Albemarle’s Economic Development Director provides more details on Rivanna Futures

Six weeks have passed since the announcement that AstraZeneca would be investing $4.5 billion at Albemarle’s Rivanna Futures property. The county’s Economic Development Authority got a briefing on November 18.

“It’s sort of one biopharmaceutical manufacturing campus,” said Emily Kilroy, the county’s economic development director. “There’s actually two manufacturing facilities that are part of AstraZeneca’s plan.”

Albemarle purchased around 462 acres of land around the Rivanna Station military base in late 2023 for what had been described earlier that year as an “Intelligence Community Innovation Acceleration Campus.” Since then, Albemarle County has rezoned part of the land and secured funds to get it ready for development.

“In total, AstraZeneca will take 82 of the 105 acres that we’ve been sort of planning around over the past several years,” Kilroy said. “It’s really exciting to think about what the remainer of the property will look like with two anchors on either end of it.”

Kilroy said AstraZeneca is finalizing their design. Earlier this month, the Board of Supervisors approved a special exception allowing for the building to exceed maximum heights allowed in the zoning code. Albemarle County will begin clearing the land in January with AstraZeneca’s construction beginning in early 2027.

Kilroy began her report by announcing that the Board of Supervisors has adopted the Comprehensive Plan update.

“We’re really excited to have that clarity on that document says,” Kilroy said. “That does help us with our work in communicating with folks on what’s possible with their land or land that they’re interested in.”

Kilroy also updated the EDA on the status of the implementation of the economic development strategic plan adopted in August before AC44. That plan was created by a company called Resonance with a person named Steven Pedigo as project manager. He’s since left that company and the county has hired his firm CivicSol to continue the work.

“We’ve internally kicked that off so we’ve had a couple of work sessions as an internal office on operationalizing the strategic plan,” Kilroy said.

Pedigo will brief the EDA in December and will hold work sessions in January. That will also involve connections to the City of Charlottesville due to the overlap between desired target industries.

Kilroy also announced that Albemarle has been successful in obtaining funds from the Virginia Department of Transportation’s Economic Development Access Program for the Rivanna Futures project but offered no specifics at the meeting.

The agenda for the November 18 meeting originally included an item for the EDA to consider a $500,000 match but the item was pulled. The agenda for the November 19 Board of Supervisors meeting had originally included a “Resolution to Participate in VDOT Transportation Partnership Opportunity Fund (TPOF) Boulders Road Extension.” Both were pulled on Tuesday.

“After review, we realized that we initiated the local process prematurely, so we’re pulling the item from the agenda,” said Abbey Stumpf, the county’s director of communications and public engagement. “Staff are working diligently to get this right, and that means pausing for now to make our actions are fully aligned and in the right sequence.”

Stay tuned for more information.

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