Lusk outlines plan to bring tech jobs to corridor

Lee District Supervisor candidate Rodney Lusk has a plan to bring more middle-class jobs to the Richmond Highway corridor, and he said this week that he intends to set it in motion during his first 90 days in office.

At a candidate forum in Gum Springs on Tuesday, Lusk said that he envisions the county working with a private company to locate a co-working space/accelerator in the corridor. That co-working space/accelerator would give emerging technology companies an affordable place to work in a part of the county that has missed out on many of the middle class jobs established in the past few decades.

“The idea is we have to get more technology-focused firms on the historic Richmond Highway corridor,” said Lusk. “The best way to do that is to try to support them in their growth and development.”

The idea of a co-working space/accelerator is something Lusk, who currently works as National Marketing Director for the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority (FCEDA), talked about during the Democratic primary campaign earlier this year. Lusk sailed to big win in the four-way primary, and he said he intends to expedite the plan for the co-working space/accelerator by taking it up as a board matter during his first 90 days.

“I intend to do everything I can to make it come to fruition,” Lusk said.

Fairfax County is currently home to 10 Fortune 500 companies and 37 firms on Inc. Magazine’s 2019 list of the 5000 fastest-growing privately held companies in the nation. None are headquartered in the Richmond Highway corridor.

Part of the issue is that the corridor lacks office space, and what little exists is in older buildings. That means corridor residents looking for middle-class jobs have little chance of working where they live, and until more office is space is added, that’s unlikely to change. Lusk said the a co-working space/accelerator would be a way to create the demand needed to construct new offices.

“Right now, there’s no demand for office,” Lusk said. “Zero.”

The co-working space could be home for small companies that do work for nearby government agencies, such as those located at the Pentagon and Fort Belvoir. The accelerator would focus emerging technologies such as AI, virtual reality and augmented reality.

The successful companies in the co-working space/accelerator would then begin to grow and “graduate” in larger office space. The timing would coincide with the implementation of Embark Richmond Highway, which envisions mixed-use community business centers (CBCs) that would a prime location for new office space.

“If we are successful, we are going to have opportunities for the residents [in the Richmond Highway area] to go into competitive, high-paying jobs that push them into the middle class and give them the opportunity to live in the place that they work,” Lusk said.

Lusk said the co-working space/accelerator would initially use existing office space on the corridor. One possible location would be the original Mount Vernon High School, but no decisions have been made yet, Lusk said.

He also said he already has a firm in mind to oversee the co-working space/accelerator. The firm has already overseen such a project in a different jurisdiction, Lusk said.

Lusk initially made the announcement about the co-working space/accelerator at the Future of Fairfax Tech event held last Tuesday at the law office of McGuireWoods LLP in the Tysons Corner area. He was joined in the announcement by Hunter Mill Board of Supervisors candidate Walter Alcorn, who is also running unopposed as a Democrat. That event included appearances by U.S. Sen. Mark Warner and Rep. Gerry Connolly.

Alcorn and Lusk said they would each work to create partnerships with local college and universities to help create pipelines connecting their students with emerging tech industries. They also said they would promote the county “as a test bed for the demonstration of emerging technologies such as self-driving cars, last mile delivery systems, health care delivery, manufacturing, artificial intelligence, renewable energy infrastructure, block chain, cyber security and others.”

“Prioritizing these policy goals will lead to a boom of higher paying jobs in our community, which will enable more of our residents to move into the middle class and improve their ability to afford housing in Fairfax County, and hopefully enable them to live where they work” Lusk said at the event.