OED would like to welcome Bob Gittler to the economic development community in Virginia, and look forward to working with him in his new position serving the Commonwealth as Economic Development Specialist at the Philadelphia Regional Office (PRO) of the Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA).  Bob will serve as Virginia’s point of contact to the EDA and will advise and collaborate with local economic developers and other Virginia officials seeking to approach EDA with project ideas, funding requests, partnership opportunities, or other assistance.  As Virginia’s representative, Bob is tasked with helping to develop as many viable applications for EDA programs as possible from Virginia and has pledged to visit Virginia regularly in order to develop his contacts in the state (click here for contact info).  

As part of his orientation to Virginia, Bob visited Blacksburg in February with his colleagues for a two-day agenda facilitated by OED.  This agenda included meetings with stakeholders in southwest and Southside Virginia, including regional PDC directors, project updates from currently funded regional EDA projects, and topical sessions, such as broadband and energy.  As always, our EDA partners came with a deep interest in serving and investing in Southwest and Southside Virginia, and reemphasized their willingness to accept new project ideas.

This call for eligible projects has become especially urgent, as states compete for EDA’s recently expanded national budget of approximately $240 million for EDA’s various grant programs, which does not include an additional $150 million in stimulus funding for these programs (click here for program descriptions and EDA’s policy guidelines for project approval).  Virginia is eligible for approximately $6.4 million of the PRO’s $40-45 million share of this budget, but to achieve this maximum share Virginia projects must compete within the PRO’s jurisdiction that includes 13 Mid-Atlantic and New England states, as well as D.C. and Puerto Rico.