Portsmouth Industrial Foundation (1948)
Today's Portsmouth Partnership traces its roots to the post-WWII business climate. Wartime had brought a surge of workers and jobs to Portsmouth — and city leaders feared a mass exodus once the war ended. In response, they founded the Portsmouth Industrial Foundation (PIF) in March 1948, with a $250,000 fund to attract new manufacturers and support small and mid-sized businesses through loans.
The PIF offered a near turn-key package for interested companies: help finding a location, connections to architects and contractors, and low-rate financing. The E-Z Thread Company was first to respond, breaking ground on a 25,000-square-foot facility in 1949 that would employ over 400 people. Word spread — city managers as far away as Boston, Minneapolis, and Salinas, California wrote in to ask about the program.
Over the next 40 years, the PIF loaned more than $2.5 million to over 35 businesses, several of which are still operating today — generating hundreds of jobs and hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax revenue for Portsmouth.
The Portsmouth Partnership (1983)
By the early 1980s, Portsmouth was running out of room to grow — a problem shared by many older cities that had reached their geographic limits. Unlike neighboring Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, and Suffolk, Portsmouth faced slow economic growth, population loss, high unemployment, and a shrinking retail base. Public perception of the city's decline overshadowed its real strengths as a beautiful, historic, and well-located community.
Determined to change that image, the Chamber of Commerce and the city's civic leaders formed the original Portsmouth Partnership. A kick-off breakfast in May 1983 led to $1,236,000 in committed funds within six months, and the Partnership was officially in business.
The new organization moved quickly: a national industrial advertising campaign, a fully-equipped briefing center for prospective businesses, and an Industrial Ambassador Program to welcome new business prospects to town. A research budget and Speakers' Bureau followed, along with a professional PR campaign promoting Portsmouth locally, regionally, and nationally — plus funding for local festivals and events. In 1984, Portsmouth's Enterprise Zone was created; within two years it had doubled in size, becoming the most successful in the state.
The 1991 Merger
By 1990, forty years of effort had brought real progress, but Portsmouth still faced hard challenges. Roughly half the city's land remained exempt from property tax, straining both the city's and homeowners' budgets. Retail businesses kept leaving, taking tax revenue and jobs with them, while falling school enrollment squeezed the system between shrinking revenue and emptying classrooms.
Even so, Portsmouth's citizen leaders saw opportunity in these challenges. They determined that merging the Portsmouth Industrial Foundation and the Portsmouth Partnership could create a stronger, more focused organization — one with the vision, energy, and assets to meet the demands of successful development. That merger, completed in 1991, gave rise to today's Portsmouth Partnership, and to several other economic development organizations.
Greater Portsmouth Development Corporation
To address the economic gap due to nontaxable land, the Portsmouth Partnership combined forces the City of Portsmouth and the Portsmouth Redevelopment and Housing Authority in 1997 to form the Greater Portsmouth Development Corporation (GPDC), a 501c3 organization with the talent, financial leverage, and tax advantages needed to acquire, control, and market under-utilized but strategically located properties throughout the city.
GPDC success stories include Roger Brown's Restaurant and Sports Bar, the Dinwiddie Hotel, Victory Crossing retail development, and the Chick-Fil-A on Frederick Boulevard. Since its founding, the GPDC has produced over 1,000 jobs and $25,000,000 in tax revenue for the City of Portsmouth.
Partnership Development Foundation
The Partnership Development Foundation (PDF) was formed in the summer of 2005 with a mission to revitalize under-performing properties. Its first acquisition was the 60,000-square-foot Oxford Building, adjacent to the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame — a long-vacant, partially-occupied property that had sat on the market for several years. The PDF sold the building that November to a developer, who reconfigured the space into 24 luxury apartments with ground-level indoor parking and street-level retail.
Proceeds from that sale supported the Partnership's broader community commitments. In June 2006, the Portsmouth Redevelopment and Housing Authority assembled ten adjacent parcels in the Brighton neighborhood for a Habitat for Humanity Blitz Build. The Partnership contributed a portion of the Oxford Building proceeds to build one home in partnership with then-President Ken Jolley's Associated Contracting Services, while board member John Wright's Waverton Associates funded a second home in full. Board members Jerrold Miller of Earl Industries and John Hall of John E. Hall Electric made significant contributions to the effort, joined by several other board members individually. The Partnership-ACS home was ultimately purchased by a young mother who later enrolled in the Partnership's Lefcoe Leadership class, determined to deepen her civic commitment to the city.
The PDF's next acquisition was a five-acre parcel in Churchland straddling the Portsmouth-Chesapeake boundary. Overlapping 20-foot setback requirements from both cities had rendered the property largely unusable, until negotiations with city authorities secured a waiver, establishing a visible, accessible parcel along a high-traffic corridor. Royal Farms purchased 2.5 acres and opened a new location there in the winter of 2011; the remaining 2.5 acres represents a continuing opportunity for the PDF.
While PDF shares the GDPC’s 501c3 status, it differs from the GPDC in that the revenue produced by its activities directly supports the activities of the Portsmouth Partnership and its affiliates.
Today's Portsmouth Partnership
Today's Partnership continues to adapt as it helps Portsmouth meet the challenges of life within our growing, competitive region. Standing committees focus on issues such as education, transportation, and the maritime industry, while a family of affiliates carries the Partnership's work forward — from neighborhood redevelopment to leadership development to community events. Sixty years after the initial volunteer effort gathered steam, today's Portsmouth Partnership continues an energetic tradition of innovation as it strives to provide the highest possible quality of life for Portsmouth's citizens.
See how each affiliate carries this work forward on Our Affiliates page.