Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 23, 1994 TAG: 9402250340
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: D-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Should it get the money?
You bet. And our region's legislative delegation ought to be proud and aggressive in pursuing it.
The danger with Roanoke's planned conference center isn't that too much will go on inside it, but that too little will. There's little point in building the thing if it isn't sufficiently used.
Excellently used will be more like it, if Tech wins approval and funding to install in the conference facility a corporate training center along with traditional continuing education programs.
The idea is exciting on its own merits, as well as for its value to the Roanoke region's economic development. And more to the point, it serves and enhances Tech's state-supported educational mission.
The university's proposal departs not a bit from what has been the hotel project's point from the start - that the new conference center and reopened hotel would support each other, with Tech helping to support the conference center by installing programs and attracting conferees and clients.
Tech-sponsored activities are supposed to fill up to a fourth of the hotel's rooms within a few years. There's obvious need for greater investment in marketing to draw conferences and visitors. But Tech's Center for Organizational and Technological Advancement would help.
It would, according to university officials, offer seminars and short courses aimed at an international clientele. It also would host a think tank and core group of scholars in five fields: engineering, biotechnology, management, education and government. These educators would specialize in transferring new knowledge from academia to the work place.
Is there demand for such a program? No one can say for sure, of course. But, by one estimate, $15 billion is spent annually on management training by corporations alone - not including government and non-profit organizations. In an age when global competitiveness demands lifelong learning, this is surely a growth industry.
And universities are a natural provider. While the business world is turning increasingly to higher education for such training, universities still account for a relatively small percentage of total revenues. Tech's proposal offers, at a competitive scale, an important entry for Virginia into this burgeoning market.
For staff and support for the new center, Tech is seeking $1.7 million for each year of the 1994-96 biennium. Tech officials want to install big-name faculty figures who'll be a strong draw for clients and students. With competitive meeting facilities, it makes sense to make sure the programming also is competitive.
And keep in mind: Not a penny of state taxpayers' money has gone, or is being sought, for the hotel. Tech is asking for funding only for educational operations.
And while the Center for Global Studies at Radford University and other such programs have asked the state for major capital appropriations to build facilities, Tech is asking for none. It has joined in a unique and impressive public-private partnership with the city and the community to build this conference center.
The state can help put something worthy inside.
by CNB