Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 25, 1993 TAG: 9304230452
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Dwayne Yancey/Staff writer
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
No. 1: What kind of economic base does the Roanoke Valley want and how does it get there?
In 1988, a Massachusetts marketing research firm that studied the valley concluded that, to really grow in terms of jobs and population, it "needs to add not just more businesses or manufacturers, but a whole new industry, and what that industry might be is not now apparent." Five years later, it still isn't.
Marshall University President Wade Gilley, who has written on economic development, says that's why the Roanoke Valley needs a strategy for creating new jobs and retaining old ones.
The 1980s were tough for many midsized cities across the country, Gilley says, but he believes the 1990s will be different for some. "I'm convinced a lot of the growth will come in medium-sized cities because of their quality of life," Gilley says. "We're at the point there can be a real revival of medium-sized cities - but only for the places that have a strategy and vision." Specifically, he says, only for those places that focus on attracting certain types of industries.
"There are 25,000 economic development organizations in the country, and there are 1,000 new plants that employ more than 100 people in one year," Gilley says. Instead of taking a scattershot approach, communities should specialize in certain fields, Gilley says.
What kind of jobs should the Roanoke Valley try to attract? What kind of jobs can it attract? Those are the visionary questions Gilley says the valley needs to be asking.
\ No. 2: How can the Roanoke Valley make up for not having a university?
"The driving force for economic development in the next century," Gilley writes, will be science and technology. The emergence of an economy based on science and technology is reorganizing what Gilley calls the nation's economic geography. "The intersection of three rivers and a railroad no longer ensures the development of a vibrant economic center. Rather than raw materials and transportation corridors, the driving forces behind 21st century economics are brain power and high-tech communications systems."
That's good and bad news for cities the size of Roanoke that were built on the old rules. "Technology makes it possible for communities and regions large and small to build a new economy," Gilley says. But the key is a university, one big enough that its research will spin off high-tech companies nearby. Gilley recently completed a study of 100 midsized U.S. cities. The ones doing well economically all had one thing in common: a university.
Roanoke is one of the larger cities around without a four-year state university. That's led some valley leaders to look for ways to adopt Virginia Tech, 41 miles away, as its university. It's prompted a smaller group of people to advocate setting up a "University of Roanoke." Yet the Roanoke Valley Poll showed little interest, among either the general public or elected officials, in making "closer ties with Virginia Tech" a high priority. Gilley says that's a dangerous miscalculation and a sign that the valley lacks the visionary leadership necessary to create the jobs of the future. "Visionary administrators believe competitive 21st century communities will require a pervasive, top-notch university presence," he writes.
Roanoke may want to look to Lewiston, Maine, and Spokane, Wash., as models on how to make up for not having a university:
Lewiston was a slow-growth factory city that coveted closer ties to the fast-growing University of Southern Maine 30 miles away in Portland. In 1989, Lewiston persuaded the university to build a new school specializing in health sciences and management in Lewiston.
Spokane was more similar: A slow-growth railroad city, with a several small colleges in town and a land-grant university about 50 miles away. Spokane's response was threefold. First, it persuaded the local colleges and two out-of-town universities to set up a continuing education center in Spokane, much as Tech has talked about doing in Roanoke. Those schools then joined in establishing a $10.9 million research center in Spokane, devoted primarily to information technologies and biotechnology. Finally, one of the local colleges built its own $20 million center devoted to information technology. All told, the schools have spent $150 million in construction costs alone to create a higher education base in Spokane.
\ No. 3: Is the Roanoke Valley doing what it should to educate a work force for the jobs of the future?
U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich contends that, in a global marketplace where jobs can move easily across national borders, certain low-skilled jobs will gravitate toward Third World countries where labor is cheaper. Because the United States can't compete with developing countries on wages, it must compete on brainpower. He says the United States must better educate its work force to corner the market on high-skilled jobs. Put simply, many well-paying blue-collar jobs will disappear and, in the future, education will determine income more than ever before in this country, Reich says.
This principle applies to cities and regions: To attract the jobs of the future, a locality's greatest selling point will be the education of its work force. Austin, Texas, now emerging as a high-tech center, boasts one of the best-educated work forces in the country; two of every three adults there can use computers, and nearly 40 percent have college or graduate degrees. But Radford University organizational behaviorist Reginald Shareef wonders whether Roanoke Valley leaders have made that point clearly enough to the taxpayers who will have to foot the bill for better schools.
He notes that the Roanoke Valley Poll shows the biggest group of Roanokers hankering for the valley to be an industrial center. That's natural, he says, but it's up to political leaders to paint a picture of what the jobs of the future may really be like. "If people are still out talking about manufacturing jobs, that tells you we don't have good leadership in the city."
Former Gov. Linwood Holton, who heads the state's Center for Innovative Technology, warns that the Roanoke Valley shouldn't be concerned simply about how it educates its youth, but how neighboring localities educate theirs. After all, he says, the valley draws its job market from a wide swath of rural Western Virginia.
\ No. 4: Should the Roanoke Valley start planning to position itself as the logical site for companies involved in "smart-road" highway technology research?
Then-Roanoke Mayor Noel Taylor was considered farsighted in 1986 when he trumpeted building a road between Interstate 81 and Blacksburg to shave time off the drive between Roanoke and Virginia Tech. Former Roanoke County Supervisor Dick Robers was considered visionary in 1989 when he suggested that Western Virginia try to make the "direct link" a testing ground for the computerized highway technology that some say will revolutionize transportation in the next century. That idea has been embraced by many Roanoke Valley leaders, who believe the smart road would be a magnet for high-tech companies.
Some progress has been made toward the road. It's been authorized - but not funded - by the state. The federal government and some auto companies have put up money toward smart-road research at Tech. Road backers are hopeful that the Clinton administration, which wants to spend $224 million on smart-road research, will direct some of it toward the project.
But Roanoke Mayor David Bowers says the Roanoke Valley should be looking farther ahead and setting aside land in western Roanoke County to be the home to a miniature Research Triangle-style industrial park for the high-tech companies that want to be near the smart road. If the valley doesn't act now, Bowers warns, the land may be eaten up by residential development.
Roanoke County has created a 177-acre industrial site at Glenvar and named it Valley TechPark, but County Administrator Elmer Hodge concedes this is just a baby step toward creating the research park Bowers is talking about. The complications highlight the need for regional planning: The road would be entirely in Montgomery County. The road's strongest backers are in Roanoke. The land they're looking at as the best site to develop is in Roanoke County. "All I can do is talk about it," Bowers says.
Meanwhile, his question about whether the valley is doing all it should to make itself a smart-highway research center shines a light on two larger issues. The first is leadership. Who is looking out for the region on smart-highway funding? Right now, the push has come mostly from a loose-knit group of business leaders and academics; local governments simply have gone along for the ride.
The second is the whole issue of emerging technologies. The Roanoke Valley got interested in smart highways because Robers stumbled upon a story in the Wall Street Journal. Who is tracking other technologies and what they might mean for the Roanoke Valley?
\ No. 5: Should the Roanoke Valley try to create a tourism industry? If so, how?
Some critics contend tourism creates mostly low-wage jobs. Nevertheless, both Roanoke and Roanoke County have embraced tourism as an industry they would like to grow, partly as a way to boost sales tax revenues and maintain the health of shops on the City Market. However, travel industry professionals talk about the Roanoke Valley having little "leisure infrastructure." Translated, that means there's not much to do here. Specifically, there's no big "destination attraction."
Some travel boosters contend the Roanoke Valley should promote the mountains as its destination attraction the way Asheville, N.C., does. But two economic development experts say that's misguided. Lots of places have mountains, says Bob deVoursney, at the University of Virginia's Center for Public Service: The Roanoke Valley needs something more. Second, says Hugh Keogh, the head of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, there's not much to do in Virginia's mountains - at least not much that will result in tourists spending the money that tourism boosters have in mind. Tourists go to the beach with a mind-set of buying every souvenir in sight, he says. Tourists come to the Blue Ridge, he says, to "enjoy the mountains in a more private way that doesn't impact the economy as much."
The only way for the valley to make big bucks out of tourism, Keogh says, "is with the development of attractions to complement the natural beauty of the mountains. You need a magnet." The Explore Park was intended as such, but its scale has shrunk as funding has proved scarce. Furthermore, the attitude of valley governments toward Explore has been mixed, with the county warm and the city cool. Now some Roanoke County supervisors seem hesitant to put more money into the living-history state park. How realistic is the valley's push for tourism if it doesn't have a major attraction or any immediate prospects for one?
\ No. 6: Is the Roanoke Valley doing all it can to "grow" existing companies - or sprout new ones that will feed off the valley's existing economy?
Creating jobs doesn't just mean chasing out-of-town companies that are expanding or moving. Four of five new jobs in the United States are created by existing businesses expanding in their home regions. But this doesn't always happen automatically, urban policy analysts say; sometimes cities have to jump-start the process. This is a three-part vision, they say.
First, communities must know themselves. Gilley touts what he calls his "shopping mall" model of economic development. He studied 100 midsized cities. The most economically successful ones, he found, evolved just like shopping malls - they each had four or five major types of industries, similar to a mall's anchor stores. Moreover, just as speciality clothing stores pop up to feed off the traffic generated by the mall's big department stores, secondary businesses had grown up in each community to take advantage of the presence of the major industries. If a city was a medical center, small businesses making and selling hospital supplies tended to be nearby.
Gilley suggests cities trying to create new jobs should look first at this model - figure out what the community's big economic anchors are, then look to see what secondary niches aren't filled, and encourage entrepreneurs to exploit them. Where do the big companies do their printing? If out of town, maybe there's room for a printing company to pick up some new business.
But communities shouldn't look only within their own borders, warns Bob Heinz, Ohio economic development consultant; they should track developments throughout their region to identify new markets for hometown companies that might not have the resources to spot them on their own. Take the Eastman Kodak photo-chemical plant in Kingsport, Tenn. Roanoke Valley leaders should find out where Kodak buys supplies, then promote companies here as potential replacements that might be cheaper than traditional ones farther away, he says.
Finally, communities must actively help new companies get started. One way is a "business incubator" program in which a city supplies free or cheap office space, secretarial help and business advice to entrepreneurs getting started. Lynchburg has a program, and former congressional candidate Steve Musselwhite spent much of his campaign last year vowing to spread it throughout the 6th District. He lost, but Roanoke accountant Hope Player and state Sen. Brandon Bell, R-Roanoke County, have been looking at the same thing.
\ No. 7: Why did the Roanoke Valley's population growth come to a halt in the 1980s?
During the 1950s, '60s and '70s, the valley's rate of population growth nearly matched the state's rate, despite the swelling suburbs around Washington, Richmond and Norfolk. In the 1950s, the valley's population grew 10.5 percent. During the 1960s, 14 percent. During the 1970s, 11 percent. Well into the 1980s, demographers were predicting the Roanoke Valley's population would keep growing. But something happened, and the valley's population growth nearly ground to a halt - just 2 percent.
That's fine with many people. The Roanoke Valley Poll shows strong sentiment against population growth. But former Gov. Gerald Baliles warns there's a direct connection between population growth and economic growth. The former tends to reflect the latter; people have a way of voting with their feet, and moving to where the jobs are.
So perhaps the question ought to be: What happened in the valley's economy that caused so few people, on balance, to want to move here during the 1980s? And is this phenomenon likely to repeat itself in the 1990s and beyond? That might be a more popular question: For all of the valley's resistance to population growth, the same poll shows a deep concern that the valley doesn't provide enough job opportunities.
Furthermore, while the surface of the water may have been relatively still, some deep cross-currents were at work in the Roanoke Valley's population in the 1980s. Already older than in most cities this size in the Southeast, the valley's population became even older during the 1980s.
What does this mean for the economy? That's why crunching the census numbers is a key part of a community's search for vision. When community leaders in Lorain, Ohio, did this, they were shocked to discover that many workers at the city's factories were nearing retirement age - and that few youngsters were interested in replacing them. Fearing that when the retirements hit the companies would be forced to close factories and move away to find new workers, the community embarked on a campaign to encourage teens to consider a factory job.
\ No. 8: Which museums and other cultural attractions should the Roanoke Valley try to expand?
Visionary communities agree on what they are trying to do, says Tyler Norris of the National Civic League, and then all the major players - governments, businesses, philanthropies - work to make the plan happen. It's crucial, he says, that the most well-heeled citizens are lined up behind a community's strategy, because large-scale private contributions are usually necessary to build or expand cultural projects.
Aside from Center in the Square, there seems little consensus in the Roanoke Valley on which groups or projects deserve attention. The result: None approaches marquee status.
Consider the valley's history of deciding which projects to rally behind: In the mid-1980s, the city liked the idea of expanding Mill Mountain Zoo into a major attraction, but then the valley's old-guard business leaders picked up the idea, bankrolled a private foundation to pull it off - and the idea transmuted into the Explore Park. Now Roanoke County says Explore is its top priority. But Bowers says expanding the Virginia Museum of Transportation should be the city's top priority. And the tiny zoo lingers on, with a new expansion plan - and no money to make it happen. Those aren't the only projects competing for attention and funds. There's the new Rescue Squad Museum inside Center in the Square, and the proposed D-Day Memorial, to name two.
\ No. 9: Should there be better roads directly linking the Roanoke Valley with Smith Mountain Lake?
Bowers says yes, as a way to funnel shoppers from the fast-growing areas around the lake into the city. Right now, the main roads between Roanoke and the lake are narrow or winding, or both - Virginia 643 through Hardy and Virginia 116 over Windy Gap Mountain.
Bowers is not the first Roanoke Valley leader to look for ways to tie Roanoke closer to the lake. In the mid-1980s, then-City Manager Bern Ewert touted an even more ambitious proposal - a 25-mile road that would run from Interstate 81 at Dixie Caverns, through the heart of the the city alongside the Roanoke River, to Smith Mountain Lake. Ewert's idea was for a scenic route, rather than a conventional highway.
Ewert nearly pulled off part of his proposal: The National Park Service agreed to study the idea, and endorsed a segment from Vinton to Hardy Ford as worthy of a federal parkway. Congress and the state put up $15 million to build the road. But further studies found that building a scenic parkway through the rugged terrain might cost seven times that. As a result, the once-grand parkway has been reduced to a 2\ -mile access road between the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Explore Park that is supposed to be completed in 1996.
Which brings the valley back to the original question. Bowers emphasizes he's not pushing for an entirely new road like Ewert was; he would just like to see Virginia 116 widened and straightened. But one of the complications here is the same as with the smart-road research park idea: Planning a road to the lake would involve at least three, and maybe more, jurisdictions.
by CNB