Your March Gateway Connector

March 2024

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Economic Development Site in Colonial Heights

Photo by Mark Gormus

Update from the President & CEO:

Friends of the Gateway Region,

March has arrived! I know I am looking forward to watching nature turn from Winter brown to Spring green. Our region offers so many outdoor amenities to enjoy, and I hope you make time to get outside and witness the beautiful transformation firsthand. Some of my favorite spots include the Appomattox River Trail in Petersburg and Ferndale, the marina in Surry County and the downtowns in Waverly and Hopewell.

As March is referred to as the month of luck and good fortune, we were fortunate enough to recently host one of the legends from the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP)- Mr. John Loftus. A valued member of the Real Estate Solutions Team, John is renowned as the human knowledge base for Virginia's sites and buildings inventory. He spent two and a half days touring our region, inspecting our available sites and offering strategic recommendations on how to move development forward.

Significant progress was made last year in preparing sites for economic development activity across the region. Thanks to the GO Virginia Region 4 grant approved in 2021, we are very close to completing the work to move 10 properties from a Tier 2 designation to a Tier 4 designation. We appreciate John’s personal visit, so he can visualize each site and take recommendations back to VEDP for future projects.

Please note that registration closes for our annual meeting on March 14^th. I hope you will join us as we look back at 2023 and into the future while you network and enjoy dinner. If you have any questions or ideas for me, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Call Keith Boswell at: +1 (804) 732-8971 or Click for Email

LinkedIn Feature: Get to Know Local Economic Developer Yoti Jabri of Prince George County

We were proud to feature Yoti Jabri of Prince George County on our social media channels. Click HERE to learn more about his background, experience and vision for this growing community. If you are not yet following VGR on LinkedIn, please hit the follow button and help us reach 2,000 followers!

VGR Joins Virginia Partners to Promote Strategic Logistics Location

Tom Scott joined the Port of Virginia and VEDP to promote VGR’s logistics and distribution assets at the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) Supply Chain Conference in Dallas last month. The retail supply chain is the backbone of an industry supporting roughly 32 million American jobs and $1.6 trillion of domestic economic activity. The Retail Supply Chain Conference is the only dedicated supply chain event built by and for retailers, grocers, and product manufacturers. Logistics and distribution is a target industry for our region because VGR is a true transportation GATEWAY to Virginia, the mid-Atlantic and the rest of the United States.

VGR Attends GO TEC Open House at CCAM

Our team was thrilled to attend an open house for the exciting new GO TEC Career Connections Lab at the Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing (CCAM). GO TEC provides interactive, hands-on STEM learning for middle school students in 6^th through 8^th grades. The facility is strategically positioned to provide specialized training in key focus areas: precision machining; welding; IT/cybersecurity; robotics, automation, and mechatronics; advanced materials; and biotech engineering.

GO TEC was launched in 2018 by the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research (IALR) in Danville, VA. There are now over 40 GO TEC Career Connections labs operating in Virginia middle schools. The lab at CCAM is already training local middle school teachers from six Central Virginia school divisions, many of which represent underserved communities, including Colonial Heights, Dinwiddie, Greensville, Hopewell, Petersburg, and Surry. The expectation is that GO TEC will soon expand to support many more school divisions in Central Virginia.

Read CCAM’s news release HERE.