Virginia Beach City Manager to receive honorary degree at TCC graduation

The ceremony begins at 10 a.m. at the Ted Constant Convocation Center at Old Dominion University.

Virginia Secretary of Transportation Aubrey L. Layne Jr. will be the keynote speaker.

Spore, who is among the longest continuously serving city managers in the nation, will retire on Jan. 1 after 24 years with Virginia Beach. He was instrumental in the development of TCC’s Virginia Beach Campus, forging an enduring and positive partnership between the college and the city.

He took a lead role in the development of the 120,000-square-foot Joint-Use Library, one of the few facilities in the country shared by a college and a municipality, which opened in 2012.

In 2001, TCC and Virginia Beach Public Schools opened the 134,000-square-foot Advanced Technology Center. Students from Virginia Beach Schools are educated in the same facility as post-secondary students for today’s technically demanding jobs.

Under Spore’s leadership, the city purchased six key parcels of property and conveyed them to the college at no cost to implement a shared vision for higher education in Virginia Beach. In addition to the Joint-Use Library, TCC opened its Science Building and planetarium in 2008, the Regional Health Professions Center in 2012 and the Virginia Beach Campus Student Center in 2014.

Spore holds a master’s in public administration from the University of Colorado and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in urban planning from the University of Illinois. He and his wife, Joan, reside in Virginia Beach.

In January, he will become president of Reinvent Hampton Roads, an initiative of the Hampton Roads Community Foundation to bring more jobs to the area.