Business View Magazine | October 2020

295 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2020 LOUDOUN COUNTY , V I RGINI A state incentive that is a sales tax incentive, so data centers don’t have to pay sales tax on the equipment they buy if they meet certain qualifications. But really, that’s the only incentives we’ve ever given to data centers. We haven’t incentivized them locally at all.” The county’s business incentive program is based on a return on investment. Whatever incentive is given to a company must be paid back within three years through tax revenue. Only about two percent of the deals in the last decade have involved any sort of county-level incentive. Loudoun County has not been immune to the effects of the pandemic, but the way county leaders responded to the crisis speaks to its ability to adapt. The unemployment rate was below two percent prior to the pandemic; within a month, it had increased to more than 10 percent. “So, when we recognized that our businesses were going to be impacted by the coronavirus, we launched an entire fleet of programs to try to help them,” Rizer explains. “The first was just creating a resource page so that they could get the latest information on what were the requirements and what federal programs were available, and how should they deal with their employees.” The next step was outreach. More than 3,500 businesses were contacted in a two-month period. The feedback informed the formation of new projects. For instance, farmers in rural parts of the county wondered what they would do with food they were growing since restaurants were closed. And if people couldn’t leave their houses because of a stay-at-home order, they wouldn’t be visiting farmers markets to buy food, either. The solution was a virtual marketplace. Farmers could put their information on there for free. When unemployment spiked, a virtual jobs board specific to Loudoun County was set up. Loudoun Economic Development, Visit Loudoun, and the Loudoun Chamber of Commerce partnered to create the Take Loudoun Home and Loudoun