Group organizes to draw tech firms to region

SUFFOLK

City government and area business leaders are moving ahead with plans to attract high-tech industries to replace those likely to be lost if the U.S. Joint Forces Command is closed.

A new partnership called "Innovate Hampton Roads" will promote the region's existing high-tech infrastructure to recruit companies in robotics, coastal energy, modeling and simulation and other high-tech industries, Economic Development Director Kevin Hughes told the City Council on Wednesday.

"This is really the region's opportunity, as well as Suffolk's, to diversify our technology outside of the Defense Department," Hughes said. "It's great to have the DOD here as well, but we really want to take that next step."

He said the partnership, built on the Hampton Roads Research Partnership, includes local and state governments, businesses, and research interests at universities and federal installations.

Hughes and others have estimated that JFCOM's closure would cost Hampton Roads more than 10,000 jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

In other action, the council gave final approval to a plan to help a Maryland company acquire funding to build a plant in Suffolk to turn landfill gas into electricity.

A spokesman for the company, GPC Green Energy LLC, said groundbreaking for the $20 million facility at the BASF Corp. chemical company's plant on Wilroy Road is scheduled for late November.