ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, August 18, 1996 TAG: 9608190002
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: DUBLIN
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
Stuart Gilbert always seems to look calm and unhurried, but he's had a busy two months as the new executive director of the New River Valley Economic Development Alliance.
He started work at a post that had been mostly vacant for 10 months. He organized a daylong strategy session to lay out Alliance goals for the rest of this century. At the same time, he was pulling together a recruitment package that just barely missed luring a new industry to Radford.
And that was before he could even think about moving here. Back in Tennessee, he was trying to sell his home as the first step toward moving his family here.
Now, he has sold his house. His wife, Karen, and their sons, Scot, 9, and Kurt, 12, will join him once he has found a home in this area.
"He's sharp. He knows a lot," said Barry Evans, a Giles County businessman who was Alliance president when Gilbert was hired. Evans remembered being among eight Alliance members interviewing Gilbert on a conference call last winter.
"You would have thought one of us had called him and told him about the Alliance and how the process worked. He answered questions before we got to them," Evans said. "After the first 15 minutes, we sat there with our mouths hanging open."
President-elect Carole Pratt recalled talking to people with whom Gilbert worked in Columbia, Tenn., where he was executive director of the Maury County Economic Development Commission. The advice she got was "Pay him whatever it takes to get him there," she said. All the other comments she got were similarly positive.
Despite that, the Alliance first chose a local executive who had been active in the regional organization for years to succeed Franklyn Moreno. Moreno, the Alliance's only director since its inception about seven years ago, resigned last August to pursue private interests.
Out of some 70 applicants, the Alliance chose Pulaski businessman Hiawatha Nicely, one of the entrepreneurs who established Pulaski Magnox and helped run it until a Japanese firm acquired it. Nicely had been Alliance director for less than a month before he stepped down, saying other professional and personal responsibilities would keep him from continuing.
That was when the Alliance turned to Gilbert, who had been among the six finalists along with Nicely. His hiring was effective June 6.
Gilbert had been heading a not-for-profit partnership of local governments, private businesses and higher education in Tennessee since 1991. He was involved in landing 16 businesses for Maury County. Before that, he had directed another economic development corporation in the southwest suburbs of Chicago.
With his credentials - he is a certified economic developer, with master's degrees in urban and regional planning and public administration from Southern Illinois University - he and his family could just about pick what part of the country they wanted to call home.
"I wanted to work in a place where I could expand our horizons, so far as another state," he said. He and his wife looked for a place with strong educational programs for their sons, and where there was a strong Christian background.
"And we're really big on the outdoors," he said. "From what we've seen, this is God's country. This is honey and apple pie. Man, we love it."
Gilbert's arrival coincided with an effort by Radford to persuade a German-based automotive parts manufacturer that supplies companies like Mercedes-Benz and BMW to locate a plant in the city.
Jill Barr, the city's economic development director, said Gilbert pulled together local resources ranging from Virginia Tech and New River Community College to the Virginia Employment Commission, moving companies and financing agencies more efficiently than she had ever seen it done. Radford became the company's first choice in Virginia, but in the end, lost out to Morristown, Tenn.
Pratt noted that Gilbert immediately traveled to Morristown to see what it had offered that the New River Valley had not. That, she said, is the kind of initiative the Alliance needs.
"We have lacked follow-up and Stuart will definitely do a good job with that," Evans said. "We just need the people to follow him ... to get on board and realize we've got to do something, because everybody else is."
"That's what we have to think about in economic development. What is our competition doing?" Gilbert said. "We have to stay one step ahead of them all the time."
As for the future direction of the Alliance, Gilbert said that daylong strategic planning session held July 30 should provide direction on goals, funding and other aspects of the organization.
"I've already learned a lot," he said, before the day was even over. A four-year plan will be circulated to those who participated in the session, sent to the Alliance board, checked by the local governments who support the Alliance, and only then will it be adopted.
Gilbert had conducted similar sessions in two other regions where he worked, and found them helpful in economic development efforts in those places. "It at least gives me some ideas I couldn't get in any other way," he said.
LENGTH: Medium: 98 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: PAUL DELLINGER/Staff. Stuart Gilbert, new executiveby CNBdirector of the New River Valley Economic Development Alliance,
works with Alliance members at a recent planning session. color.