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News Suspect charged in theft of Crestview Park urns05/16/12 - 6:51 am
Clint Anthony Reamey, 42, of Chase City has been arrested on multiple felony counts stemming from the theft of numerous bronze flower urns from Crestview Memorial Park in South Hill…
Prison plans nearly knocked off track05/16/12 - 6:49 am
Amendment to saddle Mecklenburg County with extra costs fails in Assembly
Left to right are Boydton Mayor Gerald Wrenn, Councilman Ronnie Worley, Betty Herbert, Councilman Jo05/16/12 - 6:48 am
Chase City Council unveiled its budget for 2012-2013, and agreed to hold a public hearing on June 4 at 5:30 p.m.
Sports Lady Comets to face Franklin County for WVD tournament title05/16/12 - 7:48 pm
Easily get past GW in WVD semifinal.
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News IDA takes control of Riverstone mod-simSoVaNow.com / December 07, 2009
The Halifax County Industrial Development Authority will soon take control of the Riverstone Technology Park modeling and simulation center, replacing Virginia Tech as manager and fiscal agent of the project.With the final transfer expected within days, the IDA has gained the assent of Virginia Tech as well as the Virginia Tobacco Commission, which has funded most of the center’s start-up costs. While the changeover won’t be complete until the IDA has received signed documents from all parties involved, IDA Executive Director Mike Sexton said Friday there’s broad agreement that oversight of the mod-sim center should reside with the IDA. Sexton said the change will mean that the project, officially known as the Modeling and Simulation Center for Collaborative Technologies, “will be much more focused on economic development outcomes.” That differs from a prior emphasis that was more strongly oriented towards research and development, especially of clean energy technologies, he said. “There’s a lot of difference between economic development and research and development,” said Sexton. “Our thinking was that unless you’re an economic development-driven agency, you’re never going to get economic development-driven outcomes.” The modeling and simulation center will continue to offer state-of-the-art technology services for prospective clients, added Sexton, but with a greater emphasis on meeting the needs of high-tech manufacturers that are close to bringing products to market but lack “proof of concept” assurance. “The cost of bringing a product to market can run in the millions of dollars. You cannot make mistakes,” said Sexton. He added that with the modeling and simulation center at Riverstone, Halifax County can approach advanced manufacturing firms and “be able to demonstrate capabilities that will really knock their socks off. “The reason people use modeling and simulation is to get to market quickly and avoid costly mistakes,” Sexton said. The Riverstone center also will keep its focus on alternative energy technologies with its Clean Energy Business Tech Incubator, a spin-off that until recently was also managed by Virginia Tech. Clean energy development in Southside and Southwest Virginia is a top priority of the Tobacco Commission, which has pledged $100 million to develop five regional research and development hubs, including the combination of the Riverstone mod-sim facility and the R&D Innovation Center at the Southern Virginia Higher Education Center. Sexton said that in addition to serving the needs of high-tech manufacturers, the modeling and simulation center should be a potent lure for agribusiness companies and energy-related firms that want to take advantage of Southside Virginia’s farms and timber. He envisions companies developing their products and processes at Riverstone, and Halifax County using the positive introduction to convince them to locate their manufacturing operations here. “We’re trying to tack it [the Riverstone modeling and simulation center] onto what the Tobacco Commission wants it to be and what Halifax County needs it to be,” said Sexton. So far, the Tobacco Commission has invested nearly $3.7 million in the modeling and simulation center, including a July grant award of $375,000 to underwrite the first-year operating budget. Virginia Tech and the Halifax Educational Foundation, the mod-sim center grant recipients, have approved the transfer of control to the IDA, but Virginia Tech is “still cleaning their books” and is expected to seek final reimbursement of its expenses before signing off on the changeover, said Tim Phohl, grants program director for the Tobacco Commission. “Virginia Tech has told us they look forward to being a partner in the programs in the region, but they have turned over the reins to the idea,” said Phohl. “It transfers the responsibility for completing the approved activities to the IDA,” Phohl said of the shift. “It doesn’t change the activities. They didn’t ask for a change in scope for those grants [into alternative energy development]. “It’s going to be the responsibility of the Halifax County IDA now.” Sexton said the IDA is up to the challenge of running the center, with the first task being to find an outside entity to actually manage it. Sexton said IDA members will talk at their next meeting about the parameters of a management contract and what objectives the IDA will set forth for the future operator — whether it be an engineering firm, a non-profit research institution or another type of entity. Once it takes over, the IDA still will tap the brainpower of Virginia’s research universities — not only Virginia Tech, which will remain an academic partner, but also University of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University and Old Dominion University, among others, said Sexton. “Each of them have departments that would like to use the assets here,” he said Most of the equipment at the mod-sim center has been purchased and is in place, from the highly advanced computer hardware to software that will allow users to run “virtual reality” simulations of complex processes. Sexton said the IDA has begun showing off some of the mod-sim capabilities to business prospects that have visited the area. The IDA also plans to develop a virtual reality tour of Halifax County and its various economic development assets, giving officials the ability to showcase the community without business prospects ever leaving the building. “There will be some neat, neat things we can do” to attract the attention of companies who otherwise wouldn’t give Halifax County a second look, Sexton said. “This is a huge opportunity to push awareness of Halifax and its assets, in combination with the advanced manufacturing center at the higher education center,” Sexton continued. The IDA expects to have the mod-sim center up and running by the first of the year, he added. With Virginia Tech no longer overseeing the mod-sim center, the university’s representative in Halifax County, Carole Cameron Inge, will work on other projects elsewhere in Virginia. Inge, who has served as executive director of the Clean Energy Business Tech Incubator since its onset, said Sunday that she will continue to help Halifax with getting the mod-sim center off the ground, but she has two new modeling and simulation projects she’s involved with. One is a Dominion Resources clean energy technology incubator in Ashland, while the other is a start-up business incubator in northern Virginia that is closely tied to a major defense contractor. As for Riverstone, “we’ve turned it over to the local leadership group to take it to the next level,” said Inge. Inge said the university’s decision to relinquish control at Riverstone was driven by financial considerations. “This center right now has no state revenue and no continuous revenue stream, and Virginia Tech is not in the business of carrying [projects]. We don’t have the state revenue to carry local operations long-term.” Inge said she is “very excited that Halifax was aggressive enough and entrepreneurial enough to start the project, and it is my hope that they will get state funding or develop a ... model that will allow for commercialization of technologies.” But she cautioned that Halifax County will face ongoing financial challenges with the center because it takes around $800,000 to $900,000 annually to run. Inge said the cost of broadband Internet at the mod-sim center is roughly $50,000 per year, rent is $60,000, and a marketing budgeting in the neighborhood of $30,000 is needed to attract clients. But she said the single biggest cost of the modeling and simulation center is staffing it with computer scientists and engineers whose salaries likely would run $75,000 to $120,000 annually, not including benefits. She said five such employees, including a director, will be needed to maintain the center as envisioned by the county and Tobacco Commission. “You need computer scientists on staff full-time, engineers full-time, audio-visual people full-time,” Inge said. While the work of writing the algorithms for computer simulations can and will be farmed out to university researchers, those services aren’t cheap, she said. “Virginia Tech and University of Virginia are no different than anyone else. If you don’t pay their scientists and their engineers and their students for [work] ... they will not do it for free.” Halifax County can choose among several models for sustaining the center on an ongoing basis, said Inge, with each having its advantages and disadvantages. The county can go with what she called the “non-profit economic development” model, whereby the IDA would offer the modeling center’s services to outside entities for a fee. That approach would allow the county to run an “open” center, in keeping with the notion of a business incubator that would attract a wide range of businesses to the area, but Inge said she doubted the approach could be made to work without state funding support. “The center [would be] very similar to a Kinko’s on steroids,” she said. “You come in, you get your copies, use the computer, pay your fee and leave. There are not going to be enough people doing that at the center” to pay the bills, she said. Halifax County lacks both the proximity to potential clients and the software-writing capabilities to support a fee-for-service business model at Riverstone, said Inge. That’s why state funding is essential if the IDA wants to run the Riverstone project as an independent entity. “If it’s going to be a public entity, it will need state funding. If it’s going to be stay in the non-profit model, it’s going to need three to five years to make it a success,” she said. Inge said the IDA could also pursue what she called a “closed model” by handing over the modeling and simulation center to a large corporation with the financial and engineering resources to run it. She said most companies large enough to opt for that approach already have modeling and simulations labs, but “a baseline” center like Riverstone could hold appeal as an under-the-radar location for research activities. “They may want to do secret R&D activity and by taking over the center, the other thing they do is keep their competitors out,” said Inge. The biggest problem with ceding Riverstone to private control is “those models can change on a whim,” said Inge. “If a vice president or CEO or stockholders decided after a year that the center is not creating enough revenue, they can pick up and leave, and no lease can stop them.” The third option for the IDA is to bring in a private contractor to run the center while the county retains ownership — the choice the IDA appears to have made. Inge said this “hybrid model” could be the county’s best bet, but it raises complicated questions on matters from control of intellectual property to incentivizing a contract partner to how to charge small start-up companies that don’t have a lot of money to work with. “A business incubator is not about space and a building, it’s about financing, capitalizing companies” and providing the environment to bring them to Southside Virginia, she said. Inge also said that expanding the focus of the modeling and simulation center to provide services for advanced manufacturing companies isn’t as simple as “loading multiple software and algorithms on the same equipment. “You need additional funding for hardware and software that’s not integrated in the same system or you’re asking for disaster,” she said. Inge said she has lined up 13 companies that are interested in doing business at Riverstone, but she said the IDA will need to show rapid progress at Riverstone to keep them on board. About two months ago, there were 11 representatives from client companies working at Riverstone, including six from Tetra Tech, a Fortune 500 engineering services firm, said Inge. Today, that number is down to one — a Tetra Tech employee, she said. “Those companies are interested in what is going on Halifax, but with the delays in the center ... it will be to the IDA to see if they can land those companies with the right incentives,” said Inge, adding that some of the same companies are interested in the Ashland and northern Virginia incubators that she is working with. Sexton, the IDA director, said the IDA has “very aggressive” plans to create new jobs and economic growth as it moves forward with the modeling and simulation center, and noted that the Tobacco Commission concurs that the model at Riverstone needs to change. “There has been significant frustration on [the Tobacco Commission] in how forthcoming jobs have been to Southside in research and development,” he said. Tell-a-Friend | Submit a Comment 53Halifax News
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