Economic Development Authority Meeting   5/20/2025

So I will call the meeting to order.

We have a forum here.

We do not have any remote participants.

We do not have any members of the public here.

Do we have anyone online who has signed up?

All right.

We're going to fly through the minutes.

There are a little sparse and we're going to talk for example about sort of the past and then it's not until next month.

So financial report.

You have the financial report.

Indy is not on.

We added, we're working on getting the payments for the wine implementation grant and the innovation quarter, both Lake O'Virginia, Natchez.

We're going to get those paid out.

And then at the top, you'll notice everyone but Centora has officially paid their bond admin fees for the year.

So there's some income for the EDA.

Any questions, comments?

All right.

Unfinished business, I'll just report that Emily, Jeff, and I met at Ed Rogers' Funumos, and we will be reporting any meeting about.

So on to new business.

Strategic plan work session, led by me and Emily.

So the board packet, which we sent a link to all as part of your agenda packet, the board packet has

all of the technical appendices that will comprise the final report.

We tried to be a little more, a little more discerning, but it's a big document and so it's hard to read all that online.

And also I hope that you return to it again.

Either way, it's hard to read offline too.

You've got to come with, because I've seen the performance agreements agenda, financial report, and the email you sent.

It was in a separate.

It's funny, I don't understand.

You sent it separately from.

Hers is thicker because the email that you got from economic development

This is not our board agenda.

One of my favorite slides in a slideshow to staff on board agendas is how thick board packets can be when they're printed out, because you don't realize.

Okay, so we thought that it merited a proper work session with the EDA to go through the draft strategy framework.

So what you received by email, what you have in front of you are copy and what I'll go through a much condensed version of in slides.

is not the finished document but sort of the synthesis of all of the data analysis that the consultants have done and then also all the stakeholder engagement and the feedback and insights that they've sort of received.

feedback that they received and then insights that they kind of drew and gleaned from those.

And so this deliverable is sort of what they call discovery insights.

So kind of trying to pull all the data and the feedback together and then showing that to you so that you can sort of see how that then

sort of manifested in a draft strategy.

So the document in front of you has a page for each of those discovery insights.

And then the back half is really the strategy document.

The EDA and the board both have work sessions on their agendas this week.

The residents team also met with county leadership last week and we provided some feedback as well.

And so the idea is that the feedback that we get sort of in this phase will

drive sort of a fine revised strategy that then will turn into a finished plan document that will have an implementation chapter.

So the feedback now that you provide will help us know, are we on track?

Are there major changes that need to happen?

Are there things that are missing or things that you don't think should be there?

And then that'll start to kind of like drive the next phase of work from the consultants.

So we're expecting to have a draft strategic plan document from them by the end of June.

And then you all have a joint meeting with the Board of Supervisors on August the 13th.

Then I know some of you will be virtual for, and that'll be the meeting where the board will have the option to take action on adopting that plan.

So that's sort of where we're at in the process and what today's about.

So I'm going to step through some slides.

So they had 1312 Discovery Insights as part of the work that they've done.

So just very briefly, and again, each of these has sort of a page of content to go with them in the full version of this document.

There are a ton of strengths in Albemarle County.

When you talk about asset-based design and strategy work, we have a lot of assets to be really proud of.

We heard a lot from folks about a desire to balance the tax base or diversify the tax base.

The commercial tax base takes a reliance away from residential and grow the commercial industrial sector.

The next three are really responding to the cluster analysis, which is the new way to say target industries.

And the previous economic or the current economic development strategic plan has seven target industries.

They analyze six as part of their work.

And really the discovery insights here are sort of laying out that these three biotech life sciences, intelligence and national security, food processing and agribusiness are the three that they're recommending that we focus on in this plan.

A more targeted approach helps us just be a little bit more strategic with resources.

And there's a lot of good data and again, asset driven reasons why these are the three that they're recommending.

The next one is about infrastructure.

They have this identified as land planning.

I would say it's really the land development process that the county is responsible for as being an opportunity to update and refine to help better meet business needs.

There's a great spirit of entrepreneurship in Albemarle.

When you talk to folks from around the country, there's a lot of places where economic developers are focused on just getting people to think about starting their own small business, trying something on their own.

And that's not a challenge that we have here in Albemarle.

There's a lot of great examples of entrepreneurship in action.

And so ScanLite,

Those businesses is really the next area for us to focus on.

We have a ton of talent.

And again, when you talk to folks across the Commonwealth and the country, a lot of economic developers talk about how they don't have people.

You think about Southwest Virginia and other manufacturing cores where they're seeing population decrease.

That's not a challenge we have here.

And we actually have a pipeline of youth who move here for college and then often are moving on to somewhere else.

And so what would it look like to retain more of that talent here?

UVA and PVCC are powerful anchors that can really help us on workforce development areas.

We also have a really strong workforce system.

There's a ton of organizations that work in that space and have a lot to offer.

They sort of self-acknowledge that they often are working in silos.

And we think with a more focused cluster approach, that then gives us an opportunity to focus on building those career pipeline pathways.

where you can really have a workforce system that's oriented towards the sectors that you have jobs in.

And so you're opening up career pathways to folks at all levels.

Good segue into access gaps persist.

And so again, having an aligned workforce development system really opens up opportunities to bring everybody in the county to see themselves in the jobs that we'll have here in the future.

The last one is really about marketing and branding.

We're full of promise, but we don't do a good enough job telling our story.

We heard a couple of times during the stakeholder engagement in different ways, but to paraphrase, the thought was Albemarle County is a place that people talk about living and playing in, and it's not a place where we talk about working in.

And so what would it look like to think about this place as a great place to do business and to grow your career?

So I talked about the three sectors that they're recommending that we focus on.

This is some of the data and the assets that sort of back up that recommendation for focus.

And then this is a draft vision statement.

So Albemarle County is rooted in innovation open for investment, a destination for entrepreneurs, makers, growers, and thinkers, where bold ideas take root, businesses scale, partnerships thrive, leading the way in Virginia's next innovation economy.

These are the five goals.

I like to think of the top three or the three across the top as really the cluster goals.

So really focusing in on intelligence and national security innovation, biotech life sciences innovation, a modern agribusiness economy,

And then the bottom two are really more about the infrastructure, the economic development infrastructure in the broadest sense.

Goal four is really focused on talent and entrepreneurship, scaling businesses and workforce development so that our folks are successful.

Candidates in the Jobs of the Future.

And then the final one is really about being what they're calling investment ready.

So a lot of focus on the development process, county policy and codes, that kind of thing.

And so for each of these, there are a handful of strategies that would go under them.

And you can see they kind of cross.

Some of these are workforce related.

Some of these are convening.

Get the folks in the intelligence and national security sector together, talking to each other, talking to the county.

on a periodic basis.

Storytelling is the last one.

How can we make Albemarle synonymous with intelligence and national security in the mid-Atlantic?

The first two there are Renata Futures and the Innovation Corridor.

And so some of this stuff is stuff that we're already working on and seeking to grow those opportunities there.

On the biotech and life sciences side, a lot of similar ideas.

So the new things on this one are really focusing on infrastructure for scale up and commercialization.

So the EDA

recently supported the Commonwealth bioxcellerator project that Sebel Biohub is operating at North Fork.

That's one really important piece of that business growth cycle in the biotech sector.

Where those companies will land next is the next challenge on the horizon.

When you think about the types of biotech companies that we have,

in our community, a lot of them are startups.

And then they grow to maybe five people on the team.

And then as they move to 10 to 50 people on the team, they're still very small.

And they're sort of rapidly trying to grow the commercialization pathway for the R&D that they're doing.

And they don't have the capital or the time to build a building.

So if there's not wet lab space for them to move into, their opportunities here can be a little limited if we don't have a building product that's available for their needs.

And so that's sort of the thought behind that one.

Continue work with regional partnerships.

Leverage the work that Seva Biohub is leading on the BioBridge grant that the county is participating in on workforce.

business attraction work in the biotech space.

So what is the county and how are we supporting others going into trade shows, conferences, et cetera, to grow the awareness of opportunities here and then growth capital.

Goal three on the agribusiness side, one of the things that we heard from all of the stakeholder groups that we convened was challenges with the land use and zoning policies that can make it hard for them to be successful as they look at adapting their business.

And one feedback that we got from the agribusiness roundtable was this idea that the modern agribusiness has light industrial type needs that you cannot do in the rural area where agribusinesses are located.

And so that creates a challenge.

And so that first one is really a recommendation to dig into that a little bit more, support some of the

infrastructure needs of agribusiness, food processing facilities, co-packing facilities, broadband, cold storage, things that they need to be successful.

The

Getting the agribusinesses talking to each other was sort of what's behind number three and four and five, really.

They have a lot of common challenges that manifest a little bit differently.

So it looks a little bit different if you're a turkey producer versus a fruit producer, but the base challenge might be the same.

And so finding ways to continue to connect those groups together

And I'm talking about this one in particular, but it kind of delves into the national security as well.

Does UVA and PPCC have, I don't know this, have like cyber courses?

For example, right?

Because if you look at Colorado Springs, that's kind of what they did.

So we have an ability, you know, to train people to a degree.

At least you get a college degree in cyber.

There's a lot of universities that have that now.

And the same thing with, you know, kind of biotech.

I mean, I don't know if, is UVA kind of spring-loaded around these

And I would say on the biotech side, yes, and that's probably why we have, I mean, that's, there's sort of a through line from UVA's academic coursework to the startup community that we have here.

Yeah.

PVCC does have a cybersecurity certificate.

Yeah, so the BioBridge grant that this group has supported on the biotech side is really starting that getting K-12, K-Tech

PVCC, UVA, from across different schools within the university, employers in the biotech space, the localities, getting everybody in the same room together and working with a consultant to work on what are the gaps in that ecosystem?

Where are we aligning and where are we misaligned on what the needs are?

And the goal is, the study will identify all the gaps.

The next step would be then to start to fill them.

and the idea is that we're going to learn so much in the process of doing that for the biotech sector and that we could then apply that same method to some of the other sectors that we're focused on.

Obviously if we want to keep young

Absolutely.

I'm very well aware of that.

But that's not exactly.

I notice that you keep mentioning turkey farms.

How many do we have?

We have one, but you keep mentioning turkey farms, which I have no problem with, you know, $200 turkey.

like what you said in the turkey market.

Well, you're not mentioning the wineries.

Yes, you're right.

You're right.

For sure.

And you buy a turkey.

Me neither.

Nice to visit, I've been there multiple times.

So, well, I do know why I just spurred all these questions but in terms of the infrastructure.

It's both, yeah it's both.

There's food packing and that you know there's that's dry packing and then there's beverage filling facilities

Not at this point.

So this is really setting up the, are these the right things for us to then dive into at this stage.

This plan wouldn't, when this plan is adopted in August, it wouldn't have solved, it wouldn't have found all those locations and solved that challenge.

It would be, that's the work of the next couple of years for us to work through that.

Can we

The last one on this one is really just supporting the agritourism economy.

to come and play and do things.

I think, and that was sort of my question, because tourism is not, tourism as a big category is not one of the things we're focusing on.

The thought there was, let's focus on the trade sector piece of the tourism industry.

So agribusiness includes, to Kurtley's point, the wineries, which are a major driver of economic activity in that region.

You all also recently supported and currently in the early start stages of getting underway is the implementation grant that Nelson County is spearheading for the region on the planning grant that they did which uncovered that there's, you know, with the equipment and the grapes that we have

Already in Albemarle County, there's more capacity to bottle and sell wine than we currently do.

And that's because of access to markets.

So most of the wineries are selling out of their tasting rooms and through their wine clubs.

And wholesaling is an opportunity, better access into markets.

is a huge opportunity for the wineries to, without expanding their physical footprint, be able to export out of Albemarle County much more product than they presently do.

And then there's also opportunities for business stream diversification, so sort of implicit in 3.1 is also this idea that

Modern agribusinesses need to have a couple of different lines of revenue streams.

And so if you think about, I like to think about King Family, which has the grapes and the wine business, but they also have an event space where they have weddings and private events.

They have the polo matches, which bring a lot of folks onto their property, which gives them opportunities to sell their wine.

Are we saying anywhere that the county's codes or their

there are ordinances and zoning.

And the reason why I brought up this other stuff is you all need to know, which I think you're all aware of, but we're gonna have two new board members come January.

And depending on who's,

It looks like great candidates and everything.

But you never know what the future is going to bring that can undo a lot of this stuff.

Because if you get board members in that say, hey, we don't want expanded business.

And we actually have people saying, can you stop people from moving in?

So there are a lot of opinions out there.

I've gotten that numerous times.

So that worries me that if the slow process, I'd rather like get something in there that we can hold people accountable to.

And that message that, I mean, there's always been that population for the 25 years I have lived here that has said,

Basically, can we pull the drawbridge up and stop people from coming?

That population's always there.

All right, Don.

But let's talk just, if you go back, I had one thing on 3.6, and this sort of touches on Crozet a little bit.

But we hear it anywhere these places want to do events, right?

The board has been through this any number of times with

How loud can it be?

What's the measurement from the edge of the property in the decibels when you talked about having events?

But the other piece is the lodging piece, right?

And I don't know that Crozet is zoned properly, but it feels, and from everything that I've heard from people in the wine business, that a lodging opportunity in Crozet would do gangbusters.

Certainly six months of the year, probably nine months of the year, especially if you build in, you know, one, looking out to the western part of the county, but also down to Nelson, but two, turning around and looking back toward Charlottesville and the university for events this past weekend, for example.

six or seven weekends a year for football if they do what they're supposed to do in terms of helping drive some income and revenue toward the county as well.

Well, I do know that, I mean,

A hotel was supposed to be part of the downtown Crozet development, but I'm not sure.

And there was one proposed as part of the Albemarle business campus, too.

I don't remember.

I'm not sure.

I feel like there was...

There were multiple iterations.

So one point there was talk about hotel.

But anyway, trying to show that, get that piece, that lodging piece.

But again, you can't

As of right now, the growth area being limited, right?

What does rural lodging to support these things look like?

Whether I'm thinking about Nelson County now and Veritas having the farmhouse there that they have where you can stay on site, right?

And maybe part of our economic development strategy should be flexibility within our zoning and codes and everything because our county is so many different parts and something may not fit over here, but it may fit over here.

And this is the rural area.

It would fit, it makes sense.

I really truly believe that we need flexibility because it's too much like, nope, can't do it, there's a line, you can't do it.

I know that's my, it's like, but I do, I do agree.

We got to look at that, a smaller area, but that's reality.

And I think that's why I say flexibility.

You know, it may, something, a business may want to be there and it may not work out, but then another business may work out.

if we don't have flexibility or come before the board of supervisors or a special use permit, but have the staff look to say, hey, that would actually be a good location in that area.

But where do we say that?

We do say that.

Yeah, when we get to goal five.

Yeah, that's in goal five.

Nevermind.

Yep.

Our consultants had so much fun spending, they started the day with the Intel National Security crowd and they ended the day, 12 hours of meetings, they ended the day with the agribusiness community and it was riveting the whole day through.

So goal four is about talent and entrepreneurs staying scaling and succeeding.

The items on here are really trying to get at that aligned workforce development system and also one of the demographic findings that is just fascinating if you find that type of thing fascinating is that based on the number of 18 to 24 year olds we have in our community,

and based on the number of 55 and plus year olds in our community you would expect there to be more 25 to 55, 54 year olds than there actually are and what you have is you give a lot of youth at the university and you have a lot of folks who years ago had a great time at the university and decided that they wanted to retire here

But in the middle they went somewhere else and they lived their career, they had their career, they built their family somewhere else.

And so the first couple on here are really trying to get at what economic developers call stickiness, which is that we have folks graduating from our high schools and PVCC and UVA every year.

and what would it look like for them to stay here and be able to make Albemarle a really good choice for them.

And there's implicit in that, looking at wages and cost of living, but also fun and connection.

And that's what the first three on here are really about.

How do you make sure that UVA and PVCC students know that they have good options here?

How do you help them build a social network here

working with the Chamber on the unprofessional network.

And then number three, some folks will kind of raise an eyebrow at part of the competitive benchmark analysis work that the consultants did.

They looked at, they compared us to 10 university towns, counties that have one of our target sectors as well and looked at a lot of different demographic features and lifestyle features.

and we ranked high on restaurants.

So I want to recognize we ranked high on restaurants and we ranked high on outdoor rec, but nightlife.

So national touring concerts and clubs and those types of things.

We actually were towards the bottom of the list on that.

One of the issues that I brought up when we saw the session is that we are in a somewhat, Virginia being the way we're set up and the fact that the city is in the middle and we're surrounding them and a lot of that stuff is here, you know, some of the comparison isn't

For the lifestyle ones, it was for the metric.

So we get the city's club.

I am a little

perplexed by experiential retail?

That's the store with the climbing wall.

That's the yoga studio, the yoga shop that also has classes and go snuggle yoga.

Those types of experiences that younger generations are not shopping in stores.

They're mostly shopping online.

And so to get

That is the type of thing with the batting cages and the driving rages and that sort of thing.

Is that what's going in there?

Off the hook, check it out.

Just look it up.

So getting back to this then in the entertainment options, right, the state allows us now to have those... Dora.

I think they did that also in Stonefield.

But not now, right?

Well, I mean, if you've got the world around you, that's right.

And then the bottom half are more workforce development.

So again, really aligned working with our partners to align, you know, what are the programs that we're offering to get folks on to career paths?

And are they matched up with the jobs and employment opportunities that we have?

On the entrepreneurship side, making sure that all the entrepreneurial organizations in town kind of know what their thing is and what everyone else's thing is.

And so there's no wrong front door to the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

If you want to start a business or grow your business or scale your business and you call one of the organizations that work in that space, they would say,

We're not able to help you right here, but here is exactly who you need to talk to at this organization.

And I'm going to, I'm going to warm hand you off to that person so that you get what you need.

And then this is not one, so when we talk about implementation, this is not one that economic development office would have a lead role in, but really, you know, recognizing that housing development and childcare initiatives are workforce challenges, recruitment and retention challenges.

and to be supportive of opportunities in that space.

I do think there's an opportunity for the Economic Development Office to find

Paul, and to be able to grow.

And that gets also into what does the zoning in that type of location allow, right?

So that's maybe a modernization piece.

But if we can encourage those entrepreneurs, right, we're doing two different, we're doing economic growth two ways.

to be the most investment ready county, we're ready to compete, build and lead.

This is where we really get into those land use and code.

So a lot of these, you know, it's one sentence, but there's a lot that you can stack under that.

So modernized permitting and development process and zoning code.

We did specifically meet with the development community.

actually twice through the stakeholder engagement process with the consultants, but we heard in every single session that we had.

So the Intel National Security folks, the biotech life sciences folks, even the workforce development folks talking about the challenges of working through the county's development process, even if you have, even for a buy-write project, the timeline for review can be quite extensive.

Conflicting feedback can sometimes come in and it's a challenge for folks to figure out how to navigate that and so that's an area where the county could be a real partner really to all of the site and building needs across the community by looking at opportunities to streamline that a bit.

The second one is really about getting a more active dialogue with the development sector to understand what those challenges are from a customer standpoint and seeing how the county can be a partner in navigating that process.

We have a business retention and expansion program.

We talk about it every EDA meeting.

So this is really more of a keep on working to expand how we or formalize how we do our visitation work and look at strategic opportunities in that program.

And that's really sort of a classic economic development thing.

The bulk of the jobs in your community are not coming from the really exciting and fun announcements that happen with the governor, but really from the existing businesses that you have growing.

And so making sure that we're in good dialogue with our existing business communities, sort of the bread and butter work that we do.

The next one is an exciting one.

I skipped one.

Now I feel like I can't say that 5.4 is not exciting.

It's very exciting.

Working with the EDA, again, this is kind of a keep doing it.

You all are already looking for opportunities to have P3s, public-private partnerships, and being the conduit for the county to be able to do those.

Keep doing that.

Also very exciting, maintaining a pipeline of sites.

So you all have heard us talk about Rivanna Futures and site readiness work that we're doing and the grant that we're going after.

In 10 years when Rivanna Futures is full and developed, what's next?

We don't have a strong answer for that right now.

And so the work ahead and the recruitment that we have underway right now is really identifying the right person to help us advance the work of really managing a site inventory in a way that we haven't done before.

you know, once you have sites, then you need infrastructure.

So to continue to be a good partner and work with the water, sewer and energy broadband capacity in our region.

I'm gonna say something regarding modernizing and I think that also includes flexibility, but

I think the EDA, I think y'all need to come out with a strong, strong statement to the board saying, these are the things that need, not everything on there, but you need to do certain things.

Do you mind if I,

At risk of beating a dead horse, I queued Google.

So approximately 5% of Albemarle County's land is designated developable area and open for development, while the remaining 95% is designated as rural and intended for agriculture, natural resources, and protection.

If I was king for a day, I would make goal number one, changing that.

I mean, I don't know how we do all these things with 5% of the land in this.

And maybe that's simplistic, maybe I'm missing something.

But 5%, that's a lot less than 95%.

And so how do we do that?

I mean, just, somebody explained to me.

Did you guys all know that?

Only five of them?

How much is UVA already under?

Right, that's- So I'm like, you know, UVA is great.

It's a blessing and a curse because it owns so much land.

I mean, there is room in the development area, but I do think the board, for the first time that I'm hearing in five years, is that we may be just being taped together.

And watched.

Okay.

I mean, there might be opportunities to look at certain areas where we were even talking about like switching, okay, this developed five acres development area here for five acres rural area because it fits better here, doing things like that.

But just

Trying to be creative, trying to say what makes sense because in some of our development areas, if it's along a river like I think Supervisor Galloway mentions along a river, that's not going to be developable because you have to be so many feet from the stream and everything like that.

So we might start looking at things 29 North.

I think that's, and that's my area, but I mean that in the future, I think that's where we're going to see a lot of the growth.

It's the absent that.

I just don't know how we're going to get from point A to point B. I really don't.

All these things are great.

Yeah.

There's a way.

So this is just, I'm wrapping up now.

So this is some of the big picture metrics.

So in the full report that you absolutely read coming into here, you know that each goal has some metrics that they've identified to go with them.

But these are sort of the big picture goals.

So business expansion measured by growth in jobs, companies, and investment in the sectors that we've identified.

Growing that 25 to 44 year old working age population.

So filling out that donut.

back in, and then looking at the commercial tax base growth, which has really helped me look at diversifying the tax base.

So we are tomorrow having the board work session.

That is on the agenda for 2-15, I think.

And then we'll work, sort of take all the feedback that we're getting this week and last week,

Work to refine the strategy and then develop a plan document that, again, you will see on August the 13th.

But we can have lots of conversations between now and then.

So this is not the last time that we get to talk about this for sure.

And that is all I have on this topic.

Yeah, I mean, I think everybody's head is in the same place in terms of keying in on this growth potential and how do we get where needed may be and what does that all mean logistically, right?

Implementation, we have a lot of goals.

We have sort of, I guess we'll get action.

I guess that was my question.

There will be some kind of actions planned probably as general actions, but

Right.

You're a military guy.

Everything's in logistics.

Right.

It's how we execute.

Right.

Exactly.

How do you get it done?

But I was curious about, I know the county has done previous versions of build out analysis and things like that for maybe various land uses and whatnot.

So I was curious to Supervisor LaPisto's point about being creative and flexible rather than

throwing hard lines, except the one with Kaylin, that's a good one.

But anyway, there's definitely potential there.

I'm curious about, and there's a lot of detailed questions we can follow up with later, but I think those comments point in the direction

You know, some of the recommendations point in a direction that has to be looked at, but needs to be done very sensitively in context of our community goals and values, right?

Because that's where it's going to get twisted up.

So if we can have a sensitive and thoughtful approach, a informed

And maybe it's to your point about appropriate land uses in different character areas or regions or zones.

Because certainly we can accomplish a lot of this, I believe, in the context of the rural area, in the context of the rural preservation values we have and the tourism economy and all that.

to help attract and keep people here for the quality of life thing, which apparently we do very well in the study.

But I mean, I was curious about there's market potential for these various business sectors.

Market potential obviously drives growth, but we can capture that market potential.

But then there's also the business community's growth projections

What they feel that market potential is.

And those might not match.

And their business projections are influenced by all these other factors.

It might be different if they had site readiness and all the right workforce, trained workforce, pipeline, and everything just perfect.

It might match market sector, I imagine.

I don't know if it's less or more.

But then there's community readiness.

So if we imagine those as bubbles, different sizes.

Community readiness has to do with both the community being ready for this, right?

And some of the points about the sensitivity, but also the infrastructure and our zoning, our site readiness, basically, instead of thinking about the site readiness program.

So that potential to accommodate this may change and grow over time as we transition to being more ready as a community in figuring this out.

Anyway, those are my thoughts.

I think there's a way there, but I was curious about translating market demand, the business growth projections and needs to appropriate metrics, right?

Which are not all the same, not just land.

It's not just, maybe it's not just the 595.

It's redevelopment potential.

There's a bunch of different sort of land use specific metrics that translate into a program that we can then figure out how to implement.

So that's what I'm curious about.

If this study would define ways to do that, if that is an avenue to actually figure out

But figure out the metrics.

I mean, policy is good, but it's not focused and directed because we could just say, oh, we want to create more growth area.

Yeah, and I think having fewer target industries in this plan is helpful because what the bio, you know, it helps with the study.

Like, well, what does the biotech sector need?

And where are they experiencing struggle points?

Because the growth for biotech may be adequately contained, the growth potential in North Fork, Fontaine, UVA, Health Campus, Center Health, whatever, wherever it all is, right?

Same with the intelligence security.

Maybe between NGIC and Rivanna Futures and North Forkets, that's enough.

I don't know.

It's substantial.

Right.

Other thoughts?

I'd like to maybe catalyze the discussion.

The effects that has on the population.

And so it's really, there's a question mark at the end of this itself.

Okay.

And so that that makes sense.

One of the first five tax base, I guess what I'm trying to wrap my head around, as we're diversifying tax base trying to

asked the commercial sector in the county to bear more of that burden, which makes perfect sense.

What are we willing to tolerate, and what do we want to aim for in terms of operations?

So I'm imagining some scenario where we buy a spark plug factory, just take a crazy example, that needs a thousand employees.

Well, you know, we might tax that spark plug factor handsomely, but then we're going to drive a lot of population, and it could be that it had been met.

The result of that could be a financial loss, a significant financial loss once it was all, once everybody had arrived, we had accommodated them somehow in this already very demanding housing environment.

So should we be thinking about economic development in ways that increases gross regional product without having significant population impacts?

So on the other side of the spark plug factor, I'm imagining maybe it's a, I'm imagining 10 researchers in a building that because of how sophisticated their product is, you know, it's, or maybe it's a research kind of thing where they're selling

where it sells at a very high price.

The facilities they're in are taxed heavily.

The earnings of that relatively small group of people working there are taxed by the state, I guess, at a high level.

So do you see where I'm getting with this?

I just want to, like, I want to catalyze the discussion right now, just about population.

What do we think about population?

Are we just diagnosed?

We just don't, we don't, we can't understand it, so we don't care.

We can't care because we can't know, or can we?

We have knowledge that we can say, yeah, we want to focus on this very specific type of economic development because it doesn't generate the population growth that really is, you know, you refer to community values, that at least my friends and neighbors, I don't go out of my way to tell them I'm going to be an economic development authority board because the first thing they think of is,

It's traffic.

It's more building.

It's like, oh, God, what are you doing, Jeff?

And I've got to explain after some considerable effort, the furrows and the brow go away for people.

But I guess I want to make sure that our efforts here are keeping all the moral the way all the moral citizens want it to be.

They're not looking for a lot.

a lot of population and a lot of development.

Sorry, I'm just not talking.

There's smaller ones already in the county.

So maybe a little bit larger, maybe a medium size in certain locations, very few employees, but a nice amount of revenue.

But believe me, that's going to get pushed back from certain groups, you know, and Albemarle because it's, I mean, we have these competing interests and everything, but that is something that we're looking at, which

Tyson to what you're saying as far as good revenue, but for the county, but then not a lot of employees and everything.

But really the average Joe, if you ask them, do you want a data center?

So there's the cost of service.

Report is being reviewed tomorrow on the board.

It's a pretty interesting report.

On a data center, I think the rule of thumb is for every dollar of revenue, seven cents is the cost of infrastructure.

To give you a, I mean, that's the spectrum.

Residential, 30% more cost than revenues.

Yeah, maybe the sweet spot.

We've actually addressed that.

We said if you use water, then you have to use recycled water.

on their parameters regarding the size, but we will be looking at that.

So thinking about it, excuse me, just from the population piece, I go back to Emily's point that they're here for school and they're here when they retire, right?

That bump is coming in 55 plus, they're gonna come

by a two-acre plot just outside the growth area in Crozet, and that's their retirement homes.

And UVA Letterman's shirts and jackets.

Oh, absolutely.

All of the stuff, right?

Well, I have classmates and friends who are doing just that right now.

They're just off 151.

They bought a two-acre plot and they're building their retirement homes, leaving New York City and coming back.

They are coming.

If we're not designing and looking for the people who are coming to work here to generate that commercial revenue, we're going to be taxed more on the residential fees.

And I understand that you're trying to find this reason, but at this point, I don't know that we can be as selective as we want to be.

because we know the residents aren't coming.

We know UVA is also going to try and house more of their students on ground, which is a good thing.

It does open up some housing in the greater community.

But if we can get some, maybe some more, if this gets back to housing policy, some more of the missing middle of housing, so less single family, more

attached, over or under attached, or multi-family in some way.

So it's denser, so you don't have to run your services as far.

And trust me, I sit on the school's long-range planning committee and we're looking at the same things.

Do we need a new comprehensive school, high school?

Where would we put that in the county?

How much is that going to cost the county?

a comprehensive high school with everything that goes with it.

Probably these days it's 175 I'd say, 150.

Montgomery County, Maryland did one just before the pandemic.

They replaced the one I went to and it was 160 up there six years ago.

And they had to leave.

They basically built it on the site and then toured down and put the fields where the old building was.

So we know that some of these people are coming anyway.

It's trying to

to steer it and population growth.

And I think Bill mentioned it and Supervisor LaPisto currently mentioned it.

There's room in the growth area for a lot still.

And we're not seeing

at the edges of the development area in particular, the densities that they are zoned for sometimes in terms of the housing projects that come through.

So we're not making the best use of it.

I'm thinking about B-Sci out at Fashion Square Mall.

That's a great service for the county, but when Home Depot opens and businesses want to be on that property,

Is that the best use for Albemarle County of that space?

We were talking about that acronym this morning about how the cool kids say PSOC.

What is it?

It's the old JCPenney sign and when Home Depot opens and the traffic that it's going to be driven to that spot and Delta will benefit and whatever else Home Depot decides to do with that property will benefit and when that's rowing and developing how can we

the county would have to find a place to go, but it's one of those things that we're not, I've gone so far afield from your population piece at this point, I apologize for that, but I worry that if we're too picky with the businesses we pursued, that the residential tax piece will become unsustainable for many

So I imagine in this study recommends focused on three sectors.

When I look at those sectors, my layman's understanding of those, they look to address

Except agribusiness, but we're talking about automated agribusiness, right?

Not like super farms, everything, everything in agribusiness.

So that's the only, I don't know, again, metrics, right?

What does this actually mean?

How does it translate to others' points about just points?

infrastructure, housing availability, based on the types of income levels we're growing, right, which there is an imbalance, so as in the study, there's inequity, so that'll get sorted out.

You know, there's a threshold that housing creates, and we're only able to feed that pipeline so fast, right?

So that is a limiting factor, but what I'm seeing here

massive workforce booms.

They are moderate to low workforce booms because of the technology and the workforce and their higher income paying jobs.

And I imagine there's spin-offs and other support industries that accommodate the other percent of Albemarle County in the area that's not

You know, didn't go to UVA, you know, whatever degree, right?

40, 60% of us are college or whatever.

I don't know.

More respect for John Stewart.

It's just the way it is.

Something that the consultants actually talked about, it'd be great once we got the plan to do an offsite

EDA to talk about how do you all see yourselves focusing on, my team's not going to do everything on that list.

There's other partners that we'll work with on that.

But you all have a role to play, too, and can drive where the focuses are.

And so that's an area where EDAs sometimes do play a role in saying,

This is a strategic location and so we want to put out there that this is an area where we're looking for partners on to try to drive that type of outcome.

So that's an area of work that the EDA could look at and an example of how we would do that within the context of the comprehensive plan.

would be to say, you know, let's take the Broadway blueprint study or the small area, the Rio 29 small area plan or another one of the master plans and really look at what does it say about employment and commercial and land industrial sectors in that plan

and let's go after it.

You know, how do we light the sparks to get those vision projects implemented?

So to kind of go back to your original question about population, I mean, I don't think about it specifically about the population growth.

What I think a lot of the pushback, this is sort of my view is that what people don't want us to turn into is Fairfax County.

You know, you don't want to drive from here to Crozet and just go through subdivision after subdivision after subdivision.

And we want the rural landscape that we have.

And I think what we're talking about is how do you keep that, but still get the stuff that we want?

And I think the...

This 95.5 line, you know, does it need to be a softer line?

Is there graduation?

I think the problem that we've got right now is the way we're operating is that the people that, one of the reasons that people come to town after having worked in New York is they can come down here and they can buy 50

I mean, what you do see is under our current structure, you do drive out and you see development and development and development and these are the spy ride boards.

developments that are happening anywhere.

So I think what we need to be, so the two things that I feel are important is one, we need to get the housing density higher so that we can focus, we can get people in here.

It's not as expensive, hopefully.

And then, I mean, it's still going to be expensive, but at least we're not sprawling everywhere.

and we can still keep those rural views that everyone likes and enjoys.

And then I think that on the job side, and I do feel like it's important that we have those opportunities that not everybody in Alamo County needs to be a rich person whose movies need to have it top to bottom.

I mean, there are all sorts of bad things that potentially difficult issues.

I mean, one of the things that I've heard people talking about is

is driving the costs of fossil fuels and all those things well it's fine if we say yeah the people in Almonte County don't have to drive but if there's no way for anybody to live here who do the jobs they're all driving from other places we need to support those folks and I think it is

It is important to not lift the drawbridge of me.

I've lived here 36 years now, so I'm still not a native.

But I think it's important for people to be able to come to town and to move.

I do not have to run up here and to feel like they can come in at the lower level.

And I'm very sympathetic to the comments about

needing to have that network of people when I got my job for a law school.

It was hard to find people that I now think you think that building up that I the sticky comment they made that you got to have things to be able to get involved with and pull people in and that's what holds them.

If you don't have any connections and we've

we lose lawyers who are like you know don't work here but they don't sort of make those connections and it's easy to pick up and just move to D.C. where there's more stuff so I think the targeted sectors I well we have clusters now I mean I do think that they sort of are a bigger hit in terms of the the either higher income higher producing less less likely to

More organic growth from the people that we already have here than bringing a bunch of other people in.

Although I suspect that the SPAR plug factory probably would generate more tax revenues because it's a machine or something like that.

So, and I don't know, I mean, I don't know if this is coming out in the study you were talking about, but you know, how does an apartment compare in terms of tax revenue that gets generated to a

residential.

Does that consider, I guess that's commercial, isn't it?

Yeah, so that's a debate that the CFO is here.

He could say that that is a debate in the finance field because, and it's actually in the state mandated reporting that localities have to do, multifamily is its own section, because it's both.

You know, it's for the owner of the property, it's an income generating

asset, and so it's commercial.

But when you think about demand for services, it really, from a locality standpoint, it really feels more like residential.

And so you can put it in either bucket if you're thinking about where do we fit this into the mix of a balanced tax base.

But we, for, you know,

I think we've shared with you all that 11.3% of the county's tax base right now is commercial and that's fallen over the past several years.

Well, just to wrap up the population part of that, I'll yield the floor.

I'm advocating for something, maybe it's in the vision statement, where we clearly articulate that we're seeking, because I think it's like that vision statement that died for us going forward about what's important to us, and I hope we can go back to it.

In my mind, it's increased GRP without, while minimizing population.

I'd like to see,

That's what I'm talking about.

The plans involved.

Sure.

I appreciate the time you spent thinking about it.

And I don't know, what time is it?

It's 5.15.

I don't know what the board's view is in terms of whether we want to have, people feel like they need more time to look through this and come up with thoughts that we need to have another meeting to share those, or we can say people can just share their thoughts with Emily and just go from there.

We don't need to have a, I mean obviously at the next meeting, I think it's mostly the timing aspect of it.

I just want to make sure because our next meeting wouldn't be till, it would be June 17th, June 17th, which is getting closer to what's going to happen.

So I guess where we will leave it is that

If anyone has specific thoughts they want to share, they can provide them to Emily and she'll pass them along.

If something comes up that someone says, we really need to all talk about this, I could have a special meeting, but I don't sense that that's the case.

Unless something comes out of the discussion tomorrow that the board really wants you to

Yeah, so why don't I plan to do kind of a summary after the board's work session, not right after the work session, but I'll plan to send you all a summary by the end of the week on the board's discussion.

And then if you all want to connect back together, we can figure that out.

Or if, again, if everyone wants to just send any thoughts,

to me by email that or a coffee or a chat is all fine with me to share any specific feedback.

And then we'll be working with the consultant team over the next couple of weeks to start to really drive into a draft document that includes implementation action type steps.

and Assigning Roles.

So again, not everything in the plan is something that's a responsibility of the ED office.

There's lots of opportunities across the organization and also the broader community for folks to be doing work to advance the goals that we have.

And I think there's obviously a lot of that five

Goals, Subs, you know, we call these the strategies or whatever.

I mean, there's lots of those.

Obviously we can't do everything, as you point out.

Some of them are being done by other people.

I also sort of see it as some of them are sort of contingent in the sense that if we're making progress in one area, there may be things that we could say, okay, you know, the biotech folks are really cracking along.

We can hear the next things we do, whereas,

Maybe national security's not moving as fast.

We don't have to be on all of them.

All right.

All right.

So I'll send something by the end of the week.

I just want to do a quick time check.

Give me an amount of time and I'll hit it.

I can do five minutes.

Let's do it.

So forward session tomorrow, the Innovation Corridor Strategic Roadmap, that's the regional effort to look at biotech, data science, and IT and

Intel National Security as a region.

CDPED led an application to the Go Virginia program that was approved.

So there will be $100,000 from the Go Virginia program to fund that study.

The EDA supported a substantial cash match into that.

I have on here the $69,300 in local cash match in aggregate for that project because we exceeded the minimum, which doesn't happen all that often.

So you're required in Virginia to have a two to one, two state dollars, one local dollars.

And often we're struggling to figure out who can give a little bit more to get to that minimum.

And so it's really exciting.

And I think a good show of the regional interest that we were oversubscribed on that match.

This is just where we are on the Rivanna Futures funding requests.

So the new one on here is congressional directed spending at the bottom.

So we put in a request to the federal elected officials that represent this area on both sides of Congress to consider funding site readiness.

Our Virginia Business Ready Sites program at the state level would do the first 55 acres if it was fully funded, and this one would be to do that last 50 acres if that was funded.

Tell your friends.

This is just a fun picture.

The last part of the VBRSP grant program is a site visit if you make it that far, if you're invited to go that far into the process.

And so this was just a fun selfie after a long couple of weeks of hard work to get ready and just a 90-minute rock block with our grant reviewers that I wanted to share with you all.

We have been at a bunch of great events over the past couple of weeks.

The PVCC picture with the gentleman pointing is the BioBridge work kickoff.

There's an improvement project on Crozet Square and Oak Street improvements to update some of the infrastructure there and staff has worked together with other departments, facilities and environmental services and communications public engagement to support those square businesses with

some marketing support, some radio ads, some buy local bags, and then Shop the Square stickers that you see, I think, on your agendas.

It's just an example of just how we're trying to support smaller businesses as these improvements occur.

Okay, these are some examples of some BRE visits that occurred in April.

Representative McGuire's staff requested some business visits with some of our business community members and you see their Perot Robotics at North Fork with their autonomous vehicles and you see Representative McGuire chilling in the autonomous van there.

On the lower level, that's BioCor LLC, they do injury

reduction engineering testing for groups like the NFL and transportation, things of that nature.

I'd say 10 minutes without a gun if you express it out.

You know, on the, on the GRE visits, maybe we could do like a year-to-date, just a whole in total of it.

No pressure, right?

Yeah.

No pressure.

All right, anything else?

All right, then I guess we're adjourned until June 17th.