Economic Development Authority Meeting   2/20/2024

Mr. Ray, we've got Steve McNaughton who has notified you that he could not attend the meeting and would like to participate remotely because of a medical reason.

Well, yeah, it's according to, we have a remote participation policy and he's given us advanced notice.

But a majority of the quorum that's physically present needs to approve it.

and so Mr. Ray, Don Long has also notified us that he would like to participate remotely because of medical reasons and so similar motion.

Motion's been made and seconded.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Mr. McNaughton vote.

My general location is my house in Crozet and I

Appreciate everybody accommodating me for having a cold.

OK. Can you guys hear me OK?

OK, so matters from the public.

Do we have any matters from the public?

No, sir.

OK, approval of the minutes.

Are there any comments on the minutes?

Is there a second?

All right, any further discussion?

Hearing none, all in favor?

Aye.

All right, the minutes are approved.

Financial report.

Financial report, everybody should have a copy in front of them.

We're looking at a total availability of funds of $2.5 million.

We're going to look at reducing that amount by the expenditures as well as our pass-through to come up with the total economic opportunities fund of $1.6 million.

OK, thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I'll use this opportunity to provide an introduction to our guest speaker, Dr. Nikki Hastings, and I'll try to give an introduction while I pull up her slides.

which is going to be dangerous.

Nikki has spoken to our EDA on several occasions and has always had just a tremendous amount of good news to share as an ecosystem builder in the biotech space.

There have been a number of

opportunities that Seville Biohub has brought to our region.

And for many years, I think we viewed Nikki as the leader in our region of this space.

and she has a great opportunity to share with the EDA this afternoon.

There is no action requested.

There is no motion to be considered today.

This is for information gearing up for a Go Virginia grant application that will be due in March and so we'll have the opportunity today to receive information,

Digested, we can ask questions immediately on the spot that come to mind.

There's the next opportunity at the EDA meeting in March to ask questions.

There we would be asking for a potential action from the EDA to support this grant opportunity.

And so without further ado, I will turn it over to Dr. Hastings.

It's good?

Yeah.

All right.

Well, it's so great to see familiar faces again.

We were just talking about how the last time I was here, we were trying to remember when it was.

So much has happened with SEVO Biohub over the past six to eight months.

We're on a really high momentum track forward and we're really excited about nearing the opportunity for solving for the lab space problem or at least initiating solving for that lab space problem that exists here in Charlottesville, Albemarle County.

I'm going to go through the presentation and then I'll interject some of the reasons why we don't have that space.

That's some of the things that we have going for us towards

this opportunity that are all starting to line up.

We've got Momentum as an organization.

We've got interest from the University of Virginia participating and this large Go Virginia request in front of us that will allow us to actually move on a real project here.

So we're super excited about this.

So we're a thriving, growing biotech ecosystem.

I was just going to say the second button, the button with a little bit of a raise thing will help you advance the slides.

There we go.

OK, great.

The numbers have fluctuated somewhat over the past four years.

For biotech innovation, we're talking everything from drugs and therapeutics to new medical devices, diagnostics, and tools.

All that resides here in Charlottesville is around 2,500 jobs, 800,000 square feet of occupied space by private sector,

Now this number continues to climb 500 million.

I think we're at 550 with another large venture capital investment into Revas Pharmaceuticals, which is one many of us are paying attention to.

It's a pill form.

If you've been following Ozempic, this is a pill form of an obesity drug and has a lot of potential.

So we're really excited following that.

and they continue to attract dollars and attention to this region.

So we are saying Charlottesville, Albemarle is an emerging market in the biotech sector.

Interestingly enough, the large sectors, the large hubs of this sector are in San Francisco, Boston, Maryland, D.C. and the venture capitalists are now starting to pay more attention than ever to these smaller emerging markets because they know they have opportunities

for new underserved access to projects, companies, new ideas at universities where they don't have to necessarily be in the same location.

So San Francisco venture capitalists can zoom in with a company that's here in Charlottesville.

And we're seeing the impacts of that in a really positive way for this region.

And so where we have always been somewhat siloed or isolated from those investors, it's now new access that they are paying attention to and actually looking for.

That's some of the momentum.

So it's building.

I mentioned Rivas Pharmaceuticals.

They're here.

So in 2022, they raised 132 million and they've since raised up to 170 million in venture capital funding.

Other great companies that have had success recently,

BrightSpec is one here just on Harris.

They're an analytical tools chemistry analysis technology.

So they're replacing some of the analysis of new drugs being developed.

So they're selling to pharma companies, very large instrument and tool.

And they received almost 20 million in their Series B funded.

Stage.

And then Agrospheres is a company that's here in the county, in the Olacombe building.

They are developing a safe pesticide for crop applications.

So the governor came and presented and awarded them honors for the expansion that they've had, growth in jobs and things that we're seeing.

The other one I'll mention is Banyamose that stayed in the county due to support from economic development growing their manufacturing site.

They have opportunity for bringing to market a safe sugar substitute.

It's actually a plant-based molecule called Tagatose and they figured out how to build it at scale so they could sell it at a price point that was equivalent to other sugar substitutes.

So those are the kinds of things that are here, many more on this timeline.

And we continue to see new companies spinning out of the university.

Our team has now spent time with over 100 startups.

Sometimes these companies just need a little bit of advice.

They're moving forward.

Sometimes they need introductions to lawyers, accountants, the people who will serve.

and support them.

They need a lot of support around them.

And so what we're working towards is an entire program that brings all those resources and all those companies under one roof that we can support them all together.

So we know there's high growth potential here.

I'll say the real stake in the ground is the Manning Institute, the biotechnology that's being established at the university under the health system.

They've broken ground on that in December.

Another $50 million has been put up for this institute from the state.

They continue to raise funding for bringing new researchers to this region with an entrepreneurial slant, meaning

They intend or expect some of those researchers to also either come with companies or be developing new drugs that will turn into companies.

And so we're saying we need to be here on the community side ready for the support.

It's in Fontaine Research Park, the very back edge, 350,000 square feet of space.

Wow.

It will not be ready for about three to four years at this point.

They made the announcement about a year ago.

But it's definitely going to have an impact, especially if these researchers are attracted here.

There's goals for doing manufacturing in this facility and ultimately bringing some of these drugs to patients within the site.

It's a big, ambitious project.

It's really exciting for Charlottesville.

It's really exciting for Albemarle County.

And certainly, UVA is paying a lot of attention.

Jim Ryan is understanding what's going on in biotech, understanding the opportunities in front of UVA with this investment.

And Paul Manning is the large donor behind this project.

He runs PBM Capital.

So he's one of these venture capitalists who is investing in the biotech space.

So it's really great that he's

Can you just function as a point person for all these different companies?

So yeah, we're an accelerator organization.

And it started out as a convening organization.

We started in 2016 coming from private sector.

We founded it with four members who were working in industry saying, this community is just not connected.

What can we do to bring Charlottesville together to put the companies on the map so people outside of the sector could find out who's here, what's here.

So we started with a website and hosting an event.

Forty people showed up.

We had some food and beer.

We said, OK, there's interest.

So let's keep going.

And economic development from the state said, we care about this from Virginia.

We care about the sector.

We've now been funded by over $2 million since 2018 from state funds, private donations, and sponsorships.

And we continue to grow most of our momentum on the sponsorship side, where we are starting to attract those life science-specific experts in the legal arena, accounting, et cetera.

We are a convening organization, but where we are spending a lot of our time is through our entrepreneur advising group that we started as part of our first Go Virginia grant.

And we provide advising, guidance, strategic objectives, developing, reviewing their materials as they go out to fundraise, and really putting ourselves around.

So you're trying to make these connections and then you're looking at removing obstacles that would prevent their growth, hence the lab space and obstacle.

And you're trying to get that out of the way.

What happens at the at the stage of so these companies go through two major what's called valley of a valley of death, where most of these companies don't succeed because there are too many barriers in front of them.

One happens at the research level where they're spinning out from the university.

They're going through the transfer process.

The other is in the commercialization process of going from, okay, we're a university spin-out company.

We've got two research founders, no business experience, no knowledge of how to do this.

How do we take a drug to market?

It takes eight to 10 years and $2 billion to do that.

So they need a lot of advice and guidance if they're going to move it from step A to step B.

And to help them over that initial commercialization value of death is really what we're trying to accomplish.

Are all these chemically based companies?

No, we have about 20 percent in the drugs therapeutic space.

Forty percent is medical devices.

So that's a shorter timeline for approvals.

Only one clinical trial, one phase of clinical trials required there.

The reason we have a lot of med device companies is due to Coulter funding, which

has supported biomedical engineering for these commercialization purposes and investing in concepts, UVA, that have spun out.

So many of those, like Rivanna Medical is one that's here.

They have a, they call it the stud finder for the spine, which is an epidural, an epidural finder using ultrasound-guided technology.

And that was a UVA biomedical engineering spinout that received some early Coulter funding.

So,

We also have the rest in the tools, diagnostics, and other categories, which we claim everything that is broadly impacting by medical health and innovation.

So sometimes we even see software companies that are bringing tools to market.

So Springbok Analytics is one that's a clinical decision support tool.

They take MRI images and they can

render them so you can look and toggle on and off all the different muscles in the body and then inform the next step in therapeutic process rehabilitation.

Yes.

Sure.

Just to add some more color to it.

In our office, we're seeking to do similar things in supporting companies that call us, trying to connect them with resources and remove obstacles.

But someone like Nikki can do it in a way that our team absolutely cannot.

We may be in a position to help somebody get through our regulatory review or connect them to state or federal resources.

But there's no way we'll be able to be as effective as Nikki who can not only talk the talk, but she's walk the walk as a biotech professional and entrepreneur herself.

So just to differentiate, you know, we might be a starting point, but

And it's because of the connections that come through this ecosystem of entrepreneurs and companies that are here.

That's what the state is really investing in.

They're finding the data supports that companies succeed when they can work with other people who have already been successful or are trying to be successful.

A hundred million.

Yes, that's right.

Yeah.

And he's since been very successful.

The story he tells is a really incredible one on the gene therapy side.

So if you look up the Manning Institute, you may see some ties to gene therapy.

His investment firm invested significantly into this company called Abexis.

There's a disorder for babies that they

lose their musculature capabilities and really don't progress further in life very much and have a very low quality of life.

And with one injectable drug from Abexis,

These babies are able to have a relatively normal life.

They regain muscle function, and that's all they need for the rest of their lives is that one treatment.

So gene therapy is very hot right now, and it is really incredible when you see an impact like that.

So he saw that firsthand.

That company was sold to Novartis for, I think, $8 billion.

Yes.

If I can answer, okay.

I just wanted to, all you,

everything that they're doing regarding medications and things like that.

Do they also consult with what's going on, let's say in Europe, which has very high standards similar to ours for, I mean, it'd be kind of sad that I know we've done this in the past is that there's an epidemic and they develop something and we develop something and they don't talk, which is a lot of wasted money, time and effort.

And I know

A lot of times, there are drugs like, for example, the morning after pill that's been around for what, 20 years or more?

And then took the FDA years and years and years later to have that and to accept it.

Well, the FDA in the US is the gold standard of approvals in the drug

and Device Therapies.

So where in Europe sometimes you may be able to access that market first with the goal of ultimately bringing it back to the US.

But when it's got the FDA stamp of approval, that's usually when it starts to gain action.

The VEDP is really works closely with many of these companies that have opportunities for global trade.

And so we're talking with them as well.

They're one of our

Partners, the state has invested more money and more people power there and biopharma manufacturing is one of the sectors that they're very interested in.

We're working closely with a group in Richmond that is working on the pharmaceutical cluster on the manufacturing side.

We've put in for an application with them.

to support on the innovation sector.

So Charlottesville is strong in innovation.

We have the highest density of biotechs in the state and most of those companies then coming out, we want to make the connection to, oh, where are you doing your manufacturing?

You could do it right here in Virginia.

So these are the kinds of things that we're able to do as a convening connected organization that takes a lot of time and effort and we build relationships with these folks and bring the companies to them.

So I mentioned the capital structures on the venture capital side.

Most companies, when they spin out, they're looking for several hundred thousands of dollars to prove a milestone, to prove that their research works, proof of concept stage.

There's strong access to that kind of capital here in Charlottesville.

We're known for that.

Cab Angels is a group that's alumni associated.

So all UVA alumni are eligible to apply for this.

There are UVA alums who are then investing.

They'll put in $25,000 amongst other UVA alums who are putting in $25,000 and they're helping bring that company $250,000 as an example.

So that's called an angel group.

There's great tax incentive there for many of them.

They can get sometimes up to 50% back in tax credits.

So that's a really great Virginia incentive that not everybody is aware of.

Jim Chang was one who helped bring that forward when he was Secretary of Commerce.

The Charlottesville Angel Network is also here.

They do a lot less in the biotech space, but there are a few deals that may get through, maybe like one of the tech companies.

They have a lot more tech angel investors in that group.

Founders want to go to every possible opportunity to get access to capital.

UVA has a licensing and ventures seed fund, two $10 million funds.

They've deployed about 15 into 15 companies over the last five or six years.

Bob Creeden oversees that.

That's all UVA connected type of technology.

We've got strong seed capital.

What we don't have is the Series A venture capital connections.

And that's what we are hoping to do with the Accelerator project.

So I'll bring back up North Fork Research Park in a little bit.

We're spending most of our time right now at code bringing companies in.

We've got an office there.

It's a great spot for convening, running into people, bumping into, you know,

just people in our network or people who want to know what's going on or even some of the founders.

The average wet lab facilities cost is very low here relative to these larger markets I mentioned.

We're in an interesting time around real estate and life sciences, but it's very expensive to build this stuff out.

And the real estate investors, the developers in Charlottesville in this region,

haven't invested significantly in life sciences real estate.

So we've attracted a developer from Maryland who's built out the entire 280 corridor, 300 spaces over time to educate our community, to educate the developers in our community, the landlords on what the advantages are of how to support life sciences infrastructure.

We have strong talent pipeline.

I'm a grad of UVA, biomedical engineering, myself.

I have a PhD.

All my grad student friends were calling me as I started working in my first company.

They're like, I love Charlottesville.

How do I stay?

How do I get connected?

It's like there are so many things we did not know about when we were back at the university.

I think there are strong bridges that have been built.

over time, and there's more interest from graduates in industry type of roles.

So we really try to bring that pipeline talent to our community.

We've hosted an internship program over the last four years with about 20 companies and 20 interns per year that we've served.

And now biomedical engineering is saying, oh, we know who these CEOs are.

They now can go direct to some of those

companies and bring the talent right to them.

So we've really built that bridge and we're very proud of that, the outcome of that project.

So mentioned, what are we doing?

We're educating, we're connecting, we host office hours, we're networking, we vet the resources that we recommend.

And so we have become a known entity of, oh, go to Seville Biohub first, they'll put you in touch with the right people.

And we can tell if there's been a situation where you probably don't want to be talking to

you know those lawyers we've heard the situation or just be careful.

So we're giving that kind of behind the scenes guidance that can really help a company navigate and avoid some of the mistakes that we sometimes see.

So that's with our Entrepreneur in Residence group.

We have attracted some of the top successfully exited entrepreneurs from Charlottesville to our organization.

They're really engaged.

They love meeting founders.

They love talking through the strategies and ideas that they have.

And I think that's been the momentum we have in going towards this next stage and phase for the organization.

We have Chad Rogers who sold his company, Type Zero, diabetes management tool to Dexcom.

They're still operating here, but he's looking for his next thing.

So he wants to hang out, meet the companies and figure out where should he be CEO of next.

And workforce, I mentioned the internship program,

Job matching, there's a company that did unfortunately fold this year.

It was a tough market in 2023, and many companies were not able to access the funding.

Lots of reasons behind that for the sector.

But that talent all wanted jobs in Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

And they said, how can I find these jobs?

So we put them in touch with all those CEOs.

I don't know that there was the other type of resource or no to connect those.

that talent back to this community.

Otherwise, they're looking up and out and saying, I now have to relocate my whole family.

So they want to stay here.

We just need to show them the path to where they can do that.

And that helps the companies, too, that are growing and hiring and looking for that talent.

So we've done some analysis around the economic impact.

This is from 2020.

We're actually redoing this from 2023 data right now.

So we should have some updated numbers.

But I was really interested when I saw the defense sector impact numbers for the region.

We are seeing the same amount of output.

So smaller number of companies.

These companies are bringing or attracting those dollars in, but the economic output is actually equivalent to what we're seeing in defense.

You have that for every one job and there's 2.7 additional jobs.

That's in all sectors outside.

So we might attract one biotech job that then leads to

I'm trying to think of an example of what would increase.

Sure, restaurants.

There's increased restaurant needs, so you've got more servers.

How do you track that?

How do you get that number?

So this is all done using a tool called the Implan.

Implan, yeah.

This is done in conjunction with Terry Rapan at the Cooper School of Public Policy.

and we send them, here's the data of the biotech sector.

Here are the number of jobs and companies, and they run it through salaries associated with them, and they run it through their analysis.

What's really interesting about this sector is it's really hard to capture the proper data from the way that the jobs are coded.

So many of the biotech jobs are coded as manufacturers because it's the closest thing that's related.

And so that data is really skewed.

When we looked at it, we said, this doesn't seem right.

door-to-door are really calling all the companies we work with to come up with these numbers.

We've compared them to what Virginia shows, and I think we're on target with that.

I don't think it's inaccurate, but this was some of the first data like this shown.

So we'll see where we've come in just a few years.

There was tremendous growth, 400 new jobs here in the pandemic timeframe.

You see where our network has clustered up and down 29, a lot of density in

The city and the Harris Street corridor, these companies do, the early stage companies want to be downtown or closely accessible to the university.

That has been a challenge for us as we're thinking about where do we put some space because some of the accessible turnkey space is actually north.

And so we've been looking for these types of locations, where should we put

some labs that would be accessible to companies at UVA, researcher founders.

They are probably holding two jobs for a little while, making decision, growing their companies.

So we're still working through that, but we have an idea of how we want to accomplish this.

I mentioned the job growth.

So we projected in 2020 that between 2020 and 2021, this is before the pandemic hit,

that we would see about 70 new jobs here.

So this is really capturing the impact on the sector during the pandemic, significant increase growth.

So our future vision includes this lab incubation support.

So we want to take these companies, give them access to lab space, give them equipment so they can focus on their core

experiments that they can then demonstrate proof of concept so they can go get funded faster.

We are not competitive as a community relative to some of these other markets because of the time it takes to fundraise and the resources required to get to that final proof of concept experiment.

So we continue to support all of these things, but we're focused today on the lab.

We call it incubation acceleration.

You may hear lots of different terms around this.

Our team has grown significantly since the earliest days.

But we've got a program manager running our events.

We host monthly events.

We bring the entire community together.

They've been sold out every time since October.

We hosted a device expo where we had tables set up and companies put their actual devices out that people could touch and interact with.

And that was very successful.

So we want to do that again next year.

Dana Goldsmith is a Silicon Valley

Executive, she was with Amazon, and she's been helping on business development.

I mentioned Chad Rogers with Type Zero.

Andy Krause is also one of the successfully exited therapeutics biotech company leaders here.

He's now working on two new companies, Slate Bio and Genep, both of which he spun out from UVA.

So these are the kinds of people we want to keep here so they can continue to recycle and take that experience and bring the new technology forward.

Sometimes UVA will ask the question, well, do we really care if these companies stay in the region?

And we say 100% yes, because it's about the entire ecosystem working together to bring these things forward.

And they understand that.

Strong board of directors with industry, finance, device experience, and marketing management.

Some of our partners we've been attracting are those below.

So here's the concept that we have in front of us right now.

We have looked at, I would say, four or five spaces really seriously.

Should we build some of these spaces out, find a location that's ideal, spend five million dollars building it out with lab equipment and significantly expensive infrastructure that then we're committed to for a long period of time?

Or can we find a space that's available

with labs that we can show our proof of concept that we can help these companies move forward and connect them to the capital resources that they need faster.

So our objective is to bring eight companies per year into a program, into a space, give them resources.

We may give them direct capital investment, lab access, and the expertise to surround them and help move them forward

More of a daily basis as opposed to an ad hoc basis.

And where we want to go is in the county.

So I'm super excited.

This has been evolving every single day since last week.

We were looking at a space downtown that is turnkey space, but another company is moving into that space and we don't want to compete with them in any shape or form.

But if you know this location, the Bioconflexity Institute at UVA has moved out of this space and it's now available.

There's 5,000 square feet of beautiful space built up by Horrigan.

And there's a lab.

It's right here.

So we can take a portion, maybe 8,000 square feet at the back of this top floor.

And the question is, can we attract these companies here?

If we're offering them the space without cost, we think the answer is yes.

And UVA is willing to partner with us.

And we are working through collaboration agreement with them.

bringing these ideas forward at the president's level to support with this infrastructure as well as some financial investment.

This is North Fork Research Park.

Sorry, I didn't should have that there.

So this is so fresh.

I really wasn't sure what I was going to be presenting today.

Each company may have its own special needs of, oh, I need this, like a rheometer to measure a viscosity of something.

That's not a general basic need that we would want to provide for.

We would say, OK, that's on you.

But refrigerators, freezers, fume hoods, those are all general things that people need.

Benches, being able to work in an environment that is set up, ideally.

We see companies that have been here.

They're working in terrible infrastructure.

There's dust coming out of the vents in these buildings and spaces.

Thank you.

So this is built and suited for lab work.

So we put this concept as a feasibility study into our first Go Virginia grant, which was the 2020 to 2021 timeframe.

We've run the feasibility studies.

We've attracted real estate developers here.

We've asked and talked to everybody we know about solving for this problem.

A lot of the big real estate developers say, ah, small market, not interested.

But what we're hearing from the market is, wait a second, the investors are starting to be more interested here.

We haven't built out the space.

We're going to lose those opportunities to retain those companies here.

So yeah, we've been working on this for a long time and it has not been an effort that has, it has challenged us in many ways.

It's been a project that gets picked up and put down, picked up and put down because the need is still there.

And so when people realize that, they come back and they say, well, hey, how is that going?

Let's move this idea forward.

We've heard from the county and city, love it, great project.

UVA, great project.

We all want this.

Who should fund it?

This is a big question.

And so we're excited that we have UVA interested.

There is space available.

It's not being utilized right now, so they're losing money off of that.

With so many people now shifting to remote work,

It seems like, well, you hear on the news all the time that there's this abundance of commercial space, but you're not finding that so in our area.

Is that my understanding?

It's kind of still constrained for commercial space.

Yes, there's some influx of office space that we didn't have pre-pandemic.

So there are some conversion opportunities to take spaces and turn them into labs.

but as mentioned, that's running four to $500 a square foot right now.

The cost of everything is really, really high.

Built out another space in town in 2018 for $93 a square foot.

I was just more curious because it sounds like the rate of acceleration is that you're gonna be needing more space.

Over time, yes, yes.

Do we have in the county enough

It seems like it's a unique industry in that you actually have to be at work, not working remotely, which is actually economically really great because a lot of cities are suffering with vacancy, so if we can fill that and have enough

need to fill this vacant space that other people who are now working remotely, it's not just sitting there rotting.

It's a huge opportunity.

And I know shared partners would love to get involved in those kinds of projects.

And like I said, they've done all these convergence spaces in Maryland and always looking for new things that we're sending them.

I think if we build it at the, if we do this in North Fork Research Park, two things could potentially happen.

UVA has a longer term strategic plan to support the initial incubation stages and acceleration stages for companies.

So they may be involved in building and supporting this if they see success and the opportunity.

The other thing that will happen is companies are going to be looking for where do I go after the accelerator.

And we've been told you want to start planning for that and helping those companies plan for that the minute they walk in because you don't want them to stay there forever.

It's a one year to two year timeline that you're bringing them forward.

So that's what we had attracted the partner, Shear Partners, to help us with.

And they were interested in a building downtown, went through the process, and it was a speculative opportunity for them.

It was a conversion.

Not a Greenfield build, but I guess I could think of the Albemarle Business Canvas with Kyle Redinger has done that.

I think he's had a hard time attracting the companies that he's wanted to initially.

I think there's opportunity for partnering with us where we are making these connections with companies and industry.

to help attract some, and VEDP as well.

VEDP should be talking, and I think they're more, I'm seeing more energy around the attraction, retention initiatives from them.

You're looking at North Fork, you mentioned up on the business campus, both of those properties and parcels have come to the county to change their zoning map?

So I wonder, I hear what you're saying.

The market seems to be telling us something else with these properties in particular.

And you mentioned that Kyle has had our time attracting who he wants there.

And so he's looking to reduce the commercial

And North Fork is doing the same thing in terms of what they're looking at.

And so I'm wondering, and this may come to the board as well, what's our role as a community to support if this is important and this is very important for the overall health of our community?

How do we maybe push back against

these properties and say, no, we really need you to keep looking for commercial opportunities to help benefit.

I don't know what that looks like for us.

Well, I mean, I have some theories on that.

I think some of it is the commercial opportunities to have these blended locations of work, live.

And I think that's one of the visions been part of the Innovation Task Force for the

Innovation Corridor that North Fork Research Park is working on with the Rivanna Station.

And I think they want to have people attracted to the place because their home is nearby their work.

So I understand that.

And but if we don't have the people working, then we also are missing an opportunity.

So I think it's a two sided problem up in North Fork.

In Kyles, I think it is about attracting the right partner.

And I think I don't know the

Depp's of the reasonings there.

And I know the city and county are really focusing on affordable housing as initiatives.

And so perhaps there's more funding or opportunities there.

So those are my theories.

David is correct, because we are looking at giving that to come up tomorrow night.

giving commercial properties the ability to go residential.

And that's because we're hearing from some of those that are, I can think of one in particular, three years and vacant, vacant, vacant.

And so they're losing out on money.

They would rather have commercial property because it pays more per square foot than residential, but they're losing out because they can rent them, they can sell them easily,

But as far as getting commercial space, they're having a really hard time, which is causing us to say, okay, then you can do this.

If I could comment on it real quick.

What an excellent question, and one that is a complicated answer.

I think it is specific.

I think North Fork is different than Albemarle Business Campus, is different than other locations.

Some of the things that come to my mind, Civo Biohub hosted an event by Shear Partners to talk about what it means to develop space for companies.

One of the takeaways that I recall was

the tremendous pressure on companies to prove the validity of their trials to then attract additional investment that will allow them to continue to grow versus putting money into space.

And there's, because I think in part because of the lack of supply in our area, there's tremendous pressure and cost related to our sites.

And so,

There's pressure for it to convert to a use that is income-producing and to carry unproductive land in our community is nearly insurmountable and only then contributes

I think the use that the market is not telling us is there yet would only then drive the cost up even higher for whatever could ultimately go there.

And so I almost think of it as an organism that there needs to be this kind of churn of space and opportunity.

The form-based code at Rio29 was meant to

Explore, what does it mean to, if we just look more at form and not function, and allow the market to tell us what goes where.

There's very high residential demand in our community and there's almost always a market for that and so that's part of what drives the desire to have residential

I also want to put in people's minds that many of these companies are sub 50 people.

The company that I mentioned that has raised 170 million dollars has about 20 people.

I think they're adding nine this year.

So there's high dollar ratios brought in relative to number of employees and therefore amount of space they need.

They need less than 10,000 square feet.

And they're at the stage, series B, beyond that valley of death that we talked about.

So I'm not talking necessarily about a large footprint, but if we can concentrate them initially and help them

If there was growth in North Fork Research Park, which I think would be of interest, and they claim it there first, and then they want to stay, that would be a great outcome of a pilot project.

So the costs here, we think we need about a million in equipment.

We've got a connection relationship with CSC Leasing in Richmond.

That would be a zero percent interest lease for three years, after which we would own all of that equipment.

We want to put some money directly into these companies to show our skin in the game.

We want to take some equity as a return for the offerings that we're being able to provide them and ultimately be successful when they're successful.

So there's a long term sustainability plan for Civo Biohub as we have an impact with some of these companies.

Our operating expenses are about $2 million a year in that space.

Next slide.

OK. Seeking $8 to $10 million, we are in ongoing conversations with UVA that has shown interest.

We're talking with Mike Lennox, specifically the Pan Entrepreneurship Lead and initiative to bring all entrepreneurship under one roof at the university, which reports to Jim Ryan.

With an EDA commitment, we can bring $4 million from the Go Virginia grant.

It's one of the largest grant opportunities that has been proposed.

I'll mention that Richmond and Roanoke are going after similar grants for similar space.

And so they want to see these parallel tracks.

Reason being the governor put $90 million into what they're calling the Virginia Research Triangle.

these groups sitting just adjacent to the universities can help to accelerate these companies and commercialization opportunities.

So that's an opportunity for us that we were pretty excited about.

We need a $2 million match.

There is a 20% match request from the localities.

So we're not asking for all of that because I think we can waive some of that because this is such a great opportunity.

And there's no competition for the grant.

And we're being told by the state and regional

leaders that there's interest in it.

And I mentioned our sustainability model includes an investment fund which will put some of these direct investments into the companies.

So as I mentioned, there's no action and this is a

Yes, I left that intentionally blank.

I think 100K commitment per year for three years would demonstrate

the localities interest in this opportunity.

And similarly, we'll be talking with Louisa County and City of Charlottesville EDAs as there are some biotech activities going on in Louisa and certainly in the city.

As I mentioned, it's a 20% request from the localities that they'd like to see.

significant request on the nonprofit side of opportunity, but I do see us stepping into the economic development stage of supporting this sector.

So there will need to be additional funding on the operational side.

But if we have proof of concept at that point, we think we can go out to more institutional investors looking to grow the size of this accelerator fund.

And if anybody's heard of Y Combinator on the West Coast, this is how that's run.

And success breeds success.

We believe we would then be able to attract those VCs who said, I love what I'm seeing in Charlottesville.

And we are already hearing this.

So we think we can attract them to bring in five VCs, five million each to keep this thing going.

If we aren't seeing success, then we have a different conversation.

I think there will always be the need for University of Virginia spin outs.

So the partnership and collaborations we're having with them could lead to a discussion around, OK, here's where we are.

Do you want to continue investing in this?

Do you see the opportunity as else as your partner?

Or is this space valuable for something else?

So I think there are multiple pathways that it could go.

I have strong belief that this is something that can be successful.

Having been here, seeing the technologies,

Over 20 years, watched it grow.

I think we aren't really serving what's here to its best capacity.

And I think if we give that a little bit of a lift, we'll see some great impact from it.

But I actually like the three year timeline because then we'll have a point to check in on how this is going.

So this research triangle, as I mentioned, is between Virginia Tech, UVA, and VCU.

And they'll be putting together a collaboration agreement around their efforts to bring more research into commercial space, so translational

Across the state, there are five nodes working in this space.

I haven't mentioned Northern Virginia or Tidewater Virginia Beach area.

A lot going on in both of those as well.

Actually, they have a lab accelerator that was funded by the state in Virginia Beach.

Thanks, Nikki.

I appreciate you coming and your constant efforts on this on this project.

And the one thing I would add to this is I've seen over the years with startup companies, they just it's hard to get

Space, because they don't have any money to pay for space.

And so you've got to get the startups going and then you've got to have the ability for them to stay.

So they move to the next level so they can afford to then pay for space.

And I think that's what we're talking about is making an investment in that startup so that they can they can have space where they can work and develop their products and then stay in town.

And I know we've really seen a growth in companies staying.

One of the things that Nikki mentioned was the

The fact that now people can join a company and the VCs can participate in Zoom.

Because one of the issues we ran into early on was companies would get bigger and they would head out of town.

They'd get pulled to San Francisco or Boulder or places like that.

And so what we want is the ability for them to stay here and continue to grow.

Thank you.

The Weather Channel this morning said that 90% of California is under a flood watch.

So we may be attracting some of those colors at higher elevations.

Any other questions?

All right.

Thanks, Nikki.

Thank you.

Thanks for the time, everyone.

Appreciate it.

Thanks, Barry.

Maybe to add on that as we wrap up this topic,

Ashley did some quick math over the first three, four years of Project Enable.

I didn't do the number of jobs, but I could do that really quickly.

We'll call it 80, 90, 100, 200 jobs.

200 jobs over the course of the last three years.

And most, if not all, of those biotech and medical device firms are connected through Siebel Biohub.

And this is only a representation of the agreements that we have as an EDA.

So I'm sure there are more out there that we're not counting.

But from the last three years,

It sounds very exciting.

My worry is when they outgrow you, how do we keep them here?

That's the next step, and that's where my question about where are the facilities they're going to move into when they're done with you.

get there, right?

We have to have, J.T.

was very convincing about the cost of carrying land in Albemarle and it's in this area, but we need to be prepared for when they outgrow you to have a place for them to land.

Otherwise, we're growing them, you're growing them, and then they're taking it to

to Raleigh.

Right.

That's that's sort of the this this should work.

We have to be as a community, we have to be ready to to welcome these jobs after the incubator.

And how do we.

We could start isolating what risks are out there that would influence them to move to another location, whether it's customers, whether it's market.

But I think we know what those risks are.

We could kind of like get ahead of the game on potentially reducing that risk factor by, first of all, understanding what those risks are.

Any other questions or comments?

Nikki, before you go, I would just ask that this is rapidly developing.

This would be the, relative to our other commitments, this would be the most we've ever committed to a Go Virginia grant, so please keep us abreast of developments as they come along.

We're especially interested in how the county's commitment leverages the broader opportunity.

What role do we play in making it happen?

So appreciate you coming today and staying in touch with us.

Thank you.

Well, I look forward to sharing updates.

I'll keep you up to speed to disseminate the information.

Very exciting.

So next on the agenda is the recap and discussion of the Virginia Industrial Development Authorities Institute training.

I think we're going to do something really short here.

We've obviously spent a lot of time talking about in the last section and we've got staff reports.

Yeah, so we wanted to be sure we gave one final opportunity to the EDA to discuss the training that took place back in early December, which may feel like a lifetime ago now.

It feels like a lifetime ago to me.

But on the slide is a summary of the topics that were discussed over the two days.

Our January meeting, our December 19th meeting was

So close after the training, we wanted to give more time for the directors to view it if they hadn't already.

And then our January meeting was cut short due to weather.

So this is just a final opportunity.

If there were reactions or questions or things that the EDA may want to discuss, we could do that now.

I think the big takeaway from the training overall that I would like our directors to be aware of are the special powers that EDAs are afforded under state code.

There are things that we can do that the Board of Supervisors cannot do.

And so, in particular,

In an area where sites is so much of the cost can be so much of the risk and the issues related to economic growth, I want to draw our attention to this second bullet here about EDAs have the ability to buy, sell, lease things at or below or above fair market value, which is not something that boards of supervisors can do.

So we can play a positive role

in trying to leverage what is typically a barrier, could we leverage that to make deals go forward that otherwise would not?

So these, I think, over the course of two days, there's a lot of information to digest and learn, but these are the things that I would like for us to be cognizant of as we move forward.

Just a comment on that.

So for me, just from scheduling, it was like, OK, it was there, and then, OK, now let's go.

My schedule is so heavy that if I don't know far enough in advance, and that was a long, I mean, basically two days, right, to take off.

for something that's really hard for me.

So, but I really wanted to do it, but it was, so I tried to like have it going while I was trying to do it.

And it was just, it was not as, I didn't get out of it as much as I, I mean, I tried to watch it after the fact and I've been popping in and out, but it's not as impactful if there was maybe a little bit more notice.

If we do it again another time, maybe more like hold the date kind of thing a few months in advance,

So then it just doesn't get booked up.

Any other questions, comments?

Okay.

Mr.

Well, real quick, real first of all, this past month has been really interesting.

As a team, we went through a couple of scenarios of projects that were unique and it was not only a good drill of process, but it was also a good drill of education.

and it had education not bigger than just us but in other departments, how we went and worked with other departments to have discoveries and we had some great discoveries and which kind of goes back to some of our strategic thoughts on that last chart of owning property and how we could, I mean the question came up, can we receive a donation of property?

like from the county are, you know, just things like that.

We also, as a group, met with numerous sectors in the in the state here locally on different themes.

So it is and I just want to kind of say this as an introduction to what J.T.

is going to tell you.

And I'm going to tag team on him now.

So go ahead, J.T.

OK, thanks.

Thanks, Farah.

Yeah, I think.

For the staff report, we wanted to start with an update on Project Hornet.

Project Hornet was something we discussed in closed session in January and is still subject to confidentiality.

So while we're here in open session, I'll try to be brief and succinct to just say that that project is going forward.

without the EDA support.

So in lieu of of calling another closed session and moving to a new room, just to say that we thought we'd try to to just say that here.

And if anyone has questions, further questions, be happy to talk to to you afterwards.

As Barry was saying, the exploration of that potential partnership was beneficial to us as we think about how could we utilize the EDA's special powers on projects like Rivanna Futures or in other places.

We learned a lot from what some might call a fire drill.

In particular, I want to say thank you to our EDA chair for his hard work in exploring that opportunity.

I could talk about this in just a moment, but it revealed what are our strengths and weaknesses as an economic development office and as an EDA if somebody were to come to us in the future that could not move forward without our participation.

I second that, thank you.

So thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Glad to do it.

Quickly looking forward, I wanted, as part of the staff report, because we were cut short in January, wanted to give a little bit of a preview of 2024.

And so the office will be continuing to react to opportunities like what we heard from Dr. Hastings today under Project Enable, but we'll also be moving towards the next iteration of our strategic plan, Project Enable 2.0,

A big focus of our office will be Rivanna Futures and helping to support the Board of Supervisors strategic plan.

On the right hand side of this slide talks about a lot of the activities the EDA has done and we hope will continue to do.

The last bullet on the slide talks about the current MOU between the Board and the EDA.

This was a very quick mention during your respective orientations, but that MOU calls for it to be updated with the adoption of Project Enable.

So we're a little tardy in getting it updated, but given the EDA's more central role in facilitating economic development, that's something we want to do.

And that would happen

at the joint meeting with the board later this year.

We had initially talked about doing that in May.

Due to scheduling, we're going to need to look to August.

And so staff will send a doodle poll or the equivalent to help us identify what the right date is in concert with the clerk.

On the upper portion of the slide, I wanted to just share that historically we've done some significant foundational work with the board at our joint meetings.

So we've adopted some type of policy or new tool in the toolbox, whether it's matching policies for state grants, our building reuse grant, that kind of thing.

What staff is interested in targeting most at the joint meeting is more policy around how would we be involved from a property perspective.

So what are the things we need to do to be ready should a Project Hornet come again in the future and really need our help.

So we'll be building out what that looks like, bringing it back to the EDA.

This slide graphically represents where we can continue to get feedback from the EDA on that policy development, have a check-in with the Board of Supervisors before we actually have the joint meeting so we can be productive with the time.

So we're targeting Q3 of 2024,

Just to go back to the last two bullets on this slide, the picture is a site tour with the state where the person in the passenger seat next to me is the site's expert from the state and she got to see Albemarle Business Campus, Rivanna Futures, and North Fork.

Barry in the middle there is holding an emblem for the Virginia Economic Developers Association.

It's not just a toy he brought with him to show off.

So Abigail, who's in the passenger side, she takes that with her everywhere.

And so those are our partners at North Fork and at the regional level in the rest of the van.

So we had a really good visit and

We will end the staff report.

Well, you pretty much just gave the entire update.

I'll keep it short and sweet.

We were, as J.T.

said, our office was delighted to be invited for the second year to participate in the Black History Month.

Lecture series by a local author, her name is Jay Bradford, and she writes children's books that feature children of color as an effort to teach children about financial literacy and concepts that some of us even as adults were helped by and really enjoyed the day there.

It was a really fun event with the school system and

the Office of Equity and Inclusion, and some other local organizations.

And if you haven't seen the Boys and Girls Club facility that's over off Lambs Lane, oh my goodness, like it is a really nice, really nice facility.

Just that I hope, I think the joint hope was that there will be more attendees next year with every year that it grows.

But I think it covered a lot of topics that are very important for children to be exposed to, especially, I think it was the third to fifth grade range.

And again, some of the topics that came up in the book were really, I think,

It seemed new to students, but boy, they were on, you know, they were asking math questions, and they were on it, and they seemed very engaged and interested, so I think it will only grow, and it was.

It was a very fun event.

One of the exercises that we as staff developed is put together a coloring sheet where students could design their own business and draw whatever they wanted on it and how would they plan for it, what would they need, who would they serve, just to get that entrepreneurial mindset going as we were there.

I was just going to say the Boys and Girls Club, if you haven't been there, one of the things that impressed me the most were the bathrooms.

Innovative because you have four student doors, so it's just like going into your own bathroom at home.

And then when you come out, though, there are sinks that are lined up, but there's a glass wall.

Yeah, it was really neat.

Did you hear that?

He said I thought they were shorter sinks so I could use them.

I will say that the

One thing I wanted to add, J.T., can you go back to the slide you had that sort of showed the office versus the authority things?

I think we talked about this a little bit, and this really ties into the training and the

the issues related to revenue.

But I think it's important for everybody to just remember that the Economic Development Office supports the authority, but they aren't the same thing.

And it's easy to forget that because they do such a good job.

But the Economic Development Office works for the county executive and is part of the county government.

We're separate.

And as we work through these issues,

You know, things we can do.

We have to be mindful of the fact that, you know, we don't want to over tap the resources.

I mean, the Economic Development Office has things that they are focused on doing.

And so, you know, to get this ties in with our discussions with the Board of Supervisors and making sure that we're all kind of on the same page and that

that we're allocating our resources for the office and we're making decisions and they're all sort of tied together.

So I just wanted to point that out.

Thank you, Mr.

Sure.

All right.

Anything else?

All right.

If there's not anything further, then we'll be adjourned to

March 19.

Thank you.