Henrico officials planning technology zone at Innsbrook

In another effort to breathe new life into the Innsbrook Corporate Center while attracting more high-level businesses to Henrico, county officials are proposing the creation of a new technology zone there.

The zone, which would allow the county to incentivize specific types of businesses to locate there (through reduced fees and business personal property taxes, as well as custom agreements) is something officials have been considering for more than a decade, according to Henrico County Attorney Andrew Newby.

“We think now’s the time,” he told supervisors during a Jan. 22 retreat. “This is the right tool, the right place, at the right time.”

The idea would be “to put up a bat signal, put up a beacon. . . call specific businesses, specific kinds of redevelopment to Innsbrook, and to seek the right balance of development at Innsbrook,” Newby said.

Henrico’s gross annual product totals about $25 billion, and Innsbrook companies (which employ about 30,000 people) are responsible for about $3 billion of that, according to Henrico County Manager John Vithoulkas.

But as the community changes from its traditional office park design of the 1980s and 1990s to more of a mixed-use concept, Vithoulkas and other county officials are seeking ways to help it redevelop effectively.

“Right now, you have a square mile that has 30,000 jobs, and the concern is, the buildings in Innsbrook are getting older and what happens to those jobs if there’s [job] leakage?” Vithoulkas told supervisors. “We saw the buildings getting older [and thought], ‘What are we going to do with these buildings?’”

Creation of a technology zone could help the county – through the Henrico Economic Development Authority – attract new businesses in fields such as finance, insurance, professional and creative services, and life sciences, among others, according to Newby.

Innsbrook is witnessing rapid residential growth, so that segment of redevelopment needs no assistance, he said. But in order to provide the type of “live-work-play” mixed-use community county officials want to see there, incentives are necessary.

“The ‘live’ is taken care of,” Newby said. “Can we bring balance, can we incentivize additional balance by emphasizing the ‘work’ piece through a tax supplement, and we think the answer is yes.”

Before officials can promote the technology zone (which legally doesn’t need to be limited only to businesses in the technology sector), they’ll have to determine exactly what incentives they want to offer, and to whom. Such zones typically might apply only to businesses of certain sizes or that are committing to create a certain number of jobs, for example.

To draw new businesses to Innsbrook, the county could reduce building permit fees, building fees and business personal property taxes, Newby said. But its most attractive offer could be the EDA itself, he said.

“That would be what we want to really emphasize in the tech center,” Newby said. “That we want to put out the zone, put out some very basic incentives. . . but then say come to us, have discussions, we can work with the EDA on specific incentives to create win-win-win between the business, EDA, the county and the Innsbrook community.”

That latter component, Vithoulkas told supervisors, would be key.

“By going through EDA, you have the flexibility of basically tailoring an agreement per company,” he said. “So it’s pretty wide open."

Officials envision including a ‘sunset’ clause of 5 or 10 years on the zone, meaning that businesses would have a limited time to locate within it and claim the associated benefits (which themselves would extend beyond the sunset clause). The county always could extend that clause, though, Newby said. The potential also exists for the board of supervisors to create other technology zones elsewhere in the county, should it desire to do so.

Henrico EDA Executive Director Anthony Romanello told the board that the sunset clause would not hinder any potential business relocations and in fact likely would serve to encourage them.

“It would be an issue in other localities,” he said. “It’s not an issue here.”