Economic Development Authority Meeting   11/18/2025

Good to go.

Ready to roll?

Ready to roll.

The recording is going.

So we have a quorum.

We have a revised agenda.

I would move that we approve the revised agenda.

All right, revised agenda is approved.

Matters from the public.

Anyone signed up?

OK. Approval of the minutes.

Anyone have any comments on the minutes?

Second.

All right, all in favor?

Aye.

All right, minutes are approved.

Yep, nothing really too much to report on this front.

Coming up at the end of the year, so next month and in January, we'll have this next round of tax rebates.

That'll be the next biggest thing.

And then we're also working on remaking that second page of the performance agreements to give you guys a better view of them as a whole.

I was hopeful that we'd have guests today to answer any questions that arose, but there would be time to follow up if there are questions following the meeting.

You all may remember

or awesome tour of the Ciller Pollinator honey processing facility that our friends at Ciller Pollinator put together last year.

That was one of the AFID infrastructure grants.

And the AFID infrastructure grants are designed to help small farm operations and small agribusiness

develop the infrastructure that they need to be successful and to scale up.

And about a month ago, prior to our joint meeting, which is why this is coming to us in November, coming to the directors in November, we were approached by Olive Branch Gardens, and that is Amanda Chirio, I think.

I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing it correctly, but I'm going to go with Chirio.

and her husband Matt who own Olive Branch Gardens.

It's a farm in Barbersville, a small organic farm.

They use intensive planting methods to keep the soil healthy and they grow other end vegetables and co-op with some sublocal producers of pork products and flour millers to make these really fantastic Penny's Imperfect Pizzas that they produce at Beacon Kitchen.

You all might find that name familiar.

It's a shared use commercial kitchen.

It's located off of Carlton Avenue.

We've supported the Newhouse Development Corporation in the past.

and so they have the opportunity to create these yummy looking pizzas.

You can see there on the right, they sell them at several farmers markets.

They sell them at stores and wineries throughout the region and across the state.

They have a mail order option as well.

And the ultimate goal of their application here is to scale up their equipment so that they can produce more pizzas to meet the demands of their customers.

So the ask essentially, I won't go too far into this, but they ultimately need equipment to produce quicker.

They need a dough divider and rounder, a dough press, a commercial freezer, a generator,

Food processor, and with all this expansion ability, they'll need two staff members to train and support their extended operations.

I'd love to offer some more insight on the more granular

granular bottom lines as far as what that scale up would do for them.

But their current ask is that they're asking the local match of $15,850.45 that would in theory be matched by the state totaling 31,790 cents.

So ultimately this decision will be made by

by the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, December 15th.

Actually, I did have a question.

For these particular types of grants?

Oh, hi.

Hi, I mean, hello.

Let me see.

And I'm just answering some questions.

Just the eighth of infrastructure grant specifically generally runs once in the fall, sometimes in the spring.

So it's twice a year with this particular grant.

Sure, some of the, so Potter's Craftsider, they had a facility expansion.

We made, near Director Morrill's, the nice church that they refitted and had their second location there.

They've got another location down on Broadway, and they did an infrastructure expansion.

Grant to use a bunch of Virginia apples, like one gazillion pounds of Virginia apples.

They have investments in infrastructure equipment.

They are off the top of my head.

We know that this is the only

Now let's get to our next question.

It is a competitive process, but it isn't exclusive.

Well, not necessarily.

We typically, I think we've supported maybe two at a time for a specific purpose, but just because a locality puts an application in for one business doesn't mean another one couldn't also.

I'd be awarded from that same locality.

Well, actually referred by folks that

We did have another company.

kind of connect with us to inquire about it and explore what the process would entail.

I think they were.

They weren't prepared at that stage.

I think they were.

They weren't prepared at that stage.

Can you explain that for me?

Sure.

The value, the extra value for that sentiment is the state really supports regional and cooperative initiatives and projects, and because they do their production at a shared-use kitchen, they'll house until they scale up to a point where they aren't necessarily needing a commercial kitchen from a shared-use kitchen.

They will share their equipment with

Basically the equipment benefits more than the equipment.

That's what I'm trying to do.

So the investment goes a little farther.

Well, and I think the other part of that is the fact that the supplies, the

It's possible some things like the cheese is really hard, because obviously not much little cheese that we could use, like we use cabbage.

You can eat veggies, we use it for our own farm, or we have a lot, we've been in the farmers market for like six years, so we have a lot of dishes with other farmers.

and since this does support target industry business and leverages regional partnerships and is consistent with economic development strategic plan goal of growing a modern aggregate of the economy.

There aren't any further questions.

I'll move on and let everybody move on.

Thank you for having me.

We need to vote.

We need to vote.

I just can't do this myself.

I don't know.

Alright.

Well.

Well, we'll see, we'll see.

All right, thank you everyone.

Thank you.

So this is an update on the AgroSpheres.

This is an existing performance agreement that the county has with AgroSpheres.

They were awarded a Commonwealth Development Opportunity Fund grant from the Commonwealth of Virginia in fiscal year 23 for a total of $200,000.

AgroSpheres is a

the organic chemistry company that has found a way to develop natural pesticides that are derived from natural ingredients.

There's a lot of commercial interest in the product that they're producing.

Yeah, so they've made substantial investments to move sort of they when we first announced they were still refining the research and development portion of their sort of product cycle and they are now selling product to commercial customers so you know by the measured in pallets so not small batch but they're really ramping up their production capability.

and they really participate.

The leadership of AgroSpheres participates in a lot of entrepreneurship, small business development type activities.

So we're glad to have AgroSpheres in Albemarle County.

Back in fiscal year 23, the county agreed to provide a one-to-one match for that Commonwealth Opportunity Fund opportunity.

There were three years in that performance agreement, so that $200,000 was divided across three years.

The year one payment went through as sort of expected, and when we checked in with them on the year two payment, we understood that there was really a need to sort of revisit the agreement that we had with them.

The way that our performance agreements are structured, they terminate when a performance milestone

has been missed.

And in this case, the timing of the capital investments that the company made were a mismatch with the expectations as they were outlined in the performance agreement.

So if you added the capital investment requirements for year one and year two, cumulatively, they met the total two-year capital investment

But the way that that agreement was structured, they had a year one requirement and then a year two requirement that were counted, sort of treated sort of in isolation of each other.

And so in year two, they experienced a shortfall.

And the agreement does not allow us to credit that they had an overage in capital investment in year one.

And so if you add year one and year two together, they actually met the cumulative capital investment.

It just wasn't timed properly for the way that the agreement was structured.

And so we had a conversation with the CEO to get clarity on that bit.

And then also just had a conversation sort of how are things going with the business generally?

Do you think there's other, if we're gonna look at the agreement again, are there other things in the agreement that you would hope that we would look at?

And they shared at that time, we were talking with them in the early spring of this calendar year.

When there was a lot of uncertainty with federal funding, with some regulatory agencies at the federal level, and a lot of things happening in the investor space as well with startup companies.

And so they said, you know, we're actually

changing the timing of our capital investments.

We still intend to make those capital investments.

We're still fundraising towards those capital investments.

We're just looking at the timing of that.

And so they said, if you're looking at the agreement, we would appreciate extending out that performance timeline in order to better sync up with what our current capital, our planned capital expenditures investments are looking like now.

And so the First Amendment, it was part of your packet.

and sort of does the work to enact those two changes.

One, again, is just to clarify that capital investments can be cumulative as opposed to year by year.

Thank you.

And then to extend the performance period for what was year three to calendar year 2028.

Again, that just gives them a little bit of a time cushion to make those investments more in line with what their sales expectations are.

as opposed to making big investments up front and letting the supplies lag.

Emily, your slide says 28 but your memo says 27 for the

Well the performance period goes through 27 and then the payment itself would happen in calendar year 28 right after the yes period yes fiscal versus calendar yes well not even not even fiscal versus calendar right this this says extended performance period right right so that's through 27

I think we're all, I think the payment date is right.

Yeah, they continue to attract capital investments and they've won some national awards for entrepreneurship and the idea is they have some strategic partnerships with major chemical companies.

So there's a strong sort of drumbeat of folks are continuing to be interested in the product that they have.

And again, they're just starting.

In the spring, they were just starting their customer sales.

But when we saw the CEO a couple of weeks ago, he shared they had another pallet ready to pack up and ship out to another customer.

Just curious.

They're in Seminole Place, which some people call the old comm dial building on Seminole Trail.

Lots of people note lots of different ways.

Director Hood, you know where Roback is?

That is also where that is located.

Anything else?

Bea?

Just want to add a point number one that's going to be going forward.

That will be for all investments.

Meaning we'll think about that in the future when we do future agreements with other companies.

Yes, I think that's sort of a lesson learned from us that we would think about that differently.

Well, I think we can talk about it being cumulative as long as they're hitting

First benchmark, right?

You can't say, well, we're going to invest $2 million up to two years.

The first year we hit $500,000.

But don't worry, we're going to get that $1.5 million.

So you can give us the money up front.

Right, right.

It's more, you know, we overshoot in year one, we're a little behind in year two.

And I think that's sort of where you're getting with this.

That if you're falling short in year one, that's a different situation when you're talking about Q and A, because we may not be paying for the year.

Right.

Right.

Yeah, we try to meet the company where they where they're at.

And so some need capital up front, some can take it more over time.

All right, your motion?

Motion to assign the first part.

I motion to...

I'll take it.

I move that the EDA adopt this resolution amending the COF agreement and appropriate 75,000 for the winter of this year to be installed, subject to the terms of this resolution and the resulting agreements, and to authorize the Albemarle County Executive and this Authority's Chair and Treasurer to execute all documents necessary to complete the First Amendment COF,

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

It says payment calendar year 28.

The way that we operationally work through these payments, we know when the tax deadlines are.

And so that's sort of our performance agreement management process.

All right, are we ready for a roll call?

Yes.

Director Long?

Aye.

Director Hood?

Aye.

Director Mechnick?

Aye.

Aye.

Okay.

All right.

So the staff report has a little bit farther of a look back because we did meet in October, but it was a joint meeting with the city of Charlottesville EDA.

That feels like ages ago, but it was just one month.

And so we have a little bit of a further look back as we were putting the slides together.

I was wondering, why are we talking about some of these things?

But it was new to you.

And so we'll hit those.

And one is really just fun to recognize.

This is a slide we've used in several meetings over the past

to talk about some of the big documents that we've been working through and so just wanted to not miss with you all that the comp plan was adopted in October by the board supervisors.

Once you adopt a new plan, there's a lot of work ahead.

So it's still the start of a lot more work, but we're really excited to have that clarity on what that policy document says.

That does help us with our work and communicating with folks on what's possible with their land or land that they're interested in.

And so we're excited to have that, just be able to move forward from that.

On the strategic plan, the economic development strategic plan, the EDA had approved supporting an engagement with Civic Soul.

So Steven Pettigo, who was the person assigned to our plan development with a different company is now with Civic Soul.

And the EDA is supporting some implementation work on that.

We've internally kicked that off.

So we've had a couple of work sessions as an internal office

on sort of operationalizing the strategic plan.

We had hoped to actually do a session in November and December with the EDA.

There was a scheduled conflict that we couldn't resolve.

And so we will have Stephen Pettico here in December to do sort of a kickoff with you all.

And then in January, we'll try to give as much time as we can.

So we'll try to keep things off, other items off the agenda to spend some really dedicated work session time with Stephen.

working through sort of how does the EDA see its role in implementing the strategic plan.

We think that'll be a really valuable exercise for everybody.

And we'll send some resources ahead of your December meeting for you all, not to sort of present the nitty gritty of authorities of EDAs in the Commonwealth of Virginia, but just for you to sort of have to sort of think through when you have some spare time.

is sort of his preparation for that January meeting.

Initially it's been focused on the economic development office and then working and then there's sort of a second pass that we're still sort of in the process of working through of you know what are the other departments, how do we what do we need from them, how do we work with them, how do we make sure that we're advancing the work it needs to be.

Yeah.

And there'll be a time component to that work as well.

Yeah.

I have a tiny Bill Mechnick.

We're starting some sort of the softer side of the marketing.

So the plan is posted online where we scrub the website of references to the old plan, which is always fun.

And then we're in the process of getting actual documents printed so we'll make those available for you all when we have those.

And we're sort of updating our marketing materials to reflect the new goals and sectors.

And also working on what does our business attraction and retention and expansion work look like with the new plan.

So we'll continue to sort of make sure that we're visiting the businesses, convening businesses.

We talked at the joint meeting with the city, this idea of doing some joint stakeholder work groups with our listening sessions with the city of Charlottesville where we have overlaps in our target sectors.

Yeah, are there any theory

We currently are focusing on our agribusiness and our food processors and

Got a couple out in the field in the next coming weeks, so people are welcome to join us in an email out a couple days ago.

But if you're interested in coming, by all means, join, yeah.

Obviously space is limited and we don't want to inundate the business with the whole group.

But I do think it is entirely,

You have autonomy too.

Yeah, so our intention is that as we get the visit set up per quarter that we would offer out, you know, for the ones where it would be appropriate.

Sometimes we know that we can't bring additional folks, but for the ones where we can, our intention would be to offer those up and then it would be kind of a first come first served for quorum reasons.

Well, particularly if it's in our areas.

And those are opportunities too, as well.

As one person, it is difficult to get to everybody in the county.

So if there are people, business owners, that you do have contact with and relationships with that are interested, please, by all means, connect me to them.

This is another slide that we have updated you all on over the past year.

Just wanted to note, it's been a couple months since we got the VDOT, the bottom one, the VDOT Economic Development Access Program funding awarded.

But we wanted just to let you know that we were successful in that grant application.

And so that's just some additional funding coming to the county in support of the Rivanna Futures Project that we're just really excited about the support.

Many of you were here at the announcement for the AstraZeneca project.

Again, that feels like ages ago, but it was just a couple of weeks ago.

So don't need to spend a ton of time on the announcement, but I wanted just to give a little bit more detail on the project because there was so much happening at the announcement that we wanted to make sure that you all had an awareness of what is to come on this project.

Again, it's sort of one biopharmaceutical manufacturing campus.

There's actually two manufacturing facilities that are part of AstraZeneca's plan.

One facility will be larger and have office warehousing and production sort of along a central spine.

And then there'll be a second facility that's more of a standalone facility that will be able to share some of the resources of the other, but they will be two distinct manufacturing processes.

In total, AstraZeneca will take 82 of the 105 acres that we've been sort of planning around over the past several years, which is really exciting.

It's the northernmost 82 acres on the property and we sort of have been conceptually planning that that would be the last property to be occupied.

It's really exciting to think about what the remainder of the property will look like with sort of two anchors on either end of it with Rivanna Station, which is obviously not part of the county's land holding, and then AstraZeneca up in order end.

There were three, we call them land bays, so three major land bays.

They're taking an enlarged one and then we have a reduced one.

So there's two remaining, yeah.

So there's one that's 25 acres that remains, that's sort of between Rivanna Station and that private office building that's up there, and AstraZeneca on the west side of the road, and then on the east side of the road.

105, we have also, we're in the process of, we need to update the conceptual plan because we think there's more, we think there's probably more opportunity other than just the 105.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah.

So the math doesn't quite math right now, but it will again, as we work through that.

It's a total of 600 direct jobs.

Workers that will make the pharmaceuticals.

Correct.

Construction jobs is estimated at 3,000.

At his point, the 600 just evoked working in that process.

And office.

Yep.

The minimum salary on those jobs is $125,000.

When you look at the spreadsheet of all the jobs, it's an average salary of $160,000 a year.

These are not necessarily college degree jobs, but they are specialized manufacturing jobs.

And so there's some training that AstraZeneca does in-house.

And I have a slide in a minute about Virginia Center for Advanced Pharmaceutical Manufacturing, which will also be part of the solution on ensuring that Virginia's workforce is the workforce that's hired into these jobs.

and the total capital investment for all of the AstraZeneca program is $4.5 billion.

Just to make a point, in September of last year, we talked about African Scientific, $200 million, 200 jobs.

That was larger than all of our prior

Economic Development Announcements put together.

And so just for scale, 4.5 billion, 600 jobs is just incredible to be talking about just a short period later.

AstraZeneca has a real focus on green building.

They're still refining their designs, but their plans include on-site solar panels, both on buildings and on the ground.

And then for additional energy needs beyond that, they're working with the energy provider to receive green energy out of their portfolio.

They're looking to integrate as many green design principles into their building design as they can and they have a real emphasis on closed loop systems for recapture and reuse.

So they'll be trying to be as efficient as they can be in their manufacturing process.

I like this slide the best because it sort of puts all of the opportunities together.

There's

The Economic Development Strategic Plan talks about the need for an anchor in the biotech life sciences space to help just give some vibrancy to what is a really active entrepreneurial ecosystem.

with a lot of pipeline opportunities coming out of the University of Virginia with just the research that they do there.

And so this really provides really tangible partnership opportunities for UVA, workforce and upskilling with PVCC, commercial partnerships with all the local companies that are operating here.

There'll be some infrastructure build out associated with AstraZeneca's project that will have benefits well beyond just their dirt.

It'll open up opportunities elsewhere in the northern part of the county.

The biggest one they've done, but whether it's another company, as an example of something that's scalable, it's already done.

Yeah, so we are working at that question a couple different ways right now.

Subin Ahmedzai, that's part of his work plan, is to look at, we know there's other facilities in the United States that could be good benchmarks.

as well as working regionally and with the state because statewide there's more than one large manufacturing company that's announced in that space.

And so the Commonwealth should be thinking holistically about what are some of those opportunities.

So we're kind of trying to attack that question from a couple of different levels.

Yeah, exactly.

I know we all ran out there and broke ground, but that wasn't really the real...

Yeah, so site work.

So, you know, the past 12 months, we've talked a lot about business ready sites and site readiness, and we've been pursuing grant funding in that regard.

And we were, sometimes we forget that we were successful in getting one of those grants.

So we will be, the county site work will start with the calendar year, beginning sometime in the month of January, you'll start to see some earthwork, well, some clearing work, tree removal.

We've been working through that, yeah.

Current status I can't commit to, but it's in the process to be able to be ready to do that work starting in January.

And then AstraZeneca's development starts maybe a year-ish later.

Yeah and they're hoping they're hoping to have one facility open during calendar year 2028.

I don't know when and then the other one would be the larger one would be hopefully 2029 could be 2030.

Just this is how it aligns we talked about this a little bit already how it aligns with some of the work from the strategic plan

and then I referenced this workforce training opportunity.

AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, and Merck have committed dollars to create $120 million to support the Center for Advanced Pharmaceutical Manufacturing.

There will be a lot more details about what this actually looks like in the next coming months.

but an exciting opportunity to really help support Eli Lilly and Goochland, AstraZeneca and Albemarle, Merck and Rockingham.

That's kind of part of what lies ahead.

It's a place, but is it three places?

Is it four places?

Is it two places?

We are certainly excited about being sort of in the middle, the geographic middle.

And so there's a steering committee that's going to come together in the next couple weeks to start really building that plan to make sure that the dollars that they have are focused in the right way.

And a lot of partnerships with the announcement event had, you know, Dr. Jean Ryan with PVCC was there, UVA was there, other university partners across the Commonwealth were there.

So they're not trying to

come in and create something fully new and so exactly again like how do you leverage current assets and and skills in training so that you're not just standing up a new center when you could have leveraged some existing resources so that's kind of the work ahead to figure out what does that really look like but we're really excited about it.

What is the timeline for that?

They want to have a plan in place and they're measuring that timeline in months.

And then when does the first facility open?

Again, I think the answer partially depends on how much are they able to say, here's some existing space that we can kind of repurpose versus having to build something fresh.

So I think we'll know a lot more by the summer of what that'll look like.

But the need, again, with all these jobs announced, the need has a timeline on it.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And a lot of our smaller entrepreneurs who have a staff of 12 to 20 where they can't stand up a really robust training program, but they have a specialized need.

This hopefully will provide a place where they can send folks, recruit folks from.

Again, what does that model actually look like?

Just for clarification, this would be all about the equipment, not actually anything medical, right?

This is just like all the machines that go into making the drugs.

Correct.

Yeah, this is technician level style training.

How to work in a clean space, ISO best practices, that type of stuff.

This was one of the things, one of the sessions that I went to, there was discussion about how you needed these people then.

UVA was then what was

And it's interesting because just from like a skill set and personality type, most of the people who you'll find who tend to lean and they work with their hands usually aren't the ones that are so, you know, college bound, right?

One of my youngest sons is like that.

He loves to do things mechanically but you know he hates to sit there and listen to lectures.

So it's interesting I think the recruitment is where hopefully they're smart enough to really

use the resource that PVCC is because that's going to be the type of student who's going to find a job like this attractive versus somebody who, you know, they want to study and write papers and things like that.

It's a very interesting demographic.

I'm curious about the profile for employees in that subsector of the industry and what that education profile looks like.

Is it high school and then technical training?

Is it high school then?

I think they're still working through some of the details of that.

We will learn a lot more.

They have a hiring ramp up that they're getting ready to do right now.

They're trying to put in some of the key players.

that will recruit and operate the facility so that they can start doing the hiring of people who work at the facility.

And so I think as they get that first tier of hiring done, they'll be better able to articulate what those real needs are.

But part of Afton Scientific also took advantage of a state program, the Talent Accelerator Program,

which brings a really wonderful and best-in-class resources to companies expanding in Virginia or locating in Virginia that deal with workforce training.

They'll go film if there's another facility like this in

in Singapore.

They'll send a team, a video team to Singapore to film the process, the work in Singapore and then use that to do training modules for the workforce here.

They also help with recruitment and resume kind of scanning.

And, you know, the Lego facility got thousands of applicants for the new Lego facility and they could, they didn't even know where to begin with that.

So then they helped them figure out how to, how do you actually sort through a thousands of resumes.

It's easy to see that, you know, I've talked about this before, but there is really such a, you know, basically say blue collar labor, but all of the electricians, farmers, HVAC, you know, and so many of those people in those trades are retiring and there's not enough new younger people coming into those trades.

PVCC has an amazing opportunity here and honestly Charlottesville does because I think one of the things you have to be careful of, you have this really high end with the people coming out of the university, but if you don't have those jobs to support it, I mean it's really, everybody's refrigerator goes out, everybody's H-net goes out, you know, and you need the construction jobs, you need the construction trades, and if there's a huge opportunity also for Charlottesville to really be a hub

in developing, because PPC has a great reputation to grow that.

If they were smart and really expanded a lot of those programs, it would do a lot to help fill all of these gaps.

And it's huge.

It's a huge gap that works.

My husband works in property management, and sometimes trying to find someone to fix something is very difficult.

Yeah, yeah.

And PVCC sees that.

And it was really, yeah, Next Gen Skilled Trades Day.

We also had an opportunity to meet with some of the

Some of the employers that work with the Scholar Studios, that's an ACPS program that helps kids kind of go into a little bit of a focus so that they're everything in class they enjoy and they're going to get things in the track that they're interested in.

But with their construction,

companies and electrician type folks there that have been trying to work with that particular studio.

There's a lot of new, there's a lot of like newer focus on this theme.

A lot of this is

Barbecue Place on the Allied Street, I forget what it's called, but Prost.

Barbecue Place, they have a big machine right there.

I knew exactly where it went.

Yeah, forget what it's called.

No.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, there's some great opportunities for sure.

This is just our group shot.

I just wanted to brag on our staff.

When you start an economic development, everybody says it's a team sport.

Literally every single human in that picture got the AstraZeneca project to land in their own way.

There's not one person that did anything on their own.

and we were, I was so glad that we got a picture with everybody with the excavator that we found.

I know, the team is, we block out the excavator.

Thank you for indulging me on that.

We've also, we've been at a number of exciting events.

I'm not going to talk about all of them.

I think I'll just point out on here, I've got a laser pointer.

These are from the Manning Institute topping off ceremony.

So they've got the final beam was placed for the Manning Institute, which is at the Fontaine Research Park.

That really is going to transform the,

The speed that medicines hit patients and a lot of the IP generation that's part of that chain to be able to really connect the ideas coming out of the university with clinical trial patients and then a lot of spin-off opportunities from there.

and Ashley was able to participate in a Piedmont craft beverage seminar that happened in Orange County that got a lot of our agribusiness food processors together to talk about some opportunities for them to scale their business, another strategic plan alignment.

Sure, these are just some things that have gone on in the last few weeks on the left side there.

The Scholar Studios Advisory Board that I was just talking about, I attended that meeting today and that was really, really cool.

In the middle, the Charlottesville Business Innovation Council, one of our business partnership groups in the community, we had a strategic planning session there in the middle.

And then on the right, we've got Trevor presenting at the regional partnership meeting that occurred a couple weeks ago.

I think he was giving an AstraZeneca update, right?

And then below that are some folks from BBA.

I can't recall if it's career center or advisory.

Real quick touch on BRE, I know we've talked a lot about this already, but it's agribusiness and food processing border.

What matters?

which I wish we were still here for it.

So the Scout of America, formerly Boy Scouts, will start selling Christmas trees next week.

And we've got two or three locations around the county.

And I've heard from the people who have to get the permits for us to do it.

How cumbersome it is to get permits

in the months of November and December.

And we may have signage, but only until December 14th, and we can't go until December 21st, but we'll wanna sell trees.

Which is my point about, and again, we're not business, we're not a big business, but we add to business, right?

People will stop at our locations,

We are at Hollymead in the undeveloped area by Coles, or we're at Harbor Freight, or we're at Fifth Street.

All of these are county locations, or we're out in Crozet.

So there are four different locations just now in Long County.

And people will see us, and they will stop, and they'll buy a tree, but then they'll also stop and support another business.

And just the amount of, you know,

time involved by these volunteers who don't normally do this process.

And I know somewhere in our economic development strategic plan, it's streamlined permitting, but just having this appearance of it on a front row seat for it and how picky and detailed some of it is.

It must be 40 feet from this intersection,

but it's certainly not a streamlined process and not one.

It's one we have to start in August

to get for November for the month that we're going to be selling Christmas trees.

And so it's just one of those things that when a business comes to us looking for our help,

It might, but again, a lot of those, right?

And the companies that do that, they do that, right?

We're selling trees, but in a lot of respects, as scouts, we're teaching the kids how to talk to adults and handle money and work on their nuts so the tree doesn't fly off from the top of the car.

We're not really, the adults are the ones who are the ones

and have engaged in permit boxes because we don't want to scare the kids about what it means.

And when we talk about entrepreneurship or something like that.

But it's one, it's a challenge and two, it's something that we'll share

I'll find a time to share with the right offices.

But too, as companies come to us, the hoops that you all have to jump through to get an APHIC grant or whatever other grant, the work is really great.

But I just wanted to bring this to everybody's attention.

One is that you would buy your Christmas tree if you're getting Christmas trees, that Christmas tree.

So, overall that's a goal for the strategic plan, which will be an act of alignment that's strangling.

I don't know how fast it will happen.

My youngest is nine.

We're going to be selling Christmas.

But yeah, no, but it's a, it's a challenge.

It's something to, you know, streamlining the permitting process and making it more user, especially for that category, temporary.

It's the same thing, same location.

And we have different issues with the landowner and the realty company that runs the locations that we're selling.

We have to jump through their groups too, and we have to say, but it's a matter of, oh, it's August, let's start thinking about Christmas trees, which we really start thinking about in February, which is where are we going to buy them?

Because much like we don't have people entering the trades,

People who own Christmas tree farms, the next generation were staying on the farm.

So that's a different problem.

So anyway, just wanted to share that with everyone as well.

Talking about other things that we can do aside from business visits as a county to make it a better place to support a business, even if it isn't temporary.

Good luck to the fire people when you're involved.

Hopefully they're in Fauquier County, we're just trying to build

Next meeting, December 16th.

Inza.

Yeah, so the Intelligence National Security Alliance rescheduled their annual, their now annual conference in Charlottesville, and it is Tuesday, December 16th.

Same day.

Same day, so if you can spend the morning with us over at the Boar's Head, and if you do want to attend, please let us know.

There's an optional tour of the Rivanna Futures property immediately following the event that is probably waitlisted, but I probably can get you in.

I know someone.

The Intelligence National Security Alliance, they're having one of their Common Threads event series.

And because of the federal shutdown, it was a challenge to get federal speakers to be able to get permission to participate.

And so they made the decision to move it out a month.

So it'll be December 16th.

Yeah.

Great job to you and your team and everybody and just phenomenal work.

This was not, it's not, it's a heavy lift.

Thank you.