Good Governor, Bad Governor

On Monday of last week, I praised Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin for thoughtful economic development investments in the Commonwealth. Two days later, I panned him for making what I believe to be a horrible decision based on selfish political aspirations.

First a truism: You gotta, gotta, gotta have real estate product if you are going to compete for capital investment projects in today's economic development world.

If you have no inventory of available buildings and sites, you're simply not in the game.

A press release from the?Virginia Economic Development Partnership?shows a commitment to very much wanting to be in the game. Read this:?Gov. Glenn Youngkin Announces $90 Million in Grants to Develop Industrial Sites Across Commonwealth .

It shows that $90 million in Virginia Business Ready Sites Program development grants are being committed for 21 sites across the Commonwealth. At 10 sites, the Commonwealth will pony up more than $1 million for site improvements to essentially make them ready to go for development.

As most site consultants will tell you, raw land is just not in the mix for consideration as the risks are just too great. In other words, land in itself does not equate to a site.

The Virginia sites program was developed by a team of state, regional, and local stakeholders including VEDP, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, railroad representatives, utility representatives, civil engineers, and other government, business, and industry representatives.

Grants are considered on a competitive basis and made at the discretion of an investment committee composed of VEDP and Administration leaders.

The truth is that projects are driven by two things: available real estate and the availability of qualified labor. Folks, this is investing in yourself, a very smart move. Good governor.

Guv’nor, you did what?

Two days after praising Youngkin, who no doubt is an aspiring politician, I had to pan the man based on what I believe to be a very bad decision. It seems the guv'nor rejected a $3.5 billion Ford Motor Co. battery plant that would have created about 2,500 jobs due to the involvement of a Chinese partner.

“While Ford is an iconic American company, it became clear that this proposal would serve as a front for the Chinese Communist party, which could compromise our economic security and Virginians’ personal privacy," Youngkin spokesperson Macaulay Porter said in a statement to?The Detroit News.

Talk about cutting your nose off to spite your face.

Youngkin rejected the project in December, a decision that potentially cost one of the poorest parts of Virginia at least 2,500 jobs. The project would have been built on the Southern Virginia Mega Site at Berry Hill in Pittsylvania County, in south-central Virginia, the?Richmond Times-Dispatch?reported.

The Republican governor, who is considered to be a possible 2024 presidential candidate, defended his decision to remove his state from consideration for the proposed plant, a joint venture between Ford and Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. , also known as CATL.

“I look forward to bringing a great company there. It won’t be one that uses kind of a Trojan-horse relationship with the Chinese Communist Party in order to gain,” Youngkin said Friday in an interview with Bloomberg Television.?

The roughly 3,500-acre megasite is owned by the Danville-Pittsylvania Regional Industrial Facility Authority, a joint entity involving both Danville and Pittsylvania County. The authority has owned the site for nearly 15 years with heretofore no takers. About $200 million has been spent on the site.

Like so many places around the country, local officials have hoped to land a large manufacturing project that would transform the economic fabric of the area, which has largely lost its furniture, textiles and tobacco industries.

The?Times-Dispatch?reported that the plant would have produced lithium iron phosphate batteries for Ford's EVs. CATL, the world's largest battery maker, is already a battery supplier to Ford's $11 billion Blue Oval project in Kentucky and Tennessee.

CATL supplies cells to Tesla Inc. ?and will begin providing batteries for Honda Motor Co.’s electric vehicles in 2024. It recently opened a factory in Germany and is looking to establish manufacturing in North America.

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