Economic Development Authority Meeting   2/17/2026

Alright, I'll call the meeting to order.

We don't have anybody joining in on time.

So is there anyone from the public?

Alright, so next is approval of the minutes.

Yes, that was the other one.

Yes.

Yeah.

Maybe I was nervous.

Vertically challenged.

All right, any other comments on the minutes?

Is there a motion to approve the minutes?

I motion to approve the minutes.

Second.

All right.

All in favor?

Aye.

All right.

So next is the financial report.

We are coming up on the next round of bond invoicing notes.

So that's the next one on the topic.

Any questions or comments on the financial report?

All right.

Unfinished business, follow up on

Steven Fedigo's Civic Soul Presentation.

Is this our slide?

This is your reference.

So I think this was just on the agenda to see if anybody had anything that came out of that discussion that they didn't share that they wanted to share.

Steven has put together a memo that I looked at and gave him a few comments on, and I think

We should add history to that sometime shortly.

Emily had a few things as well.

But I think it's good.

It really lays out a framework.

And then once we get that, we can talk about how much of that we want to adopt and put it in place.

But he has some good suggestions about ways to evaluate things and think about processes.

So I think it's good.

Anybody has to?

All right.

Then, new business, so, food and beverage CPG Accelerate.

Okay, that is here.

And Hope is here as well to present on this implementation grant request.

And because I am on the Venture Central board, I'm going to recuse myself from the discussion in our table.

We'll leave it at this.

Well, thank you so much for having us here.

I'm going to go to my first slide.

So we're here to talk about a program that we've been working on for about a year.

It directly supports six of your strategies in your economic development strategic plan, which I will go through.

But first, a quick introduction of myself.

My name is Soph Lawrence.

I am a program manager or program director with Venture Central.

I worked with the SBDC with food and beverage companies as an advisor.

And I formerly had, that's an Henry Granola company in Flubana County, which I grew to just over a million in revenue and exited in 22.

And since then, I've been working with the various nonprofits in Albemarle and Charlottesville.

So I just wanted to start with these numbers and just sit with them for a moment

because the project of a food and beverage accelerator directly sits with what's going on in Albemarle County with your food processing and agribusinesses.

So it's your largest employer with 2147 jobs, largest or strongest export sector, so 82.7% of sales sold outside of the region, most specialized cluster, but it's the lowest wage cluster, and that's what we're focusing on and working on.

So we don't see this as a weak sector at all.

It's an underserved growth sector or growth engine, something that we can help and work on.

So to give you background, I've passed out some of our reports from our planning grants.

So GO Virginia funded a 12-month planning grant.

It was February to February.

We just wrapped it up, presented this report, which was approved by the task force and by the council.

and through that project, I worked with stakeholders, entrepreneurs, health focus groups, surveys, did a best practice review.

So looked at other accelerators around the US, really around the world and reviewed our SEDS reports, our REI report and alignment with county priorities.

So the goal of the planning grant was, is there a need for a student beverage accelerator in our region?

and so that was, you know, what I set out to find.

And through this review, the problem that is really what we're trying to solve is 92% of our food and beverage manufacturers.

So that's what we mean by CPG and the focus of this project.

So food and beverage manufacturers operate under a million dollars in Reverend Hill in our region.

Half of them,

are stuff between 100,000 and a million.

So we call it a plateau.

They have products, they're out there, they have customers, but they're just unable to scale.

And it's like, well, why are they unable to scale?

But before we get to that, the other point with it is, so when you have low revenue, often you have low wages.

So to give you an idea of Hudson Henry, I started in the basement of my home.

I hired production staff.

eventually grew out of my home, went to the Fluvanna Food Lion strip mall and had 4,500 square feet, 12 employees.

I had an operations manager.

I had someone that came in and worked on sales.

So as a business scales, which this gentleman came in, come on in.

As a business scales, you can hire these higher wage positions, right?

So sales, marketing, operations,

all come into play as revenue increases.

So if this is our problem, why do we have this situation?

The gaps that I found, and again, so this was looking at other accelerators, you know, what are the best practices?

What do entrepreneurs really need to grow?

Talking to our entrepreneurs and looking at our ecosystem.

So the five critical gaps that exist are

a specialized knowledge gap.

So our existing entities provide basically what I call incubation, right?

So you can, you start your business, maybe you get to your first farmer's market, but beyond that, you really need specialized knowledge to grow.

So FDA compliance, working with co-packers, specialized distribution, so working, starting to work with UNFI, Rainforest, Keihi, what have you,

Those aren't covered by existing programs.

So again, like me working with SBDC, I'm the person that's called in to help with those more specialized cases.

On top of that, in general, no scale programming exists in our region.

So for scaling up that programming just isn't available.

Expert access, so it's difficult and expensive for, just off a little bit,

It's difficult and expensive to engage with experts.

So if someone who is just starting their business or trying to grow their business, it's hard for them to find or pay for those experts.

And then no peer networks.

You really need a community to help you.

And so founders are building really an isolation.

I remember going to the farmer's market and asking anyone and everyone who would talk to me,

you know, questions about, you know, can I sell?

I didn't even know when I first started like, can I sell across the US with the Shopify website?

Who is the buyer at Whole Foods?

And how do I, you know, how do I pitch Whole Foods?

So really the peer network is crucial in scaling a business.

And then the support that we do have is just fragmented.

Everyone is doing a little bit for the entrepreneurs, but it's not, well, it's really operating without coordination.

So those would be our gaps and why we have the problem.

So with this slide, and I know this a lot, but if we just look at the middle column, we already talked about the problems.

The middle column is what would we do and what would we provide?

And then the impact would be the outcomes and things that I can track and report back to you.

So it's all measurable.

So what we are proposing with a food and beverage accelerator

would be these components.

So structured curriculum over eight months with monthly workshops.

Coaching one-on-one with the entrepreneur to help them with their specific business and their specific business problems.

A curated network of specialty experts.

So I have a spreadsheet across nine different categories of people that I know or people that we've met who could either volunteer their time

paid expert hours that the entrepreneur can work directly with these experts.

It's a cohort model, so the peer network is there with cohorts and networking events.

We'll take eight to 10 companies per year over two years, so up to 20 companies total over the two years.

And then providing direct connections with distributors, buyers, trade show support, and really helping to have those connections and working

with our other partners.

So Beacon, I've talked to Carver up in Culpeper, SPD, VDAC, CIC, et cetera.

So really bringing everyone together and not having a fragmented experience for the entrepreneurs.

And just so you know, so it's not theoretical.

So the demand has proven 84% of the surveyed entrepreneurs expressed interest in participating

The gap is documented.

The model is validated.

Again, really that third party research looking at other accelerators and white papers on do accelerators, and that's, these are more in the report, but do accelerators actually work?

Like, do they actually help businesses grow?

And we've seen that with other, obviously accelerators in other sectors.

So we have tech accelerators, science accelerators.

So the model of having a,

An accelerator is validated.

And then finally, the program advances Go Virginia and obviously other priorities of traded sector expansion, collaboration, a higher wage job, and leveraging existing assets.

So we're not duplicating what someone else is doing.

We're leveraging it and adding to it.

So most importantly, with you, and I had this meeting

and presented a report on this.

For each of our counties in our region, and then particularly with Albemarle, we looked at your strategic plan and where does this fit with you?

Like, do you care about food and beverage and is it important?

And with agriculture as well.

So, and I won't read all of this, but the Accelerator supports six of your goal-free strategies.

So, Strategy 3.3, a rural business resource hub,

Literally that's what the accelerator would do, would be provide these resources.

We're also building an online resource hub for everyone else.

So we got a grant through the PATH Foundation.

Right now I'm just focused in Culpeper, Rappahannock, and Fauquier because that's the counties that PATH covers.

But that's an online resource hub for

any entrepreneur to have access to resources and a place to have peer chats and ask me questions or what have you.

So that's something that we could roll out more broadly.

3.4 Wholesale and Scalable Market Pathways.

So those are those introductions and connections with buyers.

And then 3.5 Agribusiness Sector Partnership, the meetups, the peer network, and even the online resources.

So having

a place to list like here's farms in our county and you know Joe provides milk and you know who could buy directly for their their packaged food business like could you use local resources instead of you know getting things off the Cisco truck.

So and then the last three are more indirect but I still think we support them so land use and zoning and infrastructure assessment I'll combine those two

We would provide feedback to you as I talk to participants on any problems that they have with land use and zoning, and then infrastructure assessment, particularly with cold storage processing broadband, that feedback could come back to you as we work with the participants.

And then finally, 3.7 with agritourism, economy, support and resources for farm-based tourism,

There I'm looking at trying to get farms to sell off-farm.

So maybe they have, you know, they sell on-farm.

Could we talk to them about, you know, could you package something and have another revenue stream and start selling off-farm and move into the world of packaged goods?

So our projected outcomes over the grant period, again, so two-year grant period,

and then five-year follow-up.

We're looking at 15 to 30% average growth revenue for the participants.

45 new jobs created, and again, not just production jobs, but these would be sales, operations, marketing type jobs at higher wages, expanded trades from capture sales, so selling outside of our region, 16 to 20 businesses served, plus 50 plus more, I think through the online resource hub,

and then multiplier effects.

So as a business grows, their demand for foreign products, packaging, logistics, it all starts to spread a little bit and we would see multiplier effects in those adjacent sectors.

So our ask, and we'll have any questions that you have at the end,

So what we're seeking is $25,000 a year per year for two years, so $50,000 total.

Our budget is $380,000, approximately $190,000 a year.

We might have a little bit more in year two.

So that is our request.

We would love to work with you on this project.

I think, especially with Albemarle, we have so many food and beverage businesses in this county.

I have a database of

Over 80, and I checked right before I came, I think 38 were in Albemarle, but that was between purely CPG type companies and farms, but definitely a strong showing for Albemarle County.

So thank you.

I have two.

So we've seen, so SBDC sees a lot of the new businesses.

I think putting the word out there, which we would with this project, I reached out to, like I said, I've got a database of over 80 between farms and CPG, word of mouth, working with chambers of commerce, working with the EDA, maybe that economic development folks.

If I can add to that too, we're already part of the Virginia Accelerator Network.

And so across the state, we know that this is an unmet need.

And even on Hope's advisory board, she's connected with USDA, VA Fairs, VDACs, Virginia's finance, all of these entities that are touching on these food businesses that are disconnected.

They are not connected on any platform.

That's actually why we started with the online resource platform.

But as part of that, what Hope is doing as well is in each municipality, she's holding events.

And those events are not only for the packaged foods companies, but to bring in the food trucks because maybe they've got a special sauce, inviting the restaurants, inviting the agribusinesses, bringing them all to the food conversation to see if they have a vision for a packaged goods business.

And I don't know if you all saw 60 Minutes last night.

Oh my God.

Right.

I was like, this is the perfect time, right?

The whole, you know, packaged goods industry, all the big companies and the pushback on how their projects or products are causing all kinds of health issues and highly processed foods are an issue.

We're a state already of specialty foods.

We're actually doing amazingly well.

And a lot of them come out of this region and region nine has four commercial kitchens.

Hope is on the board of Carver Center, which is the one in Culpeper.

She's been meeting with Beacon and connecting them.

So we're in a really interesting position in this region to address that need.

How do you know you're going to create 45 jobs?

We have, and I forget it's in the report, the research shows the number of increased revenues and increased jobs through research.

If you go back one slide.

Yes.

16 to 20 businesses served.

Right.

So we can't guarantee like placement in the accelerator would be an application-based process.

But as I said, so I think it was, I had, did I say 38 or 48, 38,

of my 80 were from Albemarle, so I would think a good percentage, but we cannot promise who will or would not make it into the accelerator.

Rebecca, you wanna speak on that?

Oh, from the other municipalities?

So we have confirmed the city of Charlottesville,

Nelson County, Fauquier County, Madison, Orange.

Orange is in for one year.

They couldn't make the commitment for two.

There were some, town of Culpeper, Culpeper County and Rappahannock had some issues where they couldn't address it now, but they may be able to come in next year or later.

I don't think they're going to make it in time for this application.

Am I missing it?

Louisa, we haven't got confirmed yet, but we had a conversation with them.

Is there anybody else?

Yes.

So on the businesses, do you, I guess there's an application process,

Do you ensure that they're viable businesses already prior to going into this program?

Correct.

So with the marketing and the outreach that we're doing, we've already started a list of revenue numbers that we can obtain or that they've told me directly.

So the survey is actually out of revenue question.

So we have a list and then we would also open it up to anyone that we haven't discovered yet.

But yes, definitely companies that are in business have some revenue and want to scale, right?

One more follow-up question.

Do you categorize what type of business, obviously this is a food industry, but you don't want I make cheese and you make cheese and you make cheese and we're all competing with each other trying to make cheese.

I haven't actually thought about that.

I don't know that I would exclude two businesses that were doing the same thing.

I was like, we're in abundance and I mean, there's plenty of business to go around, but I guess we could notify them like, hey, we have two cookie companies.

Two different, but the same product.

I just didn't know if they were then competing for the same resources and the same shelf space.

Right.

Oh, I'm not in charge, so.

Oh.

Yeah, you just sit there.

When you say food and beverage,

I have a lot of, in my area, there's a lot of vineyards, wineries and everything.

One of their biggest complaints is that they, A, cannot sell in the quantities they want to some of the, you know, like Costco or some of the other bigger places because of state regulations.

And then I asked, you know, a couple of restaurants, because I go to restaurants a lot, I don't cook.

So anyway,

That they don't use, usually in Europe, when you're in a town and you have food and wine, the wines, a lot of them come from the area.

Ours don't.

And I ask that question, why are we using local Virginia wines?

Well, I don't know if you're familiar with the wine coalitions through Nelson County.

Matt Brown is managing that.

They actually got a Go Virginia implementation grant to try to support the wine industry in Virginia because it's actually bigger than New York's wine industry.

It's one that has been underdeveloped and under supported.

And they've got a great plan for supporting the wineries and apparently have been making really great progress with that.

On the advisory board for the food and beverage accelerator is Chris Van Orden, who is the craft beverage consultant for Virginia.

And also we're, yeah, we actually, through Venture Central, we bring all the accelerators together, including Civo Biohub to kind of work together and stay in touch with each other on how we're supporting companies.

Can you remind everybody what we did?

We did do, yes.

So I'm involved with the British New Island Coalition that Rebecca is referring to and they've got a lot of mobility currently happening.

Maureen Kelly from Nelson County came and presented at one point in the recent months and I'll be happy to connect everybody with those resources to see.

They have lots of great webinars and information on how we can

continue to propel the Virginia blind business forward.

Right, so we're not shutting the door, right?

Well, if any of you guys in Albemarle County in the city of Charlottesville, two of our biggest exits were with Devil's Backbone and what's the, Waterbird?

Waterbird, right?

I'm sorry, please go ahead.

I was just going to say from what I'm hearing from the wine industry is they really are at risk of going out of business, which is one of the reasons why well supported having, under certain circumstances, a restaurant or something, because it's not doing well.

Overall in sales and everything.

Someone told me, they said that they figured by the end of 26, maybe even half wouldn't be in accounting, wouldn't be in business anymore.

Really?

Is it at a state level?

A lot of it are state regulations.

We have Costco, and they can't sell to Costco.

Or wait, excuse me, I'm sorry.

They can't take their product in Albemarle and just take it over to Costco.

It has to go from the winery to somebody to a middleman, middle person, then to Costco, and the price goes up.

And this is distilleries as well.

Same problem.

So this is new.

Because when I came here 30 years ago, we had a few wineries.

We had an explosion of wineries and breweries and whiskey.

I mean, I know Maureen personally, over the years, she's worked hard with Nelson County to do all that.

But yeah, to Steve's question, what all, I mean, now we're,

Is it a bell curve that we've saturated the market and now it's declining?

I know my kids don't drink.

Not like me, anyway.

Well, I know, but that's a trend.

I'm just curious, is it really regulation?

It's not that recent.

Well, and yeah, even Christine, I mean, they thought about, they opened a second facility in Pennsylvania.

We've been through this through Charlottesville Angel Network because they were probably one of the first investments and everybody learned a lot after that.

He presented, but we had some turn-over, three, four, and four new people since he was last in.

To your point about the declining business in the wine industry, the consumer packaged goods accelerator that Rebecca and Hope are here discussing, it definitely serves a gap in our ecosystem and with food processing and agribusiness being one of our target sectors.

So a couple of questions.

What's the amount of the Bill Virginia implementation grant?

So our budget is, let me go back to that, is 380,000.

Well, so this is the minimum I'll be answering.

Yeah.

So we haven't set the determination because we don't have everybody's numbers yet.

If we don't get at least this much, we can't watch.

and so Go Virginia means a 50% match.

So if it's $100,000, we need $50,000 in match from the municipalities or other cash participants, right?

And we're, it doesn't always have to be cash, but we need cash to, this is the minimum budget we need to know this going.

So that's really what we're looking for.

And this will be a hybrid accelerator.

It's going to move around

People can join in person, but we're also going to cover the region, right?

Because there's assets all over the region.

Sort of similar to the conversations around the innovation corridor, right?

There are assets all up and down region nine.

Yearly, per year for the two.

No.

No, it would be, is it a third?

It would be a third of that.

Am I doing my math right?

So like 240 from the state and 120 from the localities.

Well, it would take us to 360, so.

So approximately.

250, 130.

250, 125.

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, so you're looking for, from us, a fairly big amount in your committee.

I'm just trying to wrap my head around it and then sort of trying to come up with what's our, what's the return on investment to the county, right?

So you've mentioned the 38.

If we're talking about, 50 is about 40% of the investments you're looking for,

What is- I think you have to also consider that each of these businesses that they will be serving, so they have the additional job creation, but they're also serving between 16 and 20 jobs.

If you look at basically, you know,

$2,000 investment per business to help educate them and help them grow and help them.

Sure, it is.

It goes back across the region, right?

So if we're asking, and I know this is going to sound a bit selfish, but we're on market.

Go ahead.

We are, right?

I mean, this is the Albemarle County economic development.

The return on investment for Albemarle County businesses, whether it's the creation of jobs, which leads to the tax revenue there, whether it's the expansion of businesses, which leads to tool taxes, as opposed to necessarily real estate taxes.

We're talking about broadening our tax base, taking it off the residential.

And so I'm trying to figure out what's our...

I'd like to see more...

numbers that reflect what that might show in terms of the amount of our investment for.

I get where you're coming from in terms of two thousand dollars per company across all of Virginia, but our region nine.

Having been a former CEO of a company in Savannah,

When you look at our, we're so reliant on each other.

I mean, I live in Charlottesville.

My husband and I have a business in Charlottesville, but I worked in Savannah and our employees, they came here for lunch.

And I mean, I think the thing is is that I think we have to be careful just to isolate it and say, what is in it for us at this moment to make this investment?

We look at it as a whole, overall we grow because

because their spouses work and there's so much overlap.

I also really like the fact that if we are supporting our agricultural businesses by giving them outlets to sell their products, even other investments that we've done with the honey and the vineyards and things like that,

Sure, and as a former owner of a wine retail business in Charlottesville, trust me, the three-tier system was the bane of our existence for years and we had the same problem in terms of scaling to get to a number because we got stuck between

600,000 and 800,000 when I decided it was time for me to exit.

And so I get where you're coming from in terms of, and I think Dr. Hastings talked about, right, there's this gap and this trough where you can't get from here to here without going through this middle.

But it's one of those things where if we're gonna play a large role financially, and yes, it does benefit the entire region,

I think we can be aggressive in saying, let's make sure that Albemarle County businesses get considered.

And with 38 out of 80, then they're going to be.

But I would be looking, the other question I had dealt with post-2028 funding, because it talks about corporate sponsorships and 30 identified cramped sources.

Have you made any attempts

Applying for grants from those sources, or is that too far down the line at this point?

Sure.

I'll talk about the grants and maybe do the strategic partnerships.

So we hired basically a grant writer or grant researcher, and that's where we came up with that list.

So I think there was actually 80 on the list, and then we whittled it down to most likelys.

The Taft Foundation being our first,

The $25,000 investment front of them was just the start to do the resource hub.

We think that we could go back to them.

They have a, I even talked to you about it today, flexible funding that launches in July.

So we would be able to go back and they offer that twice a year.

So there are a number of grants.

I think in the whole world of grants, it's a bit difficult at the moment.

RMSI,

was just announced, so Beacon and Parker Kitchen was able to get federal funding.

That was USDA money that went down to VDACs.

So we'll actively apply for grants.

And that is the goal of this, that it's not just a two-year project, but it's a multi-year project.

And they have funding not just from the counties going forward, but from these foundations, grants, et cetera.

And then Rebecca has been working more

No, we would not come back.

No, the assumption is that this is a self-sustaining accelerator, and that's, you know, if you look at the national models, that's how they work.

and we are in a really interesting state.

VEDP is also on Hope's advisory board.

I don't want, I'm not going to start throwing out the names of some of the bigger food and beverage businesses, but there are a number of them.

And if you look at what's happened in Virginia, we've got some of the winners that have done very well.

But we also know that we're moving into a sector that is incredibly timely, but, and we're also, it's a workforce issue, right?

And there's a lot of foundations and support that are related to workforce.

And this is,

In particular, you know, I talk about it similarly to life sciences because it's very specialized.

It's very different, right?

But it is an upward economic immobility kind of area where you can take someone who has almost no skills, get them into production, provide them with certifications.

We now have multiple certification vehicles for food processing in Region 9, advance them, advance their pay, right?

And build that.

We also know this is an infrastructure intensive type of business, but our state knows how to build it.

And with things like Beacon and Carver that are handling the ground level and getting those starter companies going, it's sort of like having an R&D engine, right?

And two big ones in this region that doesn't really exist elsewhere.

So as it relates to the strategics, the plan is definitely

to be a feeder.

Now we know the Sargento family is here, right?

We've chatted with them, but we know you got to hit about 20 million in sales before they're going to perform an acquisition.

And things are changing, as was evidenced by 60 Minutes last night.

Yeah.

Everything's changing.

Why don't you mention the nexus of that with 60 Minutes?

to R.K. Jr. and the other person who used to be in charge of the FDA.

They're now agreeing that, like they said, read the labels and if you can't pronounce it, then you shouldn't be eating it.

And they even said that this is the cause for all the obesity.

And I think we all know that anyway.

But all these foods are readily available for the lower income people.

They can't buy the other stuff.

They're actually saying that fresh fruit is less expensive.

So I don't know how that works.

But that was very, it's having a big impact on us as Americans, frankly, or in our whole nation.

Absolutely.

Just to continue, Director Storm's selfish line of questioning.

How did you come up with the ask?

Per capita.

So it was sort of the ask was generally in that range for everyone.

Some counties don't have, there's a lot of Go Virginia grants that have come along, right?

And so we can't, we're not even applying for local money because there isn't any anymore.

It's all gone.

Region 9 is the top Go Virginia municipality in getting the Go Virginia grants and succeeding in the Go Virginia grants.

And that is from the HCD who runs the program.

So we are, you know, Commonwealth Bioxcellerator, Segal Biohub, the Workforce Projects, Innovation Corridor, you know, work that's moving it, the Wine Publish.

There's so many things that have gotten Go Virginia grants.

that some of these municipalities have no budget left for matches.

If I'm not mistaken, Newhill just got a very substantial either grants or earmark.

And I think it has to do with Beacon.

$900,000.

I think the grant, the RFSI grant that they got was from 2024, so it's actually just very delayed.

So that was, my understanding is that was for their building and how that will work since it's been two years and the grants just don't come out.

But the relationships with Beacon, Savannah has a kitchen, Carver,

That's where it all starts.

That's where someone, you know, maybe gets out of their home or they start building their business there.

I already started working with different businesses that work with Carbon Beacon.

I think you guys did a grant for pennies.

and Perfect Pizza.

I was going to say, many of the businesses that we work with have come to us by way of hope.

You can bring us any pizza, though.

We've got honey in.

We can show up at the next stage.

And we, this group had done a, to help Beacon.

There was a grant to Beacon several years ago.

Early in there.

So it's not that we're not invested across the jurisdictions and with Beacon and in this sector as a body.

And it's been, yes, it's been a couple of years, but we're consistent with the Lawing Coalition and businesses, right?

The pollinator business sort of straddles

Right.

And much like the Go Virginia grants, there is a regional capacity that is required.

The AFIT grants that are distributed are typically awarded and preferential selection is given to those that are regionally collaborative.

And just to close the loop, I mean, the idea there is

You know, I get in there, work with the businesses, they grow their revenue, they're using more time at Beacon and they're using more time at Carver, so that's more revenue for Beacon, it's more revenue for the business.

So yeah, I mean, we called it the messy middle, but we were clear down that term, but it is a messy middle.

Like when I first started my granola company,

I was like, right, I'm going to get to a million dollars in five years.

And I had a little post-it note and it was like 200, 400, 680 and I thought it would take me five years.

And you mentioned the 600.

I was stuck at 600,000 for like three years and could not budge.

So these resources, I wish we had these resources, right?

Like I never talked to the Charlottesville Angel Network.

I never reached out to the SBDC.

So I think the opportunity is there to, like I said, we have CIC, SBDC, the Kitchens helping someone start a business.

We don't have anyone to grow a business, right?

These resources have never been put together before, which is kind of mind boggling, right?

Because there's so many of them.

but they're not coordinated and they're not in one place and all of the tools and connections and documents and Hope has all of that but she's been meeting sort of one-on-one through SBDC with people so that's why we know we need an accelerator, we need to bring the mentors in, we need to bring the whole network together, their online resource hub is going to be a huge tool and also getting all of the agribusinesses on there as well as the food producers and

the distributors and the packaged goods.

And, you know, Beacon and Carver, yes, they're sort of an entry level.

You can get things done.

There's a ton of little brick and mortar operations that are tucked all over the place, right?

Don't you think we should do that in executive session?

Or should we?

Yes.

We're okay.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

What do I have in the box?

You can stay.

I move that the Economic Development Authority adopt the resolution to appropriate matching funds to support venture central food and beverage consumer packaging goods CPG accelerator.

In the amount, oh is there a discussion?

In the amount that was presented, this doesn't say an amount.

Yes, the amount that is presented in the resolution.

Yeah, 25.

Good question.

25 for you.

No, no.

This is the full resolution.

That's a reference.

Oh, okay.

Okay, sorry.

Okay.

Thank you.

Well, it's their discussion.

Yeah, as I meant to say.

It's your discussion.

All right, so it's like we're ready to take the vote.

Somebody seconded the motion?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I think we ought to.

Okay, Dr. Huth?

Aye.

Dr. Storm?

Aye.

Director Mechnick.

Aye.

Director Friedman.

Aye.

Director Cox.

All right.

Well, thank you.

Yeah.

March, early March.

Director Long, Matt, proceed with the staff report.

All right.

Staff report.

Next slide, please.

VRE count for, since our last meeting has been two agribusiness and food processing visits, free biotech and life science, and one complimentary sector.

Earlier this month in this very building, the Segal Biohub held the device and tech expo, which was an amazing

event.

There were more exhibitors this year, earlier than ever before, I believe, right?

It was, yeah, exhibitors were made up of companies from here in Albemarle County, the city of Charlottesville, regionally, and then some, a couple of them out of state.

But you see on the right, the bottom right, I thought that was one of the coolest ones.

It's one of Micro Air's Carpal Tunnel

surgical implementations.

I could keep saying words that don't make sense.

But ultimately, they had a demonstration on how they perform that type of carpal tunnel surgery.

And they're teary joking about stuff.

Well, of course.

Of course.

I made up words.

I could do that.

I could do that.

But it was exhilarating, wonderful event that we are happy to attend each year.

Ashley, can I make a motion?

To do what?

Maybe, did you guys tell us this was Bill and Lauren and I just missed it?

We did, yeah, the last meeting, the last meeting, but there's a shock full, this was February, this meeting.

My wife's gonna be horrified to know that she's in that picture.

Is she?

Amazing, that's cool.

Next slide, please.

So yes, so these are some upcoming events as well.

We have the Tourism for All Conference,

that is facilitated by the CACVD, the Charlottesville area con, help me out.

Thank you very much.

But this, I'll be attending this event.

It'll be at the Hillsdale Conference Center.

It's a, it's a really neat event.

They have a cohort where they work with local tourists and businesses to

train them and certify them in inclusive tourism experiences.

And it's just a neat day to check out.

The Piedmont Ascent, this is the second business conference.

Director Hood was a guest judge for the Piedmont Pidge that follows the Piedmont Ascent business conference last year.

And Director Long has been a long standing judge for that event.

And we're

We're looking for judges this year too, so keep it in mind.

But that, ultimately at the end of the, they're small businesses, typically consumer goods, sometimes services with a community impact a lot of times, but these are ultimately small businesses that have gone through the Small Business Development Center

and business essentials trainings.

And throughout that course training, they learn all they need to know about putting together a business plan and getting their business off the ground.

And it ends with a pitch competition where they can win five or $10,000 combination 15 from the city of Charlottesville and Albemarle's offices in economic development to support their growth.

That event will be held on June 3rd at PVCC.

There's more information on the SBDC website as well as a lot of our socials.

27th here at the Biohub.

Charlottesville Albemarle Airport is considering adding the addition of a direct flight to Boston.

Yes!

Which would be really great for a lot of our biotech and life science companies and everyone else for that matter.

So if you or any businesses that you work with travel to or would consider traveling to Boston, please consider attending that event.

You can reach out to our office for more information, or you can email that.

Fly to boston.go show.com directly for an opportunity to share your feedback about why that would be impactful to your business.

Can we get a photo of Caribbean?

So as a former chair of the airport will say that it's not that the airport is not considering that.

The airport would love to have it because the airport has no control over it.

It's making a case to the airlines to get it and so the more support and the more they can convince, I mean they've got to convince the schedulers with the airlines that this flight makes sense and

Boston's always been a challenge because you're flying over other hubs and the airlines don't like to fly over other hubs and would fly through hubs.

So you've really got to show that it's going to be profitable and fast.

All the conditions have been very profitable, but it's not, it's hard to make this stuff happen.

It's on Friday the 27th from 11 to 1230.

Lunch is served.

Pardon?

Oh, lunch is served.

Yeah, make a quick comment about it.

It's a project I've been involved with since 2020, talking to the airport about the demand from life sciences companies for how we can open up the life sciences market in Charlottesville, Albemarle if we have that direct flight.

It obviously got crushed in the middle of the pandemic.

Following the data from where we were five years ago to today, I'm very encouraged by the number of seats that we can fill in these planes and the momentum and conversations happening just by pushing this out there have brought people coming forward really demanding this, saying we need this, people who are from the industry but from other industries and sectors saying,

This is a real opportunity.

And I think from an airlines perspective, there's some service that could be pulled from Richmond and the other markets.

And so I've been following this data, learning a lot about the industry at the time and the moment, but working closely with Jason Birch and the team there at Cho to just bring the community together for advocacy to get all of the data.

And I think with that behind them, there's a really great opportunity.

Or is this just internal?

There's going to be a representative from the Boston area who's been supporting the growth for Cho and is going to kind of comment on what he sees.

The Gregory Long point about what's involved

I think they do some of that stuff.

I mean, I know they do some of it.

A lot of it is, you know, how are we going to make money and are we cannibalizing from other flights and what's less supported.

But it's, you know, that's the argument.

And the more you can have businesses, ultimately, they've got to decide

Is this profitable?

Assuming the one factor was ridership, right?

There will be an ask for letters of support from businesses and to filling out the survey, which is very minimal to just collect numbers.

So we're just trying to get momentum and really

getting the commitment of the community to say, hey, if we get this, we want you to be aware.

Well, and it's also now, just because of the pilot shortage, it's making a decision.

Am I going to make more money here than what I'm doing with my plane right now?

And you've got to show, OK, I'm going to do it, which is why some flights will get.

There's a fun fact that I learned that Boston does not have enough

parking spots for the airplanes.

And the tourism factor, there's a lot of people go up to Maine during the summer and there's a smaller plane from Boston.

You can go from Richmond to Boston, or then you can go up and show to Boston.

It's here on the first floor, the conference room in this building, Tom Center 4, at 11 o'clock, February 27th.

I'll be happy also to share that full information in an email.

I'll put something on this.

All done?

All right, ma'am.

Oh, yeah.

Let's do the video first.

Thank you, Grace.

Great.

Thank you for entertaining that video.

I feel like you get the real flavor of this community through the videos we've been able to create.

The momentum in 2025 is beyond our expectations.

And truly, I think the county has been so visionary in its thoughtfulness in attracting groups like AstraZeneca to the region and to the county.

It's going to really have a major impact on the innovation side, which is really what the Accelerator is supporting.

but also knowing that it mattered to AstraZeneca that there was a community like Sebo Biohub and an accelerator and R&D work happening that they could plug into as they arrive here and get settled.

That meant a lot to us to know that what we've been building over 10 years has really also been able to help support the attraction of much larger pharma companies.

We've been talking about this for years that this ecosystem will flourish with a group like AstraZeneca coming

and so all along we've been building and connecting and offering these events and so thank you just for your for your vision behind that but thank you for the support for the accelerator just by having a place to call home has mattered for our ability to build connections and sponsorships you saw with the JP Morgan Bank coming we couldn't have done an event like that in the past work so easily where they plug in and then they get to see all this great technology

at the Device and Tech Expo.

So they're building their businesses while we are, and also supporting the businesses we're trying to grow and build.

So I can mention some statistics.

Last year, we brought eight companies to the accelerator, operating in the lab space, everything from therapeutics to medical devices, tools, and a DNA manufacturing company.

Some of those we see as high growth opportunities like built biotechnologies

They are manufacturing DNA at scale and they're sending it off and servicing large pharma companies that are building these really novel gene therapies that they're doing that as a service to pharma.

And so stuff is getting sent out here in these little packages costing half a million dollars.

And we see that as a company we really wanna grow in Albemarle County.

That alone will be success of this program.

That company stays and grows here because they got their first step here in the accelerator

They're already talking about moving with us to the next location and hopefully staying here at Norfolk.

That's how we envisioned this engine growing and building.

One point that was made when we were looking at this project was, well, where are the companies gonna go when they outgrow a single bench or a few benches?

We've done a really good job of playing Tetris.

We brought over a million dollars of equipment into the space.

And we know that we are going to outgrow the space very quickly.

We knew that, right, as we walked in here.

and we quickly turned to the Secretary of Commerce who had supported us in the project and thinking about other new projects saying, how are we gonna grow our footprint?

And we were able to secure another $15 million as sustainable add-on to the pilot project.

We've shown demonstrated success with that in our first year.

So we are awaiting the final MOUs coming from the EDP.

That first seven and a half million is gonna allow us to build out

Completely new footprint of space, 18,000 square feet right across the street here at 4105.

North Fork and the UVA Foundation has envisioned that space as an innovation building that they want to start with building out at the top level with wet lab space.

We're going to be able to grow the footprint and the space for some of these companies.

We'll be able to serve both the early stage and growing companies in that space.

We'll more than double the size of the lab access that we have there.

and we will be able to continue our operations right now to 2030, 2031.

So this seed funding and support that you've given us has brought so much momentum to the region, attention from the state, attention from Secretary of Commerce's office and we're supporting these companies to grow and build here and stay here.

So there's a retention piece.

There's also an interesting attraction piece that we've noticed

Companies know and are hearing about all the things going on.

We've got strong social media presence and companies are finding us from either across Virginia or outside Virginia.

And that was a bit of a surprise how many we talked to last year as pipeline for this.

So we have an attraction opportunity as well.

We've been involved in many conversations with groups looking to find places for the companies to come everywhere from the UK to

Companies coming from LA.

Last week we met a company who said, yeah, North Carolina, Virginia is where I think I want to build my company.

We couldn't help that company in the past and now we can.

So thank you for all the support.

It's been just, it was a wild, amazing fun year.

We hosted eight public facing events that had over 900 attendees and we

hosted our programming with lunch and learn events specific for the accelerator companies and our C-suite members, which are members of this community that are benefiting from the knowledge being shared by experts in legal, accounting, policymaking, and other domains that are just giving insights that they wouldn't get otherwise.

So that's really our educational arm to the things we're doing.

So thank you.

If you'd like a tour, we can go see the space and see what's happening and

Thank you for sharing that.

That was really great.

I love to see how we're growing as a community.

And I mean, even just coming from the discussion today, we build on each other, we rise together essentially.

And I love that.

I see the vision and the follow on opportunities for CPG in similar fashion.

So, we can build these different models and from success with the ones that have been growing and,

or we'll be meeting soon to talk more about that.

And we've learned a lot from watching what you did.

Good, it's getting forward and similar conversations happening on the defense sector side and renewable energy too.

Yeah, so it's 15 million in total.

Half of that's coming from the UVA provost office.

The first seven and a half million is for infrastructure build out and equipment.

The second seven and a half is for operations.

So basically as we roll off of this three-year Gobert Vinny grant, we'll pick up our operations support from UVA.

We've really embedded ourselves with UVA Innovates, which is a new department cross entrepreneurial initiative for the university.

So I think we're going to have a tour.

We will not adjourn the meeting because there are going to be more than two of us on the PDA there.

So we'll just continue and we'll adjourn at some later point.

But I will say that we will, our next meeting is March 17th, back at our normal stop and grab.

All right.

What's the partner term?

It would be growing business to steal.

The best is the rest of them, I guess.

Yeah, I'm just, they're done.

Yeah.

Yeah, in there.

But I was like,

It was real.

I think it's one of the great spirits of poverty.

You have to bring a couple of these communities from a protocol.

Wes will serve you, but it might be really uncomfortable for you.

Really, like, if you want to ask somebody else a question.

But that's about that.

Do you get the benefit of talking to others about how the world can be the thing that you said you were going to do to become a kind of person at the agency?

All right.

Thank you, everyone.