Economic Development Authority Meeting   5/19/2026

Avery, could you try to implement these?

Please think.

Alright.

Since we're missing someone, I don't want to wish.

Alright, then I'll call the meeting to order.

We have a quorum is present and we need to make an amendment to the

Meeting agenda to, as you will see on the screen, to consider and take action related to the EDA's insurance policy.

All right, so now we can start.

I will make the motion that we amend the agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

All right, all in favor?

Aye.

All right, the agenda is amended to add the consideration of the insurance policy.

All right, matters from the public.

I didn't sign up.

We have no sign-ups.

Approval of the minutes.

Any comments on the minutes?

Is there a motion to approve the minutes?

I move to approve the minutes.

I second.

Second.

All right, all in favor?

Aye.

Minutes are approved.

Financial report.

OK, great.

All right, moving right along.

So first item on our actions agenda, since we have changed our formatting heading and our agenda now, so we don't have new business and old business, we have action and information.

Sure.

I think I'll just invite Dan Siegel with Sands Anderson to talk about the public hearing.

This is a public hearing for Kappa Sigma bond financing.

This is not something that we do very frequently here at the EDA to have an official public hearing.

Is this a good spot?

Yeah.

So I'm Dan Siegel.

I'm from St. Anderson in Virginia, Virginia.

And I have with me Chad Gebhardt, who is the CEO virtually of Kappa Sigma Endowment Fund and in charge of Scottsville Road Holdings.

And I'll explain briefly, y'all have seen and many of you may have been there, but now 20 is the Kappa Sigma National Air Quarters and their museum.

and it was built back in 2006.

And actually with tax exempt bond, because the endowment fund is a 501c3, so it can issue tax exempt bonds.

And we kind of did this process back in 2006.

I was in grade school then, but it worked out well.

At that time we needed, so the bank, and it's the same bank here, the bank wanted to have bank qualified bonds.

And bank qualified bonds are bonds that are particularly attractive, they're tax-exempt, only

Issuers who issue very few tax exempt bonds during a calendar year can issue bank qualified bonds.

The limit is 10 million in a calendar year.

So Albemarle pretty much never has the ability to issue bank qualified bonds for tax exempt.

And I know you just got through a pretty big bond issue earlier this year.

So you're way over that limit.

So even back then you couldn't,

and we used their EDA.

You can have another EDA issue those bonds.

But federal law requires that the host EDA, in this case, Papa Sigma's Museum, is located in Albemarle County.

So the host EDA or the county needs to have a public hearing.

And the issuing, bond issuing EDA.

And back in 2006, we did it with

Nelson County, and we had a joint public hearing.

We modified those bonds and had to have another public hearing, did a new bond issue, I think in 2012, 2012.

And now we're coming, in that time we used Appomattox County, because Nelson County couldn't do that qualified that year.

So now they're expanding the museum

and that area with some new buildings and some building on the additions.

And they are gonna issue another 10 million bonds.

We've had a public hearing in Appomattox County.

Their EDA has already approved this after a public hearing.

And they approved the bond issue and the Appomattox County Board of Supervisors has last night approved the bond issue.

But it still requires

Albemarle County is the host locality to approve another locality issuing bonds for a project in the county.

So that was really long-winded, I'm sorry.

So before we actually open the public hearings, are there any questions from the EDA about that?

Correct.

requires you to concur, the Board of Supervisors, actually, but you're holding this hearing.

Federal law requires the hearing and approval of the local governing body.

So who knows?

Is there any financial?

That's a perfect question.

Albemarle County?

There is not.

In fact, you're not listed on anything.

It's just, we have to go through this process for the federal and state law, but the issue will be through Appomattox County EDA.

What does that even say?

You mean for Appomattox?

Yeah, why they do it.

They get enough RDP.

The benefit is that you get them in the mansion and whatever visitors.

I'll just offer, after this then, the Board of Supervisors will take an action at a future meeting of theirs.

They do not have to hold a public hearing.

Any other questions from the EDA?

All right, should I open the public hearing?

All right, anyone wish to speak on the public hearing?

Hearing none, we'll close the public hearing.

Is there a second?

Second.

Paul, do we need a roll call?

Don't actually.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

All right, resolution is approved.

Thank you.

Yeah, that's fine.

So if you want to read them.

Now my favorite way to do things, but I did get this policy a couple hours ago.

I have handed you all, Don has a copy of the full policy that requires three signatures on three different pages should you authorize him to do so, but you all have the renewal packets essentially from Versa that has the policy at the back, but it shows you the coverage pages.

This is a fairly standard policy.

You've got one million in coverage.

to cover kind of all of the things that you do that should be acceptable coverage.

It is consistent with your previous coverage.

So no real changes.

We're using the same insurance company.

Just needs to be executed by June 1, apparently.

So if anybody has any questions for me, I'd be happy to answer them to the best of my ability, given the timeline.

But that is what I have for you today.

I do not feel like I need more time to look at it.

Like I said, this is consistent with your previous coverage.

There's only so many insurers who cover local governments.

This is one of them.

This is the company we've chosen to go with for the past year and a half.

If you remember, we moved from Big Board to Versa last fiscal year.

So this is continued with Versa.

I think the coverage is appropriate.

If you agree, I would.

Yeah.

If you want to look at it and do it at the end of the meeting, whatever, I think that's fine.

Well, I think we can go ahead and.

Yeah, but if you authorize him to sign it.

I'll sign it when I'm ready.

These are not contracts that you give edits or negotiate back and forth.

This is the policy.

but your chair does often read very critically.

It's the key science on behalf of the school.

Just out of curiosity, you don't know if that's okay.

Did the last ones contain cybersecurity?

Any further discussion?

All in favor?

Aye.

I don't know if you need to write it down.

Do we need a roll call?

Everybody was in.

Yes.

I'll check everybody's.

Yes.

All right, so on to information, catalytic project ideas discussion.

Do you want me to lead?

I will pass it very quickly over to you all.

So this is, we at the last meeting had one slide to sort of tee up a discussion that we were hoping to have at this meeting with you all on,

One of the implementation projects from the economic development strategic plan and the subsequent sort of implementation planning effort that the EDA undertook with Civic Soul, Stephen Pedigo of Civic Soul had this notion of as the EDA's fund, which is primarily from bond fees that the EDA has collected as part of your conduit issuer role

that with sort of the amount of money that is accrued in the fund and this new strategic plan, this notion came up of the EDA wanting to be proactive or an active manager of how to use those funds to drive the strategic plan forward.

And there was this idea of if there were some catalytic projects that the EDA could support that might have things that might not otherwise happen, happen.

that that would be a good use of those funds.

Defining what does that actually mean is something that we've not done to date.

And so the purpose of this item on the agenda today is really to allow you all to have a conversation about what does catalytic projects, what does success look like in that regard from your perspective?

It's for you all to define, it's your fund, certainly guided by the strategic plan, which

The EDA very closely worked on alongside the Board of Supervisors and was adopted this past August.

And so that is sort of a guide.

Really, I think we'll turn it back to the body to talk about

What might that look like from your perspective?

What are some things that you'd like us to think about?

There's no action associated with this item today.

I think it's a discussion.

So I'll throw it open.

If anybody has an idea they want to bring up, I can go throw something out, and we'll start a discussion.

Well, I was just saying that you had a list of categories.

I don't have one ready for us.

I think what we talked about, I think what we put up at the last meeting was site readiness efforts through public-private partnerships to remove infrastructure barriers through target sectors, agribusiness, shared equipment and infrastructure, cold storage, transportation with two specific helper cues to expand their reach, EPA, branch development,

Next Generation Sites.

So one of the things I really like the agribusiness, infrastructure one, I think that's an area that

you know, putting money into smaller investments makes a big difference.

I also like the idea because of the fact that the city has things like the Beacon Kitchen and they've got restaurants, the county has food producers, that also offers us opportunity to maybe do something in conjunction with the city, EDAA to sort of work together.

We did a tour of the Beacon Kitchen, which

was great, and I'm sure Ashley could set it up for anybody else who wants to go.

That's over off of Carlton, and that allows, EEA supported that, and that allows them to sort of support food-based, visiting on the production, you know, restaurants, people are starting food trucks, faceless things.

So I think that, I really like that idea, something, because I, to me, because we have a limited pool of funds, and once that money's gone, it sort of only comes back through

through bonds, we have to be thoughtful about how we use it and make sure that it's used either in a way that we might get it back, which is also one of the benefits of potentially a loan fund is that you've got a decent chance of getting it back.

Yeah, I think, Sam, I mean, from sort of the development

It sounds like a pretty simple developer.

He thought of the multi-residential development, but it really makes piles of dirt.

and eliminating or lowering that barrier without potentially changing the stormwater rules because you don't want to change the stormwater rules for everybody because they're in place for a good reason, but I do think there's an opportunity for

the EDA and EDA to work is sort of in conjunction with that to identify the EDA or the EDO could say, hey, county owns this, what could this look like to get it to a site readiness?

So thinking about the site development strategy, what would that look like from a site plan perspective?

And then how could that fill be managed through a public private partnership?

I'm speaking very specifically because this is my background.

It is that across all industries in the county, and it is that you will hear echoed, it doesn't matter whether it's multifamily or even with the bigger development we're going to see, it's just always an issue.

And the county, I think, could position themselves really well to benefit from it and open up.

I like the site development idea.

I think one thing, just once again, wearing the professional hat of the waste management is dirt is a regulated material and heavily regulated.

And if you have this exchange, it would probably, probably need a licensed operator or someone to be able to make sure somebody's not dumping contaminated soils or something like that.

And I think that that is, it's a larger,

I think that's where the in my mind the P3 aspect comes in is you have a private operator that has responsible land to servers on staff.

You have the ability to look at soil proctors to understand like where contaminated soils can't come in.

You have people checking to reload.

So we have a partnership with Ravana Solid Waste Authority where they had some areas that they got permitted that they wanted filled in.

And we did this where we ran

Levy and Faulkner, excuse me, where Faulkner ran the fill operations and monitored it and reported it, and Rivanna made money.

Every truck that came across the scales, they paid the rate, her tonnage rate.

And so it was a really successful partnership, and it sort of got my wheels spinning, like, wait a second, this could be potentially, could be replicated in a way that would be beneficial, but still, to your point, super heavily controlled, yes.

Ivey, a lot of places, and you know this as well as anybody, you can use clean fill as an alternate daily cover for landfill cells.

And so a lot of landfills can take that fill as long as it's clean and cover their refuge.

And so we don't have that ability at the cells out there because they're closed.

So it's just a

What could be, but I think it's something that immediately came to mind when I thought about catalytic ideas because it touches everything you're going to be looking to.

So this would remove a barrier, permitting barrier, and a scheduling barrier and accelerate.

It wouldn't remove a permitting barrier.

For the individual developers, so they were still going through all the same exact permits.

Ideally what it would do is set up your site developments where you have a site that needs fill to get to a site readiness.

So let's say, I don't remember if it's one to five or five to one, how it goes whether it's DEF CON or not.

Five good ones.

Okay, so you got some of that's one you're building towards three.

How do you get there?

Okay, well, you need this much square footage flat and ready to go.

When you're talking about only clean fill or other types of dirt that

Just throwing this out if you ever need and we were actually at Panorama Pager we could they had a permitted site they are licensed

waste site under a Virginia waste permit facility for that material.

And all they deal is with leaves and mulch and dirt.

They actually make beautiful felt dirt.

So that's something that they probably have the space.

I just know that from when I was at Vanderland that we, they would buy our dirt.

Okay.

Yeah, the benefit for the county would be

more than getting to the final place and having it in a regulated place.

So it's not going in, you know, it's not going on somebody's farm.

It's getting spread towards the creek.

It's going in a place that's regulated and controlled, but you're getting to this place where it's, okay, we're going to have this pad ready in 18 months, whatever it is.

It just may not be as linear as, okay, we are building this site.

This is what we're doing.

This is the plan.

It may be more like, okay, it's going to be 24 to 36 months.

Because right now, you have a project and you're like, I just got to find a place for this or I need it.

Right.

It's on the sites themselves.

So think about like Brookhill's got a huge one.

Yeah, because I think having a non

County organization have responsibilities for dealing with the permits and things like that.

And you're talking about basically the county or the EDA in its ability, owning the parcel itself.

So are we finding sort of, not at the scale of a Rivanna Futures, but a art of soul that can be developed?

I think so.

I think so.

I think you could even play it into potentially into the agribusiness side of like, okay, develop it towards a cold storage where it's like you find your end user and then you're working towards that.

Like, hey, what do you need?

We're going to get there, but it's not maybe not going to be an immediate process, but we're going to get there over time and then ideally attract somebody that can benefit those light industrial agribusiness, that kind of thing.

But yes, the thought would be that the county owns it.

I think we're getting briefed on the building plan and all that.

Understanding the pipeline and priority sites and all that seems like a first step that we need to get our head around if we don't already know, and targeting those sites to then understand what our needs are infrastructure-wise, dirt,

or otherwise, and then go from there.

And then the other thing, obviously, in tandem with that is what I would term as, well, I call it business recruitment, branding, marketing strategy, business recruitment, retention, helping folks find sites and that sort of thing once we know what the inventory is and the aggregate of different sizes and types and their suitabilities, right?

Because they're not all just,

You know, big pads, but there's an aggregate of tech site businesses we're trying to attract.

I mean, there's an agribusiness and then there's local businesses.

And I do think, I think you could, I could see both ways as being a

Hey, here's land that we, EDA loans that we were able to buy at a price because it needs work to be usable.

Or we could say, here's a site that someone owns that needs work to be usable and just go put the land and cooperate with us and getting it, increase the site readiness so it's more available.

I think it could work either way.

And Emily, I know we have,

There have been various reports and studies and things about the land that is available and I can't remember like

Is there something going on right now?

Yeah, no, thank you for that.

So the state offers a couple of different grant programs.

The one that we've been talking about a lot is the Virginia Business Ready Sites program.

That's the one that we got $9.7 million for Rivanna Futures for this term.

That's sort of the last grant program.

If you think about developing a pipeline of sites, that's to get you from three to five, close to five.

There's other grant programs that the state has that are more targeted towards the lower tier sites.

The challenge that you have is we know what's best for your site, where it is, what it looks like, how big it should be.

And so before you do those grants, you have identification analysis.

And so we have a proposal for one.

There is potentially interest by other locations in the Central Virginia Partnership for Economic Development footprint that may also be interested in doing so.

And if it was a regional project, that then opens a different grant program that could help fund it.

And so we're working through CVPED right now to understand if there's a regional opportunity

and so we'll either move forward more quickly alone or

The way that the program is structured, it would have to be a regional project.

And so that's sort of the dance right now.

So it's in the, it's less than $100,000.

What exact parameters would be, but just from a bread box.

It's sort of in that range.

It was a regional approach for Albemarle as part of the basket of localities that would be interested in that analysis.

We'll still have an ability to sort of name target sectors because some of these care a lot for power, some of these are more agnostic to that, they care much more about highway access.

And so the toggles there, those won't be impacted by other localities sort of being in the analysis with Albemarle.

And we'll also be able to

sort of, they'll be, the way that they typically approach these, it's a desktop GIS analysis, but it's not only a desktop analysis, so there's a iteration or two written with the team running the data to say, you know, that's, we don't actually, the data suggests that that would,

and all the levels of politics.

Is the site for sale, would it ever be for sale?

Is it, you know, the politics of it, but it's adjacent to regardless of, you know, the names and all that.

So I imagine you'd have to sort of

Over and out of my advantage, the possibility of sites to end up in aggregate with something that fits our model, which we still don't know, I guess, because I mean, there is objectives that, presumably, we have for economic growth, which is increasing tax base, which can all be reverse engineered into prototypes, types of things that pay certain

land and equipment and whatnot, taxes and all that.

But knowing the kind of the thresholds we're dealing with, how much, you know, how many hundred acre sites, how many 50 acre sites, old abandoned lumber yards, how many, all these kinds of things.

Yeah, and the results are not, it's a much more robust analysis.

So you would be able to see, you would be able to sort of, you know, we did, the board does this with their transportation prioritization process where they rank, they rank the transportation projects one through two.

That's not necessarily the order in which those transportation projects are going to be built because then there's another level of analysis of, well, is there an opportunity?

Is this one well aligned with grant opportunities?

Is this one well aligned with development projects that's going to happen soon?

That ranking becomes a guide, but not necessarily.

I think the same thing would be returned out of this analysis.

So it wouldn't be, here's five sites.

It would be, here's all the attributes that make these sites strong in these different ways.

I did do this when I was on the CV network.

Have you heard of Helen?

They did an analysis that was sort of site identification sort of zero.

They did the next slide, which is probably up to more of a tier three, four, five.

And so the cap where we're on site is part of that.

So this was, you know, staff sat, we sat down and said, you know, based on the plan, you know,

Well, what does this project look like?

Just idea generating.

And so I say that to say, I don't think that list keeps disappearing.

We're having a technology problem.

Do you want me to try it?

It's certainly not the universe of ideas, but I'm loving the dirt management project.

What do you do with the funds that you have?

Our staff works through this too with some of the funds that we have of wanting to hold on to some amount, you know, for opportunities that we cannot see right now but could come pretty fast at us as we experienced this past summer while wanting to also advance really great ideas that kind of come from some of our partners as well as understanding there's some things that we just know we need to do like the site identification study

But we always hear about that there will be related businesses, related industries that will be attracted due to AstraZeneca.

Is there anything we can do to help facilitate that?

I mean, that seems to be the major initiative.

I think the agricultural suggestion is just because it's a core, like one of the things that, well even when Ashley has said they want to come here, they came here for the charm, like they said, oh it's so nice.

We don't want to lose that and I think we have to be careful.

So I think even though, yes, economic development bringing businesses, we want to keep what makes Charlottesville Charlottesville, right?

So the agriculture, the vineyards and things like that, that people come to enjoy the food and so forth.

I think that just is definitely worth considering.

And I know we've done some projects that we financed one thing that then many

businesses were able to benefit from, like the labs and stuff like that for the wines and things like that that you would have never thought of that, hey, that's a thing.

They've got to get this testing.

There's no place in the area who does this testing.

Let's create the testing center.

and now they have this place locally that they can test their wines.

Just little things like that you don't think about, but I don't know how we would find those out.

Maybe that would be my, I think your point that, you know, what if we identify something and say, hey, this would be nice in this category or site development in a certain category, is it residential?

Is it commercial?

Is it targeted towards a certain history?

How would we find that?

Well, on Thursday, we coordinated an aggressive food and beverage producers roundtable with a handful of businesses in

Charlesville Metro Area.

We're bringing them to learn more about how we can support as localities their growing needs with a lot of the shared needs.

We're talking about transport and logistics needs and trying to find a theme and a drumbeat about

how we can get in localities to support them.

Cause again, it's not a recruitment of ag business, right?

It's a, how do we sustain these businesses that exist here to help them scale up to that next level so that they are able to compete with other regionals.

And just food for the shared space to your point, treatment of the complimentary trees that might be attracted to the area.

Cold storage is a need that not only agribusiness needs, but it's also something that pharmaceutical manufacturers need.

So that might be something to- Same building.

Super thought.

Well, I'm sorry.

So on Thursday, I would like you to find the agribusiness

Okay, I'll work on it.

I know it's kind of, you know, like, but it's really sort of... Maybe that's me, maybe I am, and the farmer, Nikki Hastings.

But her 10-year overnight success in pulling the biotech community together and

driving them to what they have been able to achieve.

And all of those other things, right?

It's not an overnight thing, but who is that person that may be able to do that on the agribusiness side?

That can help pull together, right?

Chair Wong mentioned a trip to Beacon Kitchen and it's a facility, it's a shared use kitchen and commercial space that's shared.

Several of our local businesses operate out of there along with the city.

Yeah, that's a good place to start.

Maybe there isn't just one.

Well, and that's also something that they have, but could use more of, and dry storage.

So, on a similar vein in convening, what I've heard for years is that

UVA faculty, UVA researchers developing ideas that they would like to commercialize and develop spin-offs and there have been barriers to them being able to do that locally and having to leave the area even because they couldn't find land or facilities or some other

and part of what I made.

Now, I've heard that fears.

I've heard this for 20 years, and I can't cite the examples, but spin-offs from UVA that ended up leaving the region as they commercialized, I would think in many cases we don't want that to happen.

What can we do to help keep them here?

And that would mean convening.

So I think it's a very complicated

answer to that question.

And I think there are lots of groups in town, from the Charlotte Little Angel Network to CBIG, who've been working on those kinds of things, and it's not just, hey, we don't have land, they're

numerous organizations and UVA in terms of, you know, the licenses out to companies and how all of that works.

And I think we should be supporting that.

But my views, I think there are lots of other groups that are out there that are working on it.

I think one of the complaints was always, well, that

you know venture capitalists were only going to fund somebody if they were older or you know Silicon Valley and I think that's a little less true than it um it used to be you know Zoom has made a big difference in those sorts of things um I guess what I'm saying is I think it's a real problem and I think it's something that needs to be addressed but I'm not sure sure that we're the right people to do because I think there are lots of other organizations in town who we're sort of focused on but absolutely

That would be my view.

But I certainly shouldn't disagree that there's better ways to do it, but I think there are lots of folks who are in that area focused on trying to make that happen.

Just a couple of thoughts and then we'll probably need to move on.

is, you know, we've got the low-interest loan program listed up there.

That might be a way to support either, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does, you know, how does

and also on the in the in the aggregate.

So it's a nice thing is there are musicians like community investment collaborative that's used to running loan programs.

And so we might

not have to actually do it, but could tag on them to actually do the work of running the loans and we could find a framework.

And then the last point I was just gonna ask about is at one point, I think there was a study or a listing of county owned property to say, okay, what does the county own and are there pieces of property that aren't being used that could be, we could use, I know a number of years ago, we talked about, well, maybe if there's a small,

Piece of property, the EDA could get it and start to do some of these things to kind of get in the habit of doing it and to work through on a smaller scale.

So maybe that's an idea that can be revisited.

I don't know where that list is.

At one point, we were looking at some little piece of property over by one of those, but I think it was like all critical slopes, which made sense.

And that would certainly be part of a site identification analysis.

There would be a column on the spreadsheet, and so we'd be able to sort of flag the ones in the county owned.

It's the kind of but-for analysis of okay, what can we do to make this whether it's us buying it, whether it's

So I think you know following this conversation we can kind of put together uh here's what we heard here's the ideas that we heard and a little bit of thought around what it would take to move them forward um bring that back for you all the

to respond to.

And then I think I see the output as sort of a framework of here are things they would like to support around how those moving forward.

And then as we see as opportunities are sort of illuminated or opportunities as we're talking to ag businesses or undertaking a site characterization study, which is going to give us a lot of opportunities that we could pursue that

that we would know that the EDA has an interest in being a partner in that, and that it would be a conversation as individual opportunities come up of, you know, here's what you said was important, here's this opportunity that we've identified, whether we do that, whether you all do that, and, you know,

then Kumbafati, Burr and Aksu.

But I think, you know, with the specific example of the site identification study, regardless of the timeline on which that goes forward, you know, you all would receive that report and, you know, I think it's really great, robust discussion here for, you know, what seemed like good opportunities, how do we want to prioritize looking at

Grant need to do that.

I'm more excited about the storytelling side than the branding side.

I think whether it's short form video or brochures or

So, it will capitalize on a lot of what's been going on here from, you know, just AstraZeneca, but AstraZeneca and scientific as well, right?

All of the winds.

There was something recently

Something about what we've been doing in the redevelopment space there recently.

So being able to talk about those types of winds and to show what Albemarle County is open to and capable of because I think that for a long time it did not have, County has not had that reputation and I think continuing to tell our story

Right there right here that was actually when I wanted it.

I saw that did something dangerous and I looked through the comments on Reddit.

It's actually a really well informed comment.

about Sean Tubbs' effects every week.

Fingers crossed for lots of excellent economic development projects, county residents could really use the property tax relief.

And I tend to say that this person isn't like the 0.001% of county residents that understands that.

And so I thought it would be interesting to look at like, how do you

how do you like social media eyes that welder cooper study to get some of those stats out and say like hey here's like the importance of this development because a lot of people see it and they're like all right here we go again but was there they're gonna be sheets where the red lobster was more tax income like all in all it's a it's a net win so how do you tell that story so that folks see it and say okay well like while this construction is going to

not be great for me, it's a net win.

Okay.

All right.

Thanks, everybody.

I think we've got lots of things to do.

Okay.

In the interest of time, I'll put highlights in here, but the very first thing that I need to do is because of the printing of the insurance policy, Gabe Weber joined us a little bit late, but wanted to give him just a minute to introduce himself.

Gabe is new to the county attorney's office.

And then just wanted to hit a couple of highlights.

One is that next, as sort of thinking about our region as a whole, in the next month we're expecting the Innovation Corridor Strategic Roadmap Report to be finished and

Public.

We're really excited about that.

I am hopeful that we'll be able to say a lot more at our meeting in June.

And then also know that we had talked about a September joint meeting with the city EDA.

And this is a topic that Chris Engel and I were hoping that we could have

both bodies convene together, discuss, spend a little bit of time on.

But all of the partners in the region are just so excited about the opportunity to think together about how to sort of leverage what feels like a really important moment in our area because of the recent announcements that have been made both in Albemarle and in other places.

So L3Harris has a presence in Orange County and has for some time

and had some really great snapshot of what's going on in the biotech sector, as well as with the Commonwealth Biolaator, which is out of space, that they have work.

but also some other exciting donors.

It's seeming to be a really powerful project, both for Seville Biohub and the companies that they're supporting, but also for our region.

And we continue to be excited about what those future opportunities from that are gonna be.

We will be in Chapel Hill and the counties surrounding it really work with UNC to really

Their entrepreneurial community support their community.

They have some really cool opportunities in the transits world on how they move through their community that we're hoping to learn about while we're there.

That trip is organized and sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce.

And we're really excited from staff's perspective.

We're really excited to see the Chamber lean into the city to city trip.

You learn so much.

Trevor Henry, Jeff Richardson, and I were in St. Louis two years ago, I think, at this point, and still talk about what we learned with just a couple of days on the ground, even now.

And then I was going to show you guys a video, but I can't, so I will send that too.

I move that the Albemarle County Economic Development Authority go into meeting section 2.2-3711A

of the Code of Virginia under subsection 6 and 29 to discuss and consider the expenditure and investment of public funds related to an existing performance agreement with the Lewis and Clark Exploratory Center where bargaining is involved and where if made public initially would adversely affect the EDA's negotiating strategy and the financial interests of the EDA and the county in subsection 8 to discuss and consider.

Council for Legal Counseling, the civic legal matter into the Woodlark Exploratory Center performance agreement, which requires the provision of legal advice by such counsel.

And I will actually amend that slightly to say that it's the promissory note, not the performance agreement that we're discussing.

And then roll call voting.

We need your roll call when we come back.

Do you want to roll call going in?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Sneakers are $20, rental shoes are $120.

Exactly.

There's no difference.

Yeah, for something that's worth wearing.

That was going in.

That's not the motion.

All right, got it.

The EEA certified by work to the best.

Of each director's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully accepted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion authorizing the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting.

Is there a second?

Second.

All right.

Call the roll.

Dunlap?

Aye.

Dr. Storm?

Aye.

Dr.

Hood?

Aye, sir.

Dr. Friedman?

Aye.

Dr. Cox?

All right.

Do you want to play your video before we head out?

Oh, it's playing on her.

Yeah, let's.

Whoa, that changed.

Yeah, that's nice.

Thanks everyone.

Next meeting is June 16.