Industry in Richmond, VA

Since the 1960s Richmond has been a prominent hub for advertising agencies and advertising related businesses, including The Martin Agency. As a result of local advertising agency support, VCU's graduate advertising school (VCU AdCenter) is consistently ranked the #1 advertising graduate program in the country. Richmond is known as one of the most politically and socially conservative consumer markets in the country. Consequently, it is often used as a test-market for new consumer products to identify strengths and weaknesses that will appear in a national deployment.

The greater Richmond area is home to nine Fortune 500 companies, including electric utility Dominion Resources; consumer electronics retailer Circuit City, which also spun off the used car retailer CarMax, now a separate Fortune 500 company; Performance Food Group; LandAmerica Financial Group; Owens & Minor; Brink's Company, a security services outfit; Genworth Financial, the former insurance arm of GE and the recently relocated MeadWestvaco, a leading global producer of packaging, coated and specialty papers, consumer and office products and specialty chemicals. Only five metro areas in the US have more Fortune 500 company headquarters than the Richmond area.

In recent years, Richmond has been attempting to revive its downtown. Recent downtown initiatives include the Canal Walk, a new Greater Richmond Convention Center, and expansion on both VCU campuses. Despite numerous controversies related to excessive employee salaries and wasteful spending of public tax money, a new performing arts center, Richmond CenterStage, will reportedly open in 2009. The complex will include a renovation of the Carpenter Center and construction of a new multipurpose hall, community playhouse, and arts education center in parts of the old Thalhimers department store. As planned by the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation (VAPAF), the publicly funded arts center project now known as CenterStage has been mired in controversy, poor planning and questionable spending of money raised from a special citywide meals tax hike.