Economic Development Authority Meeting   12/16/2025

All right, I will call the meeting to order.

We have everyone here today.

Director Morrill to speak remotely.

I move that Director Morrill be allowed to participate remotely for the reason that he is going to tell us shortly.

All in favor?

Aye.

All right, thank you.

So matters from the public.

We have a member of the public who wishes to speak today.

All right, welcome.

I signed up online.

My name is Neil Williamson, and for those that don't know me, I serve as the president of the Free Enterprise Forum, a privately funded pro-business public policy organization focused on local governments of central Virginia.

First and foremost, I want to thank you for your service.

It really wasn't that long ago that the very concept of economic development was not clearly, shall we say, embraced in Albemarle County.

But now we'll fast forward to today.

I want to read you something.

Albemarle's development process is more complex and time intensive

and neighboring localities.

Businesses and developments cited a lack of clarity and requirements and longer permitting times as top challenges, especially for firms trying to move quickly on expansions.

That is not from the free enterprise forum blog, but from your own strategic plan.

That's now part of AC44, page 66 for those that aren't familiar.

Despite a top level commitment to better processes, there are still some in this building that believe no bureaucrat has been fired for saying no.

Your strategic plan and your own experiences developing Rivanna Futures have provided you with a unique perspective on the development community challenges to meet the other goals in your strategic plan.

As we move toward January, I'm asking the Albemarle ADA to make strategy number four, I'm sorry, number five, your 2026 New Year's resolution.

Without desirable, developable, and properly entitled land, you are sending your economic development team out into the market with no inventory.

But you can change this, working with the Board of Supervisors in community development.

You can advocate that every applicant get the AstraZeneca treatment, or as I call it, hit the AZ button.

As an example, I provided you with the zoning modernization project timeline.

If you hit the AZ button to shorten this three-year planning employment project, it could have a huge economic benefit for Albemarle County.

Entrepreneur Seth Gooden once said, you don't need a new plan for next year, you need a commitment.

I'm asking Albemarle County EDA to make such a commitment, commit to be the conduit to continue to advance positive change in Albemarle County's development philosophy.

I firmly believe Albemarle can do things like proactively rezone commercial property, allow residential and commercial zones, process a building permit in two weeks, process a rezoning application in less than six months, approve a site plan in less than three months,

If not now, when?

If not, who, you, who?

All right.

Next on the agenda, approval of the minutes from the joint meeting.

I think the whole comment I had on it is that maybe we ought to list the Charlottesville members down there.

Any other comments on the meeting minutes?

Is there a motion to approve the minutes?

Motion to approve as amended.

Is there a second?

Second.

All right.

All in favor?

Aye.

All right.

Minutes are approved.

Financial report?

Couple of notes here.

We got some occurred funds and EDA accounts from the investment piece.

I'm going to talk to Thea to see where that bump came from.

It goes a little bit more than I thought it was going to be.

The Brookdale tax rebate is working its way through the system, so that'll be out shortly.

I believe Habitat Southwood is going before the board next month.

So that will also be coming up shortly.

And then as we'll talk about later today in January, we'll have the Seaville Biohub next round of installment.

Yes, that one's not on.

So it'll be on there for Jay.

All right, unfinished business.

So first is the economic development strategic plan implementation update.

We welcome Liz Pedigo to do that.

I'll just say that we've been working with Stephen since the EDA approved the funding for the implementation strategy for the past couple months.

Thanks, David.

Cool.

Hey guys, can I just share a couple slides?

Do you mind if that's possible?

I don't know if the person will give me sharing results.

Yep, I've got access, fantastic.

Okay, so good afternoon, y'all.

Thanks for having me here.

I feel like I'm getting some feedback.

Perhaps you could mute the floating...

There we go.

Now you guys, I can't hear you, but I'm not hearing myself talk twice.

You guys can hear me, yes?

Thumbs up?

Fantastic.

Okay, so first of all, thanks for the opportunity.

This has been really fun to work with Emily and the team on.

I think that it is often challenging to take a large county-wide or community economic development plan and then think about how you're going to implement that at a department level.

And so part of the work that we've been doing together is doing some business planning around that.

As you guys know, the question at hand was how do we take the large, the strategic plan that the county had approved, the Board of Supervisors was spent all that time doing and really actualize on that work.

and I'm gonna have an opportunity to come back and spend I think a full meeting with you guys next session to talk through what that business plan will look like, talk a little bit about the resourcing, share about how that will be connected to the work that you all are doing as the Economic Development Authority as well and offer some insights and recommendations back to you guys.

So we're gonna spend a little bit of time workshopping on that.

But really what I really wanted to do is just kind of overview really quickly what we've done so far with Emily and team.

So one of the things that's been really key for this is just trying to have a better understanding about how do we identify what are the functions that is happening in the Economic Development Office.

So to build out the strategic plan, there are several staff members across the department doing different work and really what we wanted to be able to do over the course

in the past few months would start to tie their work back to the plan.

We could see the team plans, the individual plans tie back to the advancement of the work.

So as part of that, I really kind of introduced this idea of accountability mapping for those of you have used this work before, maybe in your own business or own work.

Really spent some time with the team kind of understanding like what were the core functions of things that we actually did.

It was actually a really great conversation.

I think Emily can talk a little bit about this.

But we were able to identify really what were core functions.

We also spent some time really unpacking who was doing what amongst those core functions.

And then as we did that core functions, then we went back to the economic development strategic plan and then started to map the strategic plan to those functions and having a real clear sense of how do we start to organize the work around the work that the department is doing.

From there, we spent some time identifying our one-year and three-year goals.

We're still working through that work in a way to advance the plan.

And then from that, we have developed some six-month, 18-month, and 12-month priorities.

So we're starting to scaffold up the work.

So the work, when I come back to you guys in January, we'll be setting up this business plan around sort of what were our short-term goals, our medium-term goals, and our long-term goals, all situated about how it delivers back onto the strategic plan.

So in doing that work, I'm not going to go back through the plan, but I will say this is really key important work.

And I think that's probably the first time that the department has spent some time really doing this.

What we really identified throughout the work is if you go back to thinking about what the department does and what's in the strategic plan,

Here are kind of the five things that this department really does.

We as an organization do.

We spend a lot of our time in the next generation of work spinning around business attraction, innovation work.

We're doing a lot around business success partnerships and talent partnerships.

Think about this as our existing business work.

The previous speaker made a good element about what do we need to be doing around site investment.

Site investment and readiness is going to be a key element of the work that we're doing going forward as it ties to the plan and market intelligence.

and business intelligence and then kind of our back of the house work, all three of those kind of being kind of the front of the house operations that we as a department do.

Front of the house is important because it's the delivering on the community promises that we made in the economic development strategy.

The back of the house being the stuff that's really centered on the administration and fiscal stewardship work.

All that's to say, developing those core functions, you can start to imagine how we've done this and you start to really get a real clarity about what we do and what we don't do.

So for instance, you know, around business attraction, we're going to target our, you know, really build out really strong recruitment plans around our target sectors.

We're going to have a real clear process around our RFIs.

We're going to make sure that we've got our incentive packages aligned.

This is a conversation that we'll have with you all back when we come back in January.

Around business partnerships, we're going to get our structured business program together.

We're going to have a real clear sector priority and partnerships together.

We're going to make sure we've got a process around how we're supporting grant and funding.

Site readiness, we're going to make sure that we're advancing the site readiness, that we're thinking about how we're aligning that with the infrastructure investments that the county's making and making sure that we've got the development processes in place.

marketing and business intelligence, making sure that we've got all the things that are necessary to support the business attraction efforts, the marketing materials, the collateral, all of the intelligence kind of work put together in a way that becomes really kind of off the shelf and easy and accessible to do.

And then finally around the kind of fiscal stewardship piece of this was really understanding what is the role that we do around our systems, how are we thinking about our governance with you all, and how does that tie back into budgeting and procurement.

So now that those are kind of core functions, the next element of the work, and which again we'll come back and share, will be what are our short-term priorities, our medium-term priorities, our long-term priorities, and then in addition to that,

We've done a really good job with Emily and team of identifying who's really accountable for that work.

So who within the office is on point for advancing pieces of the work so that we've moved beyond just sort of job descriptions but tying back to individual work plans and our department work plan back to the implementation.

So a little bit of the work that we're doing, I'm excited.

Emily can talk a little bit more about this.

Maybe I'd love to hear her thoughts, but it's been a good process in terms of us thinking about how we actually actualize on the strategic planning process so far.

So with that, I'll stop.

I had a little bit of a problem with your connection there, but I think the high level points that Stephen was making came through.

One question that I had.

is sort of thinking about, in terms of the plan, also EDA versus EDO and how much of that, like what are really EDO office issues versus or plans or how that plays out too.

Yeah, it will be kind of a...

So I'll grab it, Stephen.

You can fill in if you disagree, because we're having a hard time with you.

So part of the approach was let's start by sort of lining out what are the things that the EDO is going to do, and then sort of the phase two fold in, OK, what is the EDA's role, and what do you all see as the key opportunities that make sense for your authority?

and as it relates to the work that the office is planning on doing.

Obviously there's things in the plan that we've discussed that EDO would take lead on that the EDA is a key critical partner in.

We can't do incentives without the EDA's participation and incentives is one key example.

But then I think there's opportunities for the EDA to sort of articulate

The financial report provides at the bottom line the funds that the EEA can use to leverage or support initiatives.

We now have a big grasp of what that number is.

It's very close to real time.

How do you all see

this authority directing those funds?

And do you have a shared vision on what sort of opportunities would be in alignment with what you hope to use those funds for versus things that might fall outside of that?

And you would look to the board of supervisors, the office budget to fund.

And so that's a part of, I think the work that we would look to do in January with you all.

Again, with sort of an intro to here's the things that the office is looking at and how we're approaching what's in the strategic plan and how we would operationalize that into the work that we do and then fold in, okay, what does the EDAC have some key opportunities.

First of all, thank you.

I know that Avery sent so much work.

And from when I first came to work, this is so much from user friendly.

So thank you to even be able to see really where we're at.

And so I appreciate the hard work that's on there.

One of the things I think for me that when you look at the projects that are coming to us, especially in the beginning of the year, and we look okay, we have this amount of money, how are we going to

Is there going to be enough at the end of the year?

Something really big comes up or something like that.

How far in advance do you have an idea of basically projects and potential asks in your

in the pipeline.

Does that make sense?

And the answer may be frustrating.

There's things that we know will be coming.

We actually, feedback that we've shared and other local economic developers have shared at the regional level.

A lot of the grant matches that come before this body are related to regional funding bodies.

And so we have shared sort of collectively as local offices, you know, we never know when someone's making an application until they come asking for the match.

And so it's hard to know, it's hard to budget for that, you know, like, I don't want to say yes to the first one in.

I don't want to put you in a position to make a positive recommendation around the project opportunity, not knowing what's coming behind it.

And so that can be frustrating.

I have one more follow-up question.

When we look at things, because we've done everything from, you know,

The honey cart that goes around and feeds on us, many people, but has a really, I think, big influence on the small sector, but within our communities really helps that

that industry start to thrive in our community.

I know in Crozet when we did the lab for all the vineyards and their testing and things like that, that was a big one where it could feed.

And it's not after Seneca, but it really helps build a great foundation for these other businesses to rise on.

Is there any priority when these things come across the threshold into the office

Yeah, I mean, I think that's the area for us to grow.

I think the old plan was so broad, it was hard to say, you know, a lot of things aligned to it.

And so it was hard to say, well, which ones better aligned than others?

The work that we're doing regionally to get better understanding of what's coming is going to help us sort of us be able to say okay we know that this month it's this thing but in three months this other thing is probably coming forward and so we need to be thinking about the next one in also.

The other thing is I think now that we have target sectors that are much more clearly defined and the other goals that deal with talent and some of the procedural items I think we can do a better job as we bring things forward to you all to say

This isn't strong alignment.

This is, you know, maybe more of a moderate alignment.

This is out of left field, but, you know, there may be some benefit to it anyway, and let's just talk about that.

And I think too, we've had so many big projects, especially that, you know, lately

that I think it's these small projects to keep those that really has a, to me, I think a large impact on our overall infrastructure that I think, you know, to keep that in the plan and not forget about those smaller businesses that really can start making this really strong foundation for others to grow on.

I think it's critical for, you know, overall

Emily, I was just going to say you nailed it.

So we are going to come back and share with everybody what happened with the EDO's work, but there is going to be a session of the discussion.

Obviously, my intention is to come back to you all with the EDA and say, here is the framework and here are the things where we believe the EDA should be participating in the work.

So it will be a two-part conversation.

All I say is this.

We thought it was really important to start with the EDO office, partly because

Getting ourselves aligned in terms of what our staff is working on and ensuring that we've got some real flow to that work allows, I think, the work with the EDA we'll be able to do at a strategic level to make much more sense as it's connected back to the business plan.

So there is a little bit of process to the madness.

That's all I'm saying.

Well, I was just going to add that, yeah,

what this is all about, that we're going to have filters to prioritize our decision making based on effectiveness and alignment in this thing.

And also involve factors that are not defined in here that relate to opportunity and feasibility, right?

Because there's typically some big, long-term thing we wish for that would be just

kind of, you know, are blessed with, you know, we actually have a situation where the big long-term thing, you know, happened.

But anyway, you might just, so I think we need to kind of converse and discuss how we see this, but, you know, we need to keep in mind whether it's an official tool or set of, you know, rules to inform our decision-making based on these priorities or just at least keep that in mind every time we,

you know, do your view stop.

Unfortunately, you know, our funds are limited, right?

We do have certain functions in terms of, you know, bonding authority and all that, but we need to be careful.

To circle back to the points that Neil made, I'm not a developer, but for 20 years I've been hearing some of those concerns about the time frame for approvals in Albemarle County.

Is there a commitment in the strategic plan to shorten those timeframes?

Yeah, that's a great question.

Not everything in the economic development strategic plan is owned by the EDO or the EDI.

Yes, that's part of the question.

Yeah, and so I think that one doesn't live inside of our direct realm of influence, but certainly lives within this organization.

And I understand from the outside, it's all Albemarle County.

And so I think the zoning modernization

work that is kicking off shortly is a big piece of how we get to that answer.

Part of the reason that it takes so long to review things is because the code is so complicated.

And so part of the reason to do that work is to try to make the code less complicated so that it's easier to then implement.

And so it'll be working with community development as they go through that process.

to look for opportunities to make sure that we're representing the business community's interests and the development community's interests in addition to other stakeholders who would want to participate in that process with an understanding that there's a clear articulation at least through the economic development strategic plan engagement process of the timelines are long, the

There's a lack of clarity of what the expectations are at the front end, and that creates a lot of challenges for the business community.

And I guess follow-up question would really be to Steven.

Yeah, so the, and Steven had to run to another engagement at 4.30, but the draft document that we've been working on has that in it as something that is, something to be worked on in the near term.

That outcome, you know, is gonna be the process, the time that that outcome takes is gonna be, you know, longer than a six month project, but certainly one that will,

I just want to say from the Board of Supervisors, this is something that is very, very important to us.

And I know staff, we've been saying this for a while,

and staff I know is now working on it.

We have a comp plan, we have a strategic plan, the monitor system and everything.

This is something we're going toward.

This is something that is a priority and staff's working on that.

I will say this county is very unique, I guess, in that it's not all urban, it's not all rural, it's a mix of everything.

And so anytime you have a code or a rule, it's hard for it to apply.

to apply to everything, everybody.

It's almost like everything we look at when someone wants to do a redevelopment, when someone wants to do a business, we always get pushback from the people around.

neighbors and everything.

They don't want that traffic.

We always hear about traffic, noise, blah, blah, blah.

So it's like nobody, we know we have to do it.

Everybody wants it.

But the people surrounding these developments don't want it.

And they let us know that.

And each area, I mean, we're dealing with, they're going to be dealing with tonight, the Planning Commission, frankly, is that each area is different.

You just can't, it's hard to have an apple bar,

a set of rules that fits everything.

And it seems like everything we deal with, frankly, is almost, needs to be individualized.

Well.

You mean there's no model across, there's 3,800?

and counties in this country.

There's no way that we can say, well, how did you guys do it faster?

How do you do it more efficiently?

How do you do it later?

And I hear what you're saying.

And I mean, we have had progress on that because homes now, individual homes, I think it takes, what, four to six weeks now to get a permit.

I mean, we've reduced the amount of time for individual homes.

We need to do that on a larger scale, which is something they're working on.

But believe me, everybody wants an exception to the world.

Maybe that's a better way to put it when there's a land development.

They want, okay, we want to be able to do this by right.

Bob, we want to be able to increase it.

We want to be able to do this and that.

And it makes it complicated, frankly.

Are the cumbersome directives, are they state written documents or are they county written documents?

You said that the reason why things are so cumbersome and slow is that the procedures are detailed and hard to follow and they're complex.

So I heard the feedback that we heard and it was that some folks who work in many localities in the Commonwealth find that it takes longer here and that they would say is because of the local zoning ordinance, which again, Mr. Williamson handed out the zoning

Modernization Project timeline.

That is probably a key objective of that process is to address the conflict of how complex the current regulations are, which staff and I think the development community feel is a big driver for why reviews take as long as they do.

Yeah, and I think the,

You know, so often this is more general statement.

I mean, it applies in general to the law as well as his localities.

A lot of these rules get driven by things that have gone wrong in the past.

And what often happens is a rule or law is created to deal with one situation and then it is applied across the board.

And I think it's

You know, the reaction is, okay, well, this one bad thing happened.

We've got it.

We've got to make sure we're checking all these things, doing all these things to keep it from happening.

Sometimes you do have to say, well, is our cure worse than our, the problem we're trying to fix?

And I think that's, I think that's a battle that the county is trying to deal with.

And I know people can certainly speak to many of those things because he deals with it all the time.

So I think that is one of the things we've worked through, but I do think it is, I mean, it's the county's,

zoning subdivision ordinances and the steps through the process.

And as Bea was talking about, it's, okay, well, you know, let's just add a provision that says, well, we'll let the board decide this.

You know, if you want an exception, you've got to go to them.

You've got to go through.

So it's deciding, okay, well, maybe there are things that really don't need to go to the Planning Commission or don't need to go to the board.

It could be made at a staff level.

So, because that's the other part is we're a big complicated,

County, but what's going on?

So you can't just stroll in and get into a board meeting.

that day, there's timelines to get everybody ready.

And so that's part of what I assume is being worked on to try to address and is trying to find that balance, I think is what's going on.

Well, I attended a board of supervisors meeting and they were examining somebody for Airbnb.

Yeah, it's the political.

So on our side of the equation, it's the political pressure that we get.

And depending on who's on the board, you get boards making exceptions, caving in.

So then that creates other problems also.

But there's a lot of political pressure out there from all of the residents.

Sure.

That causes exceptions, and I'm not necessarily in favor of that, but sometimes because of the topography, water, floodplain, whatever, you do need exceptions.

And that goes back to the uniqueness.

Believe me, if it's simple and it's just a straightforward thing, we don't get a lot of pushback.

I mean, we just get it through.

But unfortunately, not everything's that way.

I was at a community meeting for one of the items coming, most recently at the community meeting for the Woolen Mills proposal that's coming tonight and the public was very engaged with what they want to do with that.

and just seeing how many times that that has come through the process, much like the other item, the seed property, which is coming through tonight.

And just the interconnectivity of the issues that something that was originally proposed around 2,000 houses came through first at 1,200.

Now they're looking at 600.

And you think, oh, well, we need houses.

That's great.

It's going to bring 50 kids to Red Hill Elementary.

Red Hill Elementary's at capacity.

It's on a septic field.

It can't take 50 more kids.

So where do those kids end up going?

If you're redistricting, you talk political.

So this is a zoning question that's going to the Planning Commission.

But ultimately, there are going to be so many trickle-down things that it's not just a zoning question anymore.

You heard the capital improvement request from the schools, and it's a big number, and you can talk offline if you'd like to.

I would love to.

But that's one of those things where, you know, when we talk here about empowering talent and competing for investment, you know, the schools become a driver of them.

And so, again, as we said earlier, it's my last point, a lot of these things fall outside of our

ability to actually affect beyond bending the ear of hopefully some receptive members of boards and elected officials.

So thank you.

Well, I think that, I guess the way I picture it is, while it might not be within our work plan of things we can control, but it's certainly within our purview of providing feedback and comments.

And where there are opportunities for investment to help push things along.

I think that's the other place where we can go.

And certainly knowing, and I think you've mentioned this a couple of times, knowing as early as we can about those types of things so we can start thinking about if we have to prioritize investment.

Because what Mr. Richardson always said, we can do anything, but we can't do everything.

All right, so if there's no further questions, then we will go.

Oh, second unfinished, I thought we were on the longevity list.

All right, so the next unfinished business item is the Seaville Biohub Go Virginia, second year installed.

So just a reminder for the EDA, the Commonwealth Bioxcellerator Project is also called Project Vital.

They're the same thing.

It was a three-year pilot program that was funded through a Go Virginia grant to build an accelerator that would serve biotech companies in the region.

and received a, this was a large grant out of Virginia and this was a large grant, even if you look Commonwealth-wide, for what has been a very strongly supported project, again, sort of across the Commonwealth.

This is being looked at as a model and as an asset for companies coming out of Virginia Tech, BCU, ODU, et cetera.

But it's a project that was created by Siebel Biohub, which is obviously a Charlottesville Albemarle based nonprofit.

And the bioxcellerator is opened in February.

Some of you were at the opening event.

It's headquartered up at North Fork Discovery Park.

There have been eight companies that have officially signed on to the accelerator since it began in February.

That is down from 43 companies that express interest in joining.

And so there's a vetting process to make sure that the resources that the accelerator has are going to be a good match for what that company needs.

And so some may be too early stage, some may be too late stage.

But so eight have successfully joined and the accelerator looks like shared wet lab space.

So there's benches that companies can get assigned

to be able to do their work and advance their work.

The benefit to the company is that they have a lot of expensive specialized equipment that they're able to access as part of their rental agreement.

And it's very affordable space for companies.

And then it's not just about the space itself.

It also, Siebel Biohub provides connections with investors at different scales.

They have an entrepreneur advisory team that can help advise on some of the things that startup founders are not so great at, so the bookkeeping and the legal aspects of operating business.

Siebel Biohub also works with the University of Virginia and PVCC on an internship program where they can help connect budding talent with budding startups that need some extra hands in an affordable way.

The impact of the bioxcellerator since it opened has been pretty incredible.

And so much so that they've already secured $15 million for what happens when the three-year pilot is done.

So they've $7.5 million each from the University of Virginia and the Commonwealth of Virginia to help fund a permanent home for the accelerator project.

So incredibly exciting.

Work that they've done over the past several months and what we expect will be sort of into many years of the future.

As part of the Go Virginia grant, the EDA approved a three-year commitment of $100,000 per year for three years, subject to the approval of the EDA at each year.

And so the reason that this is on the agenda today is for the EDA to consider authorizing the year two payment for this project.

The objectives for year two are to continue recruiting companies, grow the investor and industry partnerships, to help with the thing that we hear the most from startup companies, which is

financing access to capital.

So this is a motion if the IDA so desires.

I have a quick question.

So is this on the financials, I see it listed here, that $100,000.

So this is the $100,000 that will come out for this year, because this is this financial year.

So the whole agreement is for $300,000.

We did $100,000 last year, $100,000 for this one.

This is money that the floor is

So the funding was to sort of start up capital to get the lab started.

So it pays for operations as well as capital.

They did come and give an update on their progress, which was really nice to see when they saw, hey, this is kind of the before and the after, the lab space, these are the new

did new furniture and equipment that we were able to go.

I think they kind of all plunked it in together.

We couldn't say exactly what our- Exactly, you can't point to a piece of equipment and say that was- Their progress and what they were doing in that.

Yes, yes.

And we certainly, we can have Sebelbile Health come and give an update as they hit their year one of operations.

They recruited, there's six companies, eight companies involved.

They have an additional $15 million in funding.

So

Anyway, the potential energy has been turned into actual energy.

So I would make a motion.

Thank you.

Quick question, if I may.

My understanding is that that $100,000 or the $300,000, none of that goes for salaries.

Money is fungible.

If that money goes to equipment, then the other money is available for salaries, and I mean the salaries.

Other money is available for equipment.

Those of you who are entrepreneurs, you don't want your hands tied in terms of that.

If you can avoid it, you wouldn't be able to put the money to whatever its best use is in getting this off the ground.

I think having Dr. Hastings come back in or making the field trip is all we need to see what they're doing.

It's been approved.

They are heavily, you know, still in the early planning phases, but they are sort of planning how to program those funds.

There's a lot of details in, you know, are they expanding their current footprint?

Are they going to just move somewhere that's larger?

So there's, they're working through the sort of the details of what does it actually mean with this type of equipment that they have and the specialized HVAC needs that those types of businesses have.

The $15 million will run out fairly quickly.

All right, is there a motion?

Yes.

The authority authorized $100,000 to satisfy year two, the year two.

so you go buy a HUB grant match payment and to authorize the authority to chair and treasurer to execute all documents necessary to complete this grant.

Second.

Who's Lauren?

Do you want to call the roll or do you want me to... Richard Long?

Richard Johnson?

Aye.

Richard Storm?

Aye.

All right, the motion passes unanimously.

Okay, so media meeting is adjourned.

I think it was just feedback.

So we have a list of meeting dates.

We're next year.

We'll actually adopt these at the meeting next month.

We wanted to go ahead and give a staff advice.

Just one question.

Is there a reason we moved off the third Tuesday in March other than it was St.

St. Patristy.

It's very brief.

Yes, 17.

March 17.

Well, I think the two of them have mentioned something.

Yeah.

We're okay?

Sure.

So we are rounding up Q4 of our agribusiness and food processing

Porter, four BRE visits, and I had an opportunity to join our regional state partners on several visits this quarter to five agribusiness and food processing businesses here in the county.

We had two intelligence national security and one biotech and life sciences visit.

Some of the themes are

or things we've heard before, just wanted to drop those in the slide.

Our agribusiness and food processing customers specifically really want to echo each other that there's a need for more cold storage or shared space.

One of the farms that we worked with specifically, and this is something that makes complete sense once you hear it, but

as they travel to markets from rural areas into towns and more populated retail areas.

It's time intensive, it's labor intensive, it's expensive, and it's a food safety issue to travel back and forth with that load of stock.

So a lot of her peers and herself would like to see some co-op retail space maybe.

So those are things that we're trying to learn some more about.

Staying small or scaling up,

is sometimes a challenge due to high operating costs.

And again, there is to business regulatory administrative concepts, nothing really new, but these are just good.

With any food processing type activity, there's often several state agencies that are involved in regulating depending on what exactly you're doing.

It can be hard for a small business to

And next quarter as we go into the new, I'm sorry.

Before we move to the next one.

So what's the role that the county can play if this is frequently a state issue?

Yes.

How do we support the businesses?

Education is the priority in getting ahead of regulatory issues.

A lot of times it's a, after the fact, a reactionary

Mitigation effort rather than planning ahead.

I'm sorry, I guess where I was getting sort of

We can advocate, we can advocate for streamlining and those types of things, keeping safety in mind of course.

But it almost feels like it's more of a, and I hate the way the kids say this, but a vibes-based

As we go through the next three and as we get deeper into the implementation process of the

the strategic plan.

I know internally we're working through some different opportunities to pull some of our business community leaders together to continue to stay engaged rather than stopping with the stakeholder engagement through the plan.

Thank you, Chair Long.

So part of that work is to try to get all of these small mom and pop businesses are operating and having to navigate the same challenges.

How do you build a community among those operators so that they're able to lean on each other for expertise?

and then you get to know what the resources are to get through those challenges.

So it's not necessarily us trying to change the state regulatory framework, but

The top left photo with the pizza, that is the business that came to our media a couple months ago or last October for the Imperfect Pizza grant that they had applied for and they operate out of Beacon Kitchen.

That's a commercial kitchen that provides shared use opportunity for cost prohibitive space for food processors.

And they really do have an ecosystem.

They work together.

Everyone collaborates already organically.

So a lot of these goals to move forward with their agribusiness food processing customers, it's an opportunity that's waiting to happen.

And it takes that state regulatory off the business owners who are operating there, that's one less certification that they need in the state.

So the health department is inspecting vegan

as a whole facility.

So two questions.

On the cold storage, how local does that need to be?

I mean, I think currently any is better than none.

Same goes with these processing opportunities and space.

And we're not talking about adjacent locality level production facilities.

And there's some good opportunities through the bio, funnily enough.

with a stronger biotech life sciences ecosystem.

Well, it just seems like to me then,

This might be something that a joint EDA project might work for, like, you know, because Beacon is in the city, you know, a co-op space because it's centrally located, but obviously a lot of the agricultural products are coming from the county, and maybe it's something we should work on together to, you know, get some co-op space or some, you know, things like that that might be helpful, you know, central storage.

I don't know if that works.

Okay, and then just moving into Q1, we'll be in Biotech and Life Sciences focused again.

And just to rewind that to the bio-excelerator, I'm sure we could arrange a tour if there are interested, enough interested folks.

Okay.

Yeah.

Should be some trees down in the spring.

It will.

This is some events that we've been at recently.

I'm not going to talk about all of these, but top right, the Albemarle hosted the EDP real estate team.

VEDP, the State Economic Development Partnership has a database of all the sites and larger buildings that are available in the Commonwealth.

And so part of our relationship with the state is maintaining the ones for Albemarle County into the state database.

The real estate team uses that database when they get inquiries from site selectors or companies looking for buildings or sites in the Commonwealth.

And they try to get out and see sort of the best of

sites and buildings on a regular cadence.

Because there's so much to, you know, you need the right size or specs for a building, but there's so much more to what's gonna be a successful site selection than just enough space or enough loading docks on a building.

And so it familiarizes them with what some of the assets that we have here are.

And so we were very happy to host them just a couple of, you know, that is us at the Albemarle Business Campus on 5th Street extended.

and then bottom left, bottom right, I don't know my left or my right.

It feels like I need to tell you that.

I made it like 11 years without telling you.

Good turnaround.

Yeah, so we were so, so, so proud to once again host the Intelligence National Security Alliance Common Threads event in Albemarle County, literally this morning.

So they tried this for the very first time last year.

I like telling this story, so I've probably heard it when I'm saying it again.

Last year in the planning for that event, they said, you know, we don't do these events in lots of other places outside of the DC area, because that's where most of our

members are, but we do like to get out every once in a while and do something.

We're going to take a chance on Charlottesville.

And can you help us recruit people to attend this event?

And we said, sure.

You know, and I said, what, what's your goal?

How many people do you hope to come to this first one?

And they said, you know, 60, 75 would be great.

Well, last year we had over 300 people come.

A lot of them were from out of town.

So they were coming from the DC area down.

There's worse places to be.

But a ton of our local community came out.

Last year, we sort of took advantage of the fact that the local community was kind of assembled in one place.

And we had a pre-event briefing with some of our local startups to talk about the Rivanna Futures Project and how we were trying to be much more intentional about engaging that sector.

Had a great conversation.

This year, they came back and said, we'd love to do it again.

Last year it was free.

We have to charge this year.

That's our model.

And we said, okay, sure.

We'll take a hit on attendees, we're certain, but it'll be worth it.

And we had 300 people again.

So huge attendance, again, from outside of the region who just wanted to hear more about what's going on, what goes on at Rivanna Station.

Just tell me.

It was an honor to be on the stage this year with some very, very, very important people and just a great conversation, a lot of good conversations before and after the event.

We offered a tour for the first 40 people to sign up of the Rivanna Futures property and another just great opportunity to show off our dirt.

and the proximity to Rivanna Station and all that that provides.

So it was, we were just so excited to host it again.

It's really impressive seeing all those folks.

I know we did have a lot of overnight stays.

We started at 8 a.m. this morning.

That was smart.

We could measure the success and economic impact.

Yeah, that's a good point.

You can come with the wine tours and get the community involved.

Yeah, the organizers said we want to come back again next December, which again is just great because they're only going to do events that make sense for them.

And they want to add more programming to make it a longer day.

So the first two years were half-day events, but they talked about adding a classified briefing that we wouldn't be able to attend.

And then folding in stuff like go out for winery.

And so they're sort of thinking the same way.

Yeah.

Classically, I don't know.

I think this is a very, very good venue.

And I think doing, like when we were bringing DIA down here, we had to coerce them to come down.

So we had to show them this was like Houderville.

It was great.

And they didn't know that.

They didn't know that.

They didn't know that because they all lived in Northern Virginia.

They don't know anything about it.

And then they went, oh, that's pretty great.

So if you have a company with winery, that would be fantastic.

That's great.

That's super smart.

Just quickly, I'm not going to read this, I promise.

This is another project that the EDA helped support, that Segal Biohub led as a Talent Pathways Initiative.

It was another Go Virginia funded project that we've provided some grant matching for that really a year and a half ago, maybe a little bit longer than that ago, when Afton Scientific was still talking about, it was still just a code name project still for their expansion, 200 jobs, $200 million.

and several of the local workforce partners got together and said, how are we gonna make sure that our community is ready to be successful candidates for those jobs?

And we need to build a talent, we need to work on talent so that we have the right workforce.

And thank goodness we did because now there's several more large projects underway in that space in Albemarle and beyond.

And so this project was well underway when AstraZeneca was announced

It was, the final report is not out.

I'll send a copy when it is, but this was a sort of a celebration event to talk about how to get ready, how to be ready.

And I think this is one of those processes where the report is great.

The connections between the workforce partners and a lot of the small businesses in the community is probably better because it really deepened the understanding of how PBCC, ACPS, KTEC,

and University of Virginia can be a real talent resource for these small businesses.

And each of them individually have small number needs, but when you add them up together, you really start to see the large needs that the community has.

And then that puts PVCC in a good position, for example, to build a program to meet those needs.

So it was a really great process that we think is gonna yield a lot of positive outcomes over the next couple of years.

and then another one that I will not read to you but I just pulled a couple of tables and charts and infographics out of University of Virginia just did a new economic impact study.

Their previous one was I think getting on 10 years old and it's great that they did do an update because the number before was over $5 billion of annual economic output and it's up to almost $12 billion.

So that remains the largest sector, largest employer

in our region.

Those numbers are inclusive of the health system.

So it's the health system, the academic side, and also UVA-wise.

And if you dive into the report, you can get more localized data where you sort of isolate pieces of that.

But I just thought it was interesting.

There's some information in the appendices

about UVA invention disclosures by industry sector.

You can see a lot of alignment with the innovation corridor areas of focus.

So IT and analytical instruments, biopharmaceutical and medical devices.

There's a table here on UVA tech transfer activities.

So how much IP being generated at the university is being spun out into commercial opportunities

and then the LBG Startup Employment by Industry Cluster.

LBG is a licensing ventures group at UVA and you can see what sectors the companies that they're working with are operating in.

So just a couple of quick data points.

We can also send a link so that you can check out the website and the full report, which is available on their website.

And I think that's it for me.

Any questions?

I just wanted to follow up on the little discussion I had last month with the Boy Scouts scouting America in their Christmas tree lots, right?

So we had four lots across the county, eight permits required, four signed permits, four building permits, because we have sheds that are there temporarily.

I talked to the person, the volunteer who filed these, took about 16 hours worth of filing of time for him to do the work.

And we had them all back in time.

But we were also graced with two inspections, two site inspections per location.

One to make sure that the sign we posted was in the proper location.

and the one I'm most familiar with was we were 40 feet from the intersection of Merchant Walk Square and Fifth Street Station Parkway and eight feet back from the edge of the roadway, so we're not in VDOT's right-of-way.

We don't do this all the time, although we are gonna do it sort of once a year.

And now that we've done it and had it, we'll know how to do it again next time, but I hear

For people who do this all the time as part of their business, I can see where it's a big headache.

We're trying to sell a thousand Christmas trees across 12 counties in the Commonwealth.

I don't even think we're in the city anymore.

and so just so scouts can help, you know, earn some money so they can go on adventures.

It's a challenge and it's hard and we think we're providing a service.

So again, how do we make that easier for everybody, but certainly for nonprofits, for people who don't do it all the time.

And so it was just a follow up over to get the fact that we ended up with two

Inspections from the zoning inspector to come to make sure the sign was in the right location and then that the sign came down properly at the certain date.

Do you think that has a lot to do with the being able to also be respectful of maybe other businesses that are in the area and you have a temporary business who comes in and they are building a structure but you know if there's high winds or something they have a structure if it's not well you know has good foundation it could blow and hit something or cause damage and the sign for the local businesses you know I think

It's like a balance because you have, of course, your nonprofit and kids, but also the businesses who, you know, they're having somebody temporary come into their space, if it's a parking lot or something like that, and that's going to have impact on their business.

Oh, it absolutely is.

And while we're nonprofits, you go off 29 and you see a tent that's on

Somebody else's property, right?

We're on private property.

We're on Fifth Street and Station property.

They're kind enough to let us use basically an unused portion of their parking lot to do this.

And the one at the bottom of Pantops is the same, the property at Hollymead, right?

So the undeveloped piece there just sort of up the hill from Coles is where that lot sits.

and I think Great Value lets us use it in Crozet.

So we're working with these private places, and we absolutely do, and we had high winds that knocked trees over and knocked a bunch of stuff down.

But it's a challenge for us, and I'm sure for the businesses that come in temporarily, it's a challenge to try and, right,

If it can be easy for people that don't do it all the time, or simpler for people who don't do it all the time, it would be simpler for those who are in it and live with it on a regular basis, I guess is all I'm getting at.

It was just sort of a follow-up out of what we talked about last year.

If you know of anybody looking.

He was just standing there.

He was here.

Good idea for somebody out there.

I might give it away.

I should trademark it.

Permits are us.

Maybe there's a local permit expediter type of person.

We'd have them on our terms.

But they make a business just to target smaller people or be.

Maybe that's an incentive-based thing of how quick they can get it done.

Half serious.

Anything else?

All right.

We're all adjourned.

And we'll see everybody in January.

Everyone have a nice holiday.

Happy holidays.

Happy holidays.