Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 13, 1993 TAG: 9302150272
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
VALLEY CAN'T COMPETE WITH `IMAGE' PROJECTS
NOW THAT the hoopla over funding the Hotel Roanoke project is settling down, we should look at why Roanoke does not have its priorities straight and is so eager to embrace marginal projects as the salvation to job loss and growth.We should ask the valley leadership why are the major focus projects (Hotel Roanoke, Dominion Tower, Explore, smart highway) losers by any economic-development standards. Why do we have such myopic leadership that can only focus on projects of image and not substance? Why did Roanoke become an All-American City on deficit-funded projects in which it had little to no investment?
Part of the answer is that private-sector entrepreneurial people are not as involved as are the salaried government and academic planners who have little real-world experience and never risked $100 of their own money in any venture. All around us we have city councils, boards of supervisors and government planners with little real-world financial-risk experience making decisions for taxpayers on how to spend millions of public dollars on projects that are more political than real economic-development projects.
If we are really concerned about job loss in the valley, leadership should be cutting out the image projects for real-world projects. For instance, shell buildings for new industry, helping existing small businesses to expand and prosper, assisting the private sector in starting new enterprises.
Imagine what benefits the Roanoke Valley could realize if the $150 million cost of the 10-mile (Virginia Tech to Roanoke) smart highway were spent on real economic-development activity instead of a politically based image project of very questionable economic benefit. The $150 million would build 100 shell buildings, plus a $125 million four-year college campus in Roanoke.
The Roanoke Valley will never catch up with North Carolina's competing areas with image projects, despite all the promises of politicians and academics "that they will come" if we do this marginal project. Let's get back to real-world projects involving the private-sector entrepreneurial people. Banks are ready to lend money on solid ventures. Let's encourage existing businesses of the valley to create new jobs (nationally, small businesses represent 60 percent of new jobs generated), get government out of the way of expansion and focus on real-benefit projects, not images. ROY LOCHNER ROANOKE