Norfolk City Council members are again pressing Hampton Roads Ventures, the for-profit investment arm of the city housing authority, to do more in its home city. The firm’s latest annual report, filed September 30, lists no Norfolk project since 2008, while describing recent support for a $12 million grocery store in rural Marion, a $10 million farm equipment distribution center in Martinsville and a $3 million supermarket in Louisiana.
The pattern is nearly two decades old at this point. As Virginia Mercury reported, Hampton Roads Ventures has backed investments in 17 states and the District of Columbia using New Markets Tax Credits, a federal program that lets community development entities apply to the U.S. Treasury Department for allocations meant to spur investment in distressed areas. Norfolk itself has 16 severely distressed census tracts prioritized for that kind of funding, with poverty rates ranging from 31 percent to 80 percent and unemployment reaching as high as 40 percent in some of them.
Grocery Stores and Warehouses, Just Not Here
Food City opened a 56,700-square-foot store in Marion in September, creating 50 new area jobs, while Rural King is investing $42 million, including Hampton Roads Ventures tax credits, in a distribution facility in Martinsville projected to create 150 jobs. The company is also backing a 47,694-square-foot Rouses facility in Chalmette, Louisiana, expected to open in 2027. None of that activity is in Norfolk, where the firm’s parent organization, the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority, is based.
Created in 2003, Hampton Roads Ventures is wholly owned by the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority, but Norfolk City Council does not directly control the company. The council appoints the housing authority’s commissioners, some of whom sit on Hampton Roads Ventures’ board, and a 2003 council resolution specified that the firm would be managed by those commissioners. In 2022, the council passed a resolution requiring the subsidiary to seek projects in Norfolk; the latest filing shows no local investment has followed.
Housing Commission Leaders Push for a New Role
Carlos Clanton and Jeremy McGee, co-chairs of the mayor’s housing commission, want Hampton Roads Ventures to contribute to Norfolk’s affordable housing response. The commission’s interim report called for more pathways to homeownership. Clanton said the tax-credit financing mechanism has been used in other communities for homeownership, vacant-property rehabilitation and mixed-use development. The firm has not backed a for-sale affordable home project and has not contacted a St. Louis firm specializing in that work, according to the report’s findings…