointing to here, will help increase awareness to the region, increase interaction, what we call network capital in our entrepreneurial ecosystem,

improve and attract talent, retain that talent here, hopefully expand our capacity in the region to attract outside capital and enable probable successes, particularly with early stage concepts.

Looks like I'm not able to advance my slide here.

Sorry about that.

There we go.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Is there something I clicked on there?

My apologies.

Seville Biohub serves our purview and particularly with our prior work in the Go Virginia grant cycle serves all of our companies in our region nine, including many in Albemarle County.

This is a map just to show the density in our area and the location of many of our companies by sector as it relates to both activity and footprint, both in Albemarle County and also in downtown Charlottesville.

Thank you.

I wanted to share some program highlights in 2021.

We hosted a series of webinars that tackled a number of topics from the future of vaccines.

In partnership with UVA, BME, and the Coulter Foundation, we were able to attract high-level notable government and industry organizations to talk about.

The Future for Funding and Development on that front, Women in Bio, Data Science and Bioinformatics with the UVA School of Data Science, and Growth Stage Funding, which focused on maturing next-stage companies and how they are able to attract their next rounds of capital and what that means for current and future investment in the region.

To try to bring some community connection in person, we had a series of events in person with our newly launched Circle of Leaders program.

And I'll talk more about that as part of our fundraising strategy and sustainability strategy for moving forward.

The CHIP internship program, as I mentioned, we just completed the second year, our biggest cohort yet.

19 interns and 11 companies served in that program.

Great news for us in terms of our future sustainability is that in July of this year, we were awarded a 501c3 designation as a public charity.

So that really broadens our opportunities for future funding.

Also something fun and perhaps of interest to the community here on the call today, we're embarking on a series of industry videos and a digital storytelling campaign that will highlight company successes across our Biohub and demonstrate the future potential for the region.

In terms of metrics to date over the 2021 cycle, I've highlighted quite a few logos here.

So I'll talk about these specific to Albemarle County.

So we have served a total of 117 companies in the HUD.

36 internships have been created over a two-year cycle.

We've retained, created, or attracted a total of 15 companies to the area.

and the current but not yet final number that we're particularly proud of is that there have been more than 300, 305 specifically new jobs created in the region since January 2020.

We were frankly shocked by the amount of growth and ability that our companies have been able to sustain and grow in these times.

Many of these companies listed here today on the right I will talk about a little bit more in detail.

But Rivanna, Banumos, Agrospheres, Caretaker are examples of companies that have participated in our internship program.

We featured Banumos in a webinar this year.

We focused on a fireside chat between Lighthouse Instruments and Acton Scientific, the leaders of that organization, talking about partnerships and collaborations.

So you'll see there's quite a mix in terms of how we serve companies, in terms of highlighting them in our programming.

That could mean also working with them through the EIR program, helping connect them to space for their future needs.

We are broad in our definition of how we work and serve companies.

We wanted to talk about a few specific storylines and anecdotes, and Nicky, feel free to jump in here as you were such a key part of these initiatives over the last year.

Sable Biohub is engaged with economic development, specifically on space needs.

It's no surprise, and we have revealed that both within our industry report and also follow on in our wet lab development plan, the need for space as our companies mature,

and solidify their projects and move into more R&D and manufacturing.

We really played a key role working alongside economic development on connecting opportunities for space and company retention.

Some examples, Rivanna Medical that I mentioned on the last slide recently was able to move and purchase and move into a larger space in Albemarle County from their small location previously.

to sustain their current and future growth.

They're on quite a bit of a trajectory at the moment.

We also worked on the strategy and content for a pitch deck with economic development to retain PRA Health Sciences after their recent acquisition by ICON.

They're also very participatory in our webinar programming and very interested in our internship program as we move forward.

We also connected ZeoBio, a growing company, to potential spaces in the county.

Also, they are just in need of space and have received very significant funding and are on the move.

And this is an example where we've actually worked to retain them in the region twice.

Yeah, I mean, just on ZeoBio, they were a company that reached out to us and said, well, we got funding.

We got our $25 million Series A.

We think we're going to Richmond.

I think we're going to North Carolina, but it's not here.

We said, wait, wait, wait, let us put you in touch because we know of a company that's looking for a sublet

And we were able to make that connection happen.

It was mutually beneficial to both of those companies.

And that was in the city.

Then when they're going out for the next round of fundraising, they said, well, now we want to actually pay for some infrastructure and build to spec of what we need, what we think we need.

They were looking at a place in the city, became aware of the old diffusion pharma space becoming available because the company was going remote just through the network effect of us knowing diffusion pharmaceuticals and what they were up to.

And they said, hey, we're looking for somebody to take over in our space and there's wet lab that's been built out.

So we went and we toured with zeal and they, you know, they're seeing it as a much more ideal scenario because they don't actually have to build out and spend

the dollars to put wet lab infrastructure into a new building in the city.

So it's a huge win for the county to keep them and have them here.

And I think they're also looking to bring a few other companies into sublet in this space because it's 8,000 square feet and they only need about half of that.

Thanks, Steph.

Thank you, Nikki, for that added level of detail.

You were such a key component of those connections.

And then more broadly, obviously when companies come to us, as Nikki mentioned, we're

We're very aware of kind of movement and we work really hard to make sure to fill that space as companies are moving around.

But the bigger picture that we all are talking about is the just need for more wet lab space in the region.

And so we developed a wet lab incubator model that included the Broadway District as the key development site.

Since that original concept have introduced real estate developers to Albemarle County economic developers,

on potential conversion spaces.

So that is something that is still in the mix.

Civo Biohub is not taking that on as a project in terms of being the ones to fund and host that incubator model, but very much involved in the connection component to try to find the right partners who can take that project forward.

Any questions on these?

projects before I move forward.

Sure.

Yes.

So through Nikki's relationship building, I was able to go out and meet with Rivanna Medical several times over the last couple of years.

And yes, you guys have been very instrumental in that.

We have recommended them for the state's economic gardening program as well as the international trade program.

So we have started connecting them with some state opportunities as well.

And that was all made through your connections.

Oh, that's amazing to hear.

They're a great company and great leadership there.

So we definitely are pleased they're staying here.

Long history around that Hunter's Way building, too.

Interest over the time.

Multiple groups interested in that space.

So I'm glad they landed.

Organizationally, as I mentioned, we're now a 501c3 designation organization.

Expanded our reach with the board of directors last year around this time and are excited about that development as we grow and mature as our own organization.

On the staffing side, I just highlighted just a switch and a small movement here and the roles among the staff alongside our EIRs and we're hopeful with future funding and sustainability in 2022 and beyond to

be able to bring on a part-time program or internship manager, essentially what I was doing, working alongside Nikki and potentially some internship experiences directly with our organization.

We typically have connected students directly with companies working in the biotech space.

We actually hosted our first intern this summer working for Seville Biohub and it was a really gratifying experience.

She worked to help on our video project and

also on some of our entrepreneurship efforts.

And it was great to hear from her perspective how she was able to really learn a broad range of topics and really explore the industry versus, you know, specifically working with one company.

So it was a great outcome as we experimented with that this summer.

Key partners and community supporters, this takes a village.

We are ever so grateful for the support with Albemarle County Economic Development, the city economic development with UVA and Pace Lockd.

It seems like we're always constantly talking about opportunities and potential funding.

And it's just great to have that very connected and collaborative relationship, obviously, with Go Virginia and other partners in our ecosystem.

Licensing and Ventures Group, to some of our industry partners and supporters, funding supporters like CavAngels.

I know a big topic for today is about our funding request that we sent to you via our letter.

Hopefully you've had a moment to review that.

We are very well aware that the future for SEVO Biohub relies on a sustainable funding mix, and we are very much on that path to

Figuring out the most viable path forward for organizations so that we can continue in our very entrepreneurial, nimble way.

We're a very lean organization.

It's just been Nikki and I on the board working to do some what we think is some real heavy lifting and some very gratifying work.

And so we're looking forward to

Really dialing in for us how we become balanced and sustainable through a blend of revenue sources, including grants.

I'll talk about that in a moment.

Private donations and company contributions through our Circle of Leaders program.

This is where our companies, the first time we've asked, we've worked

and felt very strongly about you give before you get.

It's a philosophy very close to Nikki's heart.

And we just launched the Circle of Leaders program where we are asking those in the bio hub are capable and in position to sort of give back to support our activities moving forward.

And we're really dialing up our efforts through our 501 C3 status on the private donations and sponsorship front.

We hope that you will grow with us.

We see this as a very synergistic ecosystem, very entrepreneurially minded.

We are in service to so many companies in the county and that is growing.

We've seen just over the course of the two years that the presence of companies in the county is growing and will continue to do so as the industry matures.

Someone's in that sort of startup mode.

Maybe they're working out of their house and they've got a small space outside the university or within the university.

And then as those concepts are being funded and companies are growing, they are in need of additional space that we've talked about here today.

We believe the county is uniquely suited and positioned to serve that growing need for space and resource as our sector grows.

We have a very ambitious goal to double the industry sector by 2030 and are well on our way.

And we need a collaborative partner to house these growing concepts and these growing companies.

Many of the talent and workforce live in the county and even though maybe their company might be based in the city are contributing to economic multipliers with their activities and home base in the county.

And Nikki can attest to this, but since we've launched our entrepreneurship and residence program, we've seen new concepts emerging in this ecosystem at a pretty unprecedented pace.

So we're looking forward to that and seeing this current frenzy of activity as, you know, future casting to

what might be possible in two years time, five years time.

And we really need our ecosystem to be connected and partnering and thriving so that we can support that growth.

So as our organization working in this space for two years and beyond, we are dedicated to expanding impact and working toward the economic development outcomes that you are also tasked with.

So

Today we're here to seek $25,000 in funding support for 2022 to enable that continued work in the ecosystem.

These dollars, similar to the generous support you have provided in the past, are matching funds, local matching funds, this time for the VIPA Regional Innovation Fund grant.

This is a new funding mechanism through the Center for Innovation and Technology, CIT,

and we are uniquely positioned as an organization who has benefited and gone through the pathway through the Go Virginia funds.

We are applying for that RIF grant in the fall of 2021 and these funds will go a long way in serving as match and are

Our core work will continue the same if we are granted that funding in terms of supporting our key pillars as we have shared with you today.

Mr. Chairman, if I may make a comment.

I know that many of you have been directly engaged with Venture Central and the actions that this particular EDA and the county have taken to launch Venture Central.

I just wanted to quickly differentiate between Venture Central, which is an agnostic organization,

compared to, say, SEVO Biohub or SEBIK, which are more targeted approaches.

SEVO Biohub focuses on the life sciences, biotech industry, while SEBIK looks at high-tech companies and Venture Central's agnostic.

Venture Central will obviously look to partner with SEVO Biohub or SEBIK.

We do not expect to do anything duplicative of what's happening with SEVO Biohub.

We simply want to fill in any gaps in our entire

So from my perspective, I do not see there to be any conflict by supporting Civo Biohub, CBIC and the like.

They're partners and not necessarily duplicative of the overall strategy the county is incorporating.

Sure.

So thank you, guys.

Yeah, forgive me, Nikki may have mentioned this in a previous meeting, but I have forgotten if she did so.

They are, yes.

Okay, and how would you, a lot of what you described for us today and in previous sessions falls under the larger rubric of synergistic efforts, where you're combining your work with that of many others.

If you didn't exist, what key part of that effort would kind of fall apart in your view since there's so many constituents and so many players?

Doug, do you want me to jump in?

Sure.

Yeah, jump in.

I mean, we're a pretty new organization.

And what was happening was that companies were not finding the resources that they needed, whether that be capital, great talent, or infrastructure and places to stay.

We've lost companies to other areas, locations saying, well, I got to go to Boston to get the best biotech talent here.

Now with our existence, those companies find us,

We're actually the go-to.

We've become a go-to first stop off the train out of the University of Virginia, talk to Seville Biohub and get connected.

And I think that's the value.

We're bridging the gaps between the university and the community in a way that hasn't been done before.

And that's tremendous value because that's the most volatile time for a company as well.

That's when most early, especially the early stage companies, when they fail.

They need to look to models of people who've been there and done that.

They need to look to say, I can do this too.

So some of it's morale building, some of it's resource connection.

And I think for our opportunity,

is to draw them into the community and say, oh my God, I'm here.

And not just from a company perspective, but also a talent perspective.

There's been a huge brain drain out of the University of Virginia, which is how, from my own interest in getting involved where this began, because I had grad student friends out of UVA saying, where do I find a job in Charlottesville?

And say, oh my gosh, there's so many great companies here, but you couldn't find out about them.

And so Seville Biohub, putting those companies on a website was a huge inflection point

to bring awareness to those students looking for jobs.

And we now have seen increased activity from job seekers finding and posting their resumes, people coming from other communities looking for jobs.

There's a guy who's coming with his wife from Texas.

He's leaving his academic position.

He has a PhD and we connected him to about five companies after one phone call, 30 minutes.

He said, this is the most valuable conversation I've had and could imagine of having

coming into a new community and I'm so thankful that I thought I was going to go to the website and it would be a dead website and so if we did not exist it would become a dead website and and we'd be lost we'd be losing those opportunities to pull people into the community and show what a great area it is to to live and work and play and I think that's the you know what we're trying to sell here too externally from company and talent perspective and and certainly capital too so I could go on we could

go on on that for a while, but we've demonstrated value.

And that's where I think Steph was saying, we did not want to start asking for participation from a financial perspective from the companies, unless we felt like we were demonstrating that value.

And this year we turned the corner into that and all of them said, yes.

I mean, it was a sliding scale request.

So we gave them the opportunity to choose what felt right for them, but we gave recommendations.

but they said yes and so I think you know that alone is hugely validating to us to say the community we're serving sees value in what we're bringing to them and we will and we hope we will continue to see that because those early stage companies are the ones that came in at the lower end of that sliding scale as they continue to grow and get fostered and builds up here they're going to have success points and exits hopefully that they will say when I got started Sevo Biohub was the group that helped make this happen and brought us into the community in a way that

And if I could just follow on that really quickly.

And David, I think being as someone who is an outsider who joined this organization two years ago, it's an industry founded and industry led organization.

And I think that's so unique.

These are people who have started companies who are scientists and entrepreneurs.

And so they're uniquely suited to serve and to help.

And I think that also

you know has created sort of a fast track so we can connect early stage ideas or talent who find their way here companies who want to start here you know you can talk to the founders who are all kind of leading their companies or and you know leadership roles in the biotech life sciences space um also we've sort of been this central storyteller to Nikki's point I think that collaborative nature is the simple act of gathering and connecting our community that are

We are at a stage where we are very collaborative and not competitive.

Hopefully it stays that way.

But due to that sort of natural collaborative nature, people are willing to give of their time and share of their time.

I just talked about this with Tom Thorpe, an Afton Scientific, who is in the county and is also growing.

He just said the most valuable thing you can give is time.

And it just really resonated as someone who's given a lot of time himself and I'm very inspired by that.

And I think we've really moved the needle forward in terms of potential funding sources.

By telling that story broadly, we're able to attract potential funding, right?

Where we're able to put the story out about the region so that we can potentially diversify the funding sources for our companies as they look to the next beyond angel investing into their seed rounds and further rounds of funding.

Also, David, sorry, internships are my passion because of my work with the CHIP program.

And I can't give you the data points exactly.

I can follow up.

But there are so many of our summer internships that have led into carry-on fall internships.

We hear every year, we do a survey with companies and students, and we're just so thrilled to see how many companies are keeping on their internship talent and also hiring.

And so this year, we had an example of a company who was the,

This development engineer was an intern last summer for a new concept and is now hiring and overseeing two interns in the SHIP program.

So we're seeing that sort of graduation and then leadership carry forward, which is really gratifying.

And I went into a company to do this video project and bumped into two of the summer interns while I was there having my interview with the CEO.

And then I turned around and saw

Another person that was in our internship program last year and realized that they had been hired on full time.

So there's a lot of connectivity.

That internship program is really developing a real talent pipeline and companies appreciate that opportunity, particularly with our matching funds to experience the talent, see if they're a good fit for a potential full-time role.

So, you know, particularly in the pandemic, this has been a transformational moment for some companies.

Jax, did you have something?

Two quick questions.

David might have more, but I'd like to understand the scale.

You said the sliding scale.

What does that sliding scale look like?

What's the high and low end?

And the second was, is this particular request conditioned on getting the RIF grant?

Yeah, I can tackle that in terms of our Circle Leaders program.

Our very early stage concepts, we're just asking them for a small contribution of $250 up to $2,500 to $5,000, which is on par with other like-minded organizations in the state that are membership-based and nationally we've looked at those models.

In terms of the matching funds,

Certainly we would love to stay afloat and moving forward and we feel very confident in our submission and our application for the RIF grant funding.

And so in theory, this would be matching funds that are connected and collaborative.

I imagine we would also appreciate the opportunity to request these funds that are untethered to the matching funds.

They're certainly part of that funding mix for the RIF grant.

Yes, the RIF grant, much like the Go Virginia grant structure, requires matching funds.

It's slightly different.

It's a two to one match for the RIF grant.

Real quickly, I think it's a one to two match.

50 cent gets you a dollar.

Sorry, reverse.

Other questions from authority members?

I guess I have two sort of related questions.

So Roger was talking about Venture Central, and I'd be curious as to what you think

That organization can bring to our community in terms of how things that y'all are doing or that you see a need for beyond what you're doing.

Because as he was talking about, they're sort of covering different areas.

What are things

Could they do to support you?

I would like Nikki to tackle the venture central question because she's been so

involved in terms of that concept.

I will say broadly from my perspective as executive director moving forward for the organization, we see any initiative that is working to advance entrepreneurship in Charlottesville and Albemarle County as a good thing and a growing opportunity for the entire ecosystem.

Let's do it.

Let's bring more resources to the region.

Let's bring more talent and expertise to serve companies from all sectors.

We feel strongly about our presence in the region because we are serving a very impactful growing sector.

And certainly while we are industry focused, we do have the capacity to also connect

more broadly to entrepreneurs in the community as they see fit.

I agree with everything there, Steph, and

On the venture central side, I think the greatest thing that organization can provide is visibility to the outside world on what's here and what's happening and entrepreneurship and the great activities across all sectors and helping to promote the biotechs and the tech sector is burgeoning one here and to empower this organization to do its best work.

And I think some of the things that we've talked about and had conversations around include

Spending time to build the large EDA grants that are available at a federal level and to bring those into our region and help to disperse those dollars to the organizations doing the work like we are in entrepreneurship and broadly in economic development.

That would be incredibly impactful.

We are a small team with little bandwidth and very little experience in applying for those federal grants.

I think there have been three opportunities that we have passed on because that were a direct fit.

One was on the internship program.

Steph and I saw this and said, oh, my gosh, this is what we're doing.

But as a federal grant required a lot of heavy lifting that that takes us out of the organization and serving the companies that we do.

So we had the pass on that opportunity.

There are some new EDA grants on the table right now that UVA is saying, you guys should go lead this.

Get the dollars in the phase one, which is half a million dollars.

Put that project together.

We've got ideas around what that would look like.

And then the phase two grants are up to $50 million.

We could go build the wet lab incubator.

And we have that expertise.

We've got the connections to go do that.

We don't have the bandwidth.

right now to write those grants without great support.

So Venture Central could be a really incredible resource from that front to say, you know, we want to help you and extend our bandwidth on all things, but in particular, helping us to secure those long-term sustainable dollars into the region.

And, you know, I think it's a great opportunity to collaborate and we keep working towards that as we watch and support

That's a really helpful answer, because I think as I was listening to that and listening to what Steph was saying, you know, one of the things I was thinking about was, you know, the wet lab space is always an issue that comes up and needing more space, you know, is that something that government can help

help us get in a position to have more of that space.

But it had not occurred to me that grant writing assistance might be an area that if we could provide personnel or you could provide personnel, that really brings more dollars into the community.

So I think that's an interesting idea.

I don't know if that's something that other EDAs have done in the past.

Roger, you may be able to speak to that or Jennifer.

I just want to make a couple of comments that may be germane.

First, Dr. Hastings is exactly right.

In fact, the Venture Central has completed a couple of grants, including a federal grant.

We don't know the status of that, but we applied for that for the betterment of the community.

As one example, as Dr. Hastings was pointing out,

The second thing I thought that was germane is that both Nikki and Steph have been working with myself and Chris Ingle to make sure we were lockstep with the city.

So in the near future, Steph and Nikki are going to approach the city with a similar request.

Their finances run a little bit different than ours.

They're expecting to make two requests and get two different tranches of $12,500 each.

And all of this is intended to

Are there other questions?

Comments?

Is there, I guess with no further questions or comments, is there a motion

Well, and I do want to point out that the way the resolution is drafted and being as there's some changes to their organizational structure, there could be a change to the resolution.

Well, there's the word may, Richard.

That's what got me looking at it.

I'll stand by whatever the will of the group is.

I just, um, I do like, as you know, to leverage county money.

It may secure from its August 2021 application.

All right, is there a second?

I'll second.

All right.

Is there any further discussion?

All right, then all in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

So all, that's unanimous.

Yeah.

All right, so thank you all for coming and thanks for the presentation.

Thank you so much, Sharon Long.

Just wanted to say thank you again, Roger, for your continued collaboration and partnership to assist us and work step in step.

And we wish the whole Venture Central concept much success and can't wait to partner on it.

So keep us posted.

Thank you.

My portion of the director's report is going to be real short.

I'd like to introduce J.T.

Good afternoon directors.

We have a number of timely and very important closed session topics so I will try to be as brief as possible to discuss.

One of the items included in the agenda materials for today was a draft uniform grant policy, and

This is meant to be a part of the EDO's support of the EDA and their in its effort to continue to develop consistent policies around its activities.

Over time, the authorities received a number of different requests for grants and funding from different groups in our community and

It can be challenging to comprehensively consider all of the great work that all of the

Really important and great efforts that are being undertaken in our community at one time.

When we get them sparsed out, it can be difficult to know what are we sacrificing in order to support the request in front of us at that current moment.

So this policy would standardize a time frame and a set of guidelines and a process for any group requesting funds from the EDA.

And there's a resolution included in the materials that would direct staff to to move forward with further

adding details to this policy, but it was meant to just provide an initial start to start the conversation of how do we want to receive these types of requests in the future?

What are the criteria that we should be considering?

So let me, as I understand it, what we're talking about is what was provided in the package was a draft process for how someone would apply to be considered.

But what we don't even have a draft at this point yet and what you're working on is the policy, which would be the framework for evaluating the

the proposals that are put in.

Yeah, we could further delineate a specific set of criteria or we could even do like a quantitative matrix that would have specific criteria

Economic development being so broad, it could be challenging for every organization to squarely fit under a specific set of criteria.

Included in the policy right now are all the goals of Project Enable.

On page two, there's a criteria guidelines to be considered for EDA funding.

But if the directors were interested in something more specific, we could do that.

Okay, all right, okay.

We could, we used the quantitative matrix, for example, with the CARES money in providing economic development grants during the initial part of the pandemic.

So if the authority was interested in that, we could develop something and bring it back.

Or keeping it flexible, I know this particular policy was adapted from

a successful process that Roger used in another community he worked in.

Well, thank you for that surprise introduction, J.T.

I appreciate that.

So to be quite candid, when I was in Wilmington, North Carolina, we had a similar situation

where requests for support were coming in as the institutions needed them.

And most of those ideas, if not all of them, look great in isolation.

What was not happening was a comparison between the allocated budget

and the strategies in which the city was trying to get specific outcomes.

One way to align the funding with the outcomes was to create a single process by which requests were filtered in and they could be looked at and viewed comprehensively.

and collectively scored and brought back to this board for a strategy or a decision to be made on what is the best path forward.

I love that you helped SEPA Biohub and I love that you helped the SBDC and CIC.

All of those folks would likely be partners in the future, but as we develop our programs and our policies, this EDA is going to receive additional requests

at a time that the institutions want them, not necessarily what's in the best interest of the county and or this EDA.

Yeah, well, I guess my question is more about the specifics in the in that evaluation process.

And you may have some ideas.

This is much more your world and things that you've seen.

But I know from when

but when I was on the United Way board and we went through, I mean, there was a fairly detailed evaluation structure.

And I'm not saying that I think we have to have that, but I do wonder if we're fairly vague about the criteria that we're using, if that's gonna make it hard to evaluate whether these, you know, what the right project is.

I guess the one benefit we'll have is we'll be looking at all of them together and evaluating them

but I don't know whether we need more specifics in terms of how we're comparing.

I don't know what the answer is.

Well, to me, the big question and a lot of this when you look at it globally is not so much good versus bad.

Generally, what you find is that there's a lot of good.

And so it's sorting through the

The Good Proposals, and this is sort of why I asked the question of our guest today about the but for question.

If you didn't exist, who would pick up the slack?

Is there anybody that can also do this work?

I'm struck by what Seaville Biohub is doing, for example.

It reminds me of when I did a history of venture capitalism in the early post-World War II era,

the universities were leading the effort themselves.

And it was a couple of key players like MIT and Stanford and there were others involved as well.

But it strikes me that what they're doing is something that maybe UVA would be doing in a different world or environment.

And maybe they've supplanted them to some extent.

Whether that's,

There absolutely was, Dave.

It includes in the narrative to make sure that they're the only organization providing that good or service.

And if they're not, we would instruct them to work together and come back collectively on their plan and their narrative.

That was part of the process.

We had a university, you know, similar nonprofits trying to accomplish the same thing, creating some degree of redundancy.

So Roger, maybe a question to follow up on David's too.

I mean, I think that's the whole problem is just gonna be lots of great ideas.

You'd like to say yes to everybody, right?

And so we're looking for things like, does a grant from the county or an investment by the county, does it leverage other dollars?

Does an investment by the county serve an underserved area?

And that maybe that's geographic too.

I mean, I'm often struck by, you know, Scottsville and, you know, places that are,

not in the Charlottesville Albemarle urban core, would one of the things that we're trying to change, would it be we'd have a preference for adaptive reuse going into existing buildings?

Oh, the danger of making comments.

Mr.

Chair, it's Doug.

Yeah, I'm on Kat's train on this one and Roger and I talked about this and kind of preparing for today and kind of the best analogy that I could come up with was the county's ABRT process where there's a limited amount of money that the board of supervisors makes available to the many, many, many, many good nonprofits serving the health and human services interests generally.

and we have done it with the city in the past.

We've done it on our own more recently, but there is a very well-constructed, I think, process by which those good entities are evaluated on how that they are aligning their work with the interest of the county, serving the defined population.

have performance measures, performance metrics identified and then are held accountable over time for whether they actually meet them or not.

And so there's an academic aspect to it, but that's somewhat challenging on the front end, but it does create a

Much of an objective way to deal with what ultimately is the subjective process to try to put the best, what limited money you have in the best way to serve the best outcomes.

Knowing that there's always going to be more interest than there is money.

So that was kind of my thinking in sharing it with Roger.

And there's no one right way.

I've never done this on the economic development side, but I didn't think that the model

Yeah, I mean, I think that's the same sort of process the United Way went through.

So that's what I'm talking about.

I guess the flip side argument is you don't want to make it so cumbersome and expensive that it weeds people out.

I mean, if you're trying to get

$10,000, you can't spend three weeks preparing your response.

So I think that's the other side.

So I guess my comment would be, let's see what other, take the kind of information that Doug's talking about, see if other folks have developed a framework that they've used in terms of evaluating the actual

applications.

I think what what you put in here makes a lot of sense of the structure and what you're asking for is not being oppressive and then use that as a as a as a starting point.

To a certain extent, we're going to have to just try it and see what we get from people and how they get comparison.

But if we can get a little bit of a jump on what those things are, I think that would be.

Because I just, I know that the language in the motion says something else.

It says that the EDA is not gonna consider

Future request until that policy is adopted.

Yeah, and I think that is important.

Thanks for bringing that up because we do want it out there that, you know, we've considered everything that we've been made aware of up to this point and that so from this point on anybody who comes needs to understand that they're

They're going to have to deal with whatever our new policy is.

Thanks, Doug, because that is a really good point we wanted to clarify.

All right.

I'd like to move to support the resolution as stated

Second.

All right, second.

All right, is there any further discussion on the resolution?

All right, all in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

So the resolution is approved.

All right, well, then we're going to move into closed session, so I will make the motion.

I move that the Albemarle County Economic Development Authority go into a closed meeting as authorized by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act Section 2.2-37

11A of the Code of Virginia under subsection 5 to discuss and consider the expansion of three existing Albemarle County businesses where no previous announcement has been made of their interest in expanding their facilities in Albemarle County and subsection 6 to discuss and consider the investment of public funds to support the expansion of three businesses located in Albemarle County where the bargaining

where bargaining is involved and where if made public initially would adversely affect the financial interests of Albemarle County and subsection seven to discuss and consider consultation with legal counsel and briefings by staff members pertaining to probable litigation and three matters involving breach contracts where such consultation or briefing at open meetings would adversely affect the negotiating or litigating posture of the authority and subsection eight,

to discuss and consider consultation with legal counsel employed or retained by a public body regarding three breaches of contract matters requiring the provision of legal advice by such counsel.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

There is a second.

All right.

All in favor?

And can Jennifer send our other link around?

Yep, there it is.

Thank you.

Just came.

All right, so the motion is approved, so we will move into closed session.

Jennifer just sent the link, although I have now lost it.

There we go.

I'm on the phone, so you should be able to hear how to do this.

OK.

They're in the audience.

I need to pull them in.

But J.T.

started the screen and my stuff was jumping everywhere.

OK, here we go.

There we go.

OK, so let's see here.

All right.

Let's see how many ported back in.

All right.

All right.

I move that the EDA certified by recorded vote that to the best of each director's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempt open meeting requirements, the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion authorizing the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting.

Alright, I'll call the roll.

Mr. Long?

Is that everybody?

Do you do Supervisor McKeel too?

Yep.

Okay.

It might be.

Okay.

So this is actually a follow up from the last meeting where there was some confusion as to what the status of the rules were.

So Jennifer and I, we went back and we scoured the minutes and we were able to find out that in 2015, the rules had been amended, had been updated, particularly when it came to the administrative fees.

There were some amendments that were made.

I know Don mentioned that and Jim may have mentioned that.

So those were updated and they were adopted.

In order to make things kind of cleaner, what we have suggested is that we go ahead and we have a resolution re-adopting those rules so that we can publish them as current rules without any real concerns.

Then the resolution also speaks to the EDA staff or the EDO staff working with the EDA to work on a schedule for the fees related to the bonds

and so we can address that at a later date.

And then the practice will go on to follow this is that at our annual meetings, we'll just go ahead and readopt the rules.

That'll kind of prompt everyone to say, hey, look, is there something that needs to change?

We can address that.

If nothing changes, then we have a clean set of rules and Jennifer can post those on the website.

I know Don had mentioned in terms of fairness to the public,

but they ought to have easy access to the rules to see, particularly the administrative fees when it came to the bond to know what they're dealing with when they're making plans with their client.

So this would kind of institutionalize that, that every year we'd re-adopt the rules.

So that's kind of the basis right now.

Okay, any questions on that?

I guess my only comment is really just about, do we have a central resource where we can look for all of these things?

And if we don't, we probably should have it.

And maybe we even need to think about putting together a hard copy with

Right, well I know since Jennifer started she has been maintaining hard copies of everything and doing the best she can to update what she can.

There is a central location on the county's website that would be SharePoint.

I don't want to even begin to try to explain what SharePoint is, but I'm not sure I know.

But the net effect is that the public

You can go to that website and Jennifer is including organizational documents there for the public to be able to access.

I think it's pretty clear that the intention is that these rules will be included on that.

Okay, well, and let me be clear, my, my comment about not finding things was not directed at at the county, it was directed at the fact that I've never gotten around to actually doing what I need to to get access.

No, no, no, I didn't take as directed because it's an evolving, it's an evolving practice.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, so back to the matters at hand, especially since we've got people who need to go.

All right.

All right, a second and a third.

All in favor, or is there any further discussion, I should say?

Hearing none, all in favor, aye.

Aye.

All right, readopted or adopted.

Then other matters, we have a joint meeting on October 19th.

This was our regular board meeting and the Board of Supervisors has agreed to come to this meeting since I could not come, was going to be out of town.

And since it all revolves around me, we have moved the meeting.

I'll be glad to take this.

And we plan to talk about, update us, the county EDA and the Board of Supervisors on where we are with project enable goals.

We're going to talk about creating a sustainable revenue stream for the Economic Development Authority, which may include property ownership.

And we're going to talk about some new potential economic development policies and update the memorandum of understanding.

We wanted to provide these directors an opportunity to weigh in if there are other topics that you would like to add to this.

Just for clarity, that means that we are not doing the October 13th meeting.

In light of the length of this meeting, why don't I suggest that people, if they do have comments or ideas, why don't we put it on our next agenda for the September meeting to just take this up so that people either can pass those things along in the interim and they'll have an opportunity at the next meeting to bring them up.

And Don, would you like me to issue a brief

Yes.

OK, so very quickly, in terms of operating revenues and expenditures, and this would include approximately two thousand fifty nine dollars in interest.

We have one hundred and twenty nine year to date, one hundred twenty nine thousand six hundred and eight dollars.

Twenty six cents in revenue against twenty eight thousand three hundred forty five

dollars twenty four cents expenditures.

It passed through activity.

Revenue includes one million two hundred eighteen thousand one hundred and thirty one dollars ninety one cents against outlays of one million one hundred and eighty thousand five seventy.

The difference in that case being the thirty seven thousand five sixty one ninety one in the Brookdale agreement, which has not yet been dispersed.

We also should note we have committed funds not yet expended, encompassing four grants, two of which are matching fund grants, totaling $171,400.

Ultimately, that leaves us with a cash balance and cash equivalent of the $138,824.93 resulting from the amounts that I just addressed.

to go with our beginning balance at the beginning of the fiscal year 7-1-2020 of $688,085.02 with an ending cash balance, therefore, June 30th of 7-31-167.64.

Thank you.

Any questions?

By the way, I think I like the way this report is put together.

It really has all the information and puts it in a easily understandable form, or at least it is to me.

I don't know if it is to others.

I agree.

All right.

Anything further?

All right.

Hearing none.

When is our next meeting?

Oh, September 21st.

There we go.

So we will now adjourn.

I appreciate everybody's time and good discussion we had today.