2 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
2030 Vision Statement
By the year 2030 Newport News is an active center of research and development and applied high technology with an enviable quality of life marked by livable, walkable communities. These communities attract creative and highly educated knowledge workers that support the City’s strong research base that provide well paying jobs and new housing for our children. The Newport News area has has two of the region's four national research centers from which economic spin-offs occur-- the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab); the Herbert H. Bateman Advanced Shipbuilding and Carrier Integration Center (VASCIC); the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Langley Research Center (NASA Langley) and the Virginia Modeling and Simulation Center (VMASC). The City also has private sector research and development at the Applied Research Center, Jefferson Center for Research and Technology and elsewhere in the City.
The City has a strong applied technology base, including Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding, Canon Virginia, Continental AG, and other major technology-driven firms. Several high-tech, precision machine shops are located in Newport News. These support the region’s research and development centers, they also support the City’s state-of-the-art manufacturing sector. Firms in this sector are capital intensive and besides those mentioned above, include companies in the advanced equipment, engineered plastics, communications and detection instrumentation, aerospace engineering and food processing sectors. Perhaps the most significant sector to have grown in Newport News, however, is the photonics (5) industry, a direct spin-off from the Jefferson Lab.
Most workers employed in the City’s economic base industries (6) are knowledge workers. These include the engineers, managers and administrative workers employed by Northrop Grumman and other high-tech manufacturers. They also include the many information technology workers developing software and network applications for a world of information sharing, analysis, processing and communication barely imaginable today. Newport News is home to several corporate headquarters and district offices, as well as to back-office information processing centers.
High-technology and knowledge industry firms are attracted to Newport News by the outstanding scientific research being conducted here, by the City's highly skilled and educated labor force, by its quality public and higher education institutions, by its superior transportation systems, and by its attractive quality of life. All of these qualities mutually support each other. Particularly attractive to scientists, engineers, technicians, information technology workers and other knowledge workers is the ability to live and work in the same neighborhood. Thousands work in the class A office space, live in the upscale apartments and condominiums, shop in the stores and dine in the fine restaurants of City Center and greater Oyster Point, the central business district for the Virginia Peninsula. Hundreds more occupy live-above, walk to work or telecommute from a number of urban village communities such as Asheton, Port Warwick, Huntington Pointe, Patrick Henry Place, and the Hampton Roads and James River waterfront.
Neighborhoods all over the City, but especially in the Southeast Community, have been revitalized. Poverty and crime have been reduced significantly. The economic disparity between Planning District I, pockets within Planning District III and the rest of the City has been substantially eliminated. Newport News has truly become a world-class community that is an active participant in the global economy.