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Fifty-Five Years of the Henrico EDA
2023-11-29
In the exciting world of economic development, where projects breathe new life into communities, each of us has the power to make a real difference by putting our hearts into meaningful initiatives. This was true for Henrico Economic Development Authority (EDA) Former Deputy Director B. Anthony Hall.
He began working as Director of Marketing at the Henrico EDA in 1998. Now retired and serving as our fractional consultant, Hall spoke of a meaningful moment in his career that didn’t occur behind his office desk or in a business meeting.
Hall was shopping at a local department store and saw a woman with her two children. He didn’t know them but noticed they were all wearing Alfa Laval t-shirts, and he smiled. For good reason: the EDA recently helped convince this leading global supplier of products and solutions for heat transfer, separation, and fluid handling to relocate its headquarters and manufacturing to Henrico. It was then that Hall thought about the cyclical nature of it all – creating jobs so that employees could support their families, get a great education, put money into the economy, and create even more jobs – all leading to today’s impressive $27 billion GDP.
“I thought, ‘Ok, this makes a difference. My team and I are making a difference,’” said Hall. “And that’s what it’s all about.”
The Heart of the Matter
Look deep into our more than half-century existence, and you will uncover a great story – a special bond between our organization and the community we serve – and our relentless determination to go the extra mile on behalf of all our business residents and constituents alike. It all springs from our enduring belief that opportunities should be enjoyed by everyone, and every one of our 330,000+ residents should be able to enjoy a superior quality of life.
From Humble Beginnings…
The Henrico Board of Supervisors created the first iteration of the Henrico EDA in 1968. Known then as the “Industrial Development Authority of the County of Henrico, Virginia” (the “Authority”), we were created specifically to finance the construction of a new clothing manufacturing plant. For the first 15 years, we met annually and served as a conduit issuer of Industrial Revenue Bonds.
In 1984, the Board of Supervisors designated the Authority “as the official Economic Development Organization for the County of Henrico.” With the new title came the new responsibility to act on the county’s behalf to establish an economic development program for Henrico.
…A Fresh Start
Until the mid-1990s, our team of three met in the county offices. We then expanded to five professionals and moved to the Villa Park corporate center with Bank of America. By 2001, we constructed a 10,400-square-foot office at 4300 East Parham Road, across the street from Henrico’s Government Center. It is a building we are still proud to occupy today with a team of 11.
Valuing Our Assets
Hall recalled the excitement of the early years and spoke about our time of transition from IDA to EDA.
“We loved the autonomy. As an EDA, we could act as both a county agency and a business consultant,” said Hall. “Of course, it meant a lot of trust from our County leadership, but they never showed any doubt. They believed that it would work. This confidence made our EDA staff not afraid to succeed on behalf of Henrico. With a clear economic development mission, we took a data-driven approach and provided the guidance and reports that empowered business leaders and site selection consultants to confidently select Henrico based on informed decisions.”
Lucky for us, there is a lot for Henrico to promote. We have a nationally recognized public education system focused on excellence and a deep labor pool – a big draw for the six Fortune 1000 headquarters that have chosen our location for their home. Beyond the skills of our workforce, Henrico offers an infrastructure that is extraordinary for business. From Richmond International Airport, which was recognized in 2023 as the Most Efficient Airport in North America in the under 5 million passengers category, to our access to interstates to the Port of Richmond, we help businesses keep their global goods moving.
In terms of sewer and water capacity, Henrico is second to none. Cobbs Creek Reservoir, a 14.8 billion-gallon regional water supply project, is estimated to be finished by December 2024. We also operate a 75 MGD wastewater treatment facility to accommodate any business’ sewer needs.
Perhaps in the early days, it may have taken a little more wooing to attract businesses. Executives sometimes didn’t understand the specialness of our community, the diversity of our population, and the beauty of our region until they came to visit. Yet when they saw with their own eyes, many never wanted to leave. We are more than 25,000 businesses strong and no longer a best-kept secret. With Short Pump and Innsbrook, two communities named as some of the best places to live in the U.S., Henrico is quickly earning a reputation as one of the top places to build, relocate, or grow your business.
Chipping In
The county invested $44 million to develop White Oak Technology Park, enticing Siemens AG and Motorola to team up and build a massive, 1 million square foot semiconductor chip manufacturing facility. The plant turned into a major employer and tax generator for Henrico, employing nearly 1,100 residents. As the U.S. business landscape shifted, we pivoted to make White Oak Technology Park an attractive site for advanced manufacturing and data centers.
The master-planned, publicly owned industrial park is now the home of Meta and QTS, which has meant billions of dollars in investments for Henrico. In fact, in 2022, QTS acquired an additional 200 acres at its campus. With this growth, the leading supplier of data center solutions will double their footprint.
Moreover, White Oak Technology Park is the home of world leaders like Polykon, Hewlett-Packard, Foxconn, Lumber Liquidators, Pratt Recycling, and Bank of America.
Mixing It Up
As focused as we have been on assisting the growth of our businesses, we have been equally diligent in ensuring that their most valuable asset – talent – loves where they live. To that end, the county incentivized developers to build Short Pump Town Center and the Shops at White Oak Village in the early 2000s. And, as the way we live and work has evolved, the EDA is quick to keep up. Today, as the demand for walkable neighborhoods and a sense of place become a priority, we’re focused on revitalizing several of our areas into vibrant mixed-use communities, including:
Surging Ahead
Not content to rest on past success, the Henrico EDA is also firmly focused on the future. New missions emerged with our 2020 plan about how best to continue growing Henrico’s economy for all. We worked alongside the county on a great toolkit for success, which included:
We enhanced our strategies to foster a more inclusive business community, partnering with the Virginia Department of Small Business and Supplier Diversity and Henrico’s supplier relations manager to increase small, women- and minority-owned (SWaM) business certification and company awareness. Today, 56% of our annual spend is with small businesses – the highest of any locality in central Virginia – and this year, the Richmond metro area was named one of the Best Places for Black Entrepreneurs.
The QTS Mega Data Center in White Oak Technology Park offers access to four subsea cables. It also leverages the new DE-CIX Richmond, a revolutionary global internet exchange (IX) platform that is part of the largest carrier and data center neutral interconnection ecosystem in North America. The partnership with DE-CIX provides a virtually instant connection with the leading IX operator’s more than 3,000 networks and 700 data centers around the world.
Who would have thought in 1968 that we would have helped lay the foundation to host 18% of international internet traffic? Yet here we are, ready and willing to seize the best opportunities for our community. Today, Henrico houses the fastest data speeds on the planet. In fact, the Dunant subsea cable located at QTS offers a record-breaking 250 Tbps capacity – fast enough to transmit the entire digitized Library of Congress three times every second. What does our emergence as a global communications hub mean for our businesses? Increased reliability, flexibility, adaptability, maximal uptime, and lower operational costs – and all at unimaginable speeds.
Going the Distance
Sure, ensuring the economic vitality of a community means attracting giants like Amazon to our community; however it also means paying attention to the small businesses – the oftentimes unsung heroes that keep our economy going – all while staying focused on economic stability. This means the dedicated effort toward maintaining our AAA bond rating with all three major credit-rating agencies. It also means proactively lowering our tax rates for the benefit of our business’s bottom line, such as when we recently slashed our R&D tax rate by 74%.
Our dedication to a stable, business-friendly tax rate environment includes a lowered machinery and tools tax rate from $1.00/$100 to $0.30/$100 of assessed value, the lowest effective rate in central Virginia, a decreased aircraft tax rate to $0.50 per $100 of assessed value, and a reduced business license tax rate, increasing non-taxable revenue threshold from $100,000 to $500,000.
We cut the data center tax rate by 88.6% to $0.40/$100 on computers and related equipment for data centers, and our real estate tax rate has not increased since 1978.
This includes our work during unprecedented times, like during the pandemic when we covered permit fees for temporary structures for outdoor dining and retail. Since the Virginia Economic Development Partnership began keeping track of jobs and investment, the Henrico EDA has enjoyed announcing 480 projects, totaling 43,220 new jobs and close to 8 billion dollars in capital investment.
Across the 55 years, it all comes down to one thing: continuing our service. We work knowing that every business, big or small, is our business. We do everything it takes to help your business succeed. The Henrico EDA has been moving at the speed of business for 55 years, and we’re just getting started.
Want to learn more about our locality’s achievements this year? Check out the Henrico 2024 Look Book.
He began working as Director of Marketing at the Henrico EDA in 1998. Now retired and serving as our fractional consultant, Hall spoke of a meaningful moment in his career that didn’t occur behind his office desk or in a business meeting.
Hall was shopping at a local department store and saw a woman with her two children. He didn’t know them but noticed they were all wearing Alfa Laval t-shirts, and he smiled. For good reason: the EDA recently helped convince this leading global supplier of products and solutions for heat transfer, separation, and fluid handling to relocate its headquarters and manufacturing to Henrico. It was then that Hall thought about the cyclical nature of it all – creating jobs so that employees could support their families, get a great education, put money into the economy, and create even more jobs – all leading to today’s impressive $27 billion GDP.
“I thought, ‘Ok, this makes a difference. My team and I are making a difference,’” said Hall. “And that’s what it’s all about.”
The Heart of the Matter
Look deep into our more than half-century existence, and you will uncover a great story – a special bond between our organization and the community we serve – and our relentless determination to go the extra mile on behalf of all our business residents and constituents alike. It all springs from our enduring belief that opportunities should be enjoyed by everyone, and every one of our 330,000+ residents should be able to enjoy a superior quality of life.
From Humble Beginnings…
The Henrico Board of Supervisors created the first iteration of the Henrico EDA in 1968. Known then as the “Industrial Development Authority of the County of Henrico, Virginia” (the “Authority”), we were created specifically to finance the construction of a new clothing manufacturing plant. For the first 15 years, we met annually and served as a conduit issuer of Industrial Revenue Bonds.
In 1984, the Board of Supervisors designated the Authority “as the official Economic Development Organization for the County of Henrico.” With the new title came the new responsibility to act on the county’s behalf to establish an economic development program for Henrico.
…A Fresh Start
Until the mid-1990s, our team of three met in the county offices. We then expanded to five professionals and moved to the Villa Park corporate center with Bank of America. By 2001, we constructed a 10,400-square-foot office at 4300 East Parham Road, across the street from Henrico’s Government Center. It is a building we are still proud to occupy today with a team of 11.
Valuing Our Assets
Hall recalled the excitement of the early years and spoke about our time of transition from IDA to EDA.
“We loved the autonomy. As an EDA, we could act as both a county agency and a business consultant,” said Hall. “Of course, it meant a lot of trust from our County leadership, but they never showed any doubt. They believed that it would work. This confidence made our EDA staff not afraid to succeed on behalf of Henrico. With a clear economic development mission, we took a data-driven approach and provided the guidance and reports that empowered business leaders and site selection consultants to confidently select Henrico based on informed decisions.”
Lucky for us, there is a lot for Henrico to promote. We have a nationally recognized public education system focused on excellence and a deep labor pool – a big draw for the six Fortune 1000 headquarters that have chosen our location for their home. Beyond the skills of our workforce, Henrico offers an infrastructure that is extraordinary for business. From Richmond International Airport, which was recognized in 2023 as the Most Efficient Airport in North America in the under 5 million passengers category, to our access to interstates to the Port of Richmond, we help businesses keep their global goods moving.
In terms of sewer and water capacity, Henrico is second to none. Cobbs Creek Reservoir, a 14.8 billion-gallon regional water supply project, is estimated to be finished by December 2024. We also operate a 75 MGD wastewater treatment facility to accommodate any business’ sewer needs.
Perhaps in the early days, it may have taken a little more wooing to attract businesses. Executives sometimes didn’t understand the specialness of our community, the diversity of our population, and the beauty of our region until they came to visit. Yet when they saw with their own eyes, many never wanted to leave. We are more than 25,000 businesses strong and no longer a best-kept secret. With Short Pump and Innsbrook, two communities named as some of the best places to live in the U.S., Henrico is quickly earning a reputation as one of the top places to build, relocate, or grow your business.
Chipping In
The county invested $44 million to develop White Oak Technology Park, enticing Siemens AG and Motorola to team up and build a massive, 1 million square foot semiconductor chip manufacturing facility. The plant turned into a major employer and tax generator for Henrico, employing nearly 1,100 residents. As the U.S. business landscape shifted, we pivoted to make White Oak Technology Park an attractive site for advanced manufacturing and data centers.
The master-planned, publicly owned industrial park is now the home of Meta and QTS, which has meant billions of dollars in investments for Henrico. In fact, in 2022, QTS acquired an additional 200 acres at its campus. With this growth, the leading supplier of data center solutions will double their footprint.
Moreover, White Oak Technology Park is the home of world leaders like Polykon, Hewlett-Packard, Foxconn, Lumber Liquidators, Pratt Recycling, and Bank of America.
Mixing It Up
As focused as we have been on assisting the growth of our businesses, we have been equally diligent in ensuring that their most valuable asset – talent – loves where they live. To that end, the county incentivized developers to build Short Pump Town Center and the Shops at White Oak Village in the early 2000s. And, as the way we live and work has evolved, the EDA is quick to keep up. Today, as the demand for walkable neighborhoods and a sense of place become a priority, we’re focused on revitalizing several of our areas into vibrant mixed-use communities, including:
- Innsbrook, a premier office park and the future site of North End, is zoned for up to 700 residential units, 55,000 square feet of retail space, and a hotel
- Regency Square, the future home of Performance Pickleball RVA – the largest indoor pickleball facility in Virginia – and the current home of Rise at Regency, a 320-unit luxury apartment complex built in 2022
- GreenCity, a visionary ecodistrict complete with a 40-acre park system, residential space, a 17,000-seat multipurpose arena, and more – is estimated to be completed in 2035
- Virginia Center Commons, a former enclosed shopping mall in the midst of a revitalization with a new 275-unit multifamily community and the recently opened, state-of-the-art Henrico Sports & Events Center
Surging Ahead
Not content to rest on past success, the Henrico EDA is also firmly focused on the future. New missions emerged with our 2020 plan about how best to continue growing Henrico’s economy for all. We worked alongside the county on a great toolkit for success, which included:
- The Innsbrook Technology Zone - a program that offers eligible businesses building and permit fee waivers, flex spaces to accommodate the modern hybrid workplace, custom incentives, and custom-tailored financial solutions fit for their specific business needs
- Enterprise Zones - special geographic areas where businesses can take advantage of tax exemptions, financial assistance, grants, and more
- Henrico Investment Program (HIP) - special incentives in key corridors beyond our current Enterprise Zone, including portions of Mechanicsville Turnpike, Staples Mill Road, Patterson Avenue, West Broad Street, and Williamsburg Road
- Amended Commercial Tax Rehab Credit Program - changes that allow more buildings to qualify, even if they grow larger during a renovation
We enhanced our strategies to foster a more inclusive business community, partnering with the Virginia Department of Small Business and Supplier Diversity and Henrico’s supplier relations manager to increase small, women- and minority-owned (SWaM) business certification and company awareness. Today, 56% of our annual spend is with small businesses – the highest of any locality in central Virginia – and this year, the Richmond metro area was named one of the Best Places for Black Entrepreneurs.
The QTS Mega Data Center in White Oak Technology Park offers access to four subsea cables. It also leverages the new DE-CIX Richmond, a revolutionary global internet exchange (IX) platform that is part of the largest carrier and data center neutral interconnection ecosystem in North America. The partnership with DE-CIX provides a virtually instant connection with the leading IX operator’s more than 3,000 networks and 700 data centers around the world.
Who would have thought in 1968 that we would have helped lay the foundation to host 18% of international internet traffic? Yet here we are, ready and willing to seize the best opportunities for our community. Today, Henrico houses the fastest data speeds on the planet. In fact, the Dunant subsea cable located at QTS offers a record-breaking 250 Tbps capacity – fast enough to transmit the entire digitized Library of Congress three times every second. What does our emergence as a global communications hub mean for our businesses? Increased reliability, flexibility, adaptability, maximal uptime, and lower operational costs – and all at unimaginable speeds.
Going the Distance
Sure, ensuring the economic vitality of a community means attracting giants like Amazon to our community; however it also means paying attention to the small businesses – the oftentimes unsung heroes that keep our economy going – all while staying focused on economic stability. This means the dedicated effort toward maintaining our AAA bond rating with all three major credit-rating agencies. It also means proactively lowering our tax rates for the benefit of our business’s bottom line, such as when we recently slashed our R&D tax rate by 74%.
Our dedication to a stable, business-friendly tax rate environment includes a lowered machinery and tools tax rate from $1.00/$100 to $0.30/$100 of assessed value, the lowest effective rate in central Virginia, a decreased aircraft tax rate to $0.50 per $100 of assessed value, and a reduced business license tax rate, increasing non-taxable revenue threshold from $100,000 to $500,000.
We cut the data center tax rate by 88.6% to $0.40/$100 on computers and related equipment for data centers, and our real estate tax rate has not increased since 1978.
This includes our work during unprecedented times, like during the pandemic when we covered permit fees for temporary structures for outdoor dining and retail. Since the Virginia Economic Development Partnership began keeping track of jobs and investment, the Henrico EDA has enjoyed announcing 480 projects, totaling 43,220 new jobs and close to 8 billion dollars in capital investment.
Across the 55 years, it all comes down to one thing: continuing our service. We work knowing that every business, big or small, is our business. We do everything it takes to help your business succeed. The Henrico EDA has been moving at the speed of business for 55 years, and we’re just getting started.
Want to learn more about our locality’s achievements this year? Check out the Henrico 2024 Look Book.
