Economic Development Authority Meeting   9/24/2024

Quorum, I'll call the meeting to order.

There's a quorum present in person.

All right, then.

Anyone?

There are none.

No one from public.

So the first item, next item on the agenda is approval of the minutes from the July 16th, August 20th meetings.

Is there a motion for approval of the minutes?

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

All right.

The minutes are approved.

The new financial report

We actually had a meeting a couple of weeks ago with the finance department and lots of people.

I was remote at that meeting, so I don't remember who was there, but we were making some progress on the financial award.

And since Andy wasn't going to be here, we have things that we hold up.

So we could all wait with bated breath until the act came and we received brand new financial statements.

Um, either of our people, Bea or... We have Ms. LaPisto-Kirtley.

All right.

She's not a director, I'm not voting that part out.

All right, we do have...

So,

We need to ask him the question first or do we vote?

I think he's requested to participate remotely for medical reasons.

That's my understanding.

I move that he be allowed to participate remotely for medical reasons.

Is there a second?

Second.

All right.

All in favor?

Aye.

All right.

So we will go to new visits.

So

who is going to do our introduction.

So we are very pleased to have Mickey Hastings and Shannon Hollins join us.

Thank you Smith for the people bio.

Dr. Hastings for the people bio hub.

and Shannon Holland, the director of the Go Virginia Region 9 partnership.

And they'll be talking today about the BioBridge, Developing Talent to Tomorrow's Breakthroughs, a grant match opportunity for the Economic Development Authority to consider today for a Go Virginia Talent Pathway Initiative grant that Segal Biohub is spearheading.

And spearheading on behalf of a lot of partners.

So it is not Segal Biohub alone, but we're

a lot of the right stakeholders to advance this work.

So I will let them take over their presentation, but just wanted to thank them for coming and for the opportunity to work.

Great to be here and be back.

I'll give a little bit of an update on our five accelerator work, but first Shannon will maybe give the big perspective on what the TPI grants are.

Talent Pathways is a separate tranche of funding from Go Virginia established about a year and a half, two years ago.

Originally by the governor where we have some larger ideas around the Talent Pathways that follow on funding.

That's morphed a little bit because it's gone through a budget profit.

That's that this is

$250,000 available to create a planning grant around priority talent leads in our region.

So the Go Virginia Region Line Council identified three target sectors that they saw as a priority.

Biotech is one of them.

I've been working with partners over the past two and a half years to find the right one to take the lead in the application.

And, you know, at the very last opportunity, we're pulling it off with Siebel Biohub taking the lead with, as Emily mentioned,

many amazing partners.

And it aligns really well with this initiative that you all have supported with the Accelerator and the Single BioPublic Expansion.

Yeah, part of why this came back to us a year ago, we were engaged with UVA Economic Development hearing about this opportunity and a conversation with Emily and KBCC

You know, we just continue to hear the need for understanding the talent needs and the growth potential, especially with the Manning Institute of Biotechnology coming online.

What do we need to be preparing our workforce for now so that we can serve the growth that's anticipated as a result of the things that are happening, the accelerator being a small part in that work.

But at the time we were prepared to go after that as we felt the accelerator was our more near-term priority.

This opportunity has since presented itself.

And we said, this is really important work.

And we were hearing that from all the stakeholders that we've been talking to.

And really being kind of an unbiased party in this project is why we are taking the lead on it.

But we are partnering.

And I'll mention who the partners are and how we plan to work to accomplish the goals.

So you're all familiar with our organization.

Thank you for all the support you've offered us over the many years.

So this is a workforce development opportunity.

We do think we're thinking about talent that can support life sciences initiatives.

And this is talent that would be uploading through opportunities from private sector to research opportunities and back to private sector.

We're not just serving the economic growth, but we're serving the needs that are going to be evolving at the research levels of the university, serving private sector, and to continue to have a workforce that can be versatile enough to be serving in both capacities is really a great opportunity and a significant need.

We're hearing from the Manning Institute folks that they have not prepared for

training the staff needed to support the researchers who are coming into, that are being recruited.

And so they're saying, where is that talent coming from?

And that's where some of these conversations with EPA economic development started.

But we're also saying there's such an opportunity for private sector growth.

Companies like Bonemos and Rivanna Medical and Agrospheres have all been growing here and the talent recruitment effort is one of their challenges.

So we want to continue to serve that and be able to meet those needs.

So what we're planning to do is work with a consulting firm.

Techonomy Partners is very well versed in the biotech space.

They partner with Bio International and they are actually one of the groups that put together a very early report on this region, understanding the needs and opportunities for biotech.

So we went back to them.

We surveyed three potential consultants.

They were the ones that came in with

reasonable costs, knowledge in the space, and a strong clear plan of timeline and execution opportunity to come up with a three to five year strategic plan.

We'll get a region wide asset map.

We'll be looking at the skills and training needed for the sector, which they have much experience in.

They have a database that we will have full access to, understanding skills, talent, and salaries from

from this sector at a nationwide level that will gain ability to query.

They'll run a gap analysis and quantitative qualitative situational analysis as well.

So it's a comprehensive one-year project.

We will partner with them.

And we've also identified some support from the central community partnerships for economic development and Katie Devaney who would support us on the operations planning, organizing, ensuring

Facilitation of the Meetings with Economy, and Sebo Biohub bringing the stakeholders from private industry and all of our connections together.

So it's really leveraging the strengths of all of our three groups to execute on this project, Go Virginia being the funding component for this.

So I'm not really in favor of hiring a consultant to put together a great report unless there's an opportunity to execute on that work.

and that's what I'm excited about and why I said yes to this project because there is some follow on funding to provide implementation support.

So we want to see some really powerful list.

We are pulling together an advisory coalition which will ensure forming goals that we meet these objectives, that we're connecting with the leaders and the stakeholders required

that we will be able to provide feedback on the findings so that it's not biased to what we think also is that we're getting some unbiased perspective here, but that we can provide some feedback and ensure that the execution plan is something we could actually implement.

And then ultimately to have all of the coalition be the champions to make sure that we can bring some ideas forward.

I did just get off the phone this afternoon with Alan Yost.

He's very excited about this opportunity

Connect Albemarle and to the north.

So he's very much a champion already.

The city is very motivated by this as well.

They're willing to put in 25,000 in matching funds.

And we have in-kind contributions and committed support from those that have stars next to their names.

We're still collecting some of the support commitments to the advisory coalition that we have until October 10, 2015.

the 15th, okay, in five more days.

But I think this is a really great opportunity for our region to really bring more connectivity to the counties surrounding Albemarle and Charlottesville, where the sector has really been focused in the efforts with Seva Biohub and PVA and most of the sector is active here, but there's opportunity for growth outside.

So I think also thinking about it from a talent development perspective brings in some new interests

Do we have any sense how many of these people needed in all the Manning Center and all the projects that we know about?

How many of those people are already here?

Well, if we think about the numbers of what Manning is working for, it's just as a standalone example,

It's 120 PIs, private investigators who are leading labs, which means they still need support staff, which may come in the form of graduate students and undergrad researchers, but they also need generalist lab staff, lab specialists.

So if you, at minimum, say three per lab, people generally won't relocate with the PIs.

Sometimes they will.

but that gives a ballpark number of significant gap in what we have available.

We had a company here pulled earlier this year that was 50 employees.

Many of them want, they wanted to stay here and they did not find all of those opportunities available to them.

So, but that's a rare experience.

So, I think we're on the order of a thousand potentially in the next three to five years.

The sector itself in labor force that we collected data on is somewhere between 2,000 to 2,500.

Yeah, it's great.

And they're really interested in

They've already got ideas around how the strategic plan could be, what details could be in there.

That's our first conversation was, well, we needed to do this and we can do this.

And we said, well, this will be the meeting where you can have those conversations.

But there was a biotech training certificate that was brought forth, I think in the early 2000s.

And they found that the workforce, there was a disconnect between the training that was being done

and the labor opportunities that those students were then eligible for.

I think we have a lot more connectivity in our region than that time was bringing those students forward into opportunities where now, you know, this is some of the work that SEPA Biohub is doing.

We've got job boards and we've got the people you can connect with to find those folks.

They're really excited.

I think the types of jobs that we're also seeing somewhere on the manufacturing side, Afton Scientific is growing.

They're going to need that kind of talent that's coming out of two-year certificate programs.

So they hire significantly.

And so they're going to want to see that interview.

And this can help.

I would just add to these types of opportunities, these workforce planning type work is really enabling the folks who live in the community today to be ready for these jobs.

So we're in a really nice position in that a Manning Institute doesn't come all the time.

You don't always know that you're going to have a major employer emerge.

And we have the opportunity of time

to develop the workforce.

And again, as Nicki indicated, these are a range of jobs, but a lot of them are licensure certificate type jobs.

And to piggyback that comment, we hear often from existing businesses in our community that anticipated growth or an expansion

ability to meet those workforce needs based on the workforce tool that we have.

So these are real challenges and real critical moments where companies may have to consider opening up an office in another location in order to accommodate that workforce growth that they require.

We're also hearing a little bit around

I just wanted to take an opportunity to make a connection.

My professional life is mostly in Boston.

There's this big gap.

We're desperate for automotive technicians.

And there are people who want to be automotive technicians.

And the difficulty is that we cannot make the commitment to train them to the level we need them, because we can't guarantee that they'll stay with us.

So we have an apprentice program.

We can't just open up a school ourselves, because our ability to attain them is just, we can't keep enough of them to make the math work.

And I just think the analogy for this is that we're all sitting in this room working so hard to create the conditions where businesses can open, relocate, hire these people.

But we've got a really big challenge ahead of us to make sure that those people that want those jobs and that the companies we out hire are ready to meet.

In other words, they have the skills.

I don't think that's anyone's responsibility in this room, but I just want to

I just want to get it into the zeitgeist conversation for future meetings, that to the extent that we can support the ability of local educational institutions to align what they're teaching, as you were talking about, Dr. Hastings, with what the employers need, then we'll kind of connect those dots and not run into these gaps where we'll give it to them.

So anyway, I just want to put it out there, not for any other reason, just to get it on the agenda of people's thinking.

I think that the pathway approach is starting to get K-12 on there.

So you start thinking about what you need to do with people in high school in order to get them interested.

And then that's how you feed that pipeline.

And so that's why this initiative is so important.

That's the plan.

That's the goal.

Okay, so it's a $250,000 opportunity.

It's a 12-month project.

The proposal from Techonomy shows us completing the work in 10 months gives us a little bit of offer for a great post-analysis session to bring all the stakeholders together to talk about those next steps.

PVCC has offered their new space to host that event.

and if we put our request out here today, ideally $25,000 would go a long way towards the math requirement.

The city is interested in matching that commitment if the county is on board.

PVCC is offering $12,000 in kind.

Sarah Morton with Workforce Career Works.

Virginia Career Works, somebody knew that I've just met through this initiative.

said absolutely want to be involved and committed and puts for in-kind support.

We've had Alan Yost commit 5K in in-kind autonomy.

I mentioned the access to software.

The coalition partners are all part of a collective that in-kind support UVA.

And even JMU has a very strong biotech training program.

And interesting in speaking with them last week,

Their students are coming out looking for jobs right away and they want to stay in Virginia, which is not always the case with UVA students.

And so that's a great pipeline.

They want to come to Charlottesville for jobs.

And I've hired several of them through my own career.

So I know that they are a strong workforce school to be working at as part of this initiative.

So not in our region, but it is another opportunity.

So we put our ask out there.

We'd love your support.

This does align with the bigger vision of our accelerator project that we're working on and really supports the bigger opportunities that Sego Biohub as an organization has.

That's why I think we're interested in committing to this and showing both our depth in serving early stage companies, but our breadth in understanding what's going on more broadly in our system.

and here's our support request.

Letter of interest is due tomorrow.

No pressure.

Application is due October 15th.

We have a letter, a drafted letter that was circulated and the award, I think it was December 10th.

So early December timeframe we would know and we would try to kick this off early January 25th.

My question is, can we can we approve that ourselves?

I believe we have the authority to approve support as far as the financial side of it goes.

At this point, it's the letter of interest.

All right.

So any questions or comments?

Any further discussion?

Is there a motion regarding a letter of support?

I believe that we send a letter of support with approval.

All right.

I have a couple of little tweets.

Type of, not type of, type of wording choice things that I will suggest.

The lawyer, the lawyer.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

I'm not saying just you.

I don't know how to get it.

Oh, all right.

Insubstantially the floor is presented.

I think there's butter at the end.

It's so dictating that it's,

So moved.

All right.

All in favor?

Good luck with these minutes, Transcription.

Aye.

Steve is on the line.

Steve, was that a yes?

I said aye.

Yeah.

That was a yes.

All right.

OK. Great.

All right.

Oh, yes.

I hope to have updates for you in early June, but we have at the State Board meeting, there were some requests to see additional collaboration support through a memorandum of understanding with Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation, BEDP, and Virginia Catalyst, all who are supporting this sector in other ways.

And our collaborators, we are very excited to have.

It's taken us quite a while to get through this process unexpectedly, but Sego Biohub has continued to push forward.

We've been working with UVA on our agreements with them, including the lease agreement, getting everybody on board.

They're very excited about this project, especially as they learn more about really what it is, bringing these early stage companies into the space.

I spoke today with the UVA Vice President for Research, who has a very

Long term bigger vision beyond university walls for economic development and growth locally.

So I think she will become a really exciting partner in the long term of this project.

And we've been touring companies.

We have equipment on the second floor waiting to be installed.

You may know of a accounting company, Zio Bio.

They unfortunately folded due to funding

It's a tough market right now in the biotech sector, but we spoke with them and they said they wanted to keep all their equipment locally and that this would be a good transition for the equipment.

So we worked out a deal there and it's ready to plug in.

So that actually saved us about five months of time in getting purchasing, lead time, some orders and everything.

So once we get this signed very soon, right, Shannon?

Shannon?

Yes, we're going to be announcing.

It's approved.

Yes, the project is approved.

We'll be launching in early 2025.

We invite you all to join us at the launch party, which will be a lot of fun.

Hopefully we'll have a few more weeks there by then.

So thank you for your continued patience, and we look forward to coming back when we have more talks.

All right.

Thank you for your time today.

Okay, so thank you all.

You've been briefed on the, most of you have been briefed on the Home Depot Project at previous meetings and sessions.

And we were excited to have the board announcement a couple weeks ago of the Home Depot being the first

private sector redevelopment at the Fashions Square Mall property.

If you've been driven by there recently, the Sears is now more and they are making really quick work of the demolition and the brownfield remediation that is required before they can do any vertical development out there.

This is the final part of the process.

So the board agreed to support the development agreement and the economic development authority is also a party to that agreement.

So this is,

being presented to you all for consideration to adopt the resolution approving the development grant agreement.

I'm not going to discuss.

I'm accused from discussing.

I think it's all best to have

I'm unmuting because it was a difficult time getting onto this meeting.

But no, I don't have any concerns about this.

I do not.

OK.

Does someone want to make a motion?

I move that the Albemarle County Economic Development Authority adopt a resolution approving a development grant agreement among the County of Albemarle, Virginia, the Economic Development Authority of Albemarle County, Virginia, and Home Depot USA Incorporated.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Any nays?

as your tasks.

All right.

So next is the staff report.

So I've got a couple slides to share and a couple of office updates.

So from staffing changes, we have added Jeanette Ark.

Jeanette is a project manager, an amazing project manager.

I've never felt so organized in my entire life.

And she's working part-time on the, really focused just on the Rivanna Futures project.

So that project has several lines of effort that troughs six or seven different departments in the county.

We work together all the time, so that in itself is not the challenge, but there's a lot of moving parts to this project.

And behind every person on our team is another team of folks working to advance engineering work, property management responsibilities that we have as part of the land acquisition of Urbana Futures, partnership development and engagement work that we're working really hard to

Do another line of effort, which is grants, to secure some state and federal funding to help support site readiness out there.

So having someone at the helm who can help, I have trouble seeing the forest when there are so many trees.

And she's helping to make sure that we can keep that eye on the big picture, which is really, really incredibly helpful.

Ruby Vaughn has been working with the county for a little over a year.

but he is helping to provide some backup support for our office while the intern that we're going to hire in 2040, J.T.

Newberry, is ready to join us.

We'll be helping primarily to support the economic development strategic plan process that we are a little behind in.

but we'll be kicking off in earnest this fall and also some general research support that would be needed.

Beyond the economic development strategic plan, we did a request for quotes process and we were delighted and a little overwhelmed to receive 15 submissions to that.

Normally that's more like four to six and so

That's great.

That's great for the county because competition leads us to be able to get a better product at a better price.

But it's been a lot to go through.

And so we're a little bit behind because we've been working through that review process.

And then we are also working behind the scenes.

Staff has put together a first draft

of the MOU term sheet that we talked about at the joint meeting with four supervisors.

My first gut check is to send that to Tara Long.

And so once we've had some time with that, we'll share it with the whole EDA.

My hope is that we'll spend some time at a future meeting, whether that be October or November, to really work through what is the EDA's

What is a term sheet that is from the EDA to the board of supervisors?

And then we have requested time on a board agenda in December to have a work session with the board of supervisors.

My expectation is that Chair Long would work with me to sort of have that work session with the board so that we can get feedback on the term sheet that would be sort of representative of the EDA.

So that's sort of the rough timeline of what we're working towards

And then once that turn sheet is fully developed, that's when staff in the attorney's office would work to develop a redlined version of the MOU that we would then work through the EDA and the board.

Just a couple of events that we were excited to participate in.

I've got some pictures here from the St. Louis trip.

So in the context of Rivanna Futures, we had talked about Rivanna Station and the opportunity to purchase the land and maybe grow the mission of the current Rivanna Station being a similar opportunity to what has happened in St. Louis at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency's headquarters.

About 10 years ago, they announced that they were going to leave the city of St. Louis.

They're building from the 1850s and did not have any good security to it.

It didn't have parking.

It just had some challenges.

It's a very old building.

And they had announced they were going to leave St. Louis.

The city of St. Louis said,

we are gonna fight to keep you here.

And a lot of government, all levels of government and private sector and civic sector organizations came together to put together a really great deal that enabled the NGA to stay in St. Louis.

And so Jeff Richardson, the county executive, Trevor Henry, the deputy county executive and I went out to St. Louis in August to learn more about how they were able to do all that.

And it was really incredible

to just see how everyone is really working together to speak into being that St. Louis is the geospatial hub of the world.

And so it's not just about that one employer, that one site project, but really building an ecosystem and leveraging all the opportunities in the geospatial space for the good of the community.

There's been a lot of spin-off entrepreneurial activity as a result of the work that they've been doing.

They have a big workforce component, workforce training component where they're trying to really open opportunity to as many people in St. Louis as possible to be ready to take those jobs that are continuing to grow in the geospatial space in St. Louis.

It was just a really inspiring couple of days.

We very much are hoping to lead a trip out with a lot of folks from here

out to St. Louis in 2025, so that we can sort of share the love more broadly and help inspire folks a little bit differently.

Just real quick, a couple of the things that we have on here.

In the middle, I have a map, that map.

It's really cool looking in person, and I'm realizing it's not as cool looking on PowerPoint, but it shows the region of what comprises greater St. Louis, the St. Louis metro area.

And it's 15 counties, one city, City of St. Louis,

The 15 counties cross a state line, so it's two states.

So the level of collaboration to make that work is just incredible.

And Greater St. Louis Inc. is a chamber-like organization that does a lot of economic development work on behalf of their partnership.

The UMSL, the University of Missouri at St. Louis, has launched a really great workforce training program

at their university.

They're working on getting geography incorporated into the gen ed requirements for all university students so that everyone at their university has exposure to geo and an opportunity to apply geographic thinking to any career path they may find themselves in, which is really incredible.

BioSTL, if anyone's attending the bio event tomorrow,

I'm going to let you talk.

Okay.

Yeah.

It's so funny.

So Emily, you texted me or something and said, I'm in bio FTL.

That's the model that Seva Biohub has looked at for a lot of the growth opportunities because of nonprofit.

And obviously looking at their labs there, you could just see the growth and activity.

They have significant investment into their efforts, but we,

connected with the Senior Vice President Ben Johnson and asked him to come speak on our panel at our Biodiscovery Summit on Thursday.

And I don't remember how many companies are working in that bio-STL space.

We're in a conference room looking down over the wet lab space.

but that is several different companies working in the same location and the building has space for companies to grow into once they get off the floor and then it's in a section, a neighborhood of St. Louis that also is oriented around biotech and so the idea is you incubate on the floor, you can move up to get your first small office

And then that hopefully is putting you in a good position to continue to accommodate your growth trajectory all this money.

And then the Globe Building is a private office building that has invested in infrastructure.

So we've done the power, we've done the broadband in order to capture

Geospatial Commercial uses, because they need to be connected at all times in order for their work to be successful.

And so we got to see a bunch of different models of public-private partnerships and academic partnerships in action.

Oh, and the other thing I wanted to mention before I move on, BEDP, the state agency for economic development, hosted a knowledge sector listening session.

in Albemarle earlier this month.

It was for our region, but it was an opportunity for private sector CEOs and other leaders to share with the state some of their challenges in recruiting and growing here in Virginia.

And so they're looking at what are some of those regional challenges, what are some of those statewide challenges, and BED will continue to work on how they can be a better partner in solving some of those problems.

We were really excited to have them here in Albemarle and hosted at Woodbrook.

Just a quick snapshot on the business retention and expansion efforts.

We had some say visits since we last given you a staff report.

Yeah.

Trevor, Henry and I did one in the defense sector.

members of the EEA, or if that's useful, they won't, but it might be, absolutely.

That'd be great.

Always.

Just some items from the ecosystem, some things that the county is not necessarily doing, but just to highlight some work that our partners are doing,

The Defense Affairs Committee is a committee of the Chamber of Commerce and the county and private sector partners have fundraised to support a staff position, the program manager position, to advance some of the work of that committee.

Many of you met like Ian, she was the former

Program Manager, Andrew Saiz, speaking over the summer.

He is really hitting the ground running if you have not had a chance to interact with him yet.

He's a really, I'm really excited about what the opportunities with his work and his leadership will bring.

And so that's, just wanted to make sure you all were aware of that.

And then the CACDB, like you mentioned it, Mr. Furo, adopted the tourism master plan, which was the first one ever for our region.

So really significant in that that's work that had not been done before and will help guide how they do resource allocation and guide some of their efforts moving forward.

If you did not know about the Biodiscovery Summit, I hope you'll consider attending.

And then the other item is related to the defense and intelligence sector.

So the Intelligence National Security Alliance is a professional organization for those who work in the intelligence and national security space.

Their headquarters is on BP.

But they will do these common threads events in hubs for intelligence and national security around the country.

And they are in recognition of Rivanna Futures and the work that we're doing there.

They are hosting one in Charlottesville.

This is really significant for us because it helps put us on the map for the intelligence and national security community.

It's going to be from 5 to 8 p.m. on December 3rd at Forcehead.

There'll be a keynote and then a panel on sort of the space and then a networking opportunity at the end.

It is free to attend, but you do have to register.

It's really significant for us to

It's really amazing that INSSA chose Charlottesville, and we'd love to show INSSA that we're worth it.

And so we're hoping that folks will attend.

If you are not super familiar with the Intelligence and National Security space, it'll be an amazing opportunity to hear what some of their priorities and challenges are.

Yes.

Yeah.

All right.

So next on the agenda is the closed session.

So I'll let somebody else take a look at that.

The Baltimore County Economic Development Authority going to a closed meeting is authorized and we're creating an Information Act Section 2.2-2.

3711A, the Code of Virginia under subsection 5 to discuss and consider the expansion of an existing Albemarle County business in the Scottsville Magisterial District south of the city of Charlottesville where no previous announcement has been made that's interested in expanding its facilities in Albemarle County.

Do I have a second?

Second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

And you're recused.

I'm recused.

I will request Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley and Director McNaughton if you will close out your Zoom link and join us shortly on the Teams link that was emailed to you earlier.

And let me know if you don't have that link and I'll send it to you.

Thank you.

We need a roll call for the certification.

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

All right, here we go.

Director McCulloch.

Aye.

Director Long.

Aye.

And so Director Long refuses.

Also the record did not join us in the photo meeting.

Obviously that's David's choice.

All right.

Other matters?

Questions?

All right, so then our next meeting is October 15th.

Is everybody there?