Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 26, 1993 TAG: 9304260018
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
One in five Roanokers says the valley suffers from "little community vision." But more than half the local elected officials who answered the Roanoke College survey say the same thing.
That's effectively a vote of no confidence in themselves, says Bob Matson at the University of Virginia, who heads the Center for Public Service section that works with localities to develop community leadership.
If there's a vision problem in a community, he says, it's really a leadership problem.
That's a view chanted by urban policy analysts like a mantra. The cities that have a vision of where they're headed share one thing in common: Someone took charge and rallied people behind them and their vision.
"There is somebody who takes it as their will and destiny," says Chad Floyd, an urban consultant in Connecticut.
"There's always a champion," says Tyler Norris of the National Civic League, the Denver-based group that hands out the All-America City awards.
Sometimes that champion is a charismatic or strong-willed politician. In Baltimore, it was mayor - now governor - Don Shaeffer, who's credited with pushing a downtown revival plan that led to the creation of Harborplace and the National Aquarium. In San Antonio, it was another mayor - Henry Cisneros, now the U.S. secretary of housing and urban development.
But a city's champion doesn't come from the political arena, urban policy analysts say. "The reason why elected officials don't do this is obvious," says Glen Hiemstra, an organizational consultant from Redmond, Wash. "There's no reward for them to think beyond their terms. Even political leaders who believe in the value of a long-term vision know their time horizon is usually two to four years, so it's an unusual political leader who'll get into this."
Hiemstra was recently in the Roanoke Valley to speak to business leaders trying to organize just such a long-range economic development plan. That's not unusual. In city after city, the leadership for vision springs from the business community:
In Austin, it was the former dean of the business school at the University of Texas who saw the city's future in high technology. In the mid-1980s, George Kozmetsky proposed Austin set up a center for science and technology commercialization, sold the idea to local officials, business leaders and academics, then helped raise money to get it started.
Soon, a consortium of Fortune 500 companies and the federal government began directing work on advanced computer technologies to the Texas prairie.
Today, Austin is home to more than 200 software companies and 15 computer-chip factories. Two of the fastest-growing makers of personal computers - Dell Computer Corp. and CompuAdd Computer Corp. - are homegrown companies. California leaders are issuing reports on how Austin has eclipsed Silicon Valley. And the Washington Post calls Kozmetsky "the leading architect, guru and visionary of the Austin technopolis."
In Spartanburg, S.C., it was the head of the chamber of commerce who in the 1960s saw the demise of the South's textile industry. In response, Dick Tukey pursued European investors, and today the uplands of South Carolina boast the highest per-capita foreign investment anywhere in the country.
More than 185 foreign companies have moved into the Spartanburg area, creating 41,000 jobs. The latest is the German carmaker BMW, which recently picked Spartanburg as the site for a factory that is projected to hire 2,000 workers by the mid-1990s.
The Washington Post has called Spartanburg a classic example of "how a region can retool itself" after its dominant industry dies.
But visionary leadership doesn't have to come from just one person.
In Charlotte, there's an ever-shifting group of business leaders who provide a critical mass of leadership, says Bill McCoy, who heads the Institute for Urban Studies at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. In Charlotte, he says, the key is not so much the people as the city's personality.
Once he was invited to slow-growth Dayton, Ohio, to talk to leaders there about Charlotte's economic rise.
"I tried to pump them up and they just sat there," McCoy says. "At the heart of the problem is a problem of attitude, and that's what so refreshing about being in a place like this. It's positive, it's can-do. If an idea comes up, the response is, `We'll find a way to do this.' You can just feel the energy."
He cites the construction of the 23,532-seat Charlotte Coliseum. When proposed, the city had no apparent need for an arena that big. But business leaders put together a "committee of 100" - including neighborhood leaders - to push through the proposal.
"It was about three years from the time the power group decided we needed it until we got one," McCoy says. By then, the National Basketball Association had awarded Charlotte an expansion team.
No matter where the visionary leadership comes from, though, eventually it must depend on political support to be enacted.
"There has to be a political leadership to create the foundation," Floyd says. "That political leadership is really critical."
Why no vision?
If the Roanoke Valley is so concerned about jobs, and if so many elected officials say the valley lacks a strategy to create them, then how come? Why isn't there a single plan, a single vision? Ask around, and the reasons offered are as different as the options being put forward.
Roanoke Vice Mayor Beverly Fitzpatrick has long maintained that the railroad was so dominant for so long that it stunted the development of local leaders, political and in business. In short, too many people grew up expecting the railroad to take care of the community and never became accustomed to dealing with long-range problems and solutions.
McCoy says it sounds like the Roanoke Valley suffers from a leadership gap that typically opens up when a community's big companies move their headquarters out of town.
The key in Charlotte, he says, is not that its business leaders are involved, but who its business leaders are. For the most part, they're CEOs - something Roanoke has steadily lost with the departure of company headquarters. When Charlotte recently set up a committee on regional planning, it was NationsBank Chairman Hugh McColl who chaired the panel. This, McCoy says, guaranteed the panel's recommendations would be taken seriously.
It's not just that Charlotte's top executives are thinking about the future, McCoy says; they're in a position to act on it. The business leaders possess enough stature in the community that they can rally support for causes - be it a new coliseum or a regional economic development plan - that mere elected officials can't.
"If Hugh McColl wants something done, it gets done," McCoy says. "There's no arguing whether the city wants it or the county wants it. All he has to do is say `we want this, or we'll move to Atlanta.' There is a power elite, rather benevolent and rather benign . . . With losing the railroad and the bank, you probably have a paucity of leadership like that."
There are some people in the Roanoke Valley's business community who have tried to take the lead on major public policy issues over the past decade, but their record has been mixed.
Such old-guard leaders as Roanoke Electric Steel founder John Hancock and Grand Piano Chairman George Cartledge, both now in their 80s, were instrumental in creating Center in the Square. But they've been unable to duplicate that success with the Explore Park.
Dominion Bankshares Chairman Warner Dalhouse spearheaded the construction of the Dominion Tower, but his outspoken role in pushing consolidation backfired.
For a time, former City Manager Bern Ewert qualified as Roanoke's visionary leader. "He was one hell of a leader," says Floyd, the Connecticut consultant, who worked on Roanoke's downtown projects in the 1970s and '80s. "People might quarrel with the way he did them, but he made things happen."
The revival of the City Market, which occurred mostly under Ewert's administration, was hailed in urban planning circles around the country.
When Ewert saw the region's economy stalling out in the mid-1980s, his vision turned to tourism. Or, specifically, the Explore Park. But Ewert's vision was not shared by all, and never became a regional vision. In any event, Ewert's strength was rooted in the backing he received from Hancock and Cartledge and other old-line business leaders. They helped bankroll the nonprofit foundation set up to create Explore. But when Ewert proved a fund-raising dud on the national circuit, the foundation cut him loose.
Despite the Explore debacle, Floyd says the city manager-era Ewert is the prototype of a municipal visionary - farsighted, energetic, able to command support from business leaders, council members and neighborhood groups. "There's a Bern Ewert-type in each one of these cities that has vision."
Blind to vision?
With no commanding corporate presence that can galvanize public opinion behind a particular vision, McCoy suspects long-range economic planning falls more to local governments in the Roanoke Valley than in other communities. But Hollins College economist Mary Houska notes that local officials tend to run on neighborhood issues rather than the mega-issues affecting the entire region.
Former Cave Spring Supervisor Dick Robers - who may someday be remembered as "the father of the smart road" - was criticized for being more interested in big issues than he was in little ones, such as some controversial rezonings where he voted the "wrong" way. In many ways, his defeat stands as a cautionary tale for why politicians should be wary of getting involved in "the vision thing."
Catawba Supervisor Ed Kohinke says voters aren't especially interested in the big issues surrounding economic development - even though the poll shows complaints about "the vision thing" are concentrated in Roanoke County. "You start talking `economic development' to some of 'em and their eyes glaze over. They say, `Hey, we don't care about that. What about the drainage project you promised?' "
Local governments may be unable to forge a regional vision on how to create jobs - and what kind - for other reasons.
Nickens says local elected officials, who serve part time, don't have the time to wrestle with issues that big.
Kohinke wonders whether it's even government's job to be in the business of creating a vision. "Deep down inside, we'd all like to see someone else come along and take the bull by the horns and provide leadership. It's hard for government. It's not that we're not concerned, but I've got less than three years left in my term. What can I do to influence things 20 years from now?"
Bowers - elected to council on a consolidation platform and still eager to beat the merger drum - blames a multiplicity of governments for making it difficult to harness everyone behind a single goal. The city-county consolidation plan defeated in 1990 could have solved that, he laments. "The vision is there, but we haven't been given the tools. We're operating with old-fashioned government structures. No one wants to tackle the Balkanization of local governments."
So each government pursues its own objectives and ignores the valleywide consequences, Bowers says. "There's no better example of that than the hotel. It's a shame there was no other government than the city participating. We had no cooperation on the No. 1 economic development project in the valley, and we had to compete for banking jobs" when the city and county got into a bidding war to land the 400 consumer-loan and credit-card jobs First Union is transferring here.
What Bowers calls "the balkanization" of valley governments isn't confined to jurisdictional lines. City Council and the Board of Supervisors are themselves factionalized; on council, there are three distinct factions, none able to muster a majority on its own.
Then there's Virginia Tech urban geographer Susan Brooker-Gross, who suggests that maybe the valley already has a vision and the problem is that some business and political leaders refuse to buy into it.
She's studied the Roanoke Valley Poll, which showed that two-thirds of the citizens want the valley's population to stay about the size it is now.
Those in the minority who want faster growth tend to be the same ones who complain there's "little community vision" - those with college degrees and those who make more than $40,000 per year. Maybe they're the ones who are out of step, she says.
"The thing that struck me [in the poll] was there is a clear vision of Roanoke that's expressed in being small, friendly, stable," she says. "That may not be a vision people in upper-income groups like, and that's the problem."
The catch, she says, is the people who say they don't want much population growth turn around and say they do want economic growth. Anyone pushing a vision must emphasize that the goal is the latter, not the former, she says.
Urban policy analysts say in cities with a strong no-growth faction, those trying to create a vision must stress that its goal is to preserve the things the community holds dear.
That, says Hiemstra, the Redmond, Wash., futurist, is what vision is all about: To make sure a community's future doesn't just happen, but that things turn out the way people want them to.
He cites a railroad-track analogy that ought to be close to the hearts of Roanokers. Once he saw a hand-lettered sign that read: "It takes 21 seconds for the train to pass this crossing, whether you're on the tracks on not."
Some communities see the future barreling toward them, he says, so they try to get on the tracks and stop it, a futile gesture at best.
Others decide to climb on board the train and ride it to wherever it takes them, then try to adapt once they get there.
The visionary communities get on the train, he says, and try to drive it where they want to go.
The question he posed to the Roanoke Valley Business Council is: Does Roanoke know where it wants to go?
Are we alone? For all of the obstacles the Roanoke region faces in forging a vision, one thought is comforting. What's happening here is not unique.
Some urban policy analysts say there's a predictable life cycle that cities long dominated by one industry go through - one that appears to be playing out in Roanoke.
In the past, says Norris of the National Civic League, it was fairly easy for such cities to have a vision, because only a handful of business leaders had real power.
"In the old days, everyone could meet at the coffee shop and decide, and that vision was the common vision," Norris says. Now, adds Heimstra, "the days when four people could get together and solve everything are gone."
He picked the number four at random, but he was uncannily close to the truth: In Roanoke, the Monday afternoon cocktail sessions Hancock holds at his Avenham Avenue home are legendary. Many a politician - from councilmen to future governors - has been summoned there for command performances.
When such a city hits an economic rough spot, this old guard typically responds by proposing a headline-making attraction, McCoy says. And for the first time, their idea flops.
"It's the swan song of the old guard," McCoy says. "The old guard crowd gets really out of touch with what's happening in the wider community, so often they make dumb proposals. In Louisville, the old guard leadership proposed a river-oriented development downtown which has only partially happened." Here, Explore - another grand idea that has only partially happened - may have been the last stand of the Roanoke Valley's old guard.
"Every city has their own version of that story," Norris says, "and for the first time, the old boys don't call the shots anymore. These smaller local groups have popped up to stop them." Yet these new political forces - neighborhood groups, taxpayer associations, ethnic minorities, whatever - are scattered. While they may possess enough power to kill an idea, they don't have enough muscle to start one - or even feel the responsibility to try.
The result is gridlock, or drift.
That, these urban policy analysts say, is where the Roanoke Valley stands now. "The only way to get things done is to build coalitions," Norris says, to get these disparate groups to look beyond their particular issue and feel responsibility toward the entire community. In short, he says, "you need to build a new vision."
That's harder to do in cities with a large blue-collar population, McCoy says. "Blue-collar workers are more traditional, more afraid of change, and because of education and training, the least prepared to deal with change." Somehow, McCoy says, they need to be shown that economic changes are coming regardless, and the community must act to prepare itself.
The current economic climate helps make that point clearer, Heimstra says. "What is beginning to dawn on people is that things are truly different, that we're not just going through another business cycle. People who were laid off are not going back to their old jobs, because those jobs are gone now. People are waking up that business-as-usual is over."
Still, McCoy says, nothing happens in a community until someone takes charge - typically, that's a new generation of business leaders who organize themselves and hire an outside consultant to facilitate a communitywide series of meetings to create a "vision."
That process may already have started in the Roanoke Valley. The Roanoke Valley Business Council - a group of major employers headed by Thomas Robertson, president of Carilion Health System - has announced its intention to draft a long-range economic plan for the Roanoke and New River valleys. The council seems to be moving rapidly, by Roanoke standards: The proposal has been endorsed by the region's chambers of commerce; Virginia Tech has agreed to help; and the council has heard from six consulting firms interested in facilitating the process.
However, the council hasn't elicited the active support of political leaders that urban policy analysts say is critical. But sometimes, McCoy says, that support must be won over grudgingly.
He's seen that happen in Monroe, N.C., where his Institute for Urban Studies is involved in working on a community vision plan. "The city and county hated each other, they wouldn't even speak to each other," McCoy says. There, the chamber of commerce brought officials of the localities together beneath the umbrella of a regionwide committee. "At first, it wasn't threatening because they didn't think it was going to do anything," McCoy says. "It took six months before they opened up to one another, but the chamber guy kept calling meetings."
Now, he says, "they've bonded and become a cohesive unit, and they're pushing us to go faster than we had intended to go."
by CNB