ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, June 7, 1996 TAG: 9606070037
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: PULASKI
SOURCE: NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
Stuart Gilbert had been on the job almost three hours Thursday as the new executive director of the New River Valley Economic Development Alliance, but had yet to stop moving.
No sooner had he arrived for his first day in the position than Barry Evans, chairman of the Alliance board of directors, looped him into a conference call with an international prospect interested in making a second visit to the area.
Then he stopped by the Dublin Town Hall and met Town Manager Gary Elander, who told him about a groundbreaking for a new warehouse facility in the Dublin Industrial Park happening next week.
The next stop was the groundbreaking for an expansion at a Renfro Corp. sock-manufacturing plant in Pulaski, which could add 250 jobs.
And it wasn't even 10:30 a.m. yet.
Gilbert had been among some 70 applicants for the position vacated by the Alliance's first executive director, Franklyn Moreno, last August. In April, the Alliance announced the choice of Pulaski businessman Hiawatha Nicely for the position, but Nicely found he had too many other commitments for the job and resigned. Last month, Gilbert's hiring was announced.
His next stop after Renfro was to get a car. Gilbert said he arrived from Tennessee, where he had been director of the Maury County Economic Development Commission since 1991, in a pickup truck better suited to carrying his pontoon boat than squiring around visiting industrial prospects.
He said he was impressed by the joint approach to industrial development, as with the town and county of Pulaski cooperating in the Renfro venture. His first step with the Alliance, he said, would be a strategic planning session with its representatives.
Gilbert's first day on the job was a relief to Evans, who estimated that he had been devoting some 30 hours a week to Alliance business since Moreno left. "I'm either an idiot, or I'm dedicated," he said with a chuckle.
LENGTH: Short : 44 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Gilbert.by CNB