Aided by Amazon, Fairfax County to open innovation skills hub in May

A new innovation hub in the Lee District Community Center (7950 Audubon Avenue) is expected to open in May.

With the support of private partners and state and federal funds, the Workforce Innovation Skills Hub (WISH) is intended to expand job opportunities for residents living along the Richmond Highway corridor.

“With Amazon and Virginia Tech making significant investments a few miles to our north and the proximity to Fort Belvoir and their stream of contracting opportunities, the Richmond Highway Corridor is the ideal location for a workforce development program,” Lee District Supervisor Rodney Lusk’s office said.

Lusk hopes the workforce training program will give residents a chance to earn a middle-class income and end generational poverty.

“The ultimate goal of the WISH is to create an accessible community hub where residents can walk to and receive training in the trades and technology jobs of the future,” he said.

The hub in Groveton received $2.4 million from the county’s coffers and is in the process of securing $800,000 in supplemental state and federal funding.

County funds were primarily used to acquire and renovate the space, including bringing the center up to code.

Lusk and his office have been working with Amazon for more than year to determine how the online retail and web services company will support the project.

So far, as part of a recent land-use application to build a data center in Springfield, Amazon plans to work with Lusk’s office on contracting related to the construction and build-out of the data center.

Amazon received the county’s blessing in February to construct a roughly 242,000-square-foot data center at 7961 Loisdale Road in Springfield.

The company will also provide the office with the number of jobs available in the data center. Program constructors will then build a model to connect job training to existing jobs in the Lee District.