Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 4, 1994 TAG: 9409210022
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: D-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By JOHN B. WILLIAMSON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The absurdity of the newspaper's economic-news-coverage approach on Aug. 20.
The real issue for industrial development in the Roanoke Valley.
Your news article stated that Sematco's move to Botetourt County was a ``wash for the region's economy'' and that ``Botetourt's gain is Roanoke's loss.'' Both comments are inaccurate, misleading, and reflective of a fundamental lack of understanding of the Sematco move and the significant events announced on Aug. 19 in Fincastle.
The Sematco move will preserve 25 jobs that could have left the valley, create 15 new jobs in the valley, create 28,500 square feet of new manufacturing floor space (expandable to double that level), make available to the development community approximately 10,000 square feet of usable space to attract another start-up industry in Southwest Roanoke, and provide nearly $2 million in incremental tax base. Hardly a regional economic wash.
And while I'm sure the city of Roanoke would prefer not to temporarily lose tax base, they understand and encourage expansion of local business and will, no doubt, capitalize on the now available former Sematco site for future prospects.
However, Sematco wasn't the major news of Aug. 19. The public signing of an agreement to build a 75,000-square-foot shell building, expandable to 150,000 square feet, along with the expansion of East Park Commerce Center, was. And it's a major step forward for industrial development in the valley. It's the first such project since the shell building was built in the Center for Industry and Technology approximately six years ago, and reflects a great deal of planning and effort.
The Roanoke Valley Development Foundation (a nonprofit, local business-funded foundation staffed by the Regional Chamber of Commerce), after a request from the Economic Development Partnership, agreed to consider investing in a shell building to attract industrial prospects. Following a request from the Partnership, four valley governments submitted site proposals and the East Park Commerce Center site was selected.
This project is a significant example of cooperative efforts among valley governments, the business community, the development foundation, the economic development partnership and the regional chamber. After months of advocating regional cooperation and the need for proactive steps toward economic development, it's disappointing this newspaper fails to recognize it when it happens.
Also disappointing are your recent comparisons of the Roanoke Valley to Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham, and the seemingly endless, and sometimes self-serving, published quotations by armchair developers, academicians and suitcase development consultants offering simplistic and unrealistic pronouncements of what the valley needs to do.
We cannot mirror Charlotte's development with its international airport, flat land and multiple interstates. We also will not mirror the Raleigh-Durham area with its multiple universities, interstates and flat, often free, land. Frankly, we shouldn't waste our energies trying to mimic these communities. The newspaper and its staff have invested a significant amount of research time and print space on comparisons to such communities while overlooking the most fundamental local issues.
The Roanoke Valley is the medical, banking and retail hub of Western Virginia with a moderate industrial base and a modest, but growing convention and tourism trade. The industrial base is attracted to this area primarily by reasonable labor cost, low energy costs, a reasonable quality of life and all that entails, and the all-important transportation lifelines of Interstate 81, the railroad and the regional airport.
We appear to be moving in the right direction with our efforts at convention and tourism development, revitalization of downtown and rebuilding Hotel Roanoke. Of course, we need to continue the development of real links between Explore Park, downtown and the Blue Ridge Parkway, as well as our efforts to link with Virginia Tech and the New River Valley.
But, with respect to industrial development, the valley's greatest need is for more available choice industrial sites and buildings with adequate infrastructure in place. There's a critical shortage of ``ready-to-go'' industrial land and buildings in the valley at a time when industrial-prospect interest and visits are at an all-time high.
Several local governments are attempting incrementally to address these issues, with recent decisions to expand existing industrial parks or to acquire new ones. However, even with the planned expansions, the valley will still have very limited offerings. We can have all the visioning, strategic planning and governmental cooperation imaginable, but a major industrial prospect will seldom select a marginal and expensive site in the Roanoke Valley over a flat, free site in North Carolina, complete with significant state-government incentives, all other things being equal.
I believe we're beginning to make progress, and the counties of Botetourt, Roanoke and Franklin have begun to recognize their responsibilities in industrial land development and job creation. Just a few short years ago, the cities of Roanoke and Salem were the only providers of quality industrial sites. The surrounding counties now are taking over some of that burden.
If this newspaper and its readers want to help promote industrial development and creation of manufacturing jobs in the valley, then they need to encourage their local governments to make additional investments in industrial land, roads, utilities and cooperative regional marketing now. They must also reward local governments with recognition and approval when they do make tough land-use choices and significant financial investments for the valley's economic future.
Attempting to pit one locality against another, as in calling the Aug. 19 announcement a win for Botetourt at Roanoke's expense, merely reinforces old, short-sighted attitudes and institutional habits that governments are genuinely trying to outgrow. It's also time the newspaper outgrows them. Divisive headlines, coupled with stories unfavorably and inappropriately comparing the Roanoke Valley to non-peer communities, may make interesting reading and help to sell newspapers, but it certainly doesn't help sell the need for real economic development investment to our local governments burdened with tough funding decisions, or lead to sound economic planning.
Certainly we need to follow through on our visioning process, and looking at other communities' failures and successes may be useful. However, as we envision and plan, we must understand and act on the fact that new high-paying manufacturing jobs for the year 2000, if they are to exist, must come from well-planned industrial development parks, water and sewer capacity projects, and public school curriculum improvements that must be started in 1995.
As for wringing our hands over why we do not look and sound like Charlotte, or Raleigh-Durham or Asheville, or whatever other high-growth geographically advantaged community some publish-or-perish reporter or consultant dreams up, let us stop such self-defeating and useless behavior; or at least leave it to the consultants and academicians featured in recent articles.
John B. Williamson is vice president of Roanoke Gas Co., president of the Economic Development Partnership of the Roanoke Valley, and former administrator for Nelson and Botetourt counties.
by CNB