Economic Development Authority Meeting   10/15/2024

I will call the meeting to order.

We have a forum here.

We are expecting one member to join remotely, which I guess we will take care of when he gets on.

Matters from the public, is there anybody set up online?

Nope.

OK.

So we'll move on to approval of the minutes.

The minutes were circulated.

Is any comments on the minutes?

Is there a motion to approve the minutes?

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

All right.

All in favor?

Aye.

All right.

The minutes are approved.

We don't have a

Financial statement today for two reasons.

One, Andy is not here.

That's not the primary reason.

It's not her fault.

She just doesn't happen to be here, but we are still working out and we want to get it finalized in a way that it makes sense for everybody.

And so hopefully we will be ready at the next meeting.

So on to new business.

I'm supposed to be advancing slides.

Okay, so we have a couple of guests, two in person and one online.

Maureen Kelly is with Nelson County Economic Development and Tourism.

Shannon Holland is Go Virginia Region 9.

And Matthew Brown is MWJ Brown Consulting.

Hi, Matthew.

And he, I think he is going to take us through the slides.

Okay, let's, we'll just, we'll just stick in the slides that way.

It just works.

All right.

Awesome.

Well, thank you everybody for giving me a chance to take a little bit of your time and share the part of the project that we've been working on this year.

As you know, it's been supported by Go Virginia in conjunction with the localities.

And our mission at the start of the year was to really do a deep dive into the challenges, speed bumps, gaps that are

holding back the wineries in these counties from scaling up their business and also placing themselves into the traded sector in the marketplace as well.

So we can go to the next slide.

And I know we don't have a ton of time.

This is something I could spend hours talking about.

So if I gloss by something you have some details on, you're certainly welcome to reach out.

When we started out trying to really decode what are some of the challenges the wineries in Go Virginia Region 9 are facing, we kind of decided to go at it from a multi-pronged approach.

Starting, of course, with the wineries, we put together a pretty comprehensive survey to get a pulse on their business in terms of the size of the winery,

what their 2023 sales year were like, what their business model kind of looks and feels like, and to give them a chance to provide some feedback from themselves about what they're seeing as challenges to maintaining, expanding their business and also getting their wines out into the marketplace.

So we started there with that survey, which was complemented by a lot of in-person conversations with vineyard and winery owners, managers, winemakers, et cetera,

to really try to provide deeper context to the data that we gathered.

And while we feel like that data was really helpful, I felt like it needed to be also contextualized with feedback and information from the rest of the wine ecosystem.

So we reached out to all the other players in the wine trade, which includes the distributors, the wine buyers, sommeliers, influencers, wine shop owners,

et cetera, to really go to them and say, what is your perception of Virginia wine?

What are we doing a good job of?

What are we not doing such a great job of?

And then the goal there is sort of to put all this information into a pot, start around and come up with some really helpful ideas, concrete actions that we could take moving forward that would help support some additional growth in our wineries.

Again, with the goal of getting more of our wines outside of the region.

And for us, that means, you know, first and foremost D.C., Northern Virginia, but we certainly aren't limited to that.

You know, New York is a major market with lots and lots of potential.

You know, even the West Coast is an area that we've considered.

But a lot of those challenges into getting wines out of the market aren't necessarily market dependent.

So we've taken all this information in our report.

And as we're going to see, we got some really great information that helped us form an action plan.

So we can go ahead and click over to the next slide, my friend.

So this is some data from our respondents regarding what their 2023 sales year looked like.

And I see a lot of reasons for optimism in this information.

I see some reasons for concern in this information as well.

Almost 56% of folks who responded to the survey did indicate that they had a relatively positive sales year, which

I find something to celebrate particularly given the economic climate plus then also the fact that the wine trade as a whole has been contracting a little bit.

So to report a good sales year in 2023 to me is really something to be optimistic about.

We've got about 10% of folks who characterize the year as neither good nor bad.

which again, concerning the climate, the economic climate and some trends in the wine trade right now being neither good nor bad to me also sounds like good news.

And then of course, we've got this third of respondents who did indicate that they had either a slightly disappointing, somewhat disappointing or the most disappointing year.

And so wanting to really reach out and support those folks

We did a lot of one-on-one time with the people who are finding themselves struggling a little bit.

And we were trying to figure out what do the folks who are doing well have in common, what do the folks who are struggling a little bit more have in common, and how can we use that understanding to tailor some of our approaches to fixing these challenges.

So we can go to the next slide if you don't mind.

So our survey was broken down to the wine producers by what's going on in the vineyard, what's going on in the winery, and what's going on in their business as well.

Sort of the three legs of the stool of the wine world, if you will.

And there is a lot of overlap as you're about to see as we zip through these slides that education or lack of knowledge or lack of information tends to be a common theme, which is something that we have become

pretty focused on fixing.

But if you look at, these are sort of a heat map, if you will, of common themes that were brought up in our vineyard questions.

And labor supply, training, sustainability, understanding the vine diseases and viruses, a lot of those come down to those educational concerns that we've noted.

But of course,

There are just the regular old Econ 101 costs of running any kind of business that showed up in this area as well.

So something that I was looking to understand a little bit better was

Are we currently at a place that we could be making more wine?

Do we have the infrastructure in place?

Do we have the grapes in the ground?

Do we have the tank space in the winery?

That sort of thing.

And certainly my findings have indicated that we do in fact have grape availability and the potential to increase vineyard yields as well.

So step one sort of seems to be in place there.

And if we go to the next slide, we can talk about what's going on in the winery.

So similar themes in the winery as you saw in the vineyard.

Some educational opportunities here as it pertains to training, sustainability, understanding regulations, understanding practices that we can put into place to not only combat the changing climate, but also mitigate some of its effects as well.

So

Following our keenly scale up our production with our current infrastructure, 74% of respondents did say that they currently today have the ability to make more wine than they already are.

So combined with knowing that we could have an excess of grapes, this is starting to make us feel a little bit more light if we can generate the market and more interest in the trading sector that we already have a lot of the heavy lifting blocks in place in order to do that.

Okay, next slide, my friend.

So talking now about what's keeping people awake at night and their business.

Marketing and distribution are sort of kind of interconnected, if you will, there.

But a lot of folks, of course, commented on the economy.

That's something that all business owners are stressed about right now.

But getting visitor traffic up.

Driving folks to their tasting room is something that a lot of folks are also struggling with.

But if you can kind of imagine looking at these challenges, so many of them feed each other as well.

It's almost like if we can solve one of these, we can solve a lot of them all at once.

And so a lot of folks have pointed out a need for more help with their marketing effort, a need for really understanding what online looks like,

Social media looks like and how to run a successful online marketing campaign with not necessarily having the staffing or time to do it.

So there's definitely some real challenges out there to business owners who are widely people who are busy doing farming work and also needing to kind of juggle a bunch of different things all at once.

Our next slide, please.

Just one more slide.

There we go.

So as I mentioned, we talked to a lot of folks in the trade about what they're thinking of Virginia wine is, and a lot of them feel, I know these are busy folks as well.

A lot of them are nights and weekends, but they're really important decision makers that are a major component of our wine ecosystem.

And it sort of seems like we've not done the best job taking care of these people.

And so

A lot of them have said that Virginia wine is not present enough in their professional life, whether that is there aren't enough tasting opportunities in the market for them to attend, the challenges of getting the wines through distributors they work with, sort of prevent them from keeping consistent inventory.

They're saying things like, maybe Virginia might be a little bit out of touch in terms of branding, in terms of marketing message,

And so there's really a lot of great lessons learned from chatting with these folks in the trade about how we can make ourselves look better and also meet the kind of demands of the market in a way that will, I think, certainly prove financially rewarding and also support more long-term growth for Virginia wine.

There are reasons in the same way that our winery and vineyard owners are really busy and don't have time to put their head above water.

The restaurant folks, the wine shop folks, the distributor folks, they're the same way.

So some of our recommendations are designed to sort of crack that nut in a way that we can really help connect some of those wires and get our story out into the marketplace.

Okay, my friend, next slide.

I want to make sure we've got time for questions.

That's why we're going to be zipping.

So also, of course, very important are the individual consumers, right?

What are they looking for these days?

What are they willing to spend?

What styles of wine are they interested in?

So we pulled a lot of really great information from existing surveys, including one from YouGov that came out earlier this year to sort of discover trends regarding price point and wine variety and style.

And it's sort of a limited study that I don't think gave a full complete picture of what today's consumer really looks like, but it certainly got us pretty close to that picture.

And you won't be surprised to know that price is the number one thing that people are considering when they're going out and buying a bottle of wine.

I think that would be true for pretty much anything that people are buying.

But things that are really important to folks are what the region is, what the variety is in the bottle, and understanding kind of the brand as well.

And that all feeds into

our reputation, our perception in the market and I think indicates opportunities for us to kind of present ourselves in a new light and make sure that we are being dynamic enough to stay in touch with the younger consumers as well.

Something I thought was really interesting as a wine professional who probably spends

a little bit more than average per bottle of wine.

I was having 65% of the YouGov survey respondents indicate that they were unsure that they could tell the difference between a $10 bottle and a $100 bottle of wine.

And I honestly was heartened by that information because it sort of made me feel like Virginia might actually have an opportunity in that and to making more entry-level wines as well instead of our current focus, which has been more on the higher end of the market.

Anyway, so now to the meat and potatoes.

Next slide, please.

Thank you.

So we've come up with a list of about 20 some odd recommendations.

You've got the copy of the draft report.

Whether or not you've had time to read it, I'm not sure.

But the reason why I wanted to be brief on the slides was I'm hoping that there might be some questions in the group and I would be very happy to answer them.

But basically,

The common thread in a lot of our recommendations are we've identified some lack of knowledge, lack of access to information that we're going to really try to, moving forward, work on and improve.

So, specifically on issues regarding marketing and business, we've discovered a need to give the smaller producers, the folks that are kind of under that 2,500 case production year, which

About two thirds of the wineries in this region are under that 2500 case per year mark.

So it's a tremendous number of businesses, even if it's not the most amount of the wine.

But we've really got to do a better job serving those folks.

And I also have noted that there's just not as much collaboration

across the wine trade as there really ought to be.

We've got some great industry organizations.

We've got a lot of really great public resources, whether it's a small business development, BTC or our DMOs.

There's just a lot of different resources out there.

And I think we've got an opportunity to start to get more people talking about the ways that they can support each other.

And so that's

Definitely a priority for us moving forward from this study as well.

The other major challenge with alcohol is of course distribution and we live in a very highly regulated alcohol country and region.

And so Virginia is a little unique in that we do have a kind of self-distributed system permitted in the Commonwealth

which is called the Virginia Winery Distribution Company.

And so one of our findings in this study has motivated us to kind of create an independent study of the VWDC and to really kind of try to understand a bit more about the ways in which we might be able to expand that to be more full service, which of course will also play into helping the smaller producers but could also be a significant

way that we can potentially even get into Washington, D.C. And so we sort of decided that given the legal issues there and the legislative changes that might need to take place, that that might be its own spinoff project.

But it could certainly be an easier on ramp for producers getting into the trading sector if we were able to beef it up a little bit.

Listening to the folks in the trade say that they're not hearing from us enough encouraged us to think about ways that we could create these wine roadshow events where we pack up our wine makers and our wines and we zip up to D.C., Northern Virginia or wherever and do intimate tasting events so that we can share the story and the wine with the decision makers in the market.

And while I feel like

So many of these needs really do relate to various educational deficiencies, some of them are more clearly specifically educational, and so we've really started working to reach out to folks in the workforce world, whether it's the PVCC folks or the VTOP folks, to talk about ways that we can provide more curriculum and internship opportunities

And one of the potential action items from this report is going to be the development of a specific to Virginia wine certification program that will, much like we've seen in other places such as California, Washington, even Texas,

will create a way for us to have a consistent message about what our wines are, what our region is like, what our climate is like to the frontline staff, whether they're behind the winery tasting room bar, or they're pouring wine in a restaurant, or behind the counter of a wine bar, or they're dragging a bag, as the lingo says, as a distributor going from account to account, trying to place Virginia wines in various on and off trade retail locations as well.

I think that there was an easy way in 10 to 15 minutes to tell you what the study has meant and what our findings have been.

It's more or less that we've noticed that we've got the potential, we've got the infrastructure, we've got the interest level and energy level, but not all of the wires have yet been connected.

And it's our hope to take the findings from this project and begin to start completing a few of those circuits so that we can get folks the tools they need to really thrive and to help really lift the reputation of Virginia wine and diversify our place in the market.

And I think we've sort of targeted a narrow demographic, a narrow style, a narrow price point.

And we've, I think, left some opportunities on the table that I think folks are given the changing economy, given the changing feelings about alcohol and wine in particular, folks are willing to be a bit more open minded to some of our opportunities.

So that's the quick and dirty of it.

Before we ask questions, we have one director who has joined us remotely, Director McNaughton.

So I would move that he be allowed to participate virtually for a personal reason.

All in favor?

Aye.

All right.

So he can be admitted.

And I understand.

doesn't have video, it's only audio.

Which is fine.

Okay.

Yep, thank you.

We've all been here.

Thanks for that.

Do we have questions?

Matt, on page 11, you've got a chart that shows that tasting room sales account for 72% of the wine sales in Virginia by Virginia wineries.

Yes, sir.

Their own places, which means it seems like there's like a ton, like a ton of uncapped opportunity outside of the wineries themselves.

I mean, basically they're doing all their own sales or most of it, not all of it, call it two thirds anyway.

Yes, so that is just a straight up dollars in figure, so revenue number.

And I'll tell you, I've been in Virginia wine for about 15 years, so I've been on both sides of what I would call the Virginia wine boom.

And for most of the recent history of Virginia wine, let's say the last 20 years,

The business model has been, if you build it, they will come.

Folks have turned the light on, they've unlocked the door, they've sat there, and people have showed up in their parking lot and have bought their wine.

and I know that if we had some Virginia winery owners in the room, they'd probably be shaking their heads saying it's way more work than that.

I am simplifying it a little bit, but the point I'm trying to illustrate is Virginia has gotten to where it is today with a lot of luck and good fortune.

And that turn the lights on, unlock the door model has

Not really continued to work in the post-COVID world.

And so we've been dealing, of course, with inflation like everybody else has been, but it's not quite the thing where people go to wineries anymore and actually buy wine.

It sort of has become a recreational activity where folks come, they do some tasting, they take some cute photos for social media, they get in the van, they go to the next place.

And there's no money in the winery for that, right?

Paying 20 bucks a head.

That doesn't move their needle.

Their needle moves when you buy six balls.

And so that 72% number is actually down.

And from where I suspect we would have found it to be in 2019.

Because wineries aren't quite having the easy time that they used to have with that, people are now becoming more open-minded when I go to them and say, let's talk distribution, let's talk e-commerce, let's talk the traded sector.

Whereas pre-COVID, they all would have said, I want my margins, I can sell the stuff myself, and there's more money in it for me.

And so I think the iron is hot, but you're totally right.

That chart that you see is almost the opposite of California.

California is like around 20 to 25% tasting room sales.

You know, at least I'm not talking about Gallo, right?

I'm talking about medium sized wineries.

And then about 70 to 75% of that would certainly be out in the market.

Matthew Heights, David Storm.

I've got, I could talk about this for a couple of hours because I was on the retail side here in Charlottesville for a bit with the wine guild and I've done a fair amount of traveling and we've got some friends who've started wineries locally and who've also just made wines locally using custom crush facilities and the like.

Aren't we,

Isn't Virginia fighting some of the same headwinds that other regions are fighting?

Recent articles are showing that California, there are going to be literally tons of grapes not picked in

in Napa this year because they just can't get the price for it because people aren't drinking as much wine, so we're fighting that headwind.

And then in Virginia specifically, because I noticed you mentioned a couple of other up-and-coming regions like the Willamette Valley and the Finger Lakes,

Those are both regions that have sort of a signature grape or a signature wine.

A Pinot Noir for Oregon and a Riesling for the Finger Lakes that they can really market around.

And with Virginia, because so much of it's driven by red blends in particular, you don't have that same hook.

So are we facing some of the same headwinds?

I guess I have two things, right?

Yeah.

No, you raised some good points.

And if you ever do want to spend a couple of hours talking about this stuff, please call because I always want to talk about this stuff.

So, yeah.

This, my crazy issue that gets me riled up is the anti-alcohol lobby is incredibly well-funded and incredibly powerful.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but if I were to be, it would be related to the anti-alcohol lobby.

Last year, the WHO indicated that no amount of alcohol consumption could be considered safe.

And in a very, very shoddy survey

Lots of healthcare medical and science professionals have said was completely weird.

So I could talk about that for hours too.

So yeah, we are facing that.

We're being wildly outspent as an alcohol industry, not Virginia, but alcohol in general across the country, wildly outspent by folks who are determined to conflate wine consumption with cigarette smoking

So those are major headwinds which are addressed in the study and certainly is an area where, going back to my education theme, Virginia wine producers broadly do not understand how much of an actual existential threat the anti-alcohol lobby is and California is spending money on that and so I've been trying to figure out how we can

You know, ride on those coattails because they've got more money to spend than we do.

But you make a great point there.

And so that's why I think listening to the consumer is more important now than it's ever been.

And that's why I think diversifying our target audience is more important now than it's ever been, because we really need to start casting a wider net if we're going to be driving up our wine sales.

To your other point,

Having a style of wine that your region is known for kind of can cut both ways.

Pinot Noir put Burgundy on the map, right?

And when you think Burgundy, those have been the most expensive wines in the world.

It certainly put the Willamette Valley on the map.

And I have a lot of admiration for the Willamette Valley marketing team and of course for the wines.

but it does in a way cut both directions.

And in fact, there has been a pile of marketing dollars spent in the Willamette Valley in particular on getting people to realize, hey, we're more than just Pino because in a weird way you can sort of paint yourself into a corner.

I often compare the Willamette Valley to Mendoza and Argentina, not because they have anything really in common in terms of geography or soil or climate or great variety,

but in Mendoza the first thing you think of is Malbec and that has been really great for Argentina.

It's put Argentina on the map and on the grocery store shelf but it is also limiting in the sense that they grow all these other really great wines and not letting the consumer know about the diversity of options available can eventually come back to sometimes bite you in the butt a little bit.

So

While there are unique challenges to marketing a region like Virginia where we have such a broad range of wines being made, I do also think it makes us a bit more unique.

And so while the California Cabernet Monolith might be starting to flag, I think we get to be a bit more, I don't know, easily maneuverable, right?

We're a bit more wily in that sense in that we aren't necessarily

associated so closely with one particular variety or one particular style of wine that we can come out of the gate with a couple of new unique things and people will be more open-minded to the fact that we are kind of still figuring out what our identity is and where we're headed.

So I see strengths and weaknesses on both sides of that and that's certainly a favorite topic of mine as well.

Perhaps a very glass of Pinot Noir.

Yes, Mr. Brown, thank you very much.

That's a really great question.

And the true truth is what's good for the gander is good for the goose.

Good for the goose, good for the gander.

Whichever direction that saying is supposed to be.

You know, of course, our study focused only on wineries and vineyards in GO Region 9, which includes, you know, the whole list of counties at the top of the report, ranging from Nelson all the way up to Fauquier.

But because Virginia wine is still

Small enough, maybe not geographically in terms of distance from each other, but because it's still small enough as an industry, we feel pretty strongly that the insight we've gained in GO Region 9 is basically a universal donor to, you know, supply really any Virginia Vineyard or Winery.

And certainly there's an Almero County, and I'm here in Almero County and just unfortunately didn't join you this evening in person.

And the reason why I mentioned that is that

I think it would be nice, I know we have wine tasting, wine rooms and wine tasting rooms, but to be able to have our wineries, because we have some really good, nice wineries in Albemarle, but a lot of them, they cannot have restaurants because they're considered a farm winery.

And that's something maybe the Board of Supervisors, we need to work on.

Because if you, like Barbersville,

People go there for the food and the wine, so if we were able to have more

Wineries have restaurants with good food because that's why people come to this area for the local good food.

I think that would make a difference.

The other thing is maybe the wineries could also work with the local restaurants and promoting some Virginia wines, promoting the local wines, bringing them in.

I think that would help also.

But I am concerned that we're limiting good restaurants along with good wine.

And to me, that also goes to the anti-alcohol people.

If you had restaurants with wine, you should be eating food with your wine.

And to me, that would go a lot farther if we would allow that.

No, I think you're totally right.

In the past, the Board of Supervisors has not been at all interested in hearing that feedback.

I don't know if there's any wiggle room on that.

I know that's always been kind of a sticking point.

But I mean, it's been working in Madison.

Early Mountain has a great restaurant as well.

Of course, Barbersville over there as well.

So there's certainly examples not too far off of it working really well and making for a more complete visitor experience.

But to your other point, you know, we did focus on how to how to be more present in restaurants, you know, both in in region and then also in our target markets as well.

And so we did identify a couple of challenges there relating to simple supply chain issues through to pricing, through to relationship building.

And so getting more Virginia wine onto restaurant wine lists, I think is very, very important.

Even more so from a marketing standpoint and a branding standpoint than it necessarily might be from a direct financial gain standpoint.

It's a really important part of the ecosystem.

We do, in Amamora County, we do produce a very good V&A.

Not so much, but.

Pardon?

The unions are very nice.

Yeah, they are very nice.

Yeah.

So what's next is my silent partner in crime, Maureen Kelly and I have our little heads together and figuring out a way that we can make sure that these really awesome recommendations don't die on the table and our new sort of

A baby infant project that we're trying to put together is forming a coalition of industry people that are involved in our trade organizations like the BWA, the Virginia Wineries Association, Virginia Vineyards Association, Winemakers Research Exchange, and trying to combine that with some private sector

folks as well and come up with an organization, a coalition that can make sure that these ideas are actually implemented, put into place, taken advantage of.

What doesn't show up in these slides are hours and hours and hours of conversations and folks are really excited about seeing some change, seeing some fresh air in the room.

And we really want to make sure that we don't let our foot up off the gas and lose any momentum.

Thank you, Matthew, as always.

Thank you all very much for your time today.

So, Go Virginia, Region 9.

Thank you, Shannon.

Thank you, Albemarle County EDA for helping with the Fund the Planning grant.

And we wanted to give you an update on where we are.

We will report to the Go Virginia Council on the October 29th.

and then we will just continue to work on this through the end of the year because we can.

But our goal right now is on implementation.

This is a planning grant, so we want to move into implementation.

So what we're trying to do is take all this information and this is, I don't know what version you got, 2.0 or something, we're on another version, couple versions past that.

But taking this report and

molding it into what Go Virginia might be able to help us fund.

But we're also, Matthew is meeting with Secretary Lowell, Secretary of Agriculture, tomorrow, someday soon.

And we're talking to, so we're looking at different pots of money, quite frankly, so that we can get it all done.

The Virginia Wine Board is interested, the Virginia Wine Marketing Office is interested, Virginia Tourism is interested.

For the first time in my 20-some years in this industry, people are actually communicating with one another, and it's kind of exciting.

And we do want to keep our foot on the gas.

And we know that the next step through the Go Virginia process is the implementation grant application due January.

We're still working through the numbers, because it's all about math.

Life is a math problem.

When your genes don't fit, it's a math problem.

And so that's where we are.

That's where we are just trying to get all the recommendations and where there might be funding sources.

How much is it going to cost to write a curriculum?

How are we working with PVCC?

All the things.

And so it's just head down.

We're looking at the Charlottesville Biohub as a model.

We're looking at the food and beverage accelerator, and we think we're going to be some sort of hybrid.

But the coalition, I think, is somehow non-negotiable, and that takes time and energy and a person

to lead that because you are convening people and educating people.

And that's a full-time job, especially as diverse as our industry, even our region is, which represents about one third of the wineries in Virginia.

And to your point, because we represent a third of the industries in Virginia, what we're looking at and the state is looking at us to do is create a model that can be deployed statewide.

because every region is indeed different.

We share commonalities and what have you, but that's the ultimate goal.

So as you know, the implementation grant would be a two-year run.

And it's because it's been a big year in the planning grant world.

So that would be a two-year commitment.

And so I guess the short and long is that I'll be back.

and with more concrete numbers and thoughts and looking for more feedback because this has truly been an iterative process.

Every time Matt would come back from the visit, he's like, you know, an hour and it's been marvelous to really come up with a plan and because I've been talking about this for any number of years that I believe Virginia wine is at a crossroads and we're either gonna

Shoot for the Moon, or we might as well just sit back and say, oh, another one closed, because I'm seeing it in Nelson.

I'm at that 20-year mark, and I'm seeing vineyards and wineries sell.

And sometimes, if they listen with a succession plan, and sometimes not so well.

No, I appreciate the time.

I'm really pleased to sit here and share this information with you.

And I think the great thing about the planning grant is that Go Virginia can't fund everything.

We have boundaries.

That's great.

Any other questions?

All right.

We really appreciate your support.

Truly, it took us right over to the finish line.

All right.

And so everybody has in front of them a stapled set of papers.

And that has on one page the draft terms and then sort of that preamble on the first page.

The version that went out in the packet had a formatting issue.

So I'm hoping that the paper copy is a little bit more.

So Emily,

Emily and I sat down, Richie was involved, we went over the information that came out of the joint session with the Board of Supervisors, information that we had put together beforehand, and we came up with this set of bullet points that we wanted to present to the board.

We talked about various ways, got feedback from the county executive's office about how

who take the next step.

And the conclusion was probably the best way was for the EDA to say, this is what we want and then present it to the board.

And as the preamble says, we've got an opportunity to talk about it today.

We'll have time in November.

And there's a board meeting, board of supervisors meeting where we will present whatever the EDA has present, has voted to approve to the board

So, you know, what we tried to catch was the things that we felt like we could do, the areas that we felt like we should focus on, talked about.

And you know, some of this does include the things that the

So I don't know if people have any thoughts or comments.

No, I think where we started with the draft of the term sheet, and again, we're sort of approaching this as a term sheet and that would lead to an MOU draft, but just focus on the terms before we get focused on the legal language around it.

And so everything in here is related to what we went over and prepared in advance of that joint meeting with the Board of Supervisors this summer.

and really everything except for the last bullet were items that the EDA has discussed.

I think we sort of modified them a bit in response to the feedback that we heard from the board at that joint meeting.

Any thoughts, questions?

One of the things I always look for, it's a very difficult exercise, but what could be missing?

This is a pretty comprehensive list.

I'm just wondering, just thinking like with the Manning Institute, $100 million in thoughts and investment, the UVA was talking about

buying half of Charlottesville that has students.

I'm just thinking what seems to be missing here is some kind of connection between us and the significant investments that the university is making.

And I mean, maybe that's just outside the scope, but I mean, we're married to the university,

Oh, that's a question, Don.

Well, I'm not going to claim to be

The university as a state agency, as a state actor, sort of has its own, right?

It can act on its own.

Technically, its property resides within the county, but they've got their own, for example, building inspectors and all of that.

So they don't, they can let us know what they're doing, but they don't have to let us know what they're doing.

And he's not even quoting it here.

It's a delicate balance because we want to be engaged with them.

We want to be partners with them whenever we can.

I think that the Biohub piece out at North Fork is a great example of how we're supporting the Biohub and UVA is supporting them in that UVA facility.

But in terms of how we can, that's a great question, how do we engage them better

to mutually support the activities from each other, right?

Because all these people that they're going to employ at the Manning Institute are going to want to live nearby.

So how do we, right, support?

And they're going to want to, we hope, and this is again more biotic,

things that come from that into viable ongoing businesses.

I don't know the best way to do that.

I don't know the, is it the PAC?

Right, which now only meets, you know, whenever there's white smoke coming from a chimney.

That was Sidney John's, Bill Almaro's.

Not on the death of a pope.

Right, it's not public anymore, right?

It used to be public when it was the PACC.

And so that sort of changed, right?

It's no longer hot.

were not kept in the loop as well.

And I don't know the best way to do that, but it's a great point that they're the primary driver of so much in the community and that how can we help them and how can they help us do that?

No, not a better idea.

Just think one of the scope of the MOVU versus Project Enable 2.0.

I think that discussion is a great discussion.

I think from my perspective, I think it's a great point.

And when you look at what are now sub-bullets in this new paper copy version, I can think of ways in which our county is currently partnering with the university and potentially other local and regional partners on almost all of these issues.

And so I think it's,

I would second that as well.

I think that that is a conversation about how we could be essential to the success of the university.

I mean, because technically they don't really need to consult us.

In a sense, they are eating up taxable revenue.

But their success is really part and parcel with the county itself.

And so I think maybe reminding them and coming up with ways that we can kind of show them via Project Enable or something on that end of the spectrum would be beneficial for us to kind of think through and take on in a more meaningful way, for sure.

I guess the question I had, and it really talks about the statutory powers piece, because we're not enumerating them, and we've seen them a handful of times, is that how comfortable, I guess, the board would be with this authority

being more aggressive in using some of those powers.

Can you tease that out a little bit more?

I'm trying to.

Correct.

I won't say that I understand the statutory powers completely.

I'd look at Richie for that and he'd say, well, we'd look into it or something.

But that was my understanding that we didn't have to.

Right.

That's a novel approach.

With that, what I'm hearing from businesses is that the county on our side is that the permitting process takes so long to do everything.

And I know we have business attraction.

Well, you can attract businesses, but if it takes you a couple of years to get

Almost anything done.

I mean, we've actually lost out.

And that's our fault.

That's the Board of Supervisors fault.

We've actually lost out on land development because it's taken so long that they had to sell it to somebody else.

So in my opinion, that has to be part of it.

I don't mind personally the aggression part because I would like to even see the EDA here tell the supervisors just what we were discussing regarding some old ordinances and statutes modernize them and for example I talked about the restaurants you can't have a restaurant at a winery if it's a farm winery

Why not?

Let's redo that.

That's gonna help business.

So I don't know, a lot of these things were done way back when.

For what reason, I don't know.

I'm sure there was a good reason, but maybe update things.

So that's my take, and I'll probably get slaughtered for that since I go to a meeting.

Well, I think the,

Sort of history in the old MOU had, I don't know that you specifically had limitations on the use of the powers, but there was some hesitance to let EDA do everything that they would be authorized to do under the statute.

And so I think what we're trying to say here is that the board is not restricting the EDA from using any of its powers.

I think the important part is that we can be using them in support of the plan and the strategic plan project enablement and what the county wants us to do as opposed to going off and just deciding we want a little building, doing our own thing and whatever.

And so, in fact, we talked a little bit when we were working on this about whether

I think as much as the EDA can tie into the board and keep that communication between the two going, which I think is, I don't know, maybe lacking in the past a little bit, but keep that communication going between the two that you're both working together.

and the county executive's office.

That's powerful.

Any other thoughts?

Well, I think probably where we would leave it is,

We have time at the next meeting, and so I would encourage you to say you haven't had a chance to read this, think about it.

Great.

So thank you all.

I feel like we were just here.

But we do have a number of things that I wanted to share some updates on.

One is that we are hiring a new management analyst.

We're really excited about the candidate pool that we have.

This person really, the Economic Development Office has three funds that we manage.

Most departments in the county have one.

And so we are really excited that we have what looks like to be a really great tool to help do that work for us and really make sure that we're making good data informed decisions and doing our good job with stewardship.

I feel like we've been talking about the economic development strategic plan forever.

I'm really excited to share that the Notice of Intent to Award was posted this morning.

And so that means we have a vendor and we are required under state law to post that Notice of Intent to Award for 10 days before we can actually issue

formally issued the award.

But so we'll be getting that under control over the next couple of weeks and then really ready to launch as we get into November, which is exciting.

Chair Long and Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley will serve as liaisons to a stakeholder committee that will help give feedback at key points in the plan development process, which we talked about when we talked to you about this over the summer.

And we'll plan to bring, probably not every single month, but we'll plan to bring items to this body as well at your regular meetings so that you have an opportunity to provide feedback as well.

Just some selected events.

October is wine month, so great timing.

I can't believe that didn't come up yet.

So we have, there are 44 vineyards in Albemarle County, which is just incredible.

How many?

44.

Not all of them have tasting rooms, so some of them are truly just vineyards.

but they are a key sector in the local economy and we just appreciate all the work that they do.

$6.2 million in annual local revenues direct from wineries comes into the county every year and that's not accounting for, that's not a full like economic impact number, that's just literal checks related to sales tax and real estate from the work that they do.

And also, of course, I'm gonna just say out loud for the go to the order that we are the wine region of the world.

And so the CACBB has been working with local wineries to take advantage of that recognition in Food and Wine magazine to try to continue to keep Virginia on people's minds.

I'm gonna take advantage of some of the tourism opportunities that come with that distinction.

Many of you were at our Governor's event that we had a couple weeks ago with the really incredible announcement of the growth of AFTON Scientific.

At the Virginia Economic Developers Association conference that I was able to attend a couple weeks ago, we learned that the majority of big wins in the Commonwealth are driven by local economic developers' work.

And a lot of that is business retention and expansion.

So it's growing companies that start in our communities and the environment is such that they're able to succeed and grow here.

And so it's just absolutely amazing to get to celebrate action, scientific growth.

On paper, it's 200 jobs and a $200 million capital investment.

They already have plans to increase those numbers because of the work that they're doing and the market opportunities that they see.

And so thank you all for your support on that.

We also, just a couple other quick things.

We attended the Biodiscovery Summit that Civo Biohub hosted a couple of weeks ago over at the code building.

It was the third year that they did

That event, and it was sold out, which is really incredible and a great opportunity to hear what other biotech ecosystems are doing across the country and some good lessons learned for our region as well.

And then one of the other things at the VITA conference that I wanted to share with you all is that CNBC recognized Virginia as the top state for business in the country.

If you're at the governor's event, I think we said that seven times.

And the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, which is the state agency that focuses on economic development is really, they're really excited about that distinction, but they really don't want to lose it.

But the top five states, there's a little bit of an in and out.

on who is recognized each year.

And they really want to keep it.

So that's just a couple.

UVA dropped out of the top 10 and the law school dropped down to 14 in the record.

They used to, when I was in law school, they referred to all 14 schools in the top 10.

So the business retention and expansion work is some of the kind of the bread and butter stuff that an economic development office does.

So this is just a quick snapshot of where we've been over the past couple of weeks since our last meeting, continuing to focus on the defense and intelligence space, but also keeping a close eye on our biotech partners as well.

And then a couple things going on in the ecosystem.

I'm going to stop doing air quotes on that probably at our next meeting.

But I wanted to share out loud a really exciting new institute that the University of Virginia in partnership with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced a couple weeks ago.

This is the National Security Data and Policy Institute.

The Batten School for Public Policy at UVA and the School of Data Science at UVA are the two sort of partner schools on this new institute.

And it's focused on national security.

They have $20 million for the first two years committed from the federal government to seed the institute, which is just an incredible number.

And what they intend to do is to really

be a connection point with the intelligence community and then to help direct and pull resources for among all the different schools in the university for research.

So if the intelligence community is identifying problems and threats, that's sort of a connection point in to drive some research at the university.

So it itself will,

helped to draw down even more federal funds that would be funding specific research projects that would come out of that collaboration.

And it's a real tangible investment by the federal government in our community in the national security and intelligence space.

So we celebrate really hard with our colleagues at the University of Virginia because we think this is another one of those whole community items to celebrate.

We also attended the TomTom Regional Economic Forum.

That was a small meeting that was hosted by the Friends of Seville.

UVA innovates new

Effort, and the Chonton Foundation to talk about regional economic activity and how we can all better work together to tell the story of our community.

And then also staff have been meeting with the new business manager for our region at the state level and working together to map out business visits with her to stay connected with our local companies.

I think that's all I have.

That is all I have.

A few questions or comments?

Not in submarines anymore, in front of their computers.

All right, so any questions, comments from the board?

All right, then we are adjourned until the winter of 19.

Thank you.

Thank you, Thomas.