Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 19, 1995 TAG: 9501190067
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-14 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Today, with its central East Coast location, Roanoke remains a transportation hub. But much is changing.
The railroad thrives, but is headquartered elsewhere and no longer dominates the local economy. Truck and air-freight traffic is growing in importance. And, as the latest installment in the "Peril and Promise" series noted on Sunday, order-fulfillment centers are popping up in the Roanoke Valley, for deliveries both to retail catalogue-sales consumers and to wholesalers and manufacturers.
What to make of such changes? Is the distribution industry our region's proverbial gift horse?
In the first place, some changes reflect broad economic forces that no single region can control - and that promise general, long-term benefit, even if particular, short-term effects may prove painful.
Rail employment has declined, for example, because technological advance has cut the size of the needed labor force. On the other hand, technological advance - such as computerized, cost-saving, just-in-time delivery systems - has also fostered the growth of distribution centers in centrally located places like Roanoke. The growth of the retail-catalogue business has been fed by sophisticated direct-mailing and by growth in the number of working women. In a word: progress.
Second, the sum of such changes should not be measured in numbers of jobs alone. Distribution businesses provide jobs to replace old ones that have disappeared - one reason why unemployment in the Roanoke Valley has been consistently low and less volatile than in many other places. (The adjacent New River Valley, struggling with relatively high unemployment, has been less successful in finding new jobs to offset declines in manufacturing.) Some firms have even brought headquarters here, to be close to their distribution facilities. This is nice.
Order-fulfillment jobs, however, tend to be low-paying. They contribute to a trend, evident here and nationally, in which joblessness remains low, but so does income growth. Distribution facilities also occupy a lot of space for the number of jobs they provide. In the Roanoke Valley (if not across the larger region), low-cost labor and flat land may be nearing their limits.
Of course we should not turn away jobs for people who need them, or discourage business prospects of the quality of some that have moved here in recent years. When it comes to recruitment incentives and targeting strategies, though, higher-wage niches should be a higher priority. Economic development is about producing wealth as well as jobs.
Third, some economic changes are subject to influence. Making best use of a natural niche is more than just accepting whatever comes along and recruiting more of the same.
To enhance the pluses and diminish the minuses of opportunities afforded by this region's location, the Roanoke and New River valleys should:
Try to attract more central or regional headquarters of the companies that put distribution operations here. This entails, among other things, maintaining and improving the quality-of-life factors that make Southwest Virginia a great place to live.
Improve the physical infrastructure that supports the region's role as a distribution center, to increase the region's competitiveness for reasons other than low wages. This includes both traditional improvements (like a better connection from Interstate 81 in the Roanoke and New River valleys to Interstates 40 and 85 in the Greensboro-Winston-Salem area) and untraditional ones.
An example of the latter is the "intermodal" transportation-based industrial park proposed for the New River airport in Dublin: an excellent idea. A giant version of such a park is about to be built in eastern North Carolina, spurred by an activist state government, farsighted leadership and appreciation of regionwide interdependence, all of which Virginia lacks.
Above all, turn a low-cost labor force into a high-value one, so more higher-wage work can be attracted.
A high-value work force is well-educated and highly adaptable. Having one would raise the quality of distribution-related jobs as well as others. It also would help assure that the jobs stay here, as technology-driven automation continues to transform distribution and all kinds of work.
The keys to value, goes the real-estate adage, are location, location, location. Not quite. The keys are location - and what we do with it.
by CNB