Albemarle Supervisors briefed on economic development plan

For many years, Albemarle’s growth management policy included a certain resistance to formal economic development efforts by the county. That began to change in 2010 when a Republican majority on the Board adopted an economic vitality action plan at the first board meeting that year.

Five years later, the county hired its first economic development director, then a second one, and then adopted an economic development strategic plan called Project Enable. This year the county is putting together an update. The Board of Supervisors got a briefing on May 21.

“This is the culmination of a lot of data analysis and also a lot of conversations in the community with stakeholders, business owners, people working in the workforce development space, education partners, even some of our regional partners,” said Emily Kilroy, the fourth person to serve as economic development director for Albemarle.

The county has hired the firm Resonance to conduct the work and the Board got to review some of the draft material. They’ll have a meeting with the Economic Development Authority in August. Steven Pedigo with Resonance said Albemarle is drafting this plan from a position of strength.

“We’re not working on an economic development plan for a community that’s in decline,” Pedigo said. “We’re not even working on an economic development plan for a community that’s really stagnated. There is a lot of momentum happening in the county that really sets us up to do really outstanding work together.”

Pedigo said strengths include the University of Virginia and the county’s investment in the Rivanna Futures project. He said the draft plan has five goals that seek to advance this mission statement.

“Albemarle County, we’re rooted in innovation,” Pedigo said. “We are open for investment. We are a destination for entrepreneurs, makers, growers and thinkers where bold ideas take root, businesses scale and partnerships thrive. All with the idea that we are going to lead the way in Virginia’s next innovation economy.”

The five goals call for a focus on the intelligence sector, biotechnology, agribusiness, entrepreneurs in the area, and to prepare for investment for outside areas.

Metrics would include the number of jobs created, but also seeking to increase the number of people who are between the ages of 25 and 44.

Part of the process has included private meetings with Supervisors. Pedigo said many of them stressed the need to increase the commercial tax base.

“We’ve heard from you all, we heard from our stakeholder groups, we heard in almost every roundtable, is being really sure that we’re kind of focusing in on this growth of our commercial share of our property tax base,” Pedigo said. “So looking about trying to bring some resiliency to the way that we are thinking about our tax base where we’re not so overly heavily reliant on residential taxes.”

Each goal has several strategies and many of them touch on the need for workforce development to provide careers for people who live here.

“If you care about workforce development, Life sciences is actually a really great sector to do that because a lot of the downstream work that comes in the scaling of those businesses can create family wage creating supporting jobs and if we can create the space where those products and services can be made locally,” Pedigo said.

Goal 5 is one that seeks to make it easier for businesses to expand or relocate. That means a “simplified” zoning code and a “streamlined” permitting process, as well as increased use of public-private partnerships to build infrastructure.

Supervisor Michael Pruitt said he wanted to make sure the economic development plan was about creating opportunities for everyone and not just about making more money for people at the top. He said he would want to see more investment into companies like Afton Scientifc who announced a major expansion last October.

“Afton overwhelmingly is employing quite a lot of high quality career wage jobs that are enterable at kind of an [entry] level,” Pruitt said. “Maybe they want some tech certificates that they might be able to get at [Piedmont Virginia Community College], but really things that don’t require a college degree but are still professional career jobs.”

On the subject of agribusiness, Pruitt said many in the rural area might have input on Strategy 3.1 which reads “Updated tools to support flexible agribusiness operations, value-added production, and agricultural technology enterprises.”

“I need to hear what the horse estates think about this,” Pruitt said. “I need to hear what the Farm Bureau thinks about this. And I don’t know that they’re blowing up my phone yet because I’m not sure it’s on their radar.”

Supervisor Ann Mallek said she wanted more information about what it means to have a “modernized agribusiness economy.”

“What does that mean?” Mallek asked. “Are we talking about the local food direct to consumer, which we’ve been working, working very hard on since 2010, or something else?”

Kilroy said that some stakeholders currently have to ship their goods in order to process them into something that can be sold to the consumer.

“Some of the ag businesses described when we were sitting down with them at a roundtable that for them to be able to scale their business having, they need some light industrial type facilities that the current zoning code does not allow in the rural area where their business is located,” Kilroy said.

Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley said she would support the agribusiness sector by helping to support the wine industry. That might involve shifting Albemarle county’s rules.

“I think we need to be flexible and maybe in certain circumstances for maybe using a special use permit, but being able to get restaurants into a couple of these wineries,” LaPisto-Kirtley said. “Everyone’s heard me on that before. That’s because it will bring in millions of dollars.”

Supervisor Diantha McKeel said she could see the concern on some people’s faces in the audience as Pedigo went through the various strategies.

“And I see those same concerns when I go out into the public and talk about economic development and diversifying our tax base,” McKeel said. “And I think it’s really going to be important. Important for us to talk about why… economic development is important. They don’t always connect because for many people in our community, they’re very satisfied, they’re very happy, they don’t see any need to change. And I think there are many other people in our community who aren’t able to live in our community.”

McKeel said one big obstacle to people wanting to relocate here is the cost of childcare. She also said she is concerned about the long-term health of tourism given the drop in international visitors since the beginning of the second presidency of Donald Trump.

How will it all play out? Keep reading Charlottesville Community Engagement to see what I can write out.

Before you go: This story was first heard on WTJU in the June 14, 2025 edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement. It was then in the podcast version that went out that day, and then in the June 16, 2025 print edition. It could be argued it should be been posted here around the same time, but we’re in no mood to argue.