A public-private partnership that works to attract businesses to Virginia’s Piedmont region will celebrate its 30th anniversary next June giving an opportunity to highlight recent activity.
“It’s just been a crazy two and a half years,” said Helen Cauthen, the president of the Central Virginia Partnership for Economic Development. “Almost 40 billion dollars of new capital investment driven by data centers. $17 billion just for EdgeCorps in Louisa County. $4.5 billion just announced by AstraZeneca at Ravenna Futures. Almost 1,400 jobs plus construction.”
The Central Virginia Partnership for Economic Development serves eight counties and the City of Charlottesville and were involved in Louisa County’s sale of the Shannon Hill Regional Business Park to EdgeCorps as well as negotiating incentive packages for AstraZeneca’s investment in Albemarle.
“It’s really unheard of for a rural area like our region to have this kind of activity,” Cauthen said. “It’s pretty exciting. I do think AstraZeneca brings opportunities for our rural counties, including Greene. You guys are really close to Rivanna Station and Rivanna Futures, that site.”
Cauthen said these might not materialize right away but those opportunities might be assisted with the Innovation Corridor Strategic Roadmap that CVPED is putting together to attract more jobs in the life sciences and defense sectors. You can take a look a two-page overview here.
The idea is to build on entities that are currently in the development phase such as the Manning Institute of Biotechnology at the University of Virginia. The first director, Mark Esser, formerly served as a vice president at AstraZeneca. In all, the Institute plans to hire at least a hundred research teams.
Cauthen said the creation of the roadmap is a first step.
“Then we will apply for additional funds to do some implementation,” Cauthen said. “So we hope that this will be a very straightforward report that gives us straightforward action steps to take that we can then develop implementation steps that could get funded by GO Virginia as well.”
This year, the CVPED assumed control of a group that seeks to promote and strengthen the defense and intelligence sector. They also hired Miles Davis to run the Defense Affairs Committee. He’s a Greene County resident with over 20 years of experience in the industry.
“I look forward to partnering with this body to help identify responsible ways to grow the national security industry here in ways that the community really embraces,” Davis said.
CVPED has hired a firm called Taconomy to work on the roadmap as well as a project called BioBridge which is expected to recommend strategies to educate people who live here now to take on some of the new life sciences jobs. A report is expected in December.
The partnership also has a website called Living Central Virginia intended to encourage people to come to this area to work.
“We have pages for each of our localities,” said Katie Dulaney, CVPED’s talent director. “What it is like to live, work and play in our region. And so Greene is featured.”
Greene Supervisors had no questions, but Chair Steve Catalano said he was sure the Board would be interacting with CVPED quite often.
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