By A.J. Kaufman, Managing Editor
Just a few days before he closed out his term and Abigail Spanberger took the helm as Virginia’s new governor, then-Gov. Glenn Youngkin gave Standard & Works – a new magazine dedicated to America’s industrial resurgence — a “masterclass in economic development,’’ per Editor-in-Chief & Creator Zach Silber. As Southwest Virginia turns the page after four years of unparalleled attention from Richmond, the Business Journal felt it appropriate to summarize information from this interview for our energy-focused edition, especially since it involves this magazine’s perpetual theme of economic development.
During Glenn Youngkin’s just-completed term as governor, CEOs committed $156 billion in investment to the Commonwealth. This magnanimous number was more than the previous six gubernatorial administrations combined.
Perhaps this is because the 74th governor spent a 30-year business career growing businesses and creating investment opportunities. The advantage for Virginia was forged as co-CEO of investment giant Carlyle Group where he reportedly was “deeply hands-on.”
A recent accomplishment during his final few months of the Youngkin administration surrounds pharma, when the administration announced $12.5 billion in new investment projects in rapid succession across three major plants: Eli Lilly ($5 billion), AstraZeneca ($4.5 billion) and Merck ($3 billion). Virginia is now poised to be one of the nation’s leading states for biomanufacturing with the companies backing a $120 million pharmaceutical manufacturing workforce center that will train 2,500 workers annually.
Youngkin says his strategy was deliberate.
“When we came into office, we identified many areas that we thought would be huge growth areas for investments and jobs,” he explained in the interview. “And one of them was, of course, the pharmaceutical and life sciences industries.”
Accelerating the opportunity was how COVID-19 exposed pharmaceutical dependence.
“We saw coming out of COVID that basically 80% of the most important APIs – the active pharmaceutical ingredients – were controlled by India and China,” the governor added. “That’s all coming home.”
Youngkin and his team were reportedly in AstraZeneca’s offices the week they were deciding where to locate a new plant. Only a month later, the multinational company committed their largest investment ever to Virginia.
When it came to attracting Eli Lilly, Youngkin took a pitch team to meet at the global headquarters in Indianapolis. The result was a $5 billion investment, the 150-year-old pharmaceutical giant’s largest ever.
Lastly, Youngkin said he had daily engagement with Merck’s leadership leading up to its $3 billion expansion project.
Virginia is famously the nation’s data center capital, and the Commonwealth has a large pipeline for planned development. While the incoming Spanberger administration and General Assembly will surely set their own course on managing data centers, Youngkin planted a strong foundation, including supply chains and “an ecosystem unlike any place else.”
Beyond the job growth and tax benefits of having data centers, they fund public schools and law enforcement services.
When it comes to the vital energy sector, like East Tennessee, after lagging for years, Virginia has been leading the way.
As noted in this month’s From the Editor column, a first-in-the-nation small modular nuclear reactor — the smaller, less expensive nuclear power plant, producing about one-third of the capacity of conventional nuclear reactors — is planned for Louisa County, about 50 miles east of Charlottesville.
Youngkin called building the reactors Virginia’s “moonshot” and announced a goal of having an operational SMR in Southwest Virginia within a decade. Our region’s legislators have been bullish on the prospect of building one for many years.
Just before Christmas, Youngkin made his final visit to our region and announced that $275,000 from the State of Virginia will be awarded to UVA Wise to build a modular reactor control room simulator for students. The simulator will be one of only two of its kind along the eastern seaboard and position Southwest Virginia as a training and innovation hub for advanced nuclear energy and clean power workforce development. The project will help prepare a skilled regional workforce for future nuclear deployment and energy-intensive industries such as data centers.
The interview — which had several more themes — concluded that while “Not every governor will have Glenn Youngkin’s CEO rolodex. But his epic run offers replicable lessons in how to defy gravity in economic development. Speed is a competitive advantage. A single four-year term forced urgency and rapid execution. So is strategic focus. Virginia identified pharmaceutical manufacturing as an opportunity and built the infrastructure around it, leap-frogging the country’s most established markets that site selectors traditionally favor. Relationships may have opened the doors, but Youngkin’s tenacity and Virginia’s readiness closed the deals.”
In an editorial he recently wrote about “the Great Virginia Renaissance” for the Washington Examiner, Youngkin claimed that over 270,000 more Virginians are working today than four years ago with 255,000 open jobs and another 85,000 new jobs on the way. He added that the “growth has powered everything else,” noting that state revenues have grown at an 8% compounded rate, 50% greater than the previous decade, generating $10 billion in surplus revenue and allowing him to deliver $9 billion in tax relief to Virginians.
Beyond the attention-grabbing figures, press releases and groundbreaking ceremonies, Youngkin believes that pace and aggressive speed of his term are crucial, and on top of deregulation, sites being ready, and a workforce that is prepared now, has changed the Commonwealth’s economic future for the better.
