Groundbreaking park; Facility to modernize, manage state technology infrastructure is first in
BYLINE: JEFFREY KELLEY; Times-Dispatch Staff Writer
The Commonwealth Enterprise Solutions Center was simply an architect's rendering a year ago.
But those drawings are now reality - a two-story, high-tech facility under construction for Northrop Grumman Corp. and Virginia government.
This cornerstone project at the Meadowville Technology Park sits on a plot of land in Chesterfield County that used to be a forest.
"We're very much in an evolutionary phase here," said Faith McClintic, development manager at the park, the 1,300-acre site that houses the center and, county officials hope, more properties in the future.
"It's exciting to see it coming out of the ground."
The park is just south of the double column, cable-stayed Varina-Enon Bridge on Interstate 295. Meadowville has been Chesterfield's dream for more than a decade.
Signs are up and three flags fly in the breeze at the park's entrance. Dump trucks and bulldozers roam around the roads.
Developers are in talks to create a second structure at the park, what the county is calling the "Founder's Building," McClintic said. It would be the first Class A commercial office space in the park and would hold Meadowville's management offices.
Then there's Northrop Grumman.
The company was chosen by the Virginia Information Technologies Agency in late 2005 as part of a $2 billion deal to modernize the state's technology infrastructure. Northrop Grumman is helping the state manage the computer systems of about 90 executive branch agencies, such as the departments of taxation, health, motor vehicles and social services.
It needed a new building to do so, and it chose Meadowville as the spot.
About 180 construction workers are on the site and will remain there until the project is completed in the summer, said Joe Fay, Northrop's program director for its state contract.
Unseasonable winter weather has kept the project on track, but the price tag has increased from about $35 million to the mid-$50 million range. More office and data center space was added to the original plan, increasing the cost.
A windowless data center takes up the left wing of the 192,000-square-foot building.
The highly-secured facility, which will require fingerprints and other verifications in order to enter, will be stacked with servers that will hold all state taxpayer, driver and health records, election data and more.
"We have pretty much all the sensitive citizens' data in that complex," said Lemuel C. Stewart Jr., chief of the state's IT agency.
He said the facility is a major upgrade in security and disaster recovery for the state agency and its data center, currently in Richmond.
"It's sort of like moving out of the '80s and into the 21st century," Stewart said. "It really provides substantial improvement and disaster-recovery capabilities for the commonwealth."
And all the information it stores at Meadowville will be backed up in a second facility in rural Russell County.
The Meadowville data center also will become one of four that Northrop Grumman will operate across the U.S. to store classified homeland security information and more, Fay said.
Northrop also plans to offer what it can in terms of providing technology services to local governments and places of higher education in Virginia.
Northrop expects to start moving in on July 1, while the state agency will arrive two weeks later. About two-thirds of the roughly 850 state VITA workers have accepted jobs with Northrop, and some 600 will work at Meadowville.
McClintic and others expect the park's first occupied building to spur more economic development.
"It's a technology park that now has an anchor tenant," Northrop Grumman's Fay said. "I expect more development there. It just makes sense to me. You put the critical mass and intellectual firepower there, it should change the area."
There's space set aside for a satellite location for the Virginia BioTechnology Research Park, which has its only campus in downtown Richmond.
Still needed, however, is an interchange off of I-295. Commuters can't get to the park directly from the interstate.
A ribbon cutting for the Meadowville facility should take place sometime this summer, McClintic said. "A big shindig, from what I understand."
New construction
The first building in the Meadowville Technology Park should be completed by summer. The center, costing about $55 million, will house and manage information technology sevices for Virginia's executive branch agencies. It should employ about 600 people. The building is expected to spur more economic development in the park.
* Contact staff writer Jeffrey Kelley at jkelley@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6348.