Economic Development Authority Meeting   7/16/2024

So I'm going to call the meeting to order and I guess we don't have to establish a quorum like we do for the, or we don't have to do anything in terms of the fact that this is a virtual meeting since it was announced as one.

So first item is matters from the public.

Is there anyone who has signed up to

Sarah Long, I'm gonna just take a second to ask J.T.

to switch the display settings.

He's got it.

All right, so approval of the minutes.

The minutes were circulated from the joint meeting with the city and then our meeting on June 18th.

Did anybody have any comments on the minutes?

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All right, the minutes are approved.

There's no financial report this month because we're still working on how that's going to be constructed.

So on to new business.

Hi, so you all may recall back in April we presented in closed session an application for a solar pollinator company for an eighth infrastructure grant to fund the creation of a mobile honey processing facility.

We're pleased to announce that that grant was selected.

and we are moving forward with setting everything up for the grant.

You should have received the performance agreement in your packet and we'll be reviewing that and sending that around for execution.

The Board of Supervisors in Fluvanna gets their first shot at approving that in August.

So that will come back to the EDA for full execution at that time.

And just a reminder, the figures are on the slide in front of us.

It's a total $39,000.

Grant leveraging the $26,000 from VDACs and each locality Albemarle and Fluvanna, contributing $6,500 each.

And she's thrilled and over the moon and is very much looking forward to connecting with the manufacturer of the trailer in the next few weeks.

So we'll keep you posted on that.

Yes, so if the authority agrees that we'll move forward to have Chair Long be authorized to endorse the agreement on behalf of the authority.

For clarification, there are two agreements.

There will be one agreement

between Siller, the EDA, and Fluvanna County.

John, I just have one comment before we vote.

Sure.

I really like this kind of grant where we can

recently predicted the relatively modest amount of money will give an opportunity to a small business person to really call it dispositively up level their business.

You know, like we can clearly see the benefit that this local business is going to enjoy.

I like this agricultural, there's just a lot to appreciate about this grant.

It feels really good to vote for it.

So I'd like, if there's no further discussion, I'd be happy to,

That'd be great.

All right, any further discussion?

Hearing none, all in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All right, the resolution is approved.

And I don't know if we've talked about this, but they

When they originally, she originally came to us, it was sort of a cold email to me.

And that I then sent it on to the EDO office and they jumped right on it and followed up with her.

And so it's really nice to see our government in action for people.

So it was great.

All right.

Next is the

So we sent in the packet a background note on Locality Pay and also a draft letter of support.

And I'll share this afternoon that the action before the EDA would be to consider sending a letter of support signed by the chair that the leadership team working on this issue at Rivanna Station would share as part of a packet of information that they've been preparing to submit forward to a group that's called the Federal Salary Council.

The memo went into a lot of detail.

I'm just going to sort of cut to the bottom line.

The letter of support as drafted indicates that the EDA is supportive of an effort driven by Rivanna Station to address an existing gap in the federal pay scale system's decision-making criteria around locality pay.

So all General Schedule employees working for the federal government are part of a national pay scale, but recognizing that the United States has many different labor markets that vary by location.

There is an overlay on the federal pay scale where employees working in more competitive labor markets receive an additional pay increment so that the federal government can be an attractive employer in that pay market.

The Charlottesville Metropolitan Statistical Area is currently not in a special locality pay area, but we can demonstrate that there's a high level of employment interchange between two areas that do have locality pay.

One is the Washington DC metro and the other is the Richmond metro.

And so the letter would be in support of an effort to consider adding new criteria that would allow all federal employees

in MSAs where there is a high level of interchange between two adjacent locality pay areas to join the locality pay area with the greatest interchange.

So if that criteria were approved, it would mean that all the federal employees working in the Charlottesville MSA would receive the Washington DC pay area increment.

Maybe just one quick question.

So the leadership at Rivanna Station has been working at the locality pay issue for several years.

And for a long time, it's been pretty low level of confidence that anything would be successful.

This is the first time in the history of the folks who are currently serving in leadership roles there.

There feels as though this

would be successful because it's not specifically tied to a request to support Albemarle County or Charlottesville specifically.

It is in line with how the Federal Salary Council likes to make decisions, which is

thinking about the decision-making criteria and how to make those decision-making criteria more robust.

And so not thinking about just one area of the country, but how do you positively impact the decision-making criteria across the nation that would be broadly applied to any MSA.

Yes, sir.

Thanks, Emily.

I also wanted to add that there is a belief and I think there's support throughout the hierarchy that would be the decision makers that with the county's acquisition of the property around Rivanna Station, the locality pay needs to get right size, not just for current federal employees, all federal employees that work in

Any other questions?

All right.

So we have a resolution.

A motion to approve the resolution.

Is there a second?

Second.

All right.

Any further discussion?

Hearing none.

All in favor?

Aye.

All right, the resolution is approved.

Thank you all.

And so on to Project Enable 2.0.

All right, so before we get into Project Enable 2.0, I just want to take a minute to talk about the joint meeting that the Economic Development Authority will have with the Board of Supervisors on August 14th.

I'll take the next slide.

Here's our draft agenda.

And there's three major topics there.

One is Rivanna Futures.

One is the strategic plan update.

And the final one is the MOU between the board and the EDA.

Our goal today is to ensure that the EDA has strong background on each of these topics heading into August 14th so that we can preserve the bulk of the time during that session for the board and the EDA to hear from each other and rely a lot less on staff presentations for that time.

So looking to the bottom of that list of agenda items and the MOU, the EDA has spent time talking about this in recent meetings, so we won't cover that today unless someone has a burning question.

We are working on a memo on this topic as a follow-up from our last meeting, and we'll circulate that to the board and the EDA ahead of the joint meeting.

I have slides today on the two other topics that we can brief you on those.

Any questions on the joint meeting before I head on to the first topic?

Okay.

All right, so Project Enable 2.0, and I'll take the next slide.

So Project Enable 1.0 was adopted by the board in 2018.

It was the first economic development strategic plan in Amarillo County's history.

So it's a historic document for sure in that regard.

And it had seven broad goals that were adopted as part of that.

The plan was originally envisioned to be effective from 2019 to 2022.

That update in 2022 did not occur and staff have continued really working

within the framework of the plan even though the plan time horizon has passed.

The plan was mostly developed internally with stakeholder engagement facilitated by staff.

I would offer that a lot has changed since 2018 in the global economy, in our community, and as we look ahead to where we should be focusing staff work over the next four to five years and we think about the known opportunities that are on the horizon like Rivanna Futures,

the Manning Biotechnology Institute, then the continued evolution of the entrepreneurial landscape.

Having a refreshed plan will really help us guide our work and make sure that we're in alignment with the Board of Supervisors, this body, and all the other important stakeholders in our community.

I'll take the next slide.

I'm not going to read these.

We'll pause here for a moment though.

These are the seven goals that were for of Project Enable 1.0.

And then I'll take the next slide.

I think you're good, Emily.

So I took a look at several economic development strategic plans from communities like ours in the Commonwealth who have done a plan in the past couple of years that are counties in Virginia that have universities or colleges in or near them and a vibrant city or core.

And these are the sort of the three themes of the things that popped up to me in reviewing those plans.

The top one is data-driven.

A lot of those plans have technical appendices that are three-digit number of pages that look at building a community profile based on your demographics, analyzing workforce data, infrastructure, needs and opportunities, strengths and weaknesses, and land and real estate inventory to really get a data-driven understanding of the landscape in which your community is operating.

The second thing that popped out was that the goals are much more targeted.

So I would say the most common number of goals was four.

Three to five seems to be the range that most communities are sort of working in.

And having that targeted approach can help as we look at trying to triage which of the opportunities that come forward to staff are the best alignment of our resources.

The final thing that I would point out is that the plans articulate a vision.

So they sort of say, you know, this is the community that we want to be at the end of the five years.

And so it's time bound.

And so in that way, it's less of a stretch goal and more of a, you know, here's some concrete steps that we think that we can take towards a real vision that we hope to achieve over the five-year time horizon.

I'll take the next slide.

This is a draft schedule that outlines how we would anticipate the process to take us from the launch with the board in August to eventual adoption next summer.

I'll take a moment to talk about what we think about when we have that line for research and analysis.

So we would be looking along with our consultant at county documents, so how does the Economic Development and Strategic Plan

connect to, how can it connect to the goals of some other important county documents like the comprehensive plan which is currently being updated now under the title AC44, the county strategic plan.

And also there's a lot of great work and effort and I think success that came out of Project Enable 1.0 that we would want to be considering as we look at what a 2.0 might look like.

The next thing that I would highlight is state and regional plan documents.

So looking at how does the county's opportunities align with the state's innovative framework, which is what the Virginia Economic Development Partnership uses to guide its work and also its funding grants.

There's the new, this board saw in June the regional SEDS plan, the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy document that was led out of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, which sets out large economic development strategies for our region.

And then also there's an opportunity to look at what are the other local governments

in our area, what are they aiming for and how can we align with that?

Think about where some other localities may have some strengths.

Maybe we could think about how do we partner with them so that we're not sort of competing for the same types of things.

And then the analysis would look at benchmarking, so benchmarking some peer localities and markets, looking at what we call a target sector cluster analysis.

So what are the biggest types of jobs, types of businesses operating in our community, and where are some opportunities for us to really focus in on supporting making those types of businesses more successful and having sort of a ripple effect in that sector, as well as a real estate market assessment.

I'll take the next slide.

And then this is the last slide that I have on this topic, so I'll pause for questions after this one.

These are questions that we don't need to talk about now, but these are sort of a preview for the joint meeting with the Board of Supervisors that we would hope to have a dialogue between the EDA and the Board during that time on the 14th to reflect on these questions together.

We view this as really early seminal input into the economic development strategic plan to help guide the work of staff, the consultant, and some of the outreach that we'll plan to do so that we make sure that we're hitting the right marks sort of from the start.

So we will send an email ahead of the joint meeting that includes these questions as well as some other materials for your background and preparation.

Yeah, so that's a great question.

We are in the process of finalizing a request for quotes that we will post.

That's a procurement method that we'll use.

We believe that this type of analysis, the work that we would be scoping would be the analysis supporting some meetings.

and some survey work summarizing those and then working with staff to flesh out some draft materials that we would take back and forth to this body and the Board of Supervisors and then they would deliver the final plan document.

And so the range on that can depend a bit on a couple of factors.

We're anticipating that this would come in somewhere between $60,000 and $100,000.

But the RFQ process will give us a lot more certainty of what we're looking at.

Yeah, so that's a great point.

I think, you know,

It's sort of five years in sort of a general sense, which puts us really where Project Enable was adopted, because that was January 1st of 2019.

No, it was, the MOU was 2017.

Oh, that's what I'm thinking, sorry.

Oh, so we are on five years.

It would be consulting services.

And we would not, you know, there's several ways that you can manage through that contracting relationship.

We wouldn't be handing over fully the effort to a consultant.

It would be a lot of back and forth between our team and, you know, feedback that we get from the community, from this body and the board of supervisors.

and then working with them to shape sort of what those outcomes look like.

So it's not that an outside firm would be doing the plan, it's they would be supporting the work that we're driving towards.

The other thing that I would just highlight is that the data analysis piece, which I think is a really important piece of this effort,

Consulting companies that work in this space have access to databases that the annual subscriptions are $100,000 to $150,000 to join and be able to access.

Because this is part of their work, they are members of those databases, they subscribe to those databases and are able to leverage that data.

It would be very time intensive for us to do that internally and it would be also very expensive.

Thank you.

Other questions?

Comments?

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay, J.T.

is gonna join me at some of the later slides on this one.

The next area that we wanted just to sort of do a pre-brief with you all on is Rivanna Futures.

The Board of Supervisors is incredibly well-versed in this project.

They've been getting updates on it for some time.

And we wanted to make sure that the Economic Development Authority, the directors felt like you also knew the same amount of information as the board coming into the joint meeting.

And what we'll do at the joint meeting is share some conceptual engineering work that we've been working on also with a consultant over the past several months, which is exciting in that it helps provide a roadmap for how we might think about infrastructure needs out there, site readiness work out there, and it helps kind of illuminate some of the opportunities for how Rivanna Futures might take shape.

So with that, I'll just kind of go over some of the things that have happened since this project was announced last May so that you all come into that meeting in August with sort of the same level of information and understanding as the board.

So I'll take the next slide.

This is, we use this slide a lot, this is sort of the big picture of what the vision for the future of Rivanna Futures could look like.

So just a quick orientation, the buildings on the left are what's out at Rivanna Station today.

And then everything beyond that loop that we're drawing to the right is just an art of the possible.

So it's a 3D rendering of what could be out on that property.

And the language on the bottom of the screen, we're naming this sort of a working name for this area, is the Intelligence and National Security Innovation Acceleration Campus.

with a sort of a tagline, accelerating innovation technology through partnerships today for tomorrow's challenges.

The thing that's exciting about this is it would take

The federal agencies, the federal presence that's presently up off Boulders Road provide some opportunity for them to grow their mission, but also create a physical area where there could be collaboration with private sector and academic sector partners.

And so the idea is that this campus is sort of a combination of uses that retain and grow Rivanna Station and its missions there, and then create some opportunities for some

So real-time collaboration and physical collaboration all in this one location of the county.

I'll take the next slide.

This is a framework for how we think about the arc of this effort.

So site control was the first thing that needed to be done, and the county took care of that locally with action by the board last year.

The next phase is site readiness, and now we're working to develop state and federal partners to take onsite readiness and eventually vertical development of the property.

Next slide.

As I indicated, we closed on the property in 2023, and I'll talk through for a few minutes the purchase.

So the existing installation is that darker orange outline on your screen.

It's sort of a triangle.

And then the green rectangle next to it is a privately owned office building just outside the fence line, the secured perimeter.

It's actually fully leased by federal agencies right now, but it is not owned by the Department of Defense.

And then that white outline that kind of goes all the way around it is the total acreage that the county purchased.

You'll note part of that white outline is shaded yellow and that is the development area boundary within the acreage and then that balance is rural area.

Next slide.

That is significant because there's opportunity to develop portions of this land and the rural land will provide our own buffer.

The total cost for acquisition is $58 million and that was financed through bond and anticipation notes.

Next slide.

So since December, the county has been a property manager for this land, including there's a surface parking lot across from Evanna Station that we now own, and the Army Corps of Engineer leases for employee parking for Evanna Station.

We've also taken measures to secure the site, as it is not open to the public right now.

Next slide.

This is just a couple of the due diligence items that we've done and I've labeled this feasibility slash tier three readiness.

So if you're familiar with the way that Virginia Economic Development Partnership talks about site readiness and site inventory in Virginia,

The due diligence is an important factor that takes you from a tier two site to a tier three site.

And J.T.

's going to talk a little bit more about that in a bit if you're totally confused by what I'm talking about.

But we've done a lot of the due diligence work to make sure that the vision that we've sort of outlined for campus development is technically feasible.

So geotechnical work, looking at cultural resources and endangered species on the site,

et cetera to make sure that the property is in good condition for those types of things.

I'll take the next slide.

And this is where I'm going to turn it over to J.T.

Yeah, thanks, Emily.

I'll go through the next six or seven slides just to wrap up this overview of all the information we've covered previously with the Board of Supervisors, again, in preparation for our joint meeting next month.

In late December 22, we did an in-plan analysis and an economic impact analysis of that 3D rendering that Emily opened her presentation with that showed about 600,000 square feet of a variety of uses, mostly office space, but it included also things like warehouse.

And the assumptions that we provided to our economists

built on that vision that we've heard from the Department of Defense is an attractive way of advancing national security interests where we have private sector parties, public sector parties, and then also academic partners that are all collaborating together on

Research and Intelligence.

And so I share that in part just to note the figures that you see on the screen.

The anticipated job creation from that 600,000 square feet of space was 700 direct jobs, but about 873 total jobs that would come from this, what we call a phase one expansion.

The wages are lower than what we know people coming to Rivanna Station today.

The average is over $100,000 a year.

This figure represents jobs that were, you know, benchmarked against academic jobs as well as warehouse jobs.

But the

Expected annual impact overall is $135 million per year.

There would be about a $3 million tax revenue expected.

And just to make sure that I'm being clear about where we're talking about, this is just that initial 50 acres that would be adjacent to where Boulders Road exists today.

And then when we were working with our consulting engineer, we asked what else would be possible beyond this initial art of the possible that we did the analysis on.

And it effectively doubled the amount of square footage that was possible in phase one.

And so that comes through the addition of a loop road

further east on the site.

And you can see, you know, this was just a conceptual, you know, looking from a desktop, what do we think we might be able to add in a future phase?

And so

In total, that's a little over 150 acres, but this was part of the economic analysis that informed our interest and pursuit of closing on the property.

So I'll move on from that just to talk a little bit more.

Emily previewed our work, our focus on site readiness work.

And this graphic here is an image that both the EDA and board will see again with the next report from our consulting engineer.

So here's that five tier scale that Emily was talking about that the state uses to

quantify and evaluate the site readiness of properties across the Commonwealth.

You all may have seen that Virginia was recently voted number one by CNBC as a top state for business.

A big part of that analysis boiled down to these factors here.

How much are we positioned for future growth?

How ready are our sites to accommodate businesses that want to expand or move here?

And so as Emily mentioned, it goes on a on a five tier scale.

Tier one is totally raw land where there's really no information about how risky it might be to develop.

And it goes all the way up to a tier five, which would be a shovel ready project.

The permits are in place and

Something we've been pointing out as we presented this information to other audiences are these lines right here, the success odds, which is really what the private sector is most interested in.

When they come to an undeveloped property that they're interested in, they want to know how much of the risk has been fully investigated, quantified, and articulated so that they know that by making an investment there,

they'll be able to use it in the way that they would like.

So prior to June 5th, when the board took action on our rezoning request, the county's acquisition was squarely in a tier two state where we were designated in the comp plan for industrial or commercial uses, but not yet zoned as such.

And so we've taken a step further up the ladder.

We are not quite at tier three yet.

Our engineer is doing some final analysis that we feel like will get us there.

The goal is to get to tier four.

This is the best practice in the industry.

Getting your site to a tier four level of readiness means that you're not over investing in the property and potentially

blocking some opportunities that a future user may be interested in, but you're doing enough to signal that their potentially sizable investment is reasonably placed in the land that they're purchasing.

So I'll quickly, with that kind of context, I'll talk about what we've been doing since closing on the property.

The first thing, well, one of the first things we did was start the process for rezoning the property.

And I'll try to take my cursor here and go over, on June 5th, the board rezoned 172 acres as outlined here.

from a mixture of different zoning districts to light industry, which would permit that vision that you saw at the very beginning, and also a special use permit for office uses.

Offices in pure industrial districts require a special use permit.

The majority of the existing uses behind the fence line at Rivanna Station are office uses, so we thought it was really important to obtain that special use permit ahead of time.

The one proffer that we provided with the rezoning request was a limit for 5,000 vehicle trips per day on Boulders Road.

That

What that does is captures the existing zoning that was here was called planned residential development from a residential use that was approved back in the 70s.

That 5,000 vehicle trips per day represents basically no additional unanticipated strain on Boulders Road as it's been constructed.

Emily touched on the conceptual engineering that we did prior to closing on the property.

We've continued to work with the consulting engineer to get a little bit more refined.

So we did that phase one study.

This is the next level of investigation.

And so we were looking at things like water and sewer utilities, the extension of Boulders Road,

It would loop north and then come back west to reconnect with 29 across from Austin Drive.

What could that alignment look like?

How could that be best optimized?

And how much would that cost?

We also looked at things like stormwater management.

A lot of the feedback we got from the Planning Commission encouraged us to be very thoughtful about the environmental impact of this planned expansion and so our conceptual engineer will be presenting a lot of this information to both you and the Board of Supervisors on August 14th.

And so I'll go forward.

I think this is my last slide, just to say, as Emily mentioned, we'll be taking all of this information and pursuing grant funding at the state and federal level.

At the state level, we know that we're interested in the Virginia Business Ready Sites program.

We worked with the UVA Foundation to receive a $3 million grant for a pad within North Fork, right across the street.

That's the kind of thing we would be interested in doing here, too, to help, again, escalate the readiness of the land on that tiering system.

But there's also a wide variety of other state and federal programs that I think you'll hear more about on August 14th.

There's a lot of different offices at the federal level that have money available that could help advance the vision that the county has been bringing forward.

No question.

Just a quick comment.

You mentioned, J.T., the focus on environmental development by trying to be as responsible as we can.

And I just want to put an exclamation point on that.

I think it's great.

As the official government body for the county, we have a responsibility to be a role model to the developers in the rest of the county, the private developers.

And so we should be

leading the pack in terms of trying to develop properties in a way that minimizes the impact of the developments.

I think that's great.

Yes, quick question.

Yeah, right.

Who actually owns that piece of property?

Because it is being leased.

Do we own it?

It is owned by a company that is located

J.T., correct me, I think in the Chicago area that, and then managed by a company that does a lot of federal leasing to agencies across the country.

So it's not more of a family type business, it's more of a professional group that owns and also manages that property.

Because the,

That's sort of the existing conditions out there.

The Department of Defense has put in place what they feel is appropriate safeguards for that private office building.

Okay, thank you.

So it's not who I thought it was.

Perfect.

One quick one.

Yes, that's right.

The Shannon Hill Regional Business Park has been very successful at leveraging state programs to advance their site.

I think that if their economic development director, Andy Wade, was here, he would tell you how important that was to landing the businesses that they have out there.

In particular, the commitment from Amazon for

$11 billion of investment in that area.

I know just from my own site developments at our facility, it can be lengthy.

I mean, it took us over five years to do an extension to our facility.

And that's really, I mean, it's so long, just the engineering and all that.

I mean,

All right, not hearing anything.

Yeah, I'll hit the first one, and then J.T.

will take the second one.

And we should have added, J.T.

mentioned earlier, Virginia was just recognized by CNBC as being the top state for business.

and the country, which may feel like just a fun thing to say without a lot of meat behind it, but the analysis that CNBC does every year is very extensive and it really does take a deep dive into site readiness, infrastructure, quality of life items like public education,

and amenities.

And so it really is a meaningful accolade.

And so the work that is done here locally, the work that is done by our regional partners and at the state level all contribute to that.

So it really is a meaningful recognition and we're really excited about it.

The second thing I'll highlight just quickly, the Defense Affairs Committee

had a celebration of the retirement of the first Defense Affairs Committee program manager, Letty Bien.

Letty has been, if you don't know Letty, she's a huge force and has been, ended her extremely impressive career in public service and in military service in this position in Almero County.

The Defense Affairs Committee is a committee of the Charlottesville Area Chamber of Commerce and she really created a venue, built this venue where federal agencies, private sector, academic sector, local governments can get together and convene around getting to know each other, understanding the issues of the defense industry in our community.

She championed the Weldon Cooper Center study, which illuminated the size and strength of the defense sector in our region with a $1.2 billion annual impact, which puts it second behind the University of Virginia.

So it's a very important sector in our local economy and a meaningful part of our future, we believe.

And Emily, the only thing I would add is if I could stretch this photo out, I think just a little bit from the chamber, I think we would see Director Mottola and his sidekick, Nick Pilipowski.

John, this is where you were.

Yeah, we were there.

Yeah, it was a nice ceremony.

Yeah, it's right here at North Fork.

Yeah, we got the invite from basically as tenants from the UVA Foundation.

Well, I will end our staff report just by quickly noting the Broadway Blueprint, a project that the EDA has been involved in.

for a long time has been the redevelopment of Woolen Mills and the retention of Willow Tree for their headquarters on that site.

And a part of our commitment to that project included studying the Broadway Street Corridor, which we ended up calling the Broadway Blueprint.

And that had a phase one that

concluded during the pandemic, and then shortly before the EDA's June 18th meeting, the Board of Supervisors heard from the consultant on phase two.

And so the study was, this phase of the study was looking at connectivity, placemaking, and economic vitality on the Broadway Street corridor.

And so we just wanted the EDA to stay up to date on activity out here.

I think a big focus and something that you'll see in the next quarter or two will be the upgrading of the water line down Broadway Street and the service authority will be repaving

All of Broadway Street, and then the county will be contributing to striping that street for the first time.

And so if you've ever been out there, it's a pretty wide street.

During the pandemic, it was

widely used as almost like a multi-use path for outdoor recreation.

But this will enhance the safety of the corridor, delineating a place for cars and trucks without undermining the industrial capacity of the corridor.

which is a big focus of the study.

How do we retain the industrial uses that are flourishing there as redevelopment within the corridor and in the nearby adjacent city occurs as well.

And so just wanted to quickly make a note on that progress.

All right.

Any questions?

All right, hearing none, then I think we will move into the closed session.

So I move that the Albemarle County Economic Development Authority go into a closed meeting as authorized by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act Section 2.2-3711A of the Code of Virginia under subsection

Five and Six to discuss and consider the expansion of an existing Albemarle County business, Project Olympian, where no previous announcement has been made of interest in expanding its facilities in Albemarle County and the investment of public funds to support the expansion where bargaining is involved and where it may public initially would adversely affect the financial interest of the EDA in Albemarle County and subsection

39 to discuss and consider information subject to the exclusion and subdivision 3 of section 2.2-3705.6 related to economic development to wit proprietary information voluntary provided by a private business subject of project serious pursuant to a promise of

Confidentiality, I think, to be used by the EDA for the development of business and trade.

Is there a second?

Second.

All right.

All in favor?

Aye.

All right.

So, and I believe the

Link to the closed session was sent out by Ashley a little bit earlier today.

So we will all jump over to that.

Yeah, Mr.

Chair, may I also add, we got some direction from our IT department that just to be clear, folks should totally leave the Zoom meeting

to transition over to Teams and then totally leave the Teams meeting when transitioning back over to Zoom.

Okay.

That makes sense.

All right.

All right.

All right.

I'm closing in.

Yes.

All right.

So I recused myself from both sessions of the

both discussions in the closed session.

I will do that and I'll note for the minutes that Director Long did not participate in the closed session or any of the substantive discussion in the closed session when he learned of the matters he recused himself and exited the meeting.

Likewise, Director Storm in regards to

and Project Olympian.

He had exited the meeting and he did not participate in that discussion in any fashion.

But because Director Long had only recused himself and hasn't left the meeting, we still maintain a quorum.

But right now the floor would be open for the motion to certify the closed meeting.

All right, second?

Second.

All right, so let's see.

Director Long was not present.

Director Mottola?

Aye.

Director Johnson?

Okay.

All right, and Director Storm has left the meeting.

All right.

Great.

No action.

OK, OK, great.

Any unfinished business or other matters?

All right, any questions, comments?

All right, so the next meeting is on August 14th at our joint meeting in room 241, which is our normal room with the Board of Supervisors.