Kevin Hughes – guest speaker
- The City of Suffolk at 430 square miles is the largest geographic city in the commonwealth.
- Growing a city of this size requires a robust and focused development plan.
- Currently we have two large development corridors for the city: one in North Suffolk, and one more central.
- Current population is 96,000…we expect to be 100,000 in three years.
- Industry sectors (warehousing and distribution), play a big role in our city.
- Began preparing for this in 2008 and 2009.
- A lot of farm tracks rezoned to support this.
- 11% growth in population.?We need more people in the overall Hampton Roads area.
- Census to census Suffolk and Chesapeake lead in growth.
- $74,000 is the median household income in Suffolk, a little bit higher than the commonwealth average.
- Industrial development and overall presence is strong in the city.
- Planters Peanuts, Lipton, Pepsi, Amazon, etc.
- (Lipton)…every teabag in North America comes out of Suffolk VA.
- Mixed use development is also a key player for the city along with industrial.
- Downtown development is underway in line with a masterplan that was developed a couple of years ago.
- Marketing, new grant programs for retail and restaurants have pushed this forward.
- New public library doubles the size of the last one.
- New festival event marketplace in the center of downtown, hopefully to fully open next summer.
- Massimo Zanetti Beverage, significant player in the world of coffee, third largest coffee roaster in North America is housed in Suffolk VA.?
Richard Crouch - Vandeventer Black
- The last two years there has been an inability to hire people, however that is recently changing.
- Interest rates have slowed down acquisitions.
- Doing a lot more business development, post closure, etc.?
Dan Shelton – Whiting-Turner
- Lots of healthcare work is still happening and doesn’t seem to be letting up.
- Long lead times on anything electrical for building needs.?Lead time for roofing materials has also been long, but we have developed work arounds.
- Structural steel has not gotten worse, but it has also not gotten better.?
Craig Cope – Harvey Lindsay Commercial Real Estate
- Rental rates are approaching “13 triple net.”?
Dave France – Kimley Horn
- We personally have hired over 1000 new people since last year.
- Private sector is growing rapidly but the public sector is growing considerably slower.?
Carter Wilcox – Mumford Company
- Virginia Beach and Norfolk were the strongest hotel markets in the country during the pandemic.
- Recovered the quickest
- Performed the best
- As well as the hotel market is doing, it is slowing down.??The pandemic created a large amount of pent-up travel demand, making vacation destinations in driving distance more appealing.?Now things are leveling out to normal levels.
- Extended Stay style hotels were the best performing hotel sector 2020 and 2021.?
Keith Slattum – Dollar Bank
- In the banking world it has been a challenge to hire people.
- Our branches close from 12:45 to 1:30 to allow for lunch because we don’t have people to cover.
- PPP loan dollars will now start trickling in.
- Most recipients of PPP loans held on to the money until they were forgiven.?Now that this has happened, money will be available to budget for spending.
- On commercial Real Estate, the last 3 deals I have seen had 24% equity going into the deal.?
Kelly Martone – Bellwether Enterprise Real Estate Capital
- We did 12 billion in business last year and are already in 12 billion for this year.
- Multifamily, industrial, and self-storage still very popular for us.?
- We have well over 200 tenants looking for 15 million square feet of space in our market.
- There is really no space for tenants at the moment which is limiting leasing activity.
- Industrial is still very strong here even though it is slowing down on a national scale.?
Fouad Mohit – All Trades Global
- The market of business brokerage is changing like everything else.
- Small business is not performing as well as they used to.
- Big boxes that have several tenants aren’t performing as well.
- Car dealers that at one point were expanding and buying more dealerships now can’t get enough cars so they don’t have a need for the space.
- 30 or 40 years ago you used to have to order your car, we are going back to that.
