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

DATE: THURSDAY, October 5, 1995                   TAG: 9510050032
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NEW PARTNERSHIP IS BIGGEST EVER

Made up of 10 cities and counties that have traditionally competed for jobs, Shenandoah Valley Partnership Inc. intends to market the region to businesses across the state and nation.

The week-old organization will serve communities as far southwest as the Rockbridge County area and Bath County, which were not part of a regional economic development group until their elected leaders voted to join the new partnership.

That made Shenandoah Valley Partnership the state's largest such group in terms of the number of communities banded together to lure industry, said Jim E. Sullenger III, executive director of the partnership.

Roanoke area communities teamed up in a similar way in 1983 to form the Roanoke Valley Regional Economic Development Partnership.

Although the Rockbridge area lies within an hour's drive of the Roanoke Valley, area officials did not open the partnership to Rockbridge area communities because they are too far outside the Roanoke region to benefit, said Anne Piedmont, the Roanoke Valley partnership's research director.

Since 1983, the New River Valley Economic Development Alliance, based in Christiansburg, and Alleghany Highlands Economic Development Authority, based in Covington, have been formed. Economic development groups like these across the state show prospective employers industrial sites, place advertising in business publications and dispense information to companies, supported by combinations of government grants, private donations and taxes. This area's only tax-supported economic development organization is the Alleghany Highlands authority.

The new partnership has a benefactor in James Madison University in Harrisonburg, which provided $110,000 of the $175,000 first-year budget and is expected to continue its support next year, Sullenger said. Sullenger is based at JMU and will continue as a part-time business analyst in a university-based small-business development center.

The Shenandoah Valley region is striving to build on an already strong base of manufacturers and to raise its per-capita income, which measured 17 percent below the state average in 1993, according to a report last year from the governor's office.