Economic Development Authority Meeting   9/16/2025

and Bill Topperall.

Is there anyone who has signed up to speak?

Any matters from the public?

All right.

So I have a couple of things.

You may have them as well.

Andy's not mentioned at all as either a director present or absent.

I think there may be a prior set of minutes where he was listed.

Okay, I'll go ahead and I'll check.

Yeah, and then under the Thomas Jefferson Foundation bond discussion, council is misspelled.

It should be C-O-U-N-S again.

I'll do that for the record.

All right.

Is there a motion to approve the minutes?

So moved.

Second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

All right.

The minutes are approved.

Financial report?

Yes, so we've got a couple things.

So we'll start with FY26, which is the new van that we're in.

Still a little early.

The only thing, what you think of is some accrued interest from the funds of the share pool.

And a little early on this, but the $1,000 that we invoiced for the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.

That's just FY20 states.

And then the second half of this is FY25 year-end report.

So some tying off of the end of last financial year.

So you'll have three reports in your packet.

The second, the very last one is FY25 end.

And then the following pages with some year-end notes, so there's some highlights from that.

Feel free to read through those.

The only notes I'll put for the end of FY 25 is we're tracking down the last of the Sentara Martha Jefferson bond revenue.

And the

Okay, that's good.

And the CVAC, those are the only two from there.

And then if you guys have any questions or comments on the highlights that I had written out there for the year-end notes, this is the first time we're doing it to sort of year-end summary.

I thought the summary was good.

I did, I do have a suggestion as I was looking at it today,

So I think we should take a bunch of stuff off this.

Really, the bonds, the loan repayments,

are not really performance agreements, they're really other things.

I think what we're trying to track is either mostly money that's going out and what have we committed to put out there.

And so I think like contributions, I don't think we have performance agreements with them, but I think we should track, it'd be nice to say, how much have we contributed?

What's our total commitment?

What's our outstanding balance?

And then sort of related to that,

you know, whether we need an extra column.

So that was the original intention.

So the way it's set up right now, so if you look at these two separately, not the year, but the other two, the first one is just a snapshot.

The one that's really blank right now is just a snapshot of the current financial year.

And this work in progress of this performance agreements one is supposed to be a snapshot of the entire life of the agreements.

But I think you're right.

OK, those are just I think that would help just focus on a little bit narrower because things like the bonds really are part of what we're talking about.

That makes sense.

Anybody else have any questions or comments?

No.

OK. Is there a motion to approve the financial report?

So moved.

Second?

Second.

All right.

All in favor?

Aye.

All right.

Financial report is approved.

I'll take that.

Thank you Avery.

Hi, in your cabinets I believe you should have a handout that illustrates just with a little, thank you very much, just a little bit more graphic for the deal.

It's a summary of the business retention and expansion program that we as a team work to develop and I did my very best to execute during fiscal year 25.

It's been a few years of re-structurization so just

really truly has been one of the first years that Woody as a department have had staffing and the ability to focus particularly on executing this program.

So this is just a short overview of the,

The program, its purpose, the goals of the BRE program, and some of the overall findings from the visits that we performed.

So ultimately, as you all probably know, the BRE program, it's a service that we provide.

It's to improve the experience that existing customers in our community have, primary businesses specifically.

And primary businesses, as you know, are companies that

that generate 50% of their revenue from outside of Albemarle County.

So we typically try to establish relationships so that we can understand their challenges and opportunities that they come in to contact with day to day.

And then the special part is providing tailored resources or customized solutions to help them address those challenges.

and basically we work with them to connect them with resources like workforce training or access to capital, education, professional ecosystem support, et cetera.

We worked with the strategic and performance and strategic partnerships office.

Planning, okay.

We worked with them on our SPEAR goals, which was ultimately to set benchmarks for us to conduct during the year.

And as we collected

All of our data at the beginning of the fiscal year, our goal was to complete 12 business retention and expansion visits with businesses in the county over the course of fiscal year 25.

This is a little tip.

Well, you never know until you try, right?

And this is an overview of the sectors that we visited with during fiscal year 25.

And as you can see, those first three lines there are moving forward into our economic development strategic plan, focal points that we'll try to work with again, moving down the road.

and just some pictures.

I recognize somebody in one of those pictures there, but two people actually.

Just some cool visuals from some of the visits that we've made.

And then the honey's cutting your, you're getting your head cut off there now.

And this is one of the announcements that we were able to celebrate last October with Afton Scientific's expansion.

They're moving forward with their $200 million, $200 job expansion off of Avon.

And we just, we love to celebrate these big wins.

We recently distributed a business climate questionnaire to our stakeholders and also visited, as you know, with these companies and along with their economic development strategic plan, stakeholder roundtables.

A lot of the information that we received, we tried to condense into a little bit more of a digestible format, but some of the common themes that we received are listed here from those three

sources.

A lot of comments on regulatory issues.

We hear a lot of that when we're out with companies.

We also use the time to share a lot of resources.

So we've been able to do a lot of these visits with staff from the Central Virginia Partnership for Economic Development, as well as the state BEDP business team.

And so we're able to help

based on the growth trajectory or challenges that the company might be facing.

We're able to connect them with resources for grant programs, training resources, make connections on workforce to workforce partners and PBCC, for example.

Thanks.

Do we, one of the things that we don't really have a lot of control over, deal with infrastructure in terms of power outages and broadband access, but the county has a broadband authority.

Typically in the feedback I received, it's rural area adjacent.

And unfortunately at this framework in time, I think is just a waiting it out game.

We have expansion that's anticipated what is finishing in fiscal year 26.

So the goal is we're getting there.

It's just a matter of inconvenience up to this point.

If I can add, I serve on the broadband authority board, so we'll have nearly 100% access, availability in the county, supposed to be by the end of 2025, probably into 2026, but there are still some pockets where there are some one-offs that are being addressed, but broadly, the county will, it will be available, you know, people still need to

And the limited cases that we have heard feedback indicating frustration with that.

Connectivity, it's predominantly been from folks working from home that are part of that business community or in instances of an outdoor market or a farmer's market or a festival having a little bit of trouble with the scan car, the square situation.

So hopefully these things will be taken care of in the next little bit.

That was a great question.

The comment about working with them and sort of explaining what the resources are.

Are there opportunities to get in front of maybe, I don't know if there's affinity groups or groups that beyond just individual businesses to provide those same sorts of things on a note?

You know, the chamber's probably too high, but maybe there's some smaller groups that are meeting where you could provide those resources.

Or it's, you know, I wonder if like CBEC or somebody like that might have an opportunity to present.

Yeah, so Ashley and one of her counterparts in the city of Charlottesville meet with the, well you, why don't you tell it?

Yeah, sure, so we, as you all are well aware, and I feel warmth in the room from another one of our ecosystem supports here, one of our partners in the community.

We're like, hey doc,

from Venture Central, but the Virginia Small, I'm sorry, the Central Virginia Small Business Development Center and the community.

I'm terrible with acronyms today, but we do work with them to support a lot of the startup entrepreneurs to basically how to navigate the

The system, if you will, to come in and first you need to get your zoning clearance.

Then you need to get your business license and all the different aspects of starting off in the new business world with the different localities.

One of the things that I'm hopeful that we can start to tackle now that we have the new strategic plan is to can each of the three target sectors has a bullet in the implementation section around convening and so we actually were starting to actually this morning about you know how do we how do we breathe that to life and there's some thought to you know could we bring

You know, in partnership with whatever professional organization and town they work with.

So I feel we talk about Seville Biohub a lot.

They're such a strong partner in the bio life sciences sector.

You know, could we in partnership with Seville Biohub convene bio life sciences companies?

Give them some time to talk to us, have us have some time to talk to them and then maybe have a speaker so that it's kind of a couple of hours but there's kind of something in it for everybody to be able to do some two-way sharing on what resources we're aware of and also give them some space to share in a structured way sort of what some of their high-level concerns are.

So that's work that we're, we don't have a timeline, but we haven't.

It's a natural partnership because so many of the issues that face the community or common interests don't exist in a vacuum of geographical boundaries.

All right, any other questions?

You're to be commended for this.

I mean, visiting 50 is- I didn't do that.

Are there examples of problem solved, solutions reached, examples where a business would say, thanks to this outreach effort, we made an improvement in x or y?

I knew you were going to ask that question.

There's nothing in here about outcomes.

I think that's a valuable resource of a question to take back and develop some case studies and some takeaways, maybe some testimonials that do indicate that because the first year of getting it off the ground, getting the mechanism in here,

leaves us with a final result that yes, it's a big number.

It would look even more impressive, I would assume, if there were some takeaways, right?

At the top of my head that I could steer you to, but due to the sensitive nature of the business visits, I wanna maintain confidence with a lot of the visits that we have because they are specific to each business that we do visit.

But we've discussed too sometimes inviting directors to attend different ERE visits to see how that goes.

It will also help you recruit other

that it wasn't just talk, that it led to action.

If somebody needed the skilled workers where they hooked up with UVA, where they hooked up with PVCC, did you facilitate a step forward?

Thanks.

Good idea.

Anything else?

All right, thank you Ashley.

Welcome, I'll return the clicker.

So next item is Economic Development strategic plan implementation.

So I'm going to let Emily do most of the talking here, but

What obviously came out of our discussions with the strategic plan was a need to make sure that we implemented and take the next steps to do that.

So at some point it was mentioned that the residents and Steve could do that and help us develop that plan.

I had talked to Emily and she was saying that

They were planning to do it internally, but I said, well, look, we've got some money, why don't we have them do it so you don't have to spend your time doing it.

Sure, thank you.

And thank you for the discussion about wanting to really see the

plan, not just sit on a shelf, but really be something that we are actively working towards.

So what we had talked about was a scope of, a pretty limited scope of work.

So the plan itself took, we talked about the plan, the plan before we actually executed, brought on a consultant to actually do the plans that we spoke about the strategic plan process for about a year.

The active work by residents was probably closer to seven months.

The implementation scope would be even more limited engagement.

It would be about three months.

The scope of work that we're talking about would be two facilitated work sessions, one with staff and one with the EDA.

So we've talked about maybe your November EDA meeting.

and then some of the outcomes from that would be a year one work plan, a five year roadmap with some sequencing and prioritization of the items that are in the strategic plan.

And one thing that I know has been on folks' minds has been with the funding that we've identified sort of at the bottom line funds available to the EDA on your financial report.

How do we know, how do you all talk through what to spend those funds on?

And so coming up with an investment framework, so not a pass-fail test, but sort of questions to ask or a process to go through to understand if there's a good opportunity for the EDA to use some of those funds would be the final thing that would be part of the deliverables.

The proposal that we received from Stephen Pedigo is hanging a shingle under a different name right now.

And so it's Civic Soul.

So different company, but really the same technical support person.

And we have a proposal in hand that came in early this week that's just under $10,000.

And this would cover both sort of EDA implementation and DDO implementation.

Any thoughts, questions?

All right.

Is there a motion?

Do we need a motion?

I move that we approve the appropriation of up to $15,000 to engage

the new civic soul for the work as described in the discussion.

All in favor?

Aye.

All right, approved.

Next is the Efton Scientific Performance Agreement.

Although it says, I'm going to leave this discussion, I'm actually, so I will not be involved in this discussion.

You signed one and it's good for five years.

Yeah.

Okay.

Oh, wait, did you?

Oh, you signed one on this too.

I did.

Yeah.

Thank you.

It just didn't have to be unanimous if we're going to approve it.

I think if you recuse yourself, it doesn't disrupt the quorum.

So we have a quorum of two.

Pick a record and Frank.

He's way more seen.

All right.

Okay, so just briefly, this is an item that has been sitting out as something that needed to be done for almost a year.

So it was almost a year ago that we were celebrating the announcement, the governor's announcement for the expansion of Afton Scientific.

Incredibly exciting opportunity.

The company has committed over $200 million to create just over 200 new jobs.

The performance agreement with the Commonwealth of Virginia is the Commonwealth Opportunity Fund which looks for a one-to-one match from the locality where the expansion is occurring.

And so that is what we have laid out today.

So the way that the county approached or recommended approaching the one to one match was a total of $540,000 from the economic development investment pool.

with three benchmarks.

One, when they apply for their building permit for the new facility of the first third of funding.

The second, when they apply for or when they receive their certificate of occupancy on that new building.

And then the final one would be paid when they complete the terms of the agreement with the Commonwealth of Virginia.

And so the benchmark for that is when they've satisfied their obligations to the Commonwealth.

They would be expecting to hit the building permits in the next couple of months.

And then their construction period I would imagine is between 12 and 18 months, but I don't think we have a specific plan from them at this time.

So it would split it up over probably the course of, from announcement, you know, three to five years.

To be, I think, specific, the state's agreement has a performance date, and I want to say December of 27.

I can look at that, but that's incorporated into the December 31st of 2030.

It has to be completed by December 31st of 2030.

The way ours is structured, as they meet a benchmark within that time period, they receive our local payment.

Your packet in front of you are two items that I just want to point out.

One is

I think it's the one at the back.

It's the Commonwealth's Development Opportunity Fund Performance Agreement.

This is the agreement that's primarily between BEDP, the Commonwealth, and the company.

The county is a signator of that agreement, and so part of today's resolution is to approve the county signing of that.

And then the other is the Economic Development Investment Pool Performance Agreement and Commonwealth Opportunity Fund Match Grant document, which is the center of the two.

And that is the agreement for the local match between the county and the company.

so this is no kidding great not that low right or correct it's a cash incentive so as part of the agreement they commit to creating it was something like 200 jobs 201 jobs and 202 million dollars in capital investment in in terms of the

Yeah, so primarily those jobs are manufacturing jobs.

And so there's no degree requirements associated with those positions.

And the Commonwealth under the Commonwealth Opportunity Fund program will not incent jobs that fall below the area of median prevailing wage.

And so the dollar value a year ago when we were initially discussing this one

was a minimum of 58,000 on the manufacturing jobs.

And then there were other jobs that you would expect with a company, sort of a corporate expansion of that magnitude.

Is there any requirement for local or regional hiring?

I mean, could they bring all 200 in from

I know the

The wage level associated with these jobs, the sense would be that the worker shed would be sort of a regional pool of talent.

Inciting in the Commonwealth.

To create 201 jobs.

And so when does the government get a return on that?

There's a formula that the state uses.

It's not

The formula itself is not public information, but they have part of the analysis that they do where they look at how to structure and how to sort of create the incentive offer.

They're looking at things like income tax revenue to the Commonwealth, and then based on the business, any other types of tax revenue that would be coming from the business being located in Virginia to the Commonwealth as part of their analysis.

So they have a,

So page six of the state agreements speaks to section four to the breakeven of the state local incentives.

You know, I ask about the local hiring because I'm sure you're all familiar.

One of the criticisms local

And that's sometimes valid criticism and sometimes not.

It would seem that going forward in the future, we might consider some sort of requirement about local hiring if we ever enter into another agreement like this using EDA funds.

I'm surprised the state doesn't do it.

I'll put in a lot of money.

Yeah, I mean, again, I think based on the wage levels, I think the sort of the working assumption is that they're not going to be, folks wouldn't be moving here for these jobs.

And so it's not part of the agreement.

The verification of that can be a challenge.

Many of the agreements that we do enter into do have, they require a workforce attestation letter that does indicate that a certain percentage of their workforce base does come from the local area.

And we have to make sure there's room for it.

Right.

Great point.

What is the performance date?

The agreement in terms of it defines the facility as being one on, I want to say on Yvonne Street extended.

So what do you need from these two powerful individuals?

Spring.

Do I second that?

If you don't, we're in trouble.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We'll do a roll call.

Director Hood?

Here.

Aye.

And Director Friedman?

Aye.

I figured that's why I started turning.

All right.

All right.

I have accidentally included this twice now, but for real, welcome Sabu.

I'm Adai, who joined our team as the Senior Manager for Economic Development in July.

And we've now worked through a couple of projects together and Sabu just brings a wonderful level of expertise and one really wonderful insight to the team.

So we're just so glad to have him and

I wanted to finally be able to introduce him to you.

And then last meeting, we talked about a joint meeting with the Charlottesville EDA.

So we are threading the needle on.

It is our turn.

We've only done this, this will be the second one, but it's our turn to host.

And so we're gonna borrow their meeting dates.

It's the second Tuesday in October, not the third.

And, uh-oh.

I think we checked before.

Four o'clock in this room.

We would recommend canceling the regular October meeting, which would have been the 21st then.

The working agenda, we actually met with the city team earlier today and we talked about the Innovation Corridor.

You all had a presentation on the Innovation Corridor several months ago before the Go Virginia grant was awarded.

Now the Go Virginia grant has been awarded and the work on that project is underway.

And so it would be sort of a check-in to sort of hear what some of the early efforts have found and uncovered.

If I recall correctly, there's a consultant for the Innovation Corridor?

Yes.

I would have to check on if that was something that we could accommodate in their contract, but certainly the staff team that's sort of guiding the work that the consultant is doing, I think, when we come up with some early insights into the work that they're doing.

It's actually been very fascinating.

They've been looking at

Where is the real, you know, following the dollars of grant awards and partnership agreements?

Where's the real sort of research acumen driven out of the University of Virginia?

And then where are we seeing private sector activity commercialization sort of coming from that?

to help us sort of refine a little bit.

Biotech is a very large tent.

What are our regional strengths in the biotech sector specifically?

And then that hopefully allows us to be more strategic in how we do business attraction.

So that's kind of the work.

Right now they're very heavy into data analysis.

And we'll be sort of, so we've been sort of identifying a lot of the facts, trying to get those straight, and then we'll be able to transition into, so what do we do about it?

And how do we build a good plan for the future?

Four o'clock, yes.

And we'll have a Zoom, as we normally do, we'll have a Zoom for that.

Just a quick comp plan update.

The Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors have had work sessions in the month of September on the comp plan.

There'll be one more work session with the Board of Supervisors in October and then continuing to work towards adoption later this year.

Our strategic plan, the final document we received just a couple of days ago, they updated all the photos, we made a couple of text edits coming out of the joint meeting that we had.

That final document is now available online.

You all just approved the implementation plan support, so we'll get working on that.

And there's been some great just early things that are happening.

So one I'll highlight, the Albemarle County Public Schools is taking the strategic plan and looking at their career pathways pipeline programming and looking at how to align those more strongly with our strategic plan.

I'll be presenting to some of the staff that are working on that project at a professional development day later this month to try to, they really wanna make sure students are fully understanding what some of those career pathways can really look like.

And then working with them to also find speakers for classes.

So that's a tangible way that we're trying to bring the plan to life.

And we'll continue to look for opportunities to build on that in the months and weeks, weeks and months ahead.

We are continuing to work with the state so that they are kind of aware of what we're interested in seeing because they often are the sort of the front line of opportunities that come into the Commonwealth and so understanding where there's some good alignment locally helps them be a better sort of concierge to the companies that are coming to see them and puts us in a good position to be successful which is really great.

Just a quick update on funding requests.

We've seen this slide before.

The new funding that we're looking at is that Economic Development Access Program by VDOT.

The second read of our application is actually on the CTP agenda for tomorrow, and so we'll find out how we fared in that program.

So it is a gate.

Our understanding is that doesn't often happen, but it can.

It's a very big- And so it'll be up for action on their agenda tomorrow.

And we'll let you all know how that fares.

Just a couple of things that we've been in the middle of.

And some of you were at the Home Depot grand opening a couple weeks ago.

It was really exciting.

Obviously the EDA and the Board of Supervisors supported a public-private partnership for the Home Depot project.

They hired 160 new jobs for the community, which is great.

They have a strong retail sales volume and so sales tax revenue to the county.

We look forward to seeing how that impacts our books as we proceed forward.

But really a great opportunity to support what we hope is the sort of that first domino of redevelopment of the fashion square.

That's the real headline on that project.

We're so excited to have them in the community.

Every time I drive by that parking lot is full, no matter what time of day it is.

And so we're really excited to have them.

The top photo is from the Virginia Guest House.

That is the new hotel and conference center that is being built at the Emmett and Ivy area of the University of Virginia.

That's in the city of Charlottesville, so that's not a county project.

But we think it's a great opportunity for our region.

We are almost the center of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

There are a lot of statewide organizations that hold annual and quarterly conferences.

And if we had a larger ballroom and meeting spaces, we strongly believe that we would be successful in getting a lot more of those

conferences to locate in our area.

And the spillover effects into county hotels, lodging options, restaurants, retail sales are substantial.

more than double the Omni, I believe.

Yeah.

So it's significant.

And they have breakout rooms and attached accommodation.

It's a hotel and conference center.

There's event spaces sort of built into the property.

It'll be a really great.

We really, really needed that.

Just pay.

Yeah.

Saboon was able to join a VDOT STARS meeting that's currently, I'm not sure what STARS stands for, but they're studying the Route 29 corridor, how to make sure that that continues to meet the needs of all roadway users.

And so that's

We are often invited to meetings like that to help bring sort of what are the employers saying, what are we hearing, how can we, you know, are there things on the horizon that we should be incorporating into our modeling.

And so that's a way that we can help provide support for our state partner for transportation.

And then I was able to join the Charlottesville Albemarle Area Realtors at their Annual Development and Economics Summit.

to share about our new economic development strategic plan, put some of the recent job announcements on their radar.

And also as an effect of that got to hear from professionals in the building industry and the realtor industry talking about interest rates and supply and demand headwinds.

And it's a good opportunity to hear what's going on in the real estate sector.

I wanted to do a quick shout out.

As part of my role with the county, I serve on the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau, along with Supervisor Bea Stu-Kirtley, who chairs that body.

They announced recently visitor spending is nearly a billion dollars in our region in 2024.

That number has held, it's inching up, but it's held around that billion dollar mark for the past three years, which is a very significant number.

Food and beverage is actually the highest, so it's not lodging, it's food and beverage, which means we're getting a lot of day travel, day trips.

For food, where do they go?

Where do they go?

And the wineries would be in that food and beverage data as well.

The tourism sector supports over 7,000 jobs, and we're just excited to see those numbers continue to climb.

I'll be brief.

Since we last met, we've had six visits, one for intelligence and national security and five in manufacturing and other, as other as this quarter's focal point.

Get your boots ready.

we have confidentiality for us as we report out at the end of the aggregate.

Are we shortening up the motion now?

I didn't print off the actual motion.

I move the Albemarle County Economic Development Authority go into the closed meeting.

It's authorized by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act section 2.2-37

of the Code of Virginia under subsection 5 to discuss and consider the location of respective business or industry with the expansion of the existing business or industry in the vicinity of Seminole Trail and the Havana Magisterial District where no previous announcement has been made of the businesses or

for industry's interest in locating or expanding its facilities in the community.

Subsection 6 to discuss and consider the investment of public funds to the location of an industry in the Rio Magisterial District where bargaining is involved with their major public initially would adversely affect the financial interests of the EDA.

And subsection 6 and 29 to discuss and consider the investment of public funds or the award or amendment of

Public Contract related to the performance agreement with AgriSpears Inc. and involves the investment and expenditure of public funds, the public discussion of which would adversely affect the negotiating strategy of the EDA and the county regarding the terms of the performance agreement.

Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor?

All right.

Go to closed session.

I'll get that for the back of her.

She's already gone.

I'll put it right next to my community involved.

I have a Love Your Watershed one on my waterfall.

All right.

So I will, we need to turn back on.

Are we good?

All right.

Oh, I guess we need a second.

All right.

Call the roll.

Director Long.

Director Storm.

Aye.

All right.

All right.

Any other matters that anyone else has?

All right.