Business View Magazine - May 2016 35
But while Newport News has had a very strong indus-
trial base for well over a hundred years, Bourey is look-
ing ahead to what he hopes will be the city’s new para-
digm for economic development in the current century.
“Our vision, going forward, is to move more and more
towards knowledge-based industry and higher levels
of manufacturing,” he explains, “and we’re doing that
in a number of ways with investment in research and
scientific exploration leading the charge.”
The Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facil-
ity (Jefferson Lab), a world-class national laboratory
specializing in particle physics, is the best example of
these scientific opportunities. Jefferson Lab employs
at least seven to eight hundred people and also has
another 1,200 scientists from around the world who
come to research and study at any one point in time.
Now, Newport News is gearing up to compete for a
billion-dollar, high-energy electron ion collider (EIC) to
explore a new frontier in physics research. Jefferson
Lab in Newport News is one of two national laborato-
ries vying for the project. The Department of Energy
will decide where to put it. At a cost of about $1 bil-
lion to construct, it would have an economic impact
over the first ten years of $4 billion, with an estimated
