REGIONAL VIEW
Tech council names board chairman as its new CEO by Tim Thornton
directors of the Roanoke- Blacksburg Technology Council has named its for- mer chairman as president and CEO of the organiza- tion. Robert McAden also will lead the Roanoke- Blacksburg Innovation Net- work. He succeeds Jonathan Whitt, who resigned from the job last November. McAden has
A
been involved with RBTC since its inception. He’s been on its board for more than three years and became chairman in 2015.
Robert McAden has been involved with the technology council since its inception.
McAden also has served
on the boards of NuSpark, a free workspace for fledgling entrepreneurs, and the RAMP Accelerator, an orga- nization that has turned an old hospital building into a center that helps startup tech
FOR THE RECORD
Earth Fare is one step closer to its opening day. Property owner Harbour Retail Partners was granted permits to begin construction of the grocery store on the Ivy Market site in Roanoke in March. Randy Kelley, principal of the partnership, said the project is making a lot of progress and is on track to open in October. The 24,000-square-foot store will be Earth Fare’s first Virginia location. It will include a variety of organic and natural foods, a hot-foods bar, a juice bar and an indoor/ outdoor cafe. A 7,000-square- foot multi-tenant building is also being constructed at the site. The Thalhimer real estate group has begun to market the site to potential tenants. (The Roanoke Times)
Photo by Don Petersen
The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality said in April that it will require the proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline project to provide details about individual crossings of streams and wetlands to demonstrate that the crossings will comply with state water quality standards. The DEQ said it would demand the same from the separate but similar Atlantic Coast Pipeline — requiring what is referred to as “individual 401 water quality certification” from the Virginia Water Protection permit program. Each interstate pipeline project is seeking approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Each has garnered support in some circles and stirred fierce opposition in others. (The Roanoke Times)
Railcar assembler FreightCar Amer- ica said in March that, due to deterio- rating business conditions, it intends to lay off 166 workers on April 24 and 198, the “balance” of its Roanoke workforce, on May 28. The layoffs will go on “until production operations come to a halt,” said a letter to Roa- noke Mayor Sherman Lea. Company management “hopes and anticipates that this workforce reduction will be a temporary measure of limited dura- tion,” according to the letter, which was signed by Paul Winsauer, a com- pany human resources official. How- ever, Winsauer said he could not predict when anyone would return to work. (The Roanoke Times)
Agribusiness and food production giant Land O’Lakes Inc. plans to build an animal feed manufacturing
www.VirginiaBusiness.com
facility in the Roanoke Valley. Plans call for the plant to open in December 2018. Land O’Lakes declined to disclose where the facility would be located, what sort of investment was anticipated or how many people might work there. Company spokeswoman Becky Lentz said the plant will produce Purina-brand horse and cattle feed, as well as other livestock feed. Purina Animal Nutrition, a subsidiary of Land O’Lakes, does not manufacture Purina-brand cat and dog food, which are products of Nestle Purina. (The Roanoke Times)
For the sixth consecutive month the Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport posted a year-over-year increase in passengers utilizing the
VIRGINIA BUSINESS 23
companies grow. “So I have a lot of
experience in the kind of nonprofit, public-sector kind of thing,” McAden says. He’s also been in the
technology field since the 1980s. For more than 13 years, he worked at Rack-
space, a cloud-computing company with customers in 120 countries. Before that, McAden
worked at some small tech consulting firms and some not-so-small ones, including Oracle and Bearing Point. McAden expects to see
fter a national search for a new leader, the board of
“companies having almost farm teams” outside of traditional high-tech centers where “they’re having to pay extremely high wages. They have employees who are having a hard time find- ing places to live. And then they’ve got the problem of really high turnover. Once you land someone, it’s not uncommon for them to leave six months later because they found a better offer.”
McAden also expects to
see more companies being spun out of Virginia Tech and the Virginia Tech- Carilion Research Institute. He predicts that trend will attract more venture capital to the region. “The economic develop- ment model is changing in a lot of ways,” he says. “How do we help people who have ideas here and create com- panies and jobs right here locally?”
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