Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 3, 1993 TAG: 9301040254
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Staff
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
RESOLUTION FOR A REGION: GET REAL
THE BLUE Ridge and Allegheny Mountains shelter Western Virginia's valleys and plateaus from the worst of winter's winds. But less and less, it seems, is the region sheltered from the economic storms of national and global fortune.If Roanokers and Western Virginians thought otherwise, they should have been disabused of the notion by the often-bitter breezes of '92.
The post-Cold War reduction of America's defense establishment, for example, continued to be felt at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant. More than 1,100 jobs have vanished in the past 18 months; late in 1992, it was announced that 730 more employees will be laid off Jan. 20.
In the Roanoke Valley, the Grumman Emergency Products firetruck factory closed in September, after the Long Island-based firm was purchased by a Pennsylvania competitor; the toll was 270 jobs. The 400 jobs at the relatively new Gardner-Denver Mining and Construction factory may well be gone by the end of 1993, the result of new ownership that decided to consolidate facilities in Texas.
And, of course, there's Dominion Bank. Its pending acquisition by First Union of Charlotte, N.C., will cost 850 jobs - ranging from clerical to executive - in the Roanoke Valley alone. Many of those jobs may return, as First Union develops a regional operations center here. But at the least, the deal will take from Roanoke its last headquarters of a for-profit corporation of significant size.
To be sure, commercial loans gone sour in Northern Virginia (another example of how economic fortunes elsewhere can buffet Western Virginia) contributed to the details and timing. Management mistakes and zealous regulators also played a role. Even so, impersonal forces probably rendered Dominion's fate inevitable.
Dominion is only the last and largest of several banks once headquartered in Roanoke to become part of larger, non-Roanoke banks. Its takeover is but an episode in the banking industry's ongoing consolidation.
It would be misguided, in any event, to assume that anyone could - or should - block an arrangement under which new owners will provide basically the services that Dominion did - while cutting $100 million in operating expenses. This is First Union's plan.
The important common denominator in many of the job losses and displacements - at Dominion, Radford and elsewhere - is that they are notcyclical, not the result of downturns in sales. Rather, they result from long-term trends with a reason and momentum of their own, trends distinct from the business cycle's ups and downs, and originating far from home.
So, how are we to respond to economic turbulence from afar? Fatalistic resignation is no improvement over the illusion that we completely control our future. No, for this region's New Year's resolution, we recommend another option:
Let's determine to be realistic.
Consider Reinhold Neibuhr's well-known "Serenity Prayer," written in 1934, a bleaker time than the year just ended. It commends the stoic's wisdom that we (1) accept things we cannot change, (2) change things that should be changed, and (3) learn to distinguish one from the other.
Local residents should accept with a measure of serenity, for example, that in evolving from a headquarters town into a branch-office town, Roanoke is following a national pattern for cities its size.
We certainly need not fret about Roanoke's becoming "another Charlotte." Headaches accompanying little or no growth, not rapid growth, are our real concern.
We also should accept that change is inevitable. At issue isn't whether old jobs will continue to disappear. They will. The issue is whether new jobs - and what kind of them, and how many - will emerge to replace the old ones.
What, then, can be done at the local level, if the courage exists to do it?
Nobody can claim to read the future. But the Hotel Roanoke project stands as one instructive (and currently prominent) piece of the puzzle.
If successful, it will preserve part of the heritage that gives Roanoke a character of its own. In doing so, it will contribute to Roanoke's ability to carve out an identifiable economic niche that puts to fullest advantage the city's and region's particular assets.
If the hotel's renovation and reopening promote tourism, that will broaden the valley's economic base. And perhaps above all, given the information/technology/service economy that seems to be emerging as this century fades into the next, a successful Hotel Roanoke project will cement and expand Virginia Tech's important role.
Capitalizing on existing assets, broadening the economic base, injecting educated innovation: These are necessary parts of the answer. The rest consists in part of nuts-and-bolts sorts of things: honest, efficient and cooperative governments; available and prepared sites for business location; good schools; the nurturing of existing employers; that whole ball of wax - roads, water and sewer facilities, parking garages - known as infrastructure, promotion, land-use planning.
But the answer lies, too, in new thinking. In wisdom. For instance, we must reject the assumption - widely held in the past decade - that we can sustain a situation in which a few advance while many are left behind. We must see anti-poverty efforts and improved race relations as economic development.
We also must reject the assumption that the future is some distant time. It is here and now, in neglected children, subpar schools, feuding municipalities, ill-trained employees, displaced workers left to fend for themselves.
This new year, let us start opening ourselves to new ideas about, say, the region's prospects as an attractive place for retirees to live. About its role as a regional health-care hub, as a destination for eco-tourism and executive-training, as a fiber-optics center. About the possibilities for places like Roanoke and Western Virginia, in this computer era, to become high-skill employment centers linked to home offices elsewhere. About the attractions of becoming a community of businesses and governments committed to total-quality management and continuous improvement.
How satisfactorily Roanoke and Western Virginia will meet the challenges before them hinges on essentially the same things on which depends the fate of the hotel project: the ability to forge public-private partnerships, the cooperation of a variety of key players, the depth of public commitment, the courage of leadership.
But the first requirement is for a realistic assessment of where we are as a region, and where we might try to go.