Economic Development Authority Meeting   6/20/2023

All right.

We'll call the meeting to order.

So I don't think we don't have to do remote participation because Stephen's not here.

So matters from the public.

There are none.

There are none.

All right.

Moving right along.

Approval of the minutes.

Are there any

Is there a motion to approve the minutes?

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

All right.

All in favor?

Aye.

All right.

The minutes are approved.

Yes.

So the financial report was distributed through email earlier this morning.

I'm just going to do an abbreviated version of the report since we're going to be looking into maybe reformatting it in the new fiscal year.

We have an operating revenue through the period of April 30th of 2003, operating net revenues of $1,037,893.95

Our net revenues are $44,745,057, leaving us with a cash balance of $868,828.47.

Sure.

And I probably should know the answer to this.

Sure.

I think most of the directors have agreed that it's a little bit confusing to see the figures as they are typically outlayed because

A lot of the pass-through funding that exists embedded into the financial report gives a little bit of a different perspective on what our actual balance is and what money we have to spend because so many of our projects are supported through county funds that are channeled through for pass-through funding, so it can appear to give it a little bit of a hazy

Hazy look when you're trying to kind of come down to what's in our account, what do we have to support businesses with?

What's our checkbook look like?

So it's something we're doing here.

And I will point out, no one jumped at the opportunity to be secretary treasurer.

So that's an exciting opportunity.

OK. All right.

Well, we can at least wait till the next meeting.

Obviously, yeah.

OK.

So I jump to 5B.

So on to new business.

We welcome Andrea Johnson as our new EDA director.

I think maybe it would make sense for us to each do a short introduction of what we do here and then what we do in our day job.

So I will start out.

Andrea Johnson, I am the CEO of Bander London Recycling and Container Rentals and also my husband and I have a property management business in addition to that and I have been in Charlottesville I guess 11 years.

My husband is retired Army so we spent 23 years traveling in the globe and settled here afterwards and excited to see what I can contribute to

Thank you.

Welcome.

My name is Jeff Morrill and I own businesses in Boston.

I've started working here.

I commute.

I go back a few times a year.

I much prefer my life in Charlottesville.

This is part of it.

John Mottola, I am the COO of Pro Robotics, which is in Charlottesville now, formerly in Crozet.

I've been an EDA director for the last couple of years.

And basically, my past was I was in legal and

I've been in Charlottesville for the last two and a half years.

Diane De McKeel, supervisor representing the Jack Jewett Magisterial District.

I am thrilled to welcome Andy to represent the Jewett District.

Good afternoon, Trevor Henry.

I'm a W.D.

County executive.

I've been with the county since 2009.

I kind of came up through the facilities side of the house.

I've been in the executive office since 2018.

My portfolio is changing with Mr. Walker's departure.

I work with public safety primarily, and then I'm picking up and working with economic development, moving forward, effectively one July.

I'm transitioning now.

Well, this is awkward.

It's really since the initial, I guess, formation of the Economic Development Office, when it transitioned from Lillian Catlin to Tom Poulden, Tom Poulden.

So, a good five plus years in trying to help support the effort of economic development with J.T.

and staff.

So, it's interesting leaving, but that's kind of where I am.

So this will be Doug Walker's last EDA meeting with us.

And so I can't let that go by without saying to Doug, we greatly appreciate everything you've done to support us over the years and believing in the EDA and its potential and pushing us to do bigger and greater things.

And thank you for your confidence and

Resourcing us the way that you have, and it's been a big wind behind our sails, so thank you for everything you've done.

Thanks.

Richard, do you have any announcements you want to make?

I'm Richard DeLoria with the county attorney's office.

Yeah, we probably will.

I'm the Rivanna supervisor.

Just kind of anxious.

I've missed the meeting we had because I was overseas.

Richie, would you like to?

So we do have a guest from the county attorney's office, Nicholas Pham.

He's a rising third year student at the UVA School of Law.

And he comes to us from, I wouldn't say Mobile, Alabama.

Is that right?

All right.

Well, thanks, everyone.

So that moves us right to the next item on our

and I will tag team this.

We have Chris here in the audience to help with any questions.

I think the main goal for today is to provide an overview of the project, the work that we're doing, some background to talk about the why, and then J.T.

will cover some of the concepts that we're moving forward with, as well as how we're going to do it from a financial perspective.

Do you have control?

So, and some of you may have seen the meeting on May 24th, the day the board, through a special meeting, took assignment of this project.

So some of this, well actually much of this will be repetitive, but we wanted to make sure there was grounding for the EDA in case there were questions.

The work that the county has been doing dates back well before the board action in May to take assignment of this project.

There is a partnership with the chamber called the Defense Affairs Committee, of which I mentioned I'm a member of, J.T.

is as well now.

They have been working with DOD and our community

for the past decade or so, and also working with the state to do a series of SWOT analysis around the DOD industry and with a specific lens on Rivanna Station, the station that is a local base that supports multiple DOD components, which I'll talk about, but wanting to really understand kind of

how that work was going and the things that that that that entity needs to support its current state.

So, you know, business retention as well as ability to grow.

The Army itself in 2016 did a master plan around some growth needs that they had and they looked inside the fence line and outside the fence line as far as options.

So that work has informed some of the action that the county is in progress of taking.

There was a Wilton Cooper study that was presented to the board.

It was sponsored.

It was led through the Defense Affairs Committee.

The county was a primary sponsor of that work.

Wilton Cooper did the study and it was an assessment of economic impacts of all DoD in our region, our region being Albemarle, Charlottesville, and Greene.

The report, which is public domain,

and if you don't have a copy of it, we need to make sure that you get a copy of it, reports that approximately $1.2 billion of annual economic revenue is generated from DoD in our region, of which Rivanna Station is 52% of that.

So half a billion plus a year is generated out of Rivanna Station.

Second highest revenue generator in our community.

So it's important that we're paying attention to this.

Just a little more history.

When I was first involved in in the DAG 2018 and working with the state's Secretary of Veterans and Military Affairs Office, Rivanna Station National Ground Intelligence Center specifically was looking to move forward an addition project.

They're expanding now, so if you drive up 29 and you look to your east, you'll see a couple of massive cranes and they're doing an expansion of their secured spaces, lab space right now.

In the 2018-2019 timeframe, NGIC's reps were trying to move that project forward with funding and appropriation through

through their mechanisms.

They were meeting with the Office of Management Budget, walking through the project, which is expensive because it's infill, there's critical slopes, and it requires a parking deck because the site is constrained.

And at the time, the budget office for our federal government said, why not just relocate this whole operations out to a site in St. Louis?

St. Louis had just created 100 acres and they were marketing DOD components to try to entice them to move and expand.

Luckily, for our sake, that didn't happen.

The funding was able to get landed.

and then the $90 million project is underway.

But it accelerated our sense of urgency to make sure that we are doing everything we can as a community to support that function.

And again, we knew there was a large economic engine up there.

We just didn't have the data to show the significance of this.

Next slide.

This is a bit of an eye chart, but it just reflects the 100 plus community organizations that are in our community that are private sector defense contractors supporting both Rivanna Station and other elements of our DoD spread throughout the city, the county, up 29 North and all the way up into Greene County.

And that 29 North corridor from Airports Road

Airport Road, with the Research Park, with our work at Rivanna Station, and then all the way up into Rutgersville, I think 20 years from now will be a significant defense corridor in the region and in the state.

Next slide.

At Rivanna Station today, and a lot of folks don't even know it exists because of the nature of the work, it's an intelligence community,

you know, three letter symbols, National Ground Intelligence Center, NGIC, the DIA, NGA, they are all critical to our Department of Defense and the work that they do.

During the Afghanistan War on Terror, they were collecting and processing intelligence packages and working with troops in conflicts

through that period of time.

And a lot of folks in Elmore County are not aware of what, and that's just a small

a bit of what they do on a day-to-day basis in securing and serving our defense and our operational posture.

At the station itself, it's a substation to Fort Belvoir, the parent command out of Northern Virginia.

It houses approximately, and this number is growing, 2,100 civilian and military employees, the majority of which are civilian.

They work at NGIC, NGA, and DIA.

They support the intelligence community work with analytics and other assessment work that they do in support of the defense missions.

The ranges of fields that they're in include biotech, AI, cybersecurity, aerospace, materials engineering,

even agriculture from an impact to the global state.

And so there's a lot of work that happens at that small 75 acres that's hidden away to the right of Boulders Road up on 29 North.

The folks who work there don't just work there, but a lot of them live in Albemarle County.

They have kids in our schools.

They coach our sports teams.

They're active in churches in the community.

And the median salary there is around $100,000.

So it's a meaningful employment center.

Next slide.

So why did the county do what we did?

We recognized with a sense of urgency, especially when there was some consideration of

you know, NGIC not being able to do that expansion about how could we get involved to ensure

you know, the stability of that station and ensure its operations in a state that is supportive of that entity.

How can we be a good partner for them and how could we work with them to do an expansion of existing function in an adjacent and compatible way and also help grow the industry?

So it hits both on retention and expansion.

which J.T.

will talk about.

I kind of skipped through it at the beginning, but in 2014, there was work that was led out of our state's Defense and Military Affairs Office with the stakeholders from Rivanna Station and did an art of the possibility of what an expansion might look like.

And it came up with a concept that has been the basis of a lot of our work in assessing how we might acquire land to provide

with protection and security, but expansion opportunities.

And that's what started us on this path of doing an acquisition, single landowner in that area.

And we worked through a set of brokers and a team and a way to acquire what we believe were the critical elements of

supporting and growing the mission.

The DOD has a strong preference to have a buffer from neighbors as practical as possible to enhance its base security.

Based on the art of the possibility work, we knew there was a desire for potential expansion of 75 to 100 acres to the immediate north and the east of the site.

and we also knew that there was there was important importance for the Defense Department to have to have give a can you do the voters road so right now it did there's a dead end and and there's a lot of interest for resiliency

and support of the existing function is to have a secondary entrance to Boulders Road or to Rivanna Station via the extension of Boulders Road.

I will note that the county, EDO, ADA took action, I'll say 2017, 2018, and purchased a former palm reader's house, which basically locked that intersection

for future connection.

And so that was a very tactical move.

I don't think at the time they would have envisioned the county taking the action to acquire this this degree of property.

But but it certainly it was with forethought about what that future future looks like.

and so the county has been in negotiate one of the negotiations anonymously through brokers in 20 2019 pandemic hit we stood down for a little bit while while the dust settled on that and we picked it up back in earnest about 18 months ago the work and I should mention too that the board has been our our partner and has been been a leader in this work along the way we've had

Multiple discussions with our board about the criticality of this work and this opportunity and the future.

And so working with the board and our brokers, we were able to get to a point where we had assigned a purchase agreement through an LLC that was then presented to our board on May 24th, where they accepted assignment of that.

And that is now under the county's responsibility.

The project we're calling is Rivanna Station Futures.

J.T.

can talk a little bit about the concept and the modeling that we have done and the vision and also the work that we're doing from a due diligence and financing perspective.

But before I move on, are there any questions?

Actually, I probably should give a little more orientation.

The Orange is the existing site owned by the government.

Again, Red Ann Station, Borders Road is a public VDOT road that terminates at that green kind of boundary area.

That is a commercial property that is not part of this acquisition that is independently owned.

And I believe the Army has invested twelve to thirteen million dollars to fortify that.

And it is a functioning space right now.

So their plan is as they as they build out this lab addition

They're going to move staff out of the commercial building with the hope that they could then stand down those leases.

But I believe that the work is still expanding there, that they're going to need contractors in that.

So they're actually negotiating a five year extension of that lease now.

But our property acquisition that is under consideration is the white area.

Of the 462 acres, 232 of that is in the development area, and 230 is in the rural area.

How does it involve the former pollinator property?

Does the county or the DOD or anybody own anything else to the extent of what playground is?

No.

Yeah, everything in white is currently held by one property.

Any other questions?

Okay, well then I am going to talk a little bit about how

and then look at the vision.

And then as Trevor mentioned, we have a bond counsel for the county with us here today.

Chris Culp is in the audience and he'll help us field Q&A after we get through these next few slides.

Just wanted to take a quick pause and route this back into Project Enable.

This was the plan the board adopted in 2018.

This was an explicit part of our strategy.

The whole story that you just heard from Trevor is really a story of BRE, which is something that Ashley and I do and is fundamental to any economic development office.

We're knocking on the doors of our most targeted, our target sectors, our most important industries and finding out what is it that they need, what are their challenges and what we heard here is that the DoD was really at an inflection point of do we continue to invest here or do we try to go somewhere else and so that's what led the county to pursue the strategy of site control.

Trevor talked about that art of the possibility concept and that's what's shown on the screen here and so outlined in red is the existing station and then highlighted in green and shown with orange buildings and yellow, red, and blue are different types of uses for a proposed expansion

This is over 600,000 square feet of space across about 75 acres.

And this has been the vision that's been propelling us forward.

And so we took that vision and put it into a a 3D version that we actually have an animated little short video to go with it.

But it helps to

give a sense of what the opportunity is here.

And later this summer, Trevor and I will be going out to partners at the federal level, at the state level, as well as to academic partners and talking about if this was the vision that's still acceptable to the Department of Defense, where could these different partners see themselves?

And this plays into a little bit of the financing that the EDA is going to play such an important

To look at some of the specific numbers, Trevor mentioned the Weldon Cooper Center study on the Department of Defense's impact on our entire region.

These numbers focus on this specific concept itself.

So we had an implant analysis done that showed the

Direct, indirect, and induced benefit of this expansion would yield almost 900 new jobs.

The median income is a little bit low than what Trevor mentioned in terms of people coming into Rivanna Station itself.

That's because the

That includes private sector, that includes academia, that includes warehousing, types of jobs.

Those are not purely behind the fence Rivanna Station jobs that are those six figure jobs.

We would expect at full build out this to accrue approximately a million dollars in local tax revenue.

It would yield a little over two million to the state.

And we think these numbers are conservative.

The analysis on this concept doesn't include a maximum build out.

So it's possible, you know, as we think about how Rivanna Station has undertaken very expensive

Infill projects and found it worthy of such large investment that the concept may undersell the opportunity here that was in that art of the possibility concept.

And so I mentioned we'd be going later this summer to talk to different partners.

What would we be proposing?

The way we see it right now is that we would be going to the federal government as well as state agencies and talking about horizontal and vertical development.

So it makes most sense to us right now to work on site readiness and horizontal infrastructure with our state partners and to work on vertical construction with our federal and private partners.

And so the EDA may very well play a much larger role in how the property is leveraged to maximize the value of both the return on investment and public good perspective.

The next few slides, though, we're just going to talk specifically about closing on the property because we haven't closed on the property yet.

We just have a contract to buy it.

J.T., before you move on, just on the in-plan analysis, which is worth noting, the focus has been on that 75-acre expansion concept.

Remember that this acquisition includes additional development area, upwards of 230 acres.

Yeah, exactly.

So this just adds on to that vision for how these different partnerships could be broken out, locally driven, state supported, and federally shared.

This is the schedule we have for the rest of the summer to try to get more information about what that interest is and does this concept still apply to what our partners are most interested in.

So here's where the EDA comes into play, and that will be through helping the county to issue a

closing on the land.

So we've negotiated that rate of $58 million and we would be issuing a bond anticipation note that would last for five years and that would give us time to work with our partners to figure out how do they want to be a part of this site going forward and help us bring down that overall cost to the county.

This type of short-term financing is something that the EDA has done before for other types of county projects, and Chris Cole can answer questions about that, but we would be going to the public market and issuing this note.

So just as the EDA has done in other issuances, they would be a conduit to access this bond financing, and the

The timing gives us not only time to work on the partner development, but it also gives us time for further due diligence on the, Trevor just mentioned, you know, 232 acres are in the development area.

So what's the maximum extent of the opportunity?

We know that there's great interest in that land immediately adjacent to the existing station.

but the land that's further out that may be of interest to private sector partners that are considered safe and not a threat to the existing station, we could better identify and delineate where those opportunities are.

And so the county in approving its fiscal 24 budget included the interest payments on the short-term financing that will give us this runway of five years to do partnership development.

At the end of that ban, we'll convert whatever remaining debt there is to a long-term financing structure.

and that will be dependent on what kind of reception we've had and what kind of partners have come to the table at that point.

And so I think that's the only comments that I wanted to make.

Let's try to add one other thing I failed to mention that when the agreement was signed, the date of the signatures, May 18th, the assignment to the board was on May 24th.

The shot clock of the contract started on that day, the 18th.

We have 90 days to do our due diligence.

So it's engineering work.

All that stuff is happening.

We want to make sure that

You know, we have a good handle of the buildability of that site that we discover any, you know, unknown conditions.

So that work is happening now.

Lance Stewart, our Director of Facilities and Environmental Services in the audience, that's being managed out of Lance's shop.

Our financial, our finance department is working on the funding side, but we have 90 days by contract and then we have another up to six months of extensions.

Trevor and J.T., you may be planning on covering this, but I think it would be good to just talk to the EDA members just quickly about our public hearing for tomorrow night so that they understand.

Yes, so Richie may have more to add on this, but there's a provision of the state code that requires a public body to have a public hearing if there's an intention for any land that they're acquiring to be used for a private sector purpose.

If it was going to be used for a public use, there would be no requirement for a public hearing, but tomorrow night's public hearing checks the

that would allow the Board of Supervisors maximum flexibility on how this space is ultimately programmed.

It will receive comment, if any, from the public.

It doesn't require a resolution, but I understand the board will be presented with a resolution where they'll essentially agree that that will be a potential use.

It doesn't bind the board and what those uses will be.

Thank you.

I'm just kind of getting my head around this.

So just for clarification, the EDA would be responsible for the debt service on this.

Chris Coll from Hunt & Andrews, better known sometimes Hunt & Williams, our old name, out of Richmond.

But I've had the pleasure of serving as bond counsel to the

EDA is partnering with the county on projects.

So the EDA would be serving as a conduit issuer to actually issue the bonds to the market, but the EDA would enter into a financing arrangement with the county where the county subject annual appropriation would pay the debt service on behalf of the EDA to the bondholders.

Is there any sort of

If we had a failed bond issuance we would be getting back with the financial advisor and rethinking how to go to the market or go to a bank to try to interest banks in doing the financing but

Thank you.

Are there questions for Chris or anybody else about the project?

It's a good question.

The EDA and the county have sort of partnered together in financing regions over a long period of time.

It's a way for the county to get to the market pretty quickly to go through the EDA versus going through a referendum-related process which involves cost and time and is not easily scheduled.

that's one of the primary reasons.

But it also is appropriate given sort of the economic development related purposes to have the EDA involved in the financing.

So the county has to have a bond referendum in order to do it directly.

It has to actually put a referendum

All right.

Anything else?

speak in favor.

That would certainly be appreciated.

And I think it's going to be an excellent opportunity for the EDA to do a lot of the things that we've been talking about doing for a long time, whether from a financing side, potentially some property control side to help help with some of this land, especially the land that's outside this 75 and maybe even the land that is in the 75.

I think at this point it's still very in flux so I think there are going to be lots of opportunities for us to be able to do things to help this project move itself along.

So it's on our agenda?

I think it's at six.

Well we start at six and this is the first item after we do just a couple of

Quick Business, so probably be kind of the sixth, if you're gonna be there, I'm just trying to help out.

All right, great.

Oh, sorry.

Sorry, Nicky.

So welcome Dr. Nikki Hastings, who is the executive director of SeaBuild Biohub, which is an organization that we have supported in the past and she's got a presentation.

Thank you so much and it's great hearing everything going on in the fast world.

Very aligned with some of the opportunities of the biotech sector.

Thinking about infrastructure and really propping up this industry and life sciences alongside what's going on in defense, but in similar fashion.

Come by the EDA through years of support for the organization and our growth of the local industry here.

We serve over 2500 employees.

We've seen tremendous growth.

500 new employees since the early pandemic days that we've tracked over 800,000 square foot of space is occupied both in the city and county by the sector over 75 companies that are growing seeing strong momentum.

in both funding at frequency and size.

We're starting to see a traction of venture capital here.

I'll highlight a few of those for you.

Albemarle County-based Agrospheres raised over $20 million just last fall from VCs across the country.

Rivas Pharmaceuticals is one of the recent highlights that raised $132 million, led by Longitude.

Capital, RA Capital.

These are big VC firms in Boston.

And so we're starting to see an attention and attraction to this region for the biotech sector, which is really exciting.

Alongside that, a new initiative with the UVA, Paul and Diane Manning Institute of Biotechnology being established adjacent to UVA Health is bringing a lot more attention to this industry and a lot more long-term opportunity.

We see this as a massive opportunity for the county specifically due to the land accessibility and opportunities to build larger facilities as these companies grow.

What we lack in Charlottesville and Albemarle is acceleration space.

So our organization is an accelerating organization.

So, you know, just our mission is to engage, resource these companies, accelerate them, provide them with education and knowledge of how do you spin from your concept that you might be developing at the university or even within the community.

And so we're agnostic, but support all growth within the biotech sector.

This is everything from new drugs being developed, medical devices, software technology, supporting healthcare initiatives.

This is a sector of high interest.

We saw the high tech software boom, biotech is the next big boom and opportunity for growth as we see these industries merge.

So this is just kind of a word cloud showing what our organization has highlighted as opportunities and how we're being viewed from the broader world in 2023 really as an accelerating organization nonprofit biotech accelerator.

We catch everything that's coming out of the university.

We're even engaging with UVA in many ways through two collaboration agreements right now to support acceleration.

And through our entrepreneur in residence activities, we are connecting at the faculty level, at the student level to provide those with concepts, a pathway forward to commercialization.

Ultimately, those that are successful are going to need space to grow hiring opportunities and more attraction of capital to the region.

Just some of our highlights from this year so far.

We are a highly active

Organization focused on having an impact.

We really care about meeting entrepreneurs where they are.

We hold a monthly speaker series that is in high demand, fully sold out every month on a Tuesday night, bringing over 80 people from the community together.

We've become the go-to organization for the biotech sector in Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

Tom Tom Fest.

We were very active in planning, coordinating, and technology for good track.

We recruited venture capitalists from the West Coast to participate with us.

They said this is what we want to see.

We want to be participating in a community like this with such vibrancy and such enthusiasm.

You've put us in touch with some of these CEOs very quickly.

It would have taken us three months to

make those connections and we want to partner with organizations like yours to make those connections to then invest.

We are developing a very strong partnership with Shear Partners and South Deval.

They're in Maryland.

They are life science

Real estate experts.

We lack some of that here in our region.

And we recognize that they're a partner potentially for us in building out a lab accelerator where we could say, OK, every company coming out of UVA, this is your first stop in the community that can then lead to long term retention of those companies in the region.

We're very excited about that and just had conversations in Richmond today around the county really being the ultimate beneficiary of this accelerator and opportunity, again, from the land and infrastructure opportunity.

And Shear Partners has toured Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

They said this is their next market they're very interested in.

UVA Economic Development is connected with us.

We meet with them monthly.

Pace Lochte is a real champion and has supported making connections to us through to the biotech institute

too.

We are partners with Licensing Adventures Group, and UVA Engineering is our newest relationship there.

We have a circle of leaders, membership organization, we bring companies in, we bring them private programming and opportunities again to just become educated, aware, and hearing how did others get there.

We heard from the CEO of Rivas earlier, how did he go raise that money, giving others the vision that they can also do that too here.

We are in our fourth cohort of our CHIP internship every year, every summer, hosting about 20 interns in 10 to 15 companies.

It's been such a success that when we first started, we had to go into the UVA classrooms to say, hey, have you ever thought about doing an internship in Charlottesville?

to now we had over 125 applications just from biomedical engineering for these opportunities.

So it's hard to turn people away, but we've really flipped the demand on that model.

And it's just really exciting to see that opportunity.

Our EIR team is three strong.

and have expertise in building successful biotech companies.

And as one point there, we've recently this year helped one company secure $1.2 million from CavAngels in a private family office just this spring.

So we can become an advocate for those companies amongst our investment partners.

And we are four team members.

So it feels really good from where we've come.

It's a group of industry leaders who

said we see this opportunity to grow and build this community just by building a website is really where we got our start in 2016.

I'm not going to belabor all of these points.

We've had our strategic goal set and approved by the board.

We've had great progress so far in 2023.

And so these are materials for you to peruse if you're interested.

I'm happy to share more details.

An event we have coming up is the Biodiscovery Summit.

This is our second annual.

We will be hosting this at the code building.

Last year we had 170 attendees.

We had the USPTO engaged saying we love what's going on in your region.

How can we help support you?

It was a great program.

So we're at it again and working to secure a keynote speaker for that.

So that's October 12th open to open access for everybody.

So hope to see you there.

What we're doing new this year is

A pitch event where we're going to spread the word across Virginia.

Come and share your story with our community.

And we're going to be convening with investors from across Virginia, but also across the country.

Those that came from TomTom said, when can we come back?

So we want to have opportunities for them to engage and hear what's happening.

So we're really excited about that.

JLabs in D.C. is offering one year

virtual residency.

We have one company in our region already participating in that.

We know that when they come back from that residency, they're gonna wanna be in this region because we are a strong pole and a network and there's a community here that people are really attracted to.

So we see that as a value add for this community as well.

We have a board of nine members.

We have two seats still available and open.

I mentioned we've grown to four new team members.

So the current ask we have of the EDA and we've had again strong relationship and thank you all for the support so far today.

We wouldn't be here without support from the localities as well as Go Virginia that really lifted up this organization.

We continue to receive some sustainable

Operational funds from VIPC through their entrepreneurship regional innovation fund.

We have received an award of $200,000 for a one year term.

It's a required two to one match.

We have the city participating in that and we have an ask here for the county to equally participate.

And we have a private donor that has supported the other $50,000.

The details there are essentially the programming I've shared with you, but with a strong focus on entrepreneurship and educating and accelerating those early stage companies from getting them from concept to a company that can attract funding.

We continue to go after additional funds.

We are in the process of applying for a second grant, which I think is in the resolution here for a federal grant, which we have not yet applied for.

This will be our first federal grant.

That request comes in at a $25,000

request to support a $750,000 opportunity that can lead us to even more financial support.

That's through the EDA, it's not the build, the build to scale program.

So it's a $750,000 upfront for

Three years after which we could go after two million dollars.

So similar to the defense sector, we continue to seek funding and support to focus on industry ecosystem development, knowing that this industry in particular has a lot of very unique specific requirements.

Very active in looking towards space for this accelerator that we're trying to build.

Our other grant opportunity has come through from Go Virginia.

for that.

So request that you continue to support us.

And I have full confidence that we can continue to contribute significantly to the growth in this community.

And I'm very proud of where we've come today, but very thankful for the county's support today.

Happy to answer other questions.

We have some economic impact data, if that's of interest.

Any questions?

I'm just looking at the financial report.

We have a pool of funds set aside for matching state and federal grant opportunities.

Underneath the Economic Development Fund, there's a bucket called the Economic Opportunity Fund.

And through the end of the fiscal year, through the course of the next week, it's substantially enough to cover this particular measure.

It looks like about 230,000, I think, is left.

Yes, so those particular sources of funds are appropriated through the board for those particular purposes that J.T.

just mentioned to match state and local programming.

So what the purpose of, I believe it was last year that we passed a resolution here to allow the EDA to essentially pay these types of matching incentives without having to go to return to the board each time.

So that lump sum that was transferred, it was $465,000.

If it's my recollection, it's correct.

That was reappropriated so that we would be able to have the authority to make payments to support those organizations as needed and not delay and operate through the speed of business.

So it will, yes, to answer your question in a much shorter and efficient way, it will carry over into the next business.

I don't have any questions.

I want to say thank you, Nikki, and just an observation from where I sit is that Civo Biohub has come back to the EDA with more and more impressive results every single year.

I feel like the organization has continued to make just significant contributions to the community.

And I think for the EDA to hear, it's important to know

is who we do so much of our work through is really looking at this ecosystem model and trying to figure out, Ashley and I by ourselves could never do what Nikki and her team are doing, but it requires this kind of special focus and community building and all the resources that you leverage through your networks.

Yeah, thank you.

I feel like we're on a real inflection point.

Really coming into the true potential and I think to your point on where the state is putting their attention and seeing opportunity, you know, we're trying to find ways to participate at the highest level and bringing more attention to this region.

We see this as, you know, equivalent to opportunities in larger markets, but selling that, you know, this is an underserved market, come here, participate and get involved because the quality of life is, you know, much surpassing as we all know.

So much surpassing some of the other larger markets.

And the investors are participating in that and they understand that now too.

And so does their real estate partner.

So thank you so much.

All right.

I'm trying to get the, should I read it?

Can I just refer to the screen?

To move that we adopt the resolution as represented on the screen for us.

All right.

Is there any further discussion?

Hearing none, all in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

So, Mr.

Chair, we have a variety of pictures up here on the screen and our last meeting was canceled in May and we've experienced a lot of transitions since then, but I think what I wanted the EDA to hear is that the business of the Economic Development Office has not stopped and these pictures are just some of the things that we've been working on.

since our last meeting.

You just heard Dr. Hastings talk about atmospheres.

And this is a photograph of one of the co-founders, Payam, holding a gift from the Economic Development Office.

We historically have gifted a small recognition of the particular project name that we used.

So this was called Project B-Friend.

and this was in recognition of their company's commitment to creating 53 jobs in our community, $25 million in capital investment.

They'll be at the Condyle building, building out a R&D and manufacturing space similar to what Acrosphere's built at the Old State Farm building.

So this was a great event that you may have heard about in the news that we didn't get a chance to acknowledge at a May meeting.

A couple other things and then I think Ashley probably has something she wanted to talk about too.

On the left hand side of the screen, we have Supervisor McKeel as a presenter at the recent SEBIC gala.

That was a great event that celebrated a lot of the ecosystem partners that we were just talking about.

This was the Educator of the Year, which was great fun to present.

He's a teacher at Alwar High School at the Science and Engineering School at Alwar High School.

It was great fun.

Kevin Huff.

And then I'll let Ashley talk about the two other photos in our collage.

Let's see.

So we've talked about the CVIC.

Towards the middle, you heard earlier about the business and retention and expansion program.

and many other local businesses and address their needs and provide some customized solutions for anything that they're maybe dealing with challenges or questions or concerns that they're dealing with.

And the one in the middle there is a trip that J.T.

and I took alongside the state.

It's called Everridge, ICS by Everridge.

And they are a cooling refrigeration container system manufacturer out in Covesville.

down towards the south end of the county.

And it was a really, really interesting and fascinating experience.

We were sort of taking through the whole process of how they almost put them together from the smallest little components into these custom built refrigeration units that are then

custom made and shipped to, J.T.

was so curious, he went over to Wendy's across the road to make sure that they were- It has a walk-in cooler that was made.

So it's neat to see how we- And he got a frosty.

But when we walked into the facility, there was a nice display indicating all of the different customers that they served.

And some of the, it was just really,

Amazing to see so many of the national brands that were represented that were being being supplied.

You know, we're here in Albemarle County, really cool to see.

So we're trying to help them with some workforce issues and some visibility issues.

They're kind of tucked away in southern Albemarle County and we'd like to help them.

They are.

They're almost to Nelson County, just tucked away there on the side of the road heading south on 29.

So we're going to see what we can do to help them with their visibility and

to sort of promote their company a little bit.

But that's essentially what we'll be working on when we catch up to speed from all of our activities that we're going to be working on pretty heavily right now.

Let's see what else we have.

The top right, you can see the big checks.

You may have already heard about this update, but just to do a quick touch back, that was the first Piedmont pitch that the county and the city partnered with the Small Business Development Center, another one of our great partners that supports small businesses and entrepreneurship in the community.

And essentially, we partnered with the city and the CVSBC,

to host a pitch competition for entrepreneurs so that they could hone in their business skills and practice pitching to investors.

The Charlottesville Angel Network was involved to a degree as a judge and along with some judges from the Chamber and other business leaders.

We had Denise Herndon from the UVA Economic Development Department as a

Judge as well.

But basically, there were over 70 applicants, which was really highly, very, very, very thrilled by that.

We were absolutely, I guess, probably expecting about 40 and then 70 applied.

So that was a really great response.

They honed it down to six finalists.

who competed after completing a 10-week business essentials training.

And that was the training I was discussing earlier.

But first prize went to a young lady named Gabriela Romo for her clothing recycling business called ReFem.

And second prize was awarded to a gentleman named Phillip Rich, not $5,000 for Black Rose Landscaping.

He's looking at eco-landscaping

business that's out of Earlysville.

So that was a lot of fun.

That was a lot of fun to see.

And the wool factory generously hosted that activity.

And then the last thing I think I have, it's not, we don't have a photo of it, but again, partnering with

The CBSVDC, just like SEVA Biohub and CBIC that we spoke about the gala, as you know, CBSVDC and CIC, we do a lot of support and work with them because they

They are the experts in dealing with these small businesses and providing the support that they need.

And they hosted, I believe, Nikki, you presented at the Global Launchpad event as well, didn't you, on the 18th?

She's just always around.

Ashley, you have not already not missed it.

The Central Virginia Small Business Development Center and the CIC is the Community Investment Collaborative and they are located just across the road there.

We can see the building from our window here.

And then SEBIC is the Charlottesville Business Innovation Council and then SEVEL Bio.

Should be a glossary.

We should get one of those set up.

I could have benefited from one of those a long time ago.

Well, the Global Launch Pad event was held over at the code building, and that was another really exciting event that we were happy to participate in.

So any questions about all that?

talking about, in my experience, the Charlottesville Angel Network.

They've been very busy.

They're sort of at that, what I would say, the seed stage.

And we now seem to be, because of the opportunities that the station has,

I think you see the growth in these opportunities.

I think the big barrier that I've seen has been the larger investments coming into the community through the larger VCs.

And I think we're starting to see that money starting to come.

And the fear was always we'd get to a certain point and people would go to Holberg.

Yeah, if I could comment on the reason why that's shifting, you know, something we've been observing through the pandemic is that being in the virtual world is actually really helpful for ECs to find other deals in other locations.

And they are happy to now come to Charlottesville, spend a night, have a board meeting, come here and have a great weekend.

So they're participating in tourism and opportunities there as well.

But

They know that they can check in on their companies in Zoom.

And so that's really enabled VC investment outside of the San Francisco's in Boston.

Yeah, that's really nice.

I hadn't realized that part of it.

So it wouldn't surprise me if in the future, a member of the EDA might serve as a judge for some of our future pitch competitions.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think that's definitely up for discussion.

All right, unfinished business.

So for unfinished business,

We'd like to propose that the EDA amend a previously approved performance agreement, which was a match for a $50,000 AFIT grant to Potter's Craft Cider.

Platter's Craft Slider completed an AFib grant with the county back in 2019 where they created a tasting room that maybe you've been to down Route 29 where they renovated an old church and created an outdoor space that during the pandemic served them very well when people couldn't gather indoors.

Their continued success led to an investment on Broadway Street, which is in an industrial district.

They're now shipping their cider all up and down the East Coast.

And in September, the EDA approved a match agreement that had two requirements with it.

The first requirement was a certificate of occupancy.

And the second was to open a tasting room or retail space in that structure.

At the time that we brought that forward to the EDA, we were under the impression that the building would be exempt from the building code and that there would be flexibility around creating these different types of spaces within the building.

It's clear now that the building code will apply.

And so that reduces the flexibility and the ability to create that space in the near term.

And so the company is still interested in doing that in the future, but they're unable to commit to it right now.

And so we'd like to propose that the EDA remove the requirement

So the part of the expansion of Willowtree out of the city of Charlottesville and into the county at the Woolen Mills site that Ashley was talking about where the Piedmont pitch was, there was a commitment by the county to do a study of that corridor called the Broadway Blueprint Study.

and the recommendations of that first phase of the study talked about a desire to have more mixed use and at night activation.

Wolin Mills has grit coffee and selvage brewing, which recently moved.

But on the other end of the corridor, there's decipher brewing and an art gallery.

And so the first phase of the study contemplated more of these kinds of uses.

And Potter's Craft, their first tasting room has been very successful.

And they're optimistic about it being successful here.

it would require significantly more investment to open a tasting room while complying with the building code and so the acknowledgement that that applies makes it a challenge and kind of undermines the purpose of the grant the original purpose of the grant which was to support their expansion in manufacturing and so

Yeah, so they've just up the hill from Woollen Mills, 1820 Broadway.

They have a production facility.

There are milestones to meet the state's requirements for the grant, which for capital investment is $900,000.

They've already eclipsed that.

Should the EDA approve the match today and we go forward with this performance agreement, they would be working on their commitment to Virginia grown produce and new jobs.

So the...

They are a tenant of that building.

That's true.

Yeah.

So so I guess just so we're clear, the issue is really that the cost of doing what we're what our agreements requires them to do is just substantially greater than

So this is an opportunity for us to say look we're not going to make you spend a bunch of additional money that no one anticipated in order to fulfill this requirement that is not necessarily significant in the grand scheme of what we wanted to do.

I will add in terms of our local benchmarks part of the reason for adding those was that as the businesses you know gradually made their investments and met the benchmarks then they would earn the money we would disburse money at that point in time the state disperses their funds up front so they give you the money and then they and if the businesses don't

to meet the state's requirements, then they make us get it back.

Not stated.

So it puts us in a really difficult position.

So the EDA staff, I think a couple of years ago, said, well, why don't we build in benchmarks?

And as you meet them, we'll release the funds.

And that was kind of the structure.

We just didn't realize the amount of investment you would have to put into it.

And that was because we didn't think it was an agricultural building.

And it's not.

It's no fun to take money back.

It's a difficult position to be in.

It is.

So we have a proposed motion.

OK. We did it.

It's advanced.

All right.

Is there someone who would like to propose the motion?

and the resolution is approved.

Any other matters?

If anyone wants to bring up.

So the next meeting is scheduled for July 18th.

We have often not had a July meeting.

I don't know what vacation schedules are.

I believe what we discussed was potentially that we would keep this meeting on the calendar in case anything came up

Right, our remote and virtual meeting policy allows us to call special meetings and it can be all virtual.

We have to be somewhat surgical on that because once we do an all virtual special meeting, the next one cannot be all virtual.

The next special meeting or the next meeting?

The next meeting cannot be all virtual, whether it's special or not.

If it's very special, it still can't be.

Even if it's your birthday.

That's right.

But that's good for one issue.

I just want to make sure that we get the Weldon Cooper Center study to the members

regarding the economic impact because I think you all would be very interested in that study.

And the second thing is I had the opportunity a couple of months ago to go down to the Broadway corridor, heading down there for a good while.

It is worth a ride down there to take a look at what's happening, J.T.

I was astounded at the change.

Just saying, just a good opportunity.

and you want a driver and to just get in and drive around some of those buildings now and see what all is there is really fascinating.

So because we do talk a lot about the Broadway corridor.

Yes.

Thank you.

Sure.