Economic Development Authority Meeting   10/18/2022

All right.

So I'll just call a time out.

OK, then I'll make the motion that Mr. McNaughton be allowed to participate

remotely, is that the right term?

Remotely in this meeting under the appropriate code section.

I'll second that.

All right, any discussion?

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

All right, I think it's unanimous.

All right.

We probably should, just as a housekeeping matter, maybe have a little thing on our agenda that says,

Remote participation motion, just for the reminder.

All right, so now onto matters from the public.

Does anyone?

No, sir.

No one is here.

Looks like there probably are some people online indicated in it.

No, sir.

All right.

Then the next item on the agenda is approval of

The minutes, somebody had a chance to view the minutes.

All right, is there a motion to approve the minutes?

Motion to approve the minutes.

Is there a second?

Second.

All right, all in favor?

Aye.

All right, the minutes are approved.

No change on the financial report, and David's not here, so we'll just do one.

So, on to new business.

Staff report.

Jerry Long, directors of the authority, Roger Johnson, economic development director.

We have two short items for you today.

The first is a quick update on the hotel feasibility study that the EDA directors passed last month, and I'll turn the microphone over to Mr. Lawless.

Thank you, sir.

We appreciate the support and interest on that.

That RFP is posted open now with the closing date on the 27th.

I appreciate some advice on how to get the word out on it, and I'll show the results on it when it closes here in a minute and a half.

We're happy to help you get the word out, Director Lawless.

We'll accent that through LinkedIn and other methods we have here at the county.

For those who may be listening at home, I'll provide some context.

Venture Central was formed a couple of years ago.

It was originally a collaboration between the city, the county, and the university to help build an entrepreneurial ecosystem to connect founders to both resources and money.

It later became a process where the Chamber joined and it became a collaboration of the Chamber as the central gathering point and fiscal agent for all things Venture Central.

That group applied for a Go Virginia grant, received a little over $200,000 in Go Virginia grant to start this ecosystem building, Venture Central.

The county and the city provided matching funds as well as UVA in-kind support.

It's been operating in essence for about seven months now, and we hired an ecosystem builder, a gentleman named Alex Andrew, and he's been putting the infrastructure in place.

About two months ago, they began acting in earnest to provide support to entrepreneurs on the ground.

Some of that support includes direct connections.

For the last two months, there's been a gentleman named Alex Zee, I cannot pronounce his last name, forgive me, who is working as a contractor, along with Alexander, the ecosystem builder, who have been working directly with startup founders.

They measure connections, and a connection is anytime they meet with a founder and they connect that founder to a resource, and a resource could be a fractional CEO,

It could be a venture capitalist.

It could be an angel investor.

It could be a mentor who has gone through the process already.

Any way or any resource that can help advance that startup into a better place, both fiscally and likelihood of success, they consider that a connection.

In the two months that they've been operating, they have made over 200 connections.

to startups in our community.

A lot of those are folks over at UVA, spin-outs, but it's also existing entrepreneurs, including some in the county who are pretty prominent to help, you know, maybe help improve their pitch deck, perhaps it's to connect to capital and other reasons.

The general idea is to customize support at the point they need it.

So that's ongoing and active.

The Venture Central has done two other things while providing this ongoing program.

They submitted a grant to the Economic Development Administration, the federal level, and asked for approximately $300,000 grant.

And I'll talk to you a little bit about that in a minute because they were awarded that grant.

And then secondly, there's an existing grant through the National Science Foundation for about $1.4 million

Really the...

The idea of using data science and data analytics to promote startups, make informed decisions and have access to information that they may not otherwise have.

But it also has other expectations as part of that grant to include how do you make sure that data is not biased going in on the front end and make accurate predictions on the back end.

So it's more than just helping startups, that particular grant that includes Venture Central as well as UVA data school sites.

The good news is Venture Central did receive a $300,000 grant from the Economic Development Administration and it was to do three things.

One, create an angel academy to better connect and train investors and diversify investor networks.

This is all about diversity, equity, and inclusion, primarily to train folks how to be both an investor and network to be part of the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Number two, to link local startups to funders.

and that includes people of color in particular.

There is data that shows they don't have the same network and so the idea is to connect BIPOC community in particular to funders in a way they may not otherwise have access.

And then the third portion of this grant is to determine and assess if a venture capital fund could be created for the purposes of sustained investment in the local community to include the BIPOC community.

So that grant has been received.

That work will not start in earnest until probably sometime the first quarter of next year, although the funding may come in earlier.

Just by way of process, the matching funds for the Build to Skill grant, the $300,000 I just referenced, is it comes from some of the county's original money as well as the Go Virginia, which will be matching the federal money.

So by way of process, you have to use the

Go Virginia State money first, remit that for payment, then submit the receipts to the go build a scale grant.

So it's sort of a domino effect, if you will.

So we'll spend that money first, and then later, the diversify connect fund, this little copy.

A physical location?

There's not been a physical location identified.

Absolutely.

There is direct work that you will be doing in the future that would impact the success of Venture Central, not only for informational purposes, but also to provide support to really what amounts to the county's plan.

I know that you know this, but there may be people online who may not.

Project Enable's idea was not for us to go out and recruit businesses and bring them into our community, right?

Like a lot of economic development organizations.

Our primary plan is to tap into the intellectual capital in our community,

Help those folks be successful and provide everything they need right here in our community so they don't have to leave.

Eventually, some of those will result in brick and mortar businesses.

Obviously, we are limited in land and resources.

In certain cases, they'll outgrow our community.

But the idea is to have a perpetual pipeline that provides jobs and opportunity for your children and your children's children.

So yes, it's along with India.

Any other questions?

I'm happy to report that.

What about the trip to Greenville with the Chamber of Commerce?

I don't know if there's a time to report whether you want to do that now.

Next Monday.

If you allow us to pump that until the next meeting, we'll be back.

We'll try to articulate all the information.

We have not aggregated all that from the individual.

But I learned a lot about the people that participated.

Well, we look forward to that.

I'm not being brave.

I'm not.

Well, one of the participants I think I saw was listening online.

All right.

Anything else on the

that the staff reports.

All right, next is a closed session.

Do we have a actual motion to read for the closed session?

Go ahead.

We're not gonna read it.

I was gonna hand it to Don, but if you have it, you can read it.

I don't have the, I just had cataract surgery.

I move that the Baltimore County Economic Development Authority go into closed meeting as authorized by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act section 2.2-3711A of the Code of Virginia under subsections 5 and 6 to discuss and consider respective businesses or industry

All right.

Is there a second?

All in favor?

Aye.

Motion carries.

That's right.

We're actually exiting this room, taking a left out of here.

I move the EDA certified by recorded vote to the best of each director of knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, identified in the motion authorizing to close meetings as heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting.

I'll call the roll.

Director Ray Aye.

Director McNaughton Aye.

Director Mottola Aye.

Director Lawless Aye.

All right.

Certification is completed.

I'll speak to this and I'll ask you to share along with you tonight any additional commentary that'll be great.

Southwood has an existing performance agreement.

There is a process by which the county goes forward and vets the information to make sure they're eligible for payment.

That process includes Dr. Pitt and the housing authority validating all the information and the legal department ultimately with Jeff's signature approving and such.

We did that and made a payment a couple of months back and Don was authorized to make that and he did so.

They're coming up for their second payment and this is an amount of $300,000.

We were not certain whether or not we wanted to bring this back to the authority on a regular recurring basis anytime in the future that they may be eligible for incentive, although I believe this one actually closes out most of their performance agreement.

So what we're asking for the authority today to do is to consider adopting a resolution that allows Chair Long, or in his absence, Vice Chair, to authorize and sign

an agreement to move forward and make these payments for South.

The idea is to be both efficient as well as provide him the authority to do so.

While he may have already had the authority, we thought it was appropriate that the EDA directors here

were cognizant of all that's happening.

And I actually, I'm gonna recuse myself from this because my wife has done some work for Habitat and their projects.

On behalf of the Economic Development Authority.

I've got a private,

and Javier Zamora and his 14-year-old son Matthew helped me every Sunday with landscaping and they've become good friends.

We go to baseball games at UDA together and he lives in South

and he's not the most brilliant guy when it comes to real estate, but I've been out there and they're doing a great job out there.

And he's adamant that anybody who lives in one of those trailers now will have an opportunity to have a permanent home out there.

either writ or purchased.

So we're going to go through the process to see if Javier can qualify to purchase something.

But I think it's a dynamite project.

I think there's a resolution somewhere in the,

I move the EDA to adopt this resolution appropriating $300,000 to Greater Charlottesville Habitat for Humanity

Any further discussion?

In terms of future, I don't see the necessity for bringing it back every time, unless an authority one.

Yeah, if you say yes it is, we will not be bringing back everybody.

Director Ray.

Yes.

Director Mottola.

Aye.

Director Lawless.

Yes.

All right.

Thank you, everyone.

So the last matter is currently our meeting is in December is on the 20th.

We'd like to move it to the 13th and the bidding, of course, on what we have on the agenda.

Maybe we will have that meeting, but I think it's important to keep it on the calendar, at least, because we have had, on occasion, five instances that pop up at the end of the year.

We've had meetings, Dan, I don't think we normally do unless basically there's nothing on the agenda, because primarily it gets moved away a week prior to, away from Christmas and the issues we have.

There's no, I mean, we don't know what's going to be on the agenda at that time.

And we can certainly vote on this at the next meeting if anybody, but should we spot a thing?

Should we,

Vote on that?

Oh, I think so.

OK. Then I'm going to move that we move the December EDA meeting from December 28 through December 13.

Is there a second?

Second.

All right.

All in favor?

All right.

Meeting is moved.

Any further business?

I just wanted, can I just tell y'all something that happened yesterday?

As you all know, many of the supervisors have citizens advisory committees, we call them CACs, right?

About every few years I organize a tour for my CAC members and we actually tour our area.

Last night we toured it in a job bus because John was the bus driver.

And I do tours because periodically we have new folks that come on board.

The reason I'm telling you this is last night I had the ability

to take my CAC members by seminal place.

And we talked about the multitude of different types of businesses and manufacturing that was happening in that facility.

They were absolutely amazed.

They thought it was just, they had no idea what was in there.

And we talked about economic development and how important it was.

We then proceeded to go down to north of Grumman

right in the Stonefield complex.

Rudy Fernandez, the operating director for Northrop Grumman is on my CAC and he explained how many employees, which is almost up to 500 now, that Northrop Grumman has and how they do manufacturing and what types of work that they do in that building.

One of my CAC members said, I just thought that was full of offices.

People are amazed that manufacturing is happening in this community because there's no spokesperson, right?

And it was a great discussion around economic development.

And I also, the other thing I want to tell you is that we went up to George Ray's blank, to the blank, and the reason we went up there was because of the Veterans Memorial.

and we took a look at the Veterans Memorial that George built as part of his retirement community and they were just so happy to see that memorial and we also went to other places like Ivy Creek but it was a great tour and I think folks that even lived in that area had no clue that economic development and manufacturing was happening in their backyards.

We wanted to share that with you.

Anything else?

All right, there's nothing else, and we're adjourned until November 15th.

That's right.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.