Speed & Scale · company → industry
The Frank Ix & Sons district
A dead textile mill that UVA spinouts moved into.
2UVA spinouts on site
1999the mill closed
10,000×smaller than a hair
Overview
Frank Ix & Sons made synthetic fabric here until 1999. What is left is an arts park and a warren of industrial-scale office and light-manufacturing space a few blocks off the Downtown Mall — the kind of room an instruments company needs and Grounds does not have. Two UVA spinouts build here: Virginia Diodes, whose millimeter-wave and terahertz systems run from 18 GHz to 2 THz, and Laser Thermal, whose tools measure how heat moves through a microchip.
- The former Frank Ix & Sons textile mill, closed 1999
- Industrial-scale space a few blocks from the Downtown Mall
- Virginia Diodes — UVA LVG portfolio; millimeter-wave and terahertz components and systems, 18 GHz to 2 THz
- Laser Thermal — out of Patrick Hopkins’ lab in mechanical and aerospace engineering, with UVA alumnus John Gaskins as chief executive; measures thermal properties at scales 10,000 times smaller than a human hair, on an SBIR grant through CHIPS for America
- Suits hardware and instrumentation companies that need floor space, not a desk