A    S I T E    S E L E C T I O N    S P E C I A L    F E A T U R E    F R O M    S E P T E M B E R    2 0 0 0

---

Virginia

All corners of Virginia have benefited from new capital investments. In 1999, 45,808 new jobs were secured and $3.2 billion of new capital investment was announced.

Activity in high technology continues to take off in the Old Dominion State in part because of its venture capital market, which ranks with California's Silicon Valley and Boston's Route 128 Corridor as the top high-tech centers in the U.S. Also helpful to this and other industries is the state's low tax structure.

Northern Virginia continues to see a flood of investment in high technology. Toshiba Corp. and SanDisk Corp. recently signed an agreement to create a new semiconductor company called FlashVision LLC. The new company, which will create 600 new jobs at the fabrication plant through a $700 million investment, will produce advanced flash memory at Dominion Semiconductor in Manassas. Virginia successfully competed with Japan and Taiwan for the project.

Last fall, Intel Online Services, a subsidiary of Intel Corp., announced the investment of $130 million in an Internet service center in Fairfax County. Virginia will be the first location for an Intel service center on the U.S. East Coast. The center will be comprised of thousands of computer servers running the Web sites and e-commerce activities of numerous companies.

"A large and growing proportion of the world's Internet traffic flows through Virginia," says Mike Aymar, Intel Online Services' vice president and general manager. "That made Virginia a natural location for Intel's expanding Internet services hosting business."

MCI Worldcom and America Online operate data centers in Northern Virginia; AOL's $520 million center opened in February. Covad Communications is also investing $35 million in a new Internet data service center. Such activity has earned Virginia the title "Internet Capital of the world".

Companies continue to expand their distribution operations in Virginia. Nautica Enterprises, a fashion and lifestyle company, is opening a distribution center in Henry County, for example. The project is expected to be a $40 million investment. Virginia competed with Georgia, Tennessee, Ohio and Pennsylvania for the project. And Wal-Mart Stores is also locating a $50 million, 2 million-sq.-ft. (186,000-sq.-m.) distribution facility in James City County.

"Since 1992, the state-chartered park is 18 percent developed and houses 38 companies and two state labs," says Robert T. Skunda, president and CEO of the park. Ultimately, the project is to be expanded to 1.5 million square feet (139,000 sq. m) in 20 to 24 buildings.