with most of the funding coming from the State, and completion scheduled for the first half of
'19. Also underway down the hill at Tredegar is the $25 million addition to the Civil War Muse-um.
3
Another project plenty noticeable is the Pulse, whose track and stations are starting to take
shape, with completion looking like it might be in April, about the same time as VCU's Insti-tute
for Contemporary Art, which just announced their opening to be on 4/21 after the building
is fully acclimatized and the staff and art all moved in. They also announced that Ellwood
Thompson's will be running the Cafe in the building.
Henrico county's hush hush Project Echo down in White Oak Technology Park finally comes
out of the closet, as the occupant of the huge data center turns out to be Facebook, with the
project including a big solar farm to provide much of its electrical power at a reduced rate,
and a list of financial inducements including a 90% reduction on their property tax and an
$850,000 sewer connection credit. More acreage available down there, and the same induce-ments,
as the county looks to attract another big data center to the Park.
With all these projects going forward, we see California based developer Craig Realty, which
has developed a dozen outlet malls nationwide, including one recently opened in Hampton
Roads, hitting the brakes. Even though their website mentions outlet malls in the planning
stages in Hawaii, Illinois, and Washington state, they just announced that they will NOT go
forward with their Outlets at Richmond, on the 43 acre site off the Lewistown Rd. exit of I-95,
that they had been talking about for more than five years. It seems that the tremendous in-crease
of market share being grabbed by Amazon and the other on line retailers has not
gone un-noticed by Craig, making them unwilling to buck the trend and set themselves up to
be another casualty among the bricks and mortar retailers. Word leaking out that Amazon is
testing a new in-house delivery service that will make even more of their products available
for free two day delivery sounds another alarm for developers like Craig, as it does for UPS &
FedEx, who will be losing business to that service.
Haven't been talking much about Pfizer since Chapter President (in 2010-11) Ned Nether-wood
retired from there several years ago. Now the pharma giant announces that they are
considering the sale or spin off of their consumer healthcare business, which includes all the
former A.H. Robins brands made here in Richmond. Chapstick, Advil, Robitussin, Centrum,
and some others, that Ned used to bring us samples of at our Holiday Parties. Lots of big,
familiar healthcare companies reported as being possible purchasers some time next year so
we'll see if we get ourselves another company in town, as Pfizer will still have a presence
here even if they divest the over the counter brands.
For a change, no news out of the Craft Brewing sector, other than that Garden Grove Brew-ing
in Carytown is branching out into wines, some of which they are making themselves from
grapes grown on a small vineyard they are leasing up in Fauquier county.
Pre-season picks are announced for A-10 men's basketball, with VCU picked to finish 4th &
Richmond 8th. Lots of new faces on both teams, so it will be interesting to see how both of
them fare.
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