Author: c-ville-weekly-writers

The Entrepreneurs
Cities with universities have withstood the recession better than other communities because they rely on a global information economy that’s trending upward. Insulated by private foundation and Federal grant money, buoyed by venture capital, towns like ours are driving whatever growth is left in the national economy. Charlottesville’s startup scene might not rival Silicon Valley’s, or NoVa’s for that matter, but the confluence of academic entrepreneurs and capital has turned the town into a place with a lot of bosses. On a more whimsical note, smart people who like smart towns sometimes create smart businesses that succeed so they can stay. Here’s our list of entrepreneurs with clout.

1. Tom Skalak
UVA Vice President for Research
A biomedical engineer with a record of racking up tens of millions of dollars in research grant money, Skalak was appointed Vice President for Research at UVA in 2008. In 2010, he was a finalist for the presidency of Cal Poly, where his Southern California ties (he did doctoral work at UCSD) made him an attractive candidate. Might not sound like the resumé of an entrepreneur exactly, but if you’re a biotech startup in this town, Skalak is the man you want to convince: Because he oversees roughly $300 million in Federal research money each year, his own fingerprints have been on over $40 million in research grants, and he serves as the program director of the world’s largest bioengineering network, BME planet. Skalak launched the UVA Venture Summit, an annual conference that attracts potential investors in charge of a combined $10 billion to Charlottesville, and his imprint stretches across the fields of science, technology, and medicine. Oh, yeah, and he’s 6’8", so you have to look up to him no matter what. With UVA’s fundraising capacity at the center of the debate around its leadership vacuum, Skalak becomes an irreplaceable figure on Grounds.

Martin Chapman (Photo by John Robinson)

2. Martin Chapman
Founder, Indoor Biotechnologies
Martin Chapman’s company, Indoor Biotechnologies, recently bought the historic Coca-Cola building on Preston Avenue for $2.5 million, and is currently in the process of turning it into a production center for the allergy test kits it sells around the world. Chapman arrived at UVA in 1985 by way of UCLA and the Royal Postgraduate Medical School in London and became a leader in allergy and asthma research. In 1998, he set up Indoor Biotechnologies to explore ways to spin out his allergy antibody research into allergen testing technology and other marketable products. Around the same time, he said, he felt like he’d hit a glass ceiling at UVA as a Ph.D. in a clinical department. So he jumped ship and started a profitable company that serves public health marketplaces with growing demand. With clients like National Institutes of Health, Chapman’s business is stable but relatively modest. His power stems from his commitment to place and from the model he’s creating. He wants his lab facility to be a nexus where local biotech entrepreneurs can get their starts and build businesses that bring talent to town, instead of losing it to bigger markets.

3. Michael Prichard and Tobias Dengel
Founders, WillowTree Apps
In 2008, two business guys with technology backgrounds joined forces to start a software development company. WillowTree found its niche with the exploding market for mobile applications and has grown into one of the largest mobile application development companies in the U.S. Four years and 30 employees later, Willow Tree has developed over 100 apps for high-profile national brands, many with local ties like UVA, CFA Institute, and Johnson & Johnson. Prichard, a former technology executive at Rotech Healthcare, Inc. has experience consulting for IBM and Adobe. Dengel was a vice president at AOL and has a finance degree from Wharton to go along with his systems engineering degree from UPenn.

The company actively recruits employees from UVA, Richmond, Virginia Tech, and JMU to work on projects as varied as the Philadelphia Eagles’ 2012 Cheerleader Calendar and Manta’s Android applications.

4. Dr. Neal Kassell
Founder, Focused Ultrasound Foundation
A UVA neurosurgeon who drives sports cars and lives in a fancy house on Garth Road, Kassell is the epitome of the unapologetic marriage of public research and private money. The UPenn-educated doc moves fluidly between the medicine, nonprofit, and venture capital scenes, and has had his name on more private ventures than are worth naming, mostly related to his work with focused ultrasound technology.

Focused ultrasound, a cancer treatment, is “a new technology for non-invasive surgery, the precise delivery of drugs, and an alternative to radiation therapy” and has the potential to speed patient recovery from tumors. Kassell has turned the Focused Ultrasound Foundation into a nonprofit powerhouse with board members that include the likes of John Grisham, Michael Milken, and Dorothy Batten. He has served on the board for Eclypsis Corporation, INC Research, the Prostate Cancer Foundation, and has accrued over $30 million in grants and contracts, won numerous neurological awards and published over 450 scientific papers. Any medical students out there wondering what the future of their business looks like would do well to follow in Kassell’s tire tracks.

Zack Buckner (Photo by John Robinson)

5. Zach Buckner
Founder, Relay Foods
It used to be that entrepreneurs made deals on the golf course, but there’s a whole new type of deal maker emerging, and Zach Buckner could be the poster child for the new nerd power. Browse his website to see the load of patents, businesses, and ideas he’s working on, and you’ll see that the UVA-educated electrical engineer has an expansive set of priorities. One of Buckner’s most visible projects is his decentralized, highly social, Internet-based grocery delivery biz Relay Foods, which in 2011 earned him the Rocket Award from the Charlottesville Business Innovation Council and got a shout out in Forbes magazine. Capitalizing on and investing in the region’s local food movement, the UVA engineer has made serious waves (and raised $3.1 million in early investment capital) in Charlottesville’s economy and positioned his business as a model for regional food distribution networks that care about farmers and quality.

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IF I HAD THE POWER…

Spencer Ingram (Photo by John Robinson)

Spencer Ingram
Founder, HackCville, age 27
“What would I do with unlimited resources? Well in a real way, this is not hypothetical.
Charlottesville has a wealth of talent in experienced entrepreneurs, designers and professionals with a special willingness to help. Our collaborative spirit is at the core of HackCville. Contributors possess varying skills and experiences but everyone has something to share.
This mindset is at play to help build a start-up hub where hackers, makers, and shaker-uppers collide. I’m saying let’s bang some pans together and see how many squirrels we can wake up. I want to fill Downtown space with the offices of creative new businesses. This is what fires me up.
Let’s just build it, jump in the driver’s seat and slam the pedal. Sometimes we go skidding off the road kicking up dust, but we’re doing it.”

The Landlords
Charlottesville sits on the tippy top of the South in fertile rolling country in the Chesapeake Bay watershed that’s been making landowners wealthy for 400 years. Through the ’80s, the real estate game consisted primarily of the buying and selling of horse farms and trying to sell property to UVA for twice its value. The city rode the wave of the real estate boom through the ’90s like a sleepy surfer on a storm swell and then the buying and selling got ferocious as the stakes rose right up until 2007, when the spectacular collapse of Hunter Craig’s Biscuit Run development played taps on a dizzying decade of growth. Donald Trump and Steve Case have their wineries and Sissy Spacek and John Grisham their farms, but a few key players continue to push the Monopoly pieces around the board.

Coran Capshaw (Photo by Ashley Twiggs)

1. Coran Capshaw
Founder, Red Light Management; CEO, Musictoday
Here are the vital stats on Coran Capshaw: He’s the founder of Red Light Management, co-founder of ATO Records, CEO of Musictoday LLC, and the creator of Starr Hill Presents, a live event promotion company that promotes notable music festivals like Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, Mile High Music Festival, Dave Matthews Band Caravan, and Outside Lands. Capshaw, ranked No. 2 on the Billboard Power 100 of 2012, personally manages Dave Matthews Band, Tim McGraw, Phish, Alicia Keys, and others. That’s him in the music game.

He’s also the money behind several Charlottesville restaurants—including Blue Light Grill, Positively 4th Street, Mono Loco, Ten, and Five Guys (if you’re counting national chains)—in addition to music venues like The Jefferson Theater.

A self-made man who got to the very top from very near the bottom, some people around town still remember when he sold firewood to homeowners at Wintergreen. Famous for his love of privacy and for holding all the strings in a business empire that stretches to every corner of the country, Capshaw touches all aspects of our town.

The proud subject of a well-populated Wikipedia page could have shown up on at least three of our power lists in this issue, but we chose to put him in the real estate section, as he’s the man behind a huge residential condominium complex, City Walk, which is poised to rise just down the railroad tracks from the nTelos Wireless Pavilion, which he developed in partnership with the city.

From the way people whisper his name, you’d think Capshaw was a cross between Darth Vader and Clint Eastwood, but the guy is also famous for taking misguided young people under his wing, and has raised close to $5 million for local charities through the Bama Works Fund.

2. Michael Strine
Chief Operating Officer at UVA
As Executive Vice President and COO of UVA, Michael Strine is responsible for administering UVA’s $2.6 billion budget. The ninth-highest paid public employee in the state with a state salary of $297,000 and a total take of $450,000, Strine controls several major operational and administrative areas for the University, among them the hundreds of buildings the school had spawned over the years. Strine inherited his role from Leonard Sandridge. (Talk about big shoes to fill—that guy has a street named after him!) Sandridge was confident that the University would be able to accommodate its growth within its existing footprint for the next 25 years. Strine might have different ideas.

Strine’s job responsibilities include collaborating with R. Edward Howell, the VP and CEO of the UVA Medical Center. He’s also certainly at the table when David J. Neuman, the Stanford-bred “UVA Architect” responsible for master planning, and Tim Rose, CEO of the private foundation that typically acquires land for the school, move their chess pieces.
If you got Capshaw, Strine, and Silverman (see below) into the same room, Charlottesville’s West Main Street problem could be solved in less than, say, 12 hours.

Gabe Silverman (Photo courtesy subject)

3. Gabe Silverman and Allan Cadgene
Development partners
If you see a big building on West Main Street, chances are Gabe Silverman owns it or rebuilt it. No one outside of Coran Capshaw and Colonel Thomas Walker can claim to have influenced the landscape of Downtown Charlottesville the way Silverman has. With the backing of his business partner Allan Cadgene, the 71-year-old Silverman has made his mark by redeveloping iconic spaces, from the Amtrak Station and Main Street Market to the Ix Project and the A&N building.

A Charlottesville resident since the ’80s, Silverman is the local face of his partnership with Cadgene. The latter, a 65-year-old Stanford and Yale Law graduate and resident of San Francisco, is a more mysterious figure. He played the role of condescending owner in a 2006 spat, via mail correspondence, with local author John Grisham concerning the towing of Grisham’s Porsche from a Silverman and Cadgene-owned parking lot.

Silverman is Charlottesville’s answer to Keith Richards, a crass, chain-smoking developer with big ideas, a deeply tanned face, and a black T-shirt. He’s made plenty of friends and enemies over the years, but he’s been recognized widely for his contributions to the arts community and no one has ever called him boring.

4. Jim Justice
Owner of Wintergreen Resort
Jim Justice lives in Lewisburg, West Virginia, but his fingerprints are all over Charlottesville. In 2010, Justice bought 4,500 acres in Albemarle County for nearly $24 million. He owns the Greenbrier Resort (purchased in 2009 for $20.1 million), a popular vacation spot for some Charlottesvillians, and he recently acquired Wintergreen Resort for about $16.5 million, saying the property held sentimental value as one of the last places he golfed with his father.

Justice made his money in coal and agriculture. He launched Bluestone Farms, a commercial grain farming operation, and in 1993 succeeded his father as president and CEO of Bluestone Industries (now Justice Companies). Justice has suggested plans to continue purchasing and developing resorts across the Virginias with the idea of creating a line of upscale haunts that would connect the coast, the Piedmont, and the mountains. Forbes estimates his net worth at $1.2 billion.

A close friend of Jerry West’s and a highly visible member of his community in West Virginia, Justice finds time to coach high school basketball. In 2011, he was ranked No. 37 on philanthropy.com’s list of the “50 Most Generous Donors” for giving a combined $35 million to the Boy Scouts of America and Cleveland Clinic Innovations.

John Dewberry (Photo courtesy subject)

5. John Dewberry
Owner of the Landmark Hotel
If John Dewberry’s name doesn’t ring a bell, that’s probably because he’s only just arrived on the scene. The founder and CEO of Georgia development firm Dewberry Capital recently placed a winning $6.25 million bid on the shell of the long-stalled Landmark Hotel.

Dewberry, 48, was a starting quarterback for the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets in the ’80s. He played professionally in the Canadian Football League before ditching the jersey and turning to business in 1989, using his $5,000 signing bonus to finance his first real estate investment.

Since then, Dewberry Capital has amassed more than $400 million in assets in the Southeast. In recent years, the company has snapped up a large chunk of Atlanta’s Peachtree Street in the commercial heart of the city.

Dewberry may not be a household name in Charlottesville yet, but he does have long-standing connections to the area. Born in Lynchburg, he maintains a nonresident membership at Farmington Country Club, where he was kept up to speed on the Landmark saga over rounds of golf with close friend and local realtor Steve McLean.

So what does a Georgia millionaire want with a deteriorating hunk of Downtown Mall steel? Minutes after he made the buy, Dewberry said he sees the property becoming the second in a chain of elegant boutique hotels in upscale markets around the country (the first is already underway in Charleston).

Time will tell if his investment is more successful than Halsey Minor’s, but for now, Dewberry appears poised to become an important player.

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IF I HAD THE POWER…

Brandon Collins (File photo)

Brandon Collins
Secretary of the Socialist Party of Central Virginia; former candidate for City Council, age 39
“Rather than being a real estate developer with a blank slate to do whatever I want, which is essentially how things happen now, I would suggest that all development be people-driven and I would seek to build on standards set by the community with attention to the needs of individual tenants.

Developers want money—they see profits and opportunity. They do not care that most of the people in Charlottesville pay too much for housing. Opening the political process so we can set better standards for development is a step in the right direction. Those standards should be focused on affordable housing and employment, however, nothing short of complete transformation of the social relationship between workers and owners will fundamentally ‘solve’ our affordable housing crisis.

That said, the current set aside of 15 percent affordable units for certain developments is not enough! We need the number to be at least 51 percent to have any effect on market rentals. UVA, our largest employer, and the biggest impact on housing costs, has a responsibility to pay a living wage, and to limit new development. With the billions in its capital fund, UVA can afford to create student housing that doesn’t increase rents or accentuate the speed of gentrification in nearby neighborhoods.

The Landmark, the Marriott being planned for West Main, and any other business development should bring living wage jobs, in great numbers, for low skilled workers. Developers and CRHA should create communities collectively owned and operated by tenants. Redevelopment of public housing should be an interest to developers in terms of community building, not profit seeking. No incentives or public monies should be offered for anything short of what the community desires.”

The Pols
The political game always heats up in a presidential election year, but it’s fixin’ to boil over this time around. Virginia is being touted as an important battleground state in the Obama/Romney duel, but we’ve also got a crucial U.S. Senate race underway. The Commonwealth’s seats of political power may be in Richmond, Norfolk, and NoVa, but some of its deepest pockets—on both sides of the aisle—reside in this part of the state and these days you can’t even get in the election game at any level without a fistful of dollars. Local political leaders double as important fundraisers for statewide and national candidates, and don’t think they won’t be joining the fray with the stakes as high as they are right now.

 

David Toscano (Photo by John Robinson)

1. David Toscano
State Representative, 57th District; Virginia House of Delegates Minority Leader
Up until last year, David Toscano was an extremely popular local politician with a successful law practice, and a major force in Charlottesville’s Democratic power structure. But when he accepted the position of House Minority Leader in the fall of 2011, he took on the role of ideological leader for the state’s blue power movement on the eve of a crucial election year. Historically, Toscano has brought a litigator’s mind to the Assembly floor and pushed hard for stuff that his constituents wanted. With a statewide audience, he’s had to become a more outspoken foil to Governor Bob McDonnell’s political steamroller on social issues like reproductive rights and health care. It’s also worth mentioning that Llezelle Dugger, a political protégé who got her start in his law office, became the Charlottesville Clerk of Court. Might not sound like a big deal, but politics is all about growing an organization and that’s just what Toscano has done for the past 22 years.

2. Richard Baxter Gilliam
GOP donor
As we mentioned before, candidates need money to win elections, and when GOP candidates need money in our part of the world, they knock on Richard Baxter Gilliam’s door. Between 2010 and 2012, the Keswick resident gave a whopping $437,500 to state Republicans, including $10,000 to Ken Boyd for his reelection run last year and $125,000 to Governor McDonnell’s Opportunity Virginia PAC. In 2010, he gave at least $250,000 to Republican strategist Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, a nonprofit organization “dedicated to renewing America’s commitment to individual liberty.”

Gilliam lives in a lavish residence, enjoys buying properties with links to Civil War history, and owes his considerable wealth to King Coal. He founded Cumberland Resources Corp., one of the largest privately held coal producers in the United States, in Abingdon, and later sold his company to Massey Energy for $960 million.

3. Ken Boyd
Albemarle County Supervisor (Rivanna District)
Ken Boyd is the unapologetic voice for business and development in Albemarle County. And while the battle over the 29 Bypass isn’t over yet, his ability to wrangle with the McDonnell administration to revive the deal and the subsequent scramble to line up the swing vote he needed to get it passed are a testament to his powers of persuasion.

Boyd, who started his career in politics as a concerned parent in 1999, understands how to apply Tip O’Neill’s famous “politics is local” mantra to a tee, and the Rivanna District he represents will be a major destination for campaign fundraisers this year. Boyd withstood a fierce and expensive re-election campaign against challenger Cynthia Neff last year, so he’ll be around for a while longer to see his development plan for the 29N corridor take shape. The only thing in his way? Chris Dumler beat Lindsay Dorrier and Boyd doesn’t have the votes to push an agenda.

4. Sonjia Smith
Democratic donor
Sonjia Smith has been a major donor to local and Congressional candidates in Virginia, and unlike Richard Baxter Gilliam, Smith bleeds blue. According to the Virginia Public Access Project, she’s steered $69,200 of her and her hedge fund manager husband’s money directly to Virginia Democrats in the past two years. Those who have benefitted from her largesse include Tom Perriello, Eric Cantor’s 2010 challenger Rick Waugh, David Toscano, and Ken Boyd-challenger Cynthia Neff.

Smith’s local influence doesn’t stop at political donations, either. As a past or current member of the boards of the Center for Nonprofit Excellence, the Legal Aid Justice Center, and UVA’s College of Arts and Sciences, she’s put her stamp on Charlottesville’s nonprofit scene. Favored causes include women’s rights and teen education, and she’s poured a lot of time and funding into Planned Parenthood and the Child Health Advocacy Program.

A Wahoo through and through, Smith received both her bachelor’s and law degrees from UVA (she practiced law for six years before retiring when her first son was born). Her husband, Michael D. Bills, is the founder and president of Bluestem Asset Management, LLC. and the chairman of the board and director of local news nonprofit Charlottesville Tomorrow.

Chris Dumler (Photo by John Robinson)

5. Chris Dumler
Albemarle County Supervisor
Democrat Chris Dumler became the youngest Albemarle County Supervisor ever elected when he took 54 percent of the vote in the Scottsville District last year. Now 27, the Atlanta native is quietly making a name for himself in local politics.

Dumler graduated from Georgia Tech in 2006 with a chemical and biomolecular engineering degree, and received his JD from UVA’s School of Law in 2009. He’s also an Army JAG officer and part-owner of a new Scottsville brewery.

He got his start in politics running campaigns for local Democrats, and ultimately decided to run for office himself when his predecessor, longtime Supe Lindsay Dorrier, announced he wouldn’t run again in 2011. Dumler won his seat the old-fashioned way, knocking on nearly every door in his district, and he’s since gone from tireless candidate to shrewd politician. He’s put an emphasis on land preservation and appears ready to breathe life into the fight against the all-but-inevitable Western Bypass.

That puts him squarely at odds with No. 3 above—and we’re looking forward to seeing how the battle plays out.

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IF I HAD THE POWER…

Sarad Davenport (Photo by John Robinson)

Sarad Davenport
Director of City of Promise, age 32
“If I had the power, I would make service the standard by which people’s lives were judged. I would make self-sacrificial love an expected norm in all interpersonal relations. Hatred would be frowned upon and mutual respect would be commonplace. We as a human community would operate in the renowned ideal that ‘All men [people] are created equal.’

It is this framework that, I believe, would allow us to see the inherent value in all humanity. It would be visible in the workplace, the marketplace, and the classroom, and in our daily interactions with those who are different. Our approach would be to seek to understand rather than to fundamentally change—to authentically listen, and then to speak.

I have to admit that this assignment left me quite perplexed for some time. My faith tradition reminds me that I have the power to move mountains, but what I speak of can be done only through a power much greater. Though I acknowledge this is somewhat of a Utopian ideal that may be considered unrealistic to many, it does not prevent me from operating in it and living it—however flawed the attempt —on a daily basis.

In essence, my attitude towards political power boils down to the Golden Rule or ethic of reciprocity: ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ This maxim could be applied to education reform, human rights, and geopolitics. If I had the power to change the paradigm, which I do, self-sacrificial service and love would be model human attributes and the recognition of our equality would be evidenced in how we speak to and treat one another.”

President Sullivan addressed hundreds of supporters on the Lawn Tuesday after UVA’s Board of Visitors unanimously voted for her reinstatement. Photo by Graelyn Brashear.

After more than two weeks of protests, speculation, and angst in the UVA community, the University’s Board of Visitors unanimously voted Tuesday afternoon to reinstate Teresa Sullivan as president.

A week and a day after the Board spent nearly 12 hours in deliberations over the naming of an interim president, it gathered again in the same Rotunda meeting room to address a resolution rescinding that appointment and reaffirming Sullivan’s status as top administrator.

The first signal that the Board was initiating a do-over at the emergency meeting came when Sullivan and Rector Helen Dragas—the embattled Board leader who orchestrated the behind-the-scenes ouster announced just over two weeks ago—walked in a back-door entrance to the building side by side and smiling.

UVA President Teresa Sullivan and Rector Helen Dragas eneter the Rotunda side by side before Tuesday’s meeting. Photo by Laura Ingles.

Heywood Fralin, the only Board member who voted against installing an interim president last week, introduced the Board’s resolution reinstating Sullivan, and before the room voted, Dragas made it clear she had changed her mind.

It had been a difficult two weeks for the University, she said, reiterating her apology for the secretiveness surrounding Sullivan’s forced resignation and acknowledging that the process should have taken place in the open. But good things have come of the turmoil on Grounds, she said.

"I believe real progress is more possible than ever now, because there’s absolutely no denying that all of the wonderful people who make up this community are as awake and egaged as ever," she said. "It is unfortunate that we had to have a near-death experience to get here, but the University should not waste the enormous opportunity at hand."

But not all the discussion had been constructive, she said. The Board members "have been the target of at times vitriolic and dishonorable communication based on a mob mentality that has been created by rumor and too little accountability from anonymous sources of information," she said. "This is plainly not the UVA way."

The role call around the table saw each Board member falling into step behind Dragas. Along with the affirmative votes, several offered brief statements of support. “With high honor and great pleasure, yes,” said Hunter Craig, one of the three members who requested the emergency meeting to reinstate the president.

Many in the crowd of several hundred Sullivan supporters gathered outside were following reporters’ tweets, and began cheering immediately after the unanimous vote, and over their muffled shouts, Sullivan herself addressed the Board. 

“I do not ask that we sweep any differences under the rug,” she said. “All of us want only one thing: what’s best for the University. I believe that we can continue in this task. We know now that we are joined by thousands of others who care passionately about this institution."

Outside, with the Board and many UVA deans surrounding her, Sullivan directed her words to a crowd that welcomed back its president with loud cheers and supportive signs.

“My family and I could not have imagined the events of recent weeks when we moved here 22 months ago,” she said. “I am not good enough, I am not wise enough, and I am not strong enough to do everything that needs doing at UVA on my own. But you have shown me beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am not alone.”

Suzie McCarthy, a PhD student studying politics has been driving back and forth from her home in northern Virginia for the last two weeks, attending protests and vigils and moderating the “Students, family and friends to reinstate President Sullivan” Facebook group. She said she thought the UVA community had surpirsed itself in its ability to come together.

“If I know our community, we’ll stand strong together, and we’ll look to our president," she said. "She has already given us an idea of how we should act.” 

Ricardo Padron, associate professor of Spanish, and a UVA alumnus, commended Dragas and the Board for "finding a dignified and honorable" way out of a crisis.

But UVA needs to learn from the last two weeks, he said

“One of the things we’ve learned from this is the necessity of diversifying the Board by having representatives from other constituencies," said Padron. "Had we had those representatives on this Board, this never would have happened, because the people in charge would have had a better sense of what the consequences of their actions were going to be.”—Graelyn Brashear and Laura Ingles