32 Business View Magazine - May 2016
Newport News, Virginia
Where great things are happening
Jim Bourey, the City Manager of Newport News, Vir-
ginia is aware that the City he administers has been
around for a long, long time but it’s the City’s future
he is most excited about. One of the eight original
shires of Virginia, the metropolis of 180,000 sits on
the banks of the James River, in the southeast corner
of the Commonwealth, and was once part of Warwick
County. Originally settled in the early 1600s, Newport
News was a rural area of plantations and a small fish-
ing village until after the Civil War, when construction
of the railroad and the establishment of the Newport
News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, founded by
Collis P. Huntington, began an era of growth and indus-
trialization that continues to the present day. Growth
and economic development is a key part of Bourey’s
and the City’s agenda.
“Right now, Newport News Shipbuilding, a division of
Huntington Ingalls Industries, is the only shipyard that
builds nuclear aircraft carriers and half of our coun-
try’s nuclear submarines” says Bourey. The Shipyard,
as it is called, has at least 21,000 employees plus
navy and contract personnel. “So, at any one point in
the day, there are 30,000 employees at the Shipyard
