Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 2, 1994                   TAG: 9402020260
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV1   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG                                 LENGTH: Long

STATE'S EFFORTS TO GAIN INDUSTRY FOUND WANTING

"We're gonna put what I classify as a full-court press," on our top business prospects, said Gary Weddle, president of the New River Valley Economic Development Alliance.

"We've been outhustled."

The Alliance held its quarterly board and membership meeting Tuesday morning at the Blacksburg Marriott.

Over the past few years, attempts to attract businesses to Virginia have come up short, when neighboring states - North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, to name a few - wooed them away with incentives.

The New River Valley has felt that angst, too. Witness Siecor Corp.'s decision to locate in North Carolina last March after Montgomery County poured its financial heart out to bring them to Falling Branch. And there have been other misses.

"Once we get a project to a point, we've got to have the resources to follow them," said the Alliance's executive director, Franklyn Moreno.

Both men - in describing their organization's industry-attracting efforts - said the state needs to help them out.

Specifically, Weddle said in an interview following the session that he would like to see the Governor's Opportunity Fund, $4.5 million that the state can use to sweeten incentives for industries shopping for a home, built up to $20 million.

Moreno favors a state-funded training program that would help defray the costs new industries have to expend to train their workers, he said after the membership meeting.

Weddle is optimistic with Republican George Allen in the governor's mansion. Moreno, whose job includes taking the Alliance's message in person to those who want to hear it, laments White House policies on health care and taxes that have industries nervous about building new plants.

"It's made our job a little more difficult," Moreno said. "Things have been slow. The responses have been slow this year."

Partly because of that, the push needs to be harder close to home as well, they said.

"We need to step up our aggressiveness," Weddle said. "I think we can do a lot to improve our economic situation by improving our methods."

Wednesday, the board of directors approved a move to get the Alliance's prospect team, a group of local economic development directors and Moreno, working more closely with the board.

Weddle wants the Alliance to improve its follow-up with businesses that have expressed interest in the valley. Perhaps delegations should be sent to meet with potential clients, instead of placing the burden solely on Moreno.

"We should be doing everything that we can possibly do, including back flips," Weddle said.this would be a good pullout quote

That's not to say there aren't hopeful signs, though.

Moreno's report on prospect activity noted that 19 companies have at least responded to marketing efforts. That's a third of last year's total. And the fiscal year, which ends in June, is already half over.

But of those 19, seven have made visits to the area, the report said. That equals last year's total and is only one away from the group's goal.

Business people have to feel good about last Saturday's news that the economy surged forward by 5.9 percent during the last three months of 1994, Moreno said. Low interest rates mean businesses have more to spend.

At a trade show he recently attended, the attitude was generally positive, he said. At the same conference, "two years ago, it was like walking in a morgue."

Plus, the New River Valley has a lot to offer, according to a study that was presented at the meeting Tuesday.

Tom Johnson, a Virginia Tech economist, presented two studies focusing on the impact of new industries on the area and what industries the Alliance should target.

Both studies took into account hundreds of factors. "We want a strategy that is neither too focused to be valuable or too shotgunned to be valuable," Johnson said.

According to the targeting studying, which compared characteristics of a thousand communities, the valley is attractive to a host of potential industries.

"There's something for everyone here," Johnson said.

"It shows that we should have a leg up" on the competition, Weddle said of the study, which Johnson said he would finish within a few weeks.

According to the impact study,100 new jobs in the New River Valley would have a mushrooming effect that would bring 107 indirect jobs and would raise retail sales by $2.78 million a year. Two retail establishments would set themselves up for business.

That means that everybody benefits from growth in good jobs, Johnson said.

The study also found that the valley is economically interdependent.

"The valley has a very tight, highly linked economy," Johnson told the crowd. What that means is that people who work here, and businesses that operate here, tend to shop at home, and are able to find legal, manufacturing, consulting and other services close by.

"That tends to be good," Johnson said, "and that tends to be a risk factor as well." When business is good, it's good for everyone; when it's bad, everybody feels the pinch.