Federal agencies, defense contractors spur growth at Rivanna Station, North Fork Discovery Park
On 462 acres in Albemarle County, a plot of land along U.S. Route 29 adjacent to a federal intelligence hotspot is the latest addition to a growing cluster of industries coming to define the Charlottesville area. County officials identified the plot as a place where academic institutions, private industry focused on defense and biotech, and government agencies could come together, develop partnerships, and benefit from their proximity and talent. The county Board of Supervisors finalized the agreement to purchase the property in late 2023, the largest parcel of land purchased in the county’s history.
The new plot is adjacent to Rivanna Station, the aforementioned intelligence cluster, and directly across from the University of Virginia’s (UVA) North Fork Discovery Park, another parcel that spans more than 500 acres and hosts a similar range of organizations. Together, the growing Rivanna Station and North Fork campuses allow the industries to grow in a region increasingly known for defense and biotech companies. The county plans to use the land to establish what it’s calling an Intelligence and National Security Innovation Acceleration Campus, where defense contractors, the U.S. Department of Defense, and academia can cooperate to solve national security problems.
Partnerships between industry, area higher education providers UVA and Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC), and federal government agencies have proven to be beneficial for all sectors, which continue to grow as the state and local government focus on establishing more land and infrastructure dedicated to those economic drivers. The new land acquisition around Rivanna Station and emerging plans for a 6,500-foot biotech accelerator at North Fork are two new developments in industries that contribute significantly to Central Virginia’s economic prospects.
An Unassuming Intelligence Hotspot
Rivanna Station is a U.S. Army garrison, a sub-installation of Fort Belvoir, and home to the Army’s National Ground Intelligence Center, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The facility expanded to its current 75 acres in 2010 when the DIA opened its Joint Use Intelligence Analysis Facility, and the area’s critical mass of technical expertise has blossomed.
“Charlottesville has become a center of gravity for a lot of technical expertise, and therefore innovation,” said Tucker Moore, who manages the science and technology portfolio in the national security sector as principal director at Booz Allen Hamilton’s Albemarle County office, located at North Fork, next door to fellow defense contractors CACI International Inc. and the Battelle Memorial Institute. Other area defense companies include Northrop Grumman Corporation and General Dynamics, both of whom operate a few miles down Route 29, and GDIT, which has an office in the Pantops area southeast of Charlottesville. And just north of Rivanna Station, Greene County maintains a defense production zoning overlay that provides incentives to defense contractors.
At North Fork, just across Route 29, UVA fosters relationships between the private sector and businesses that focus primarily on science and technology, which include those in the biotech industry. The combination allows ideas generated by researchers and students to be further developed and tested at labs and turned into job opportunities. Both private industries and government agencies draw from a pipeline of talented students with interest and expertise in a variety of disciplines. The cluster will help further develop Virginia’s growing knowledge work sector, fueled by UVA, which generates $5.9 billion for the Commonwealth each year.
“We have a really unique opportunity with this powerful intersection of defense, biotech, data science, and IT,” said Pace Lochte, assistant vice president for economic development at the University of Virginia. “We intend to be active economic development partners, leveraging our research and knowledge to augment and enhance this burgeoning cluster in our region.”
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