Norfolk_web

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA AT A GLANCE NORFOLK, VIRGINIA WHAT: A city of 240,000 WHERE: The Hampton Roads region at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay WEBSITE: www.norfolk.gov lic investments and the addition of close to 6,000 new jobs. Chuck Rigney is the Director of the Economic Development Department for the City of Norfolk, as well as the Executive Director of the Economic Development Authority, a quasi-inde- pendent entity that helps market the city, has the ability to issue bonds for economic development purposes, and awards project grants for worthy initiatives.He describes some of the city’s most recent economic goings-on: “There’s a tremendous amount of activity in the Cityof Norfolk,”he begins.“Especially in the last three or four years,we’ve seen a tremendous surge in activity,and a lot of it is the culmination of planning over the years and goodworkon the part of past and present citycouncils and citymanagers. “Norfolkmade national headlines, last year, for the establishment byAutomatic Data Processing (ADP) of 1,800 jobs in our downtown, in their first urban setting.Traditionally, they had been in suburban office park developments and, as good fortune would have it,we had a 278,000 square foot, vacant office building in our downtown that was available to be shown.And as they came in and began to study what that might look like and all the other things that we had going on in downtown Norfolk that would appeal to their cal- iber of workforce, in particular, Millennials and those younger folks just coming out of school, we had the kind of environ- ment that they felt would be very attractive. “We have a very livable,walk- able downtown,we have a light rail system,we’re bike-friendly, we have a number of apartment projects in our downtown to house employees,we have shop- ping, dining, and entertainment.And we were fortunate that they selected downtown Norfolk. They’ve currently hired about 500 people of the 1,800 or so,maximumworkforce that they intend to bring on board within the next year. “The developer that purchased that empty building,Marathon Development Group, also purchased the adjacent, former Bank of America office tower, which was 80 percent vacant. They decided to convert it to residential and they’re renovat- ing that building with about 350 market rate and luxury apartments. So now, down- town Norfolk,with these two buildings adjacent to one another, has been fortu- nate to have them both completely rehabilitated. And with ADP’s 1,800 workers, and some 500 peo- ple who will be living in the building next door, that complex will now have about 2,300 people a day coming in and out of these two buildings–a tremendous surge in population and in growth that we were fortunate to benefit from.” Rigney explains that getting the ADP project