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Introduction
- All aboard — Roanoke's
downtown renovation preserves its past
- Developer unsnarls traffic congestion
as part of deal
- Sensitive project tests broker's
deal-making skills
- Turning Basin project could
be turning point for Canal Walk
- Other Nominees
Shipbuilding
complex boosts downtown Newport News
Location:
Downtown Newport News
Developer: Public-private venture
Architect: Clark Nexsen Architecture & Engineering,
Norfolk
General
Contractor:
W.M. Jordan Co. Inc., Newport News
by
Brett Lieberman
Click
to enlarge |
Like
an aircraft carrier's bow slicing through the waves,
the curved glass and steel building rises dramatically
seven stories above the street on the James River waterfront
of downtown Newport News. The structure's powerful image
is on point, considering the purpose of the $58 million
Virginia Advanced Shipbuilding and Carrier Integration
Center (VASCIC). The center, named after the late U.S.
Rep. Herbert H. Bateman, will help design advanced combat
systems for new generations of aircraft carriers and
other warships.
Doing
so will help the gigantic Northrop Grumman Newport News
Shipbuilding a few blocks away originate new technologies
as it gears up to build complex combat vessels well
into the 21st century. Downtown Newport News will likewise
get a boost when well-paid engineers, technicians and
university researchers begin to staff the 230,000-square
-foot office and laboratory complex built by the city,
the shipyard and Virginia.
VASCIC
is more than a research lab. It's likely to serve as
a model for economic development and cooperation among
local, state and federal government agencies as well
as the private sector. "We have several owners,"
notes John Lawson, president and CEO of W.M. Jordan.
Co., the project's general contractor. "The customer
is really the U.S Navy, the user is Newport News, the
owner is the city of Newport News, and it's administered
by the Newport News Industrial Authority and funded
by the state of Virginia."
By
far the center's biggest beneficiary will be the shipyard,
which is the only facility in the U.S. capable of building
nuclear-powered surface ships. As electronic warfare
systems become ever more complex, the shipyard risks
becoming a mere subcontractor as big combat systems
are developed by other defense contractors. Rather than
cede development of high-tech warfare systems to contractors
such as Lockheed Martin, the idea behind VASCIC is to
make it become the source of technology and help the
shipyard hang on to its dominant role in the building
and fitting out of warships.
The
center is expected to employ 500 to 600 people full
time and cater to an estimated 1,000 scientific visitors
each year. Its ties to universities around Virginia
and the nation will also draw well-educated, well-paid
and highly skilled people to the region. "VASCIC
is the queen of what we've done," says Paul F.
Miller, Newport News director of planning and development.
"It's not only an economic impact of substance,
... it's a visual pleasure in a downtown that was deteriorating."
The
facility includes an 118,000-square-foot area that can
handle modeling and simulation so systems can be tested.
Classrooms, lecture halls and a 180-seat auditorium
can accommodate hundreds of researchers from all over
the world who can communicate from afar on secure telephone
and data systems. An added bonus for the city: New retail
and mixed-use space that may develop nearby. VASCIC
isn't the only development project reviving downtown
Newport News, but it is certainly the most striking
and may well be the most important.
Return
to Virginia Business - April 2002
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