Economic Development Authority Joint City & County Meeting   10/14/2025

All right, I will call this joint meeting.

I guess I will call the county EDA meeting first.

And we do have a quorum, and then I'll let Madison and be the chair.

Sounds good.

All right, so I thought we could just go around the table and everybody could introduce themselves and if you're a EDA member, what you do when you're not EDA time.

And Addison Barnhart.

I am the chair of the City Economic Development Authority.

I'm Frank Friedman.

I'm a member of the Albemarle OEDA and I am not an attorney.

Thank goodness.

Oh, sorry about that.

I'm retired.

I'm David Storm.

I'm the Scottsville appointee to the Albemarle Economic Development Authority.

I'm an attorney by training, but most of what I do is act as a chauffeur for three

Hi, I'm Steven Johnson.

I'm a professor at the School of Commerce at the University of Virginia.

Steve Hood, EDA, Whitehall District.

I'm a retired military guy and I'm a consultant.

Good afternoon, Quentin Harrell,

One honest man.

She doesn't want to introduce herself.

Bea LaPisto-Kirtley, Albemarle County Board of Supervisors from the Rivanna District,

My name's Gareth Gaston.

I'm the newest member of the Charlottesville Economic Development Party.

I'm going to figure out what's what.

I'm a long time Charlottesville resident.

Bill Mechnick, County EDA Board, Riverdale, Rivanna District, Landscape Architect, ran a firm for a number of years called, I'm a land planner and designer, and ran a company called Land Planning and Design.

Go figure, right?

Chris Angle, I'm the director of economic development for the city of Charlottesville and one of the lead staff people to the EDA.

And Tristan wanted to introduce herself, but she's our extraordinary note taker at the table there.

Emily Kilroy, Economic Development Director for Albemarle.

And I've got Avery Thompson, Ashley Perry, Hernandorena, Jeanette Ark, Subun Ahmedzai.

We brought the whole team.

All right.

Well, thanks everybody for being here.

I really want to thank everybody for participating.

We did this last year.

I think it's really good for the two EDAs to work together.

I know this cooperation has really increased over the last few years and there's obviously a lot of things that we can work on together that support both

localities, and I think the more that we can do things together and communicate and work together, the better off we'll be in terms of how we can move forward.

And I think the presentation we're going to get about the Innovation Corridor ties into that and all the work that we've done to support the bio patients, I think, really shows that when we work together, that's how we can really be effective in economic development.

We don't really have anything else.

Sure, appreciate it.

Okay, perfect.

I'm Helen Cawthon, president of Central Virginia Partnership for Economic Development.

Before I get started, I want to introduce you to my team members that are here.

So first is Katie Delaney, our talent director, who will be presenting with me today.

Shannon Holland is our Go Virginia director.

And Miles Davis is our brand new director of the Defense Affairs Committee.

So we're excited to have them here today.

Shannon Go Virginia 9 didn't give us matching funds for this project, so Shannon's very important to us.

I will say she makes CVPED jump through even more hoops than anyone else when we are trying to get Go Virginia money, so just know that it's not really a dotted line.

It's a pretty hard wall that we have to climb over.

I also want to thank Chris Engle and Emily Kilroy for their service on the CVPED Board of Directors, and also Frank Friedman is a past board member, so thank you for that.

and Flora Pettit and others are generous investors.

We appreciate it.

CVPED was formed almost 30 years ago as a public-private partnership to bring together local governments, Charlottesville, Albemarle, and seven other counties you can see here, higher ed, so UVA, Piedmont, Virginia, and Germanic community colleges, and the private sector to collaborate for regional economic success.

All of those groups provide financial support for our work, so we're really funded at the regional level.

Next slide.

Oh, it's me.

Are you going to do it?

Okay.

Well, we can do it together.

We measure the region's success in part by announced new capital investment and new jobs.

As you can see from this slide, we've had just incredible success, especially in the last three years.

As you know, AstraZeneca announced a $4.5 billion, 600 job project last week.

Congrats again to Emily for her hard work and leadership and really to the entire Almore County EDA.

for this amazing and truly transformational announcement.

Supervisors as well.

But we also enjoyed a ribbon cutting on July 16th with Luna Labs in Charlottesville.

So our fiscal year started July 1, so that's what I'm mentioning these.

And then on September 29th, a groundbreaking for Apton Scientific's new building.

One of our focuses is site development.

CVPED's board wholeheartedly supported Rivanna Futures as a regionally significant site.

in part because of that unanimous regional support.

Albemarle County got about $600,000 for Rivanna Futures from Go Virginia, and also followed by 9.7 million from the Virginia Business Ready Site Program on August 1st.

As you know, this site was selected by AstraZeneca for their largest manufacturing plant in the world.

That's what it will be.

It's amazing.

I'm here today to give you an update on the Innovation Corridor.

It started as a conversation about innovation and that we feel like we have a lot of cool things going on here, but what's really unique and different in our region?

Emily Kilroy, because of the work they were doing with Rivanna Futures, they had traveled to St. Louis and became aware of work done there on geofutures for geospatial intelligence as a strength for St. Louis.

We looked at other studies done.

by other communities really across the country as well as in Virginia.

We wanted to tell a stronger story.

So CDPAD markets the region all the time, but we really do it on a project basis for a particular client.

We really wanted to tell a stronger story, have it be data-driven, really grounded in actual facts.

I mean, what is here that's really here that we can make the case for?

One of the things, those of us in economic development, everybody says they're a bioscience home.

We really are.

But communities all over the country say that.

So that kind of thing.

We believe that our region is poised to be the next significant hub for innovation in biotech, IT, data science, digital technologies, and national security.

And we started this before we landed AstraZeneca.

You know, so we have to say we, the proverbial.

Now AstraZeneca is all of ours, which helps prove our point.

So when we were looking at innovation, like what do we think is cool here?

One of the things is national security and intelligence.

It's very significant.

With Rivanna Station, UVA's National Security Data Policy Institute, over 70 defense contractors, and the Defense Affairs Committee, which is now under our umbrella as of July 1, so Miles is brand new with us, these assets result in an economic impact of $1.2 billion.

So when I say Rivanna Station, hopefully you all know it's National Ground Intelligence Center, Defense Intelligence Agency, and National Geospatial Intelligence Agency.

The next slide, another $1.2 billion, so they're both equal after the University of Virginia in terms of economic impact on our region.

We are home to the highest

The highest density of biotech companies in Virginia from all stages of growth.

Seaville Biohub, I know you all have heard of that, is a very successful industry-led nonprofit.

UVA, of course, is a major research institution, one of the nation's premier public universities.

The medical school at UVA is excellent.

The hospital and the children's hospital have many nationally ranked specialties.

And in addition to the AstraZeneca announcement, I was lucky enough to also get to go to the steel top ceremony for the Manning Institute of Biotechnology.

And it was just a fantastic event, really exciting.

They're going to hire a hundred researchers and their teams to discover therapies and treatments that improve life.

And again, another game-changing resource for us.

So in terms of the Innovation Corridor itself, with the help of many partners, including Seaville, Charlottesville, Albemarle, CVPED applied for and received $100,000 in matching funds for the planning grant for Go Virginia for this Innovation Corridor strategic roadmap.

Pace Lockley of University of Virginia is co-lead with me, but could not be here this afternoon.

The intent is really to focus on our unique competitive advantages in life science, biotech, IT, and national security,

and develop a roadmap for the future.

Well, Katie's coming up.

I'll just remind the two EDAs that you all were contributors to the planning grant process.

And I like to point out, and I know my EDAs heard this before, but when we do these Go Virginia matching grants, there's a match requirement that has to be met to be able to bring down the state dollars.

And often it's a lot of work to grab the level of local match that we're hoping to achieve.

And this one was actually oversubscribed.

There were a lot of folks who were excited about the opportunity that this would give for the broader region.

Thanks Emily.

So as Helen said, I'm Katie Delaney.

I'm the Talent Director at Central Virginia Partnership.

I'm entering into this conversation at this point because I've been working with this consultancy on another planning grant that GoVirginia is funding, the BioBridge Talent Pathway Initiative.

So Techonomy is the consultant who is working on both of these grants.

They started working on BioBridge in February of this year.

So I've been working with them supporting that grant since that point.

And they kicked off this Innovation Corridor project in May.

So it's really exciting that they are doing so much work in our region.

They know central Virginia very well, and they also are going to be able to spot and already are in big ways, the intersection points between both of these grants.

To give you just a little bit of background about Techonomy, they're based in Ohio.

They are a nationally recognized firm.

They do focus on innovation and economic development work in general.

They bring a very strong national track record, as you can see some of their projects listed here.

The St. Louis Geospatial Roadmap, they've done a lot of work in Phoenix with bioscience, and a 10-year innovation plan in Oregon.

I have found them really collaborative and data-driven to work with.

The Steering Committee that's listed here, that both Emily and Chris are on, are meeting with them every two weeks.

So the economy, this is very unique how they're working with the Innovation Corridor, but they also are approaching it with a similar kind of framework that they are using with BioBridge.

So just to, I'm gonna give you the big picture and then turn it back over to Helen to look at the specific phases that they're undertaking.

But they're approaching this project with a kind of dual approach with the technology push, which is basically what is our region already really strong at specifically with research.

So they're measuring that.

The data points that they're looking at are by research expenditures, publications, research centers that already exist, and commercialization activity.

And then they're putting that side by side with the market demand, the market pool.

So where is the market already demanding innovation and showing that there's room for growth here in our region?

They're measuring that by R&D spending, patent activity, funding programs, federal funding programs like the Small Business Innovation Research Funds, Small Business Technology Transfer, and then also venture capital.

So putting those side by side and seeing the intersection points are where region nine has real differential potential.

And they're going to use that to build the roadmap that takes us forward and that they present next year.

I'll just end with this nine month at a glance how they're breaking this project down.

As I said, they began, well the project kickoff was in July, but they started, the steering committee started forming and the project truly kicked off with them in May.

But that was the first week or two.

They are currently in this quantitative assessment phase where they're going to spend four months doing the push and pull analysis.

Months five and seven, they'll be moving to interviews and synthesis.

Months six and seven, they'll be building the situational analysis.

and then they will share their deliverable, which is the strategic roadmap next spring in months seven and nine, seven through nine.

As the date is written up here, we're expecting that at the end of March.

And because it's a planning grant that will open opportunities for implementation work on the other side of that presentation.

So I wanted Katie to share that with you because she's been working with Zuconomy.

Her grant is funded by, or it's a Seville Biohub grant, so it's not our grant.

But as you all know, with all the success Seville Biohub has had, they needed some support to help get this to the finish line with the Talent Pathways Initiative.

And Katie didn't mention it, but she's a PhD in education and used to be a middle school teacher, so she likes all the education piece.

So it's been a nice collaboration.

What I'm gonna do is get into the six steps of the work that they're doing.

Frankly, it's a little dry and boring.

If you get bored, I do have a fact sheet for you to read.

You can look at your steering committee and advisory group members so that you know who's involved.

Because this is, you all have had the kind of what I would call a more fun-like presentation about innovation quarter while we're doing it.

This is getting you into the weeds a bit.

So the first step was really just simply getting us started, making sure we have the right people, the right approach, start kicking the tires, understanding possible growth opportunities.

And really as a starting point, the main question was where do we need to come together with coordinated and combined vision to fill the gaps and understand our strength and growth opportunities.

So that was just the starting point.

Then they start the real work begins.

So to economies doing a quantitative assessment of really UVA research primarily, they're pulling five years of academic research publication, grants funding, digging in on R&D trends across the university, looking at industry facing research centers and institutes, looking at investigator initiated work and conducting an asset inventory, capability, shared resources,

and developing a list of research strengths and core competencies.

They're really interested in market, the research that the market's interested in.

So my husband is actually Jim Cawthon and he's a professor of political science and he picks whatever topic he wants you to research.

And I would say it's probably not market, the market is not as interested in his research.

An example, so this is from Arkansas and what they showed the research competence is for the state of Arkansas.

What I like about this is it's fun and colorful.

but also it shows you that what we're going to get is not only a similar labeling but also the connectivity, what things are close to other things.

We have gotten a preliminary one of these, but it's not available for the public yet.

We're just not ready to share it.

But, you know, it shows you the kind of information we're going to get, and we're not just going to get cool graphs.

Of course, they're going to be able to explain it and make it useful to us.

I saw Frank look at it and go, it's just pretty, Helen.

I like it.

Task three is a quantitative assessment of industry.

So that's really looking at assessment of companies that we already have here, what they are doing successfully, looking at our industry sectors, looking at venture capital angel investments, as Katie mentioned, the SBIR and STTR grant awards, patent activities, and other, trying to figure out what, what are the, who are the innovative companies here and what are they doing.

They're pulling about five years of data and really looking to identify the high growth innovative firms that they can then interview and talk to.

For Phoenix, this is for bioscience patents.

And so for Phoenix, they got really good information on what groups of patents, like under what subjects were those patents.

And we're already seeing on our steering committee some of this data.

It's really interesting.

And some of it we should know, but frankly, some of it we really don't know or don't have clarity around.

So it's been very interesting.

Task four is really the interview.

So what they'll be doing is after they finish this initial quantitative assessment, they'll take that information, conduct one-on-one interviews with UVA researchers and research leadership.

So Laura McMahon, who's the Vice President of UVA Research, is actually a participant in this project herself, as well as some other folks at UVA, of course, industry executives, as well as leadership at Rivanna Station, so the DEI, DIA, DEI.

DIA, NINJIC and NGA folks are also involved with this effort.

They'll help Takami verify the data, gain new insights into our strength and high growth opportunities.

Basically it's one-on-one interviews asking about unique needs and barriers and start really trying to come up with what those opportunities are.

Task five is a situational assessment.

So the first round of interviews is really to understand what's emerging in terms of industry opportunities, and the next round of interviews is to understand how ready the ecosystems are to support those opportunities.

So this will be confirming the data and findings from the interviews and, again, kind of testing the initial strategic priorities and growth opportunities, make sure they make sense.

Task six is really developing the strategic roadmap.

We'll get key findings, recommended strategies, recommended actions for each strategy, estimate of resources requires, how much will this cost, and potential performance goals and metrics.

As Katie mentioned, we should have a report by the end of March, and we expect the roadmap will lay out a plan for us to then apply for Go Virginia implementation money.

So this is a one-year planning grant.

We can potentially apply for two years of funding

for whatever is new in this.

So Go Virginia really doesn't fund ongoing activities.

It funds new ideas, new initiatives.

So we feel pretty confident there'll be some neat things that come out of this report where we can move it forward.

So we're really looking at desired outcome as really a regional shared vision for a technology-driven future, be recognized in the innovation.

It's one thing for us to say we're an innovation hub, but we want others to think we're an innovation hub.

And I did have my first meeting with the site selector since the AstraZeneca announcement.

For whatever reason, the guy had no idea we had just announced AstraZeneca.

And it was a lot of fun.

Wow!

And I mentioned the main issue.

It's like, wow, I had no idea all this was going on.

So that was pretty fun.

More trade and sector industries.

So those industries that are basically selling their goods and services outside the Commonwealth of Virginia and business, new businesses and expansion and attraction of new businesses, creation of new businesses and expansion of existing companies.

And we think we're uniquely positioned for success.

Now, every community across the country thinks that, but we do feel like we have a fantastic location, a highly educated workforce, world-class academic research.

That is a copy of the steel, or picture of the steel top ceremony at the Manning Institute.

I mean, that is just a game changer.

I mean, that is such an exciting

initiative in itself, and of course a great place to live.

Everybody says that, but I think we really are high quality of life and cost-effective operations compared to other parts of the country.

In the instructions you gave to the consulting company,

We want to know our sweet spots.

So what is it that, so we, you look at Manning Institute, you look at Rivanna, it really started with Manning Institute on one end of town, the Commonwealth bioxcellerator coming in, and then the county purchasing Rivanna Futures and the opportunities at North Fork.

So it started kind of small.

And then we said, okay, we've got Aerojet in Orange County, Euro composites in Culpeper County.

I guess my question is, did you say more economic development, but for whom?

I mean, how- We're not there yet.

So this is all about data and maybe Emily or Chris would like to add something, but it's all about data at this point.

And really we are just focused on the industry sectors,

and what that the research and the industry information can tell us.

So that's, frankly, the climate and the housing goes on all that.

That's really more at the local level versus the regional level.

Well, they got all the strategic plans.

So they have Ural's draft.

They have the City of Charlottesville.

The other localities have strategic plans with that information in them.

I do believe that will come up in the interviews too.

Certainly when we talk to companies, you know, building our plan and I'm certain we have the same company that worked on your plan as well.

So I'm certain when the city did their plan, there was a lot of stakeholder engagement.

And certainly we heard a lot from the business community about those aspects as well.

So it's not the economic development strategic plan for the county doesn't

It's not also a climate plan.

We have a climate plan, a climate action plan.

We have a housing plan.

And Emily may want to speak to this, but one of the things they liked about Albemarle County was the fact that sustainability was such a focus.

Yeah, we found out

in just some recent conversations kind of reflecting that they part of their initial site selectors tell a joke that maybe you all know that it's they're really more site eliminators than selectors.

And so they do a lot of

They do a lot of research and computer desktop sort of work before they even start making phone calls and sending out emails.

And one of their initial cuts as they were doing their data bit was they wanted communities that had a strong sustainability alignment with their corporate values.

And they talked about the first,

They didn't.

Helen, I wonder if we could get your consultant to kind of share some lessons learned on the geospatial road there.

I think Emily has done that, haven't you?

Yeah, and that was actually part of our trip to St. Louis, was to really gain some insight from that.

To follow up on Garrett's point, one of the concerns that I have in terms of forward-looking with site exclusion, rejection kind of criteria, is that we have a high quality of life and a lot of amenities, but along with that, an above average cost of living.

We have very expensive housing, and it seems to be getting more and more expensive, at least

within, you know, within our locality, within Charlottesville and our county, pushing people out, displacing them with the surrounding counties.

And so, like, I do think that from an economic development standpoint, it's, it's really important to figure out when we're attracting these high paying jobs, right.

What's happening to our existing workforce, to the residents of the city?

Are they the city or the county or the region?

Are they being displaced?

I mean, I see this in my neighborhood where people that work at some of these places are coming in and buying homes.

They're new to the area.

I mean, I think most of these projects that you're talking about, the Manning Institute as an example, those 100 people are not going to be 100 people that already live here.

those researchers are gonna be predominantly people moving here, right?

And those are well above average paying jobs, which is good from an economic development standpoint, but it's not necessarily good for the existing residents that are trying to have pathways to careers.

So I do think that part of the, I would say, you know, part of what our economic development authority does in the city and part of our strategic plan, right, is to have, what are the pathways for the workforce?

for folks from all different kinds of education backgrounds.

That's a great point.

And one thing, Katie can do a presentation on the BioBridge Talent Pathways Initiative, but she didn't do that today.

But they're really looking at that.

Like for bioscience itself, what do you need to do with K through 12 schools, with

community colleges with high schools with certificate programs.

And a lot of that, I wish someone from PVCC was here, a current PVCC person with that.

And it's really interesting.

And I do feel like to me, one of the ways you address that housing affordability is to have better jobs for your residents to make more money and not leave people behind.

Because if you have a, you know, what used to be a decent paying job, it's just not enough money anymore.

And so what can we all do about that?

I mean, it's something across the country, everyone's talking about those issues.

My family's in Joplin, Missouri.

It's a very inexpensive place to live.

They're still talking about it.

I want to add real quick to Stephen's point that there's various studies that kind of categorize the number.

But for every 10 jobs, say one's a PhD that's going to lead a program, two or three are going to be bachelor's level, and the rest are going to be community college, high school level type jobs that

come within the community.

So to your point, our plan tries to address some of that in creating those pathways for others to not be left out, but to be lifted up through that process.

Interestingly enough, it was a quick little piece of the commentary last week from the AstraZeneca CEO, but he referenced that

in terms of the 600 jobs.

I think that's great.

Part of my point was that if you're an existing resident of Charlottesville and these jobs open up, but you can't afford to live right in the house you grew up in,

And you've got to move to a surrounding area, maybe even outside of this planning region in order to have that job.

Other questions?

Thank you so much for having me.

and who manages those metrics.

Is it the city, the county, is it the economic development departments or is it other departments that are monitoring those metrics?

Side note, I mean, well, an additional component was with Rivanna Futures.

I get the, my understanding is

And so I'm just curious, like it is a side note, but it's a bigger component.

I noticed that we had six data centers in the region.

Well, they won't fit in Charlottesville.

The data centers we work with, one, two, 250,000 square foot buildings or 500,000 square feet.

Some of our rural counties still want that.

We, just so you all know, and Almar County has put that on hold as 40,000 square feet, if I'm speaking correctly.

So they're not considering larger data centers without the data center having to go through a very public vetting process.

Is that fair?

I want to tell you the way Central Virginia Partnership works is we support the localities economic development priorities.

We don't impose anything on a locality.

So we are here to support Chris and his team and Emily and her team and the priorities that you all as the EDA and the supervisor set for your community.

And I'll give you a great example as Madison County.

When they first came on board, they were not a part of CVPED when I first got here.

And they're like, we don't want you telling us what to do.

I'm like, that's not what we do.

You tell us what your priorities are, and that's what we help you with.

So we do have a couple of counties that still want data centers.

Obviously, Louisa County went very aggressive for that, and they were pretty big winners in their view from that standpoint.

I would say Charlottesville and Albemarle are much, much less interested in that.

We will share our leads with everybody.

So Chris and Emily may get a data center inquiry, but we're not expecting them to respond to it.

And so again, it's pretty local in terms of decision making.

We'll share a heavy industrial project we know nobody's going to want with everybody and say, hey, let us know.

And that would be something I would say the locals do.

have the data and we look at the data, but we're not figuring out what each community or each locality should do.

Yeah.

So it wasn't, it basically wasn't a question for you, Ellen.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Was it fair to you?

It's not a question to you.

Excuse me.

I think we can all agree that both the city and the county want local hiring as much as possible, whether it's at the Manning Institute, AstraZeneca, or anybody else.

And I think what you've identified is really where Chris and his staff, Emily and her staff,

can get involved working with these new employers to create pipelines for local people and to talk about that being a priority for us.

I know we've already talked about it with AstraZeneca.

We have an incredibly underemployed workforce in the city and county.

When you get waited on or when you interact with your bartender, they probably have a master's degree in something.

They can make a lot more money at new employment opportunities if we create that pipeline for them.

The best chance for them to afford living here is to make more money.

As my friend Rich Schuyler always said, the solution to poverty is money.

They need to make more money.

and we don't have the job opportunities that pay in that middle range and higher unless you have a PhD and you go work for the university.

So I think you've identified something that we on the local level need to do through our

economic development leaders, and our EDAs to create pipelines for our local people, not just to leave it to chance.

Who's working with the Manning Institute right now?

As Chris said, for every hundred researchers, there's going to be a couple hundred support staff.

Who's working with them right now to talk about how do we get local people into those jobs?

And that's a lot of the work that the TPI study that Katie referenced.

This was a need that was identified about 18 months ago.

We said Afton Scientific made their announcement and Manning Institute made its announcement.

And a lot of the local folks got together and said, we have to do something to not miss the moment because there's going to be all these jobs.

A lot of them are not PhD jobs.

and good career ladder jobs.

If you're not a follower of Afton Scientific's LinkedIn page, please like them after this because they do such a wonderful job talking about how they grow their employees and celebrate their employees as they grow in their organization.

They're about to bring on 200 more jobs and the predominance of those are manufacturing jobs.

They do not require a four-year degree.

And PVCC is stepping up in a major way to work on credentialing opportunities

and training opportunities.

And so I think we don't have a full answer to the question of what are we doing, but there's a lot of groundwork being laid right now.

I have two comments.

One, from having been on some of the BioBridge meetings and calls, what I was really impressed by is the businesses and their feedback and how, you know, when

The consultant got into the weeds on these issues, which I didn't even have a remote understanding of.

But the companies were saying, well, this is what we're finding, and this is what we're seeing.

And so I guess my one comment would be, looking at the advisory group, I would suggest that they be trying to, at least in the interviews, try to expand the businesses.

Oh, absolutely.

Oh, yes.

OK. OK.

I didn't know, I know we did our plan, we had lots of different groups, so and then I think just sort of the

point of this, because I know we've talked about a lot of different priorities, and I 100% agree that housing and housing affordability is a huge issue that both the city and the county have got to confront.

But I also think what we get out of this at the end of the day is here's the opportunity.

Here's where the things that we can be considering as that we can then evaluate to say, OK, is this right for us?

Is this not right for us?

Is that sort of a correct understanding of where we end up at the end of the day?

Because there are obviously a lot of things that as an EDA, either EDA, we don't have the ability to do.

Any more questions for me?

So on to the Charlottesville Economic Development Strategic Plan.

All right.

Yes.

This will be brief.

So I think we underestimated the interest in the last topic and we're a little off schedule so we'll try and catch up.

Quick overview of the economic development strategic plan for the city, which has been in place about a year and a half now.

We had the same firm, as was mentioned by Emily a little bit ago, Residence Consulting, led by Steven Pedigo, who was really the lead on it with support from his team.

Very similar process that you all went through.

I was on your steering committee, so got eyes on that.

And I think we had a representative from

the county pre-emily on our committee.

But in any case, a lot of research, a deep dive on the data is customary for any project that Stephen Pedigo is involved in.

Significant steering committee interaction, survey work, and then one-on-one conversations with key players and individuals in town.

So a pretty robust process I think was shared by both.

And, you know,

The exercise that we have set up for you here in a few minutes kind of seeks input on how the overlap, what you all see in the overlap.

And I think you'll definitely see some overlap and that emanates from having the same kind of perspective from the consultant view.

But in any case, this is really just our basic mission and vision.

I can do the whole thing right from this slide.

So these are our five goals.

This is what we call our shield.

We have one of these in our office.

We look at it every day.

The top three are really kind of the core economic development related goals.

Entrepreneurship is a key one of creating opportunity for folks in the city that want to start their own business and are equipped to do that and helping them get there either with our programming and or with partnership programming.

Number two, innovative and intentional growth.

is really the space that the Manning Institute and AstraZeneca and Luna Labs falls into.

That's kind of bread and butter economic development without doing overseas attraction trips, which we don't do primarily because we're 10 square miles and have very little kind of real estate and office space to kind of operate with.

So we really focus on growing our own.

We have a really robust business visitation program where we visit with folks, ask for challenges, problems, try and help them grow from 5 to 10 to 20 to 30 employees.

A 50 person company in the city of Charlottesville is a home run for us.

There's probably 20 or 30 of them.

We don't have big operations here generally.

And so getting into that space and helping grow our own is really a key activity of ours.

And the plan recognized that.

Pathways for Opportunity is what we just spent a few minutes talking about and kind of creating those workforce moments for folks to grow a skill set, enhance a skill set, and hopefully create wealth in that process.

And we are focused on that through this plan, and we have a staff member that kind of lives in that space every day.

There are conversations happening around not only the TPI but

the University, Piedmont, and day tech and city schools, early conversations around things that can be done to kind of play into this innovation corridor space, whether it's defense or whether it's bio or life science.

The other two are kind of the non-traditional, if you will, economic development goals that you might see in a plan.

Placemaking, we talk about quality of life, we talk about quality of place.

Next year, if you didn't know, the downtown mall is going to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

This hat is brand new merch for that.

And it's a place.

It's a place that the city made 50 years ago.

And we're blessed because of that.

We keep, we trade off of that.

People enjoy it.

They come to visit for that reason.

And we want to enhance that, grow that, maintain that.

And a lot of what we're spending time and energy on right now, not very glamorous, but making sure that the mall is in decent shape and doing all the things that add into that.

And then storytelling is something that we do terribly in this community.

As a large community, in terms of telling our story, Helen alluded to some of that the innovation corridor piece, a piece of that work is kind of preparing us to have data behind a story that we could tell authentically to the world so that we can be recognized as an innovation hub and potentially attract

you know, other folks with interest in investing and having companies and things like that.

So that's a real opportunity, not only for the city, but I think for the region to kind of lean in there and tell a better story in a way that's authentic to our community.

So that's what we're focused on.

That's what we live by.

All right.

Thank you.

All right.

So then our plan, that river image is in the city's plan.

So that's the connective tissue, right, Vanna?

So this is the plan that the board supervisor has adopted, the EA to win them for a session just in August.

So it's a brand new plan.

We're actually doing a sort of a tack-on engagement with the consultant for some implementation work.

because we don't want it to sit on the shelf, but sort of a vision of rooted innovation open for investment with a big focus on the mission on tax-based scaling up and redevelopment opportunities and career ladder job opportunities to deliver lasting prosperity for all residents.

And then we sort of combined the target sectors and the strategies kind of into just keep it a tight five.

And so the top three are our target sectors.

We're gonna lead in the intelligence national security space that's really leveraging Rivanna stations presence in our community, as well as the Rivanna Futures land acquisition.

Goal two is discover in life sciences, really focus on not leading the country, but a focus on being a real leader in the mid Atlantic.

Region in the life sciences space.

Goal three is really around supporting our agribusiness and food processing sector.

That is inclusive of the wineries, but it's a lot broader than the wineries.

It's an area where the county, 95% of the county's land area is rural area.

And there's a lot of production that happens and value added opportunities that happen.

And how do we help those businesses access wholesale

markets scale up their business to be able to grow opportunities there.

Goal four is about, it's called talent.

It's really talent and entrepreneurship.

And it's focusing on how do we create those career pathways that feed the sectors and make it easier for folks to start a business.

And then the final goal is compete for investment.

which is really looking more internal.

How is Albemarle County as a government creating an environment where businesses can thrive?

And that's land use, that's taxation, that's any other sort of political policy area.

And then this slide is sort of a transition into the small group discussion.

So this was a staff pass at taking the two plans and looking at how

how they might align for opportunities for the city and the county to continue to collaborate.

And just sort of, so this slide is really intended to sort of seed your small group discussion on where there's some overlap between the plants.

You have a printed copy in front of you behind your agenda.

And then this slide is really just a, again, just sort of

highlight a couple of areas where the city and the county have had robust partnerships.

You know, some of these things are ongoing, some of these things are recent past, but you know, we do operate, I think, from a space of, you know, how can we pull each other into things that we think are good ideas, regardless of where it sort of started.

A lot of our business community feels like they operated one community, and so how can we work in a way that sort of echoes that sentiment and, you know,

the upset if a company moves across the Rivanna River, which is a shared border from one community into the other, how do we not view that as a loss, but really as a win that we kept a business that is choosing to continue to thrive here.

And with that, we have sat you City County intentionally so that to facilitate the small group discussion

But we're going to get on time.

And we're thinking maybe 10 minutes of in groups of I think three is how the math will work out.

Maybe one could be four.

where you can just sort of cuddle up and talk.

You don't have to answer these two specific questions, but they're really just meant to see in a conversation among the EDAs on what makes you excited?

What are your interest areas?

What do you hope that we work on?

In a year from now, what do you wish that we had achieved over the next 12 months?

and then we'll do, so talk about that for 10 minutes in small groups and then we'll do a report back out.

Okay.

Make sense?

Thanks.

So the ongoing partnerships?

About 10 years.

I'm not really aware.

I know Bea has thoughts.

I just want to tell you, I'm going to be the...

I'm going to be the...

I'm going to be the...

You couldn't see me, I just spun out

Absolutely, absolutely.

These are places where you can graduate from.

The National Ground of Eligibility.

So I'll call this Polar's Ground.

I think people generally have a sense they pay their tax, realistic tax, whatever, to the city.

And so those person in five years would be able to go to a library and pay a check, but still they don't know.

It's very lonely.

No, I think all of the students would be able to have their own stuff.

I think all of the students would be able to have their own stuff.

I think all of the students would be able to have their own stuff.

I think all of the students would be able to have their own stuff.

I think all of the students would be able to have their own stuff.

I think all of the students would be able to have their own stuff.

I think all of the students would be able to have their own stuff.

I think all of the students would be able to have their own stuff.

Thomas, Seth Shostakovich, I love you, I'm glad to see you, I'm glad to see you, I'm glad to see you, I'm glad to see you, I'm glad to see you, I'm glad to see you, I'm glad to see you,

No one knew who they were.

That's right.

So in the county, that shouldn't be one or the other.

maybe I'll be sleeping

That was a woman who came up.

You know, capable folks paying their rent.

You know, there's a competition in the city next to UVA.

Well, not maybe not as a pay cut example, but an operation.

It's busy in our silo.

Alshasne, Pat Devegette,

Well, you can look at it

So, you know, those numbers, that needs to be black.

So, I think that you're, yeah, I don't have any difference.

I'm sorry, it's too late.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

The bounce didn't have anything to do with september.

There was a book that actually outlined each community in the United States, the United States, the United States, the United States, the United States, the United States, the United States, the United States,

I think it's very difficult to take this from health implications to those things, right?

So, we look at economic development, it can be just fears, it certainly goes by others.

I want to be celebrated.

Excuse me.

We're going to celebrate.

I'll let you guys talk.

I guess I was thinking you know maybe

We don't tell about it enough, but that costs money.

Yes, there is.

They're all in the city and then we also have the husk on the downtown ball.

Last word.

Alright.

Alright, I can do that.

All right, we're ready.

We have our designated reporter outers.

All right, so I will go ahead and start.

I was our designated reporter.

In a shocking turn of events with Frank in our group, we thought education was an area that we could do more on in terms of collaboration.

So I think we wanted to focus on

Pipelines, improving pipelines to employers in both the city and the county because there's really not a line for where employees come from and where the employers are and working together to do that to try to eliminate duplication of efforts.

And in terms of what we want to be celebrating at next year's joint meeting, we look forward to celebrating the Go Virginia grant implementation funding that we will have just obtained.

Great, so I guess I'm on behalf of the spokesman for our group and a scientist in that

We're a collaboration, we're splitting up the two.

So one of the opportunities that we talked a lot about was an extension of the topics we mentioned earlier, which is just how can economic development authorities support the workforce development aspects of housing affordability, also looking at regional transit as part of that as well.

and helping to just make sure that we can, in our roles, help educate people about the importance of those to economic development, right?

Very similarly to the other group, we talked about celebrating, hoping to celebrate sort of a redevelopment sort of that does cross the boundary there from sort of Seminole Square up through Albemarle Square, including Fashion Square.

So we can maybe square those.

Yeah.

We'll be here all evening till pure wage.

So I will do my best to capture everything and represent what these four gentlemen shared.

There were several different conversations really focused on sort of what does smart growth look like in both the city and the county.

And some of the things that were touched on there were just how we get better pathways to job opportunities, how we can

really leverage the relationships that we have with incoming companies and existing businesses to better line up what those pathways are and get ahead of things.

I think one of the comments that was made was you don't throw the ball to where the person is standing, you throw it to where the person is going to be.

So how can we better work with that?

How can we utilize it?

So we talked about the role that entrepreneurship can play in there as well and what that can do.

And showing people that there are different opportunities within entrepreneurship, not necessarily just the types of things they may initially think about.

Finding ways to bridge some of the gaps that exist in some of the training that's needed for some of the skilled trades between sort of what's currently available,

in some of the K-12 and what's really needed as far as from the business community and what the roles are that different groups play, whether it is the K-12 system, whether it's KTEC, whether it's PVCC, some of those.

We talked a little bit about the importance of finding lasting jobs.

not just sort of what are the immediate short-term jobs or what are the doubts that are going to be there and there was a little bit of discussion at the end as far as using the school of data science and really trying to leverage the relationship with them to help establish a better grasp of some granular data sets to give better demographic and jobs data for both the city and the county with more data sets that you have leads to better economic development

Decisions that can be made.

That's good, Matt.

That's good.

Just hire him.

Yeah, I couldn't go.

Our group mirrored a lot of your all's comments.

It started with a discussion about the city and county being different types of places, the urban density in the city and rural nature of the county and the character.

It led to a discussion on placemaking, which I had explained to Bea, but it wasn't.

And, you know, just the quality of our community in general and why people want to be here and live here.

and how that related to the levers that we need to pull to affect that, one being economic development, environment, housing, all those things that are in our plan that we address.

and almost every one of those things, whether it's infrastructure, transportation, housing, affordable housing, place-making are things that we should be and are collaborating on, I think, between the county and city has been demonstrated a couple of times.

So that was a discussion focused growth.

was brought up, education and training, making sure that we continue to cooperate on that, and creation of jobs.

Celebration-wise, I guess it was Bea said that completing the Innovation Corridor

A planning study, but the point of that was really having that story told and communicated and putting us on the map a little bit more, making that evident of the opportunity here and creating jobs.

Some move the needle on creating the type of mix of jobs we want to create.

I would love to also see, well I didn't say this, some kind of you know more in-depth analysis of the actual build out of the metrics of this plan, these plans and what we're really looking at so we have answers for them for folks on that.

One thing I'll add, and this is something Addison had mentioned about an event that he had gone to, and I would ask our directors that if there are opportunities you can see for members of the EDAs to participate in events or things together, and I like be my pitch where I think that's what I do here and those sorts of things, but if there are other opportunities, obviously only two of each

But just something as a way to get us to work together.

And the other thing is I think we should ask Stephen, as he's thinking about his, as we've gone to him to think about implementation for the county's plan, maybe if he sees some collaboration areas in the implementation that we can match up with the city since he also wrote that one, it's probably fairly easy for him to do.

I just wanted to make a real quick comment, since I hadn't heard this stuff as frequently as tonight, that the county is 95% rural.

I was surprised by that too.

So what I was just going to say is 50% of the population, as I understand it, lives in non-rural areas, right, if not more, right, is in the designated growth area.

So I think I would just kind of say that's a very different statistic.

When somebody says it's a 95% rural, that makes it sound like 95% of the population lives on a farm, which is not at all true.

Anything else?

No, I think this is a good second attempt at getting everybody together.

And I hope we can continue doing it.

All right.

Well, then I guess we can adjourn.

I will adjourn the ALMA media.