1/19/23 Hampton Roads Mastermind Group Meeting

Hampton Roads January 2023 – Key Take-Aways

Cathie Vick – The Port of Virginia

The major difference between The Port of Virginia and other ports in the country is what has been labeled the “Virginia Model”. This model includes various factors that streamline the shipping and receiving process.
- The Virginia Port Authority either owns or has a long-term lease on all of the terminals, and they only have one terminal operator, Virginia International Terminals. Compare this to other ports where the local port authority owns the property, but then they lease it to different terminal operators, creating competition within the same harbor. This reduces backup and customers waiting on an open berth at a terminal.
- During the pandemic the on-time rate for shipping vessels was 14% in comparison to the usual 60 to 70 percent.
Other ports do not have the technology that VA has. VA has invested over a billion dollars in technological advancements for the port, specifically semi-automated stacks.
- Reservations come in for the port during the day, and then automated stacking cranes rearrange the stacks in a logical order based on the reservations in the evening. This creates an average of a 30 minute window for trucks at the port leaving with containers in comparison to 3 hours.

Rail transit at the Port of VA has an in and out time of 36 hours in comparison to other locations where a container can sit for 7 days before it leaves via rail.
Because Virginia can move the cargo so quickly, customers pick VA as their first choice.
Another strength of the VA terminals is the chassis pool. The chassis is the bed that the container sits on attached to the truck. The availability of chassis was one off the biggest constraints for ports around the country. All of the chassis here are made in Virginia, and we recently replaced 13,000 chassis in the past year. 90% of our chassis are under 4 years old.
Part of what we have coined the Virginia Model is reliability and consistency.
The port is the fastest growing port over the last two years and is the #1 port in North America, #23 globally. Also, it is the first Semi Automated terminal in North America.
The success of the port was leading us to take more market share from other ports – including ports in California.
- Almond growers in California were shipping through the Port of Virginia rather than using the ports there in California, because it was faster to get their product out.

Chris Topping – 504 Capital

504 Capital handles the SBA’s 504 loan program. Not a bank and not the government, but we facilitate the government piece of the 504 loan.
With interest rates going up, volume has slowed.

David Durant – Asturian Construction

Dan Shelton – Whiting-Turner

The supply chain is a still a problem. Electrical components are a disaster to get ahold of.

Jeff Parker – Colliers

Keith Slattum – Dollar bank

Some of the biggest challenges I am seeing is the large amount of standard leases on office buildings.
Seeing a lot more “value-add”.
Interest rates have gone up but haven’t seen a big change in cap rates.
Challenges in appraisals is the use of comps that are outdated. Comps being used are a year old, and in today’s market that data is too old.

Danielle Leonor – Kimley Horn

Richard Crouch – Wood Rogers Vandeventer Black

Chris Ambrosio – Wood Rogers Vandeventer Black

Typical lease has an abundance of pages, and no one reads past the rent cost and length of the term. What has been recently discovered is there are a lot of clauses that now have come to be relevant. The pandemic has brought this to the forefront.

Lori Walker – Atlantic Office Technologies

We do everything that deals with CAT-5 Cable in the wall.
For commercial real estate, we deal with the cabling in the buildings. It is a process that is often overlooked.