THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 24, 1994 TAG: 9406240482
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ALEC KLEIN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940624 LENGTH: RICHMOND
There is little hint of the competitive demons driving him to clinch million-dollar deals. No outward clue of the boy who grew up on a farm and bagged groceries after school, the son of a Mississippi butcher who knew the names of all his customers and the cut of beef they wanted.
{REST} ``Don't let him fool you, he's not just an old country boy who fell off a truck,'' warned Curt Cottle of the South Carolina Department of Commerce.
Sterling, the man who helped South Carolina land the deal of a lifetime - a $500 million BMW automobile manufacturing plant - has been lured to Virginia. Gov. George F. Allen proclaimed Sterling his ``head coach'' to recruit jobs and industry as the state's new economic development director.
``You can expect a man who's not going to arrive with a lot of fanfare, but who's going to get organized and get the right people in place,'' said S. Hunter Howard Jr., a former neighbor and executive vice president of the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce. ``And before you know it, things are going to start happening.''
Which would be a good thing, because there are great expectations for a man widely considered a star in the industry.
``The bottom line is, we expect results,'' said Sterling's new boss, Robert T. Skunda, state secretary of commerce and trade.
In fact, the business-bent Allen administration has set a goal of creating 125,000 jobs over the next four years. The mandate is so serious that Sterling, plucked from about 500 applicants in a nationwide search, will make $111,000 a year, $1,000 more than the governor.
Sterling won the job on the strength of a resume that calls attention to South Carolina's meteoric rise in industrial development during his six years as executive director of the state department of commerce.
``We felt we could hit the floor running with him,'' Skunda said. ``He has a strong will to win, which comes out when you talk to Wayne.''
Or when you play him in a round of golf. In his second week on the job, Sterling beat his new boss by two strokes. Sterling is so driven to win that colleagues claim he has no compunction about beating prospective business clients on the fairways.
``Wayne's going to try to put that thing in the cup,'' said Doug McKay, the top economic development aide to South Carolina's governor.
``I am a competitive person, I have to admit that,'' Sterling said. ``What I love most is to be in the 11th hour of negotiations and have a company add a new wrinkle: `By tomorrow, you have to have a whole new approach and in our office in Switzerland.' ''
That's almost the way events played out on the BMW deal two years ago.
Negotiations had all but collapsed when the giant German automaker offered one last window of opportunity: Assemble more than 140 parcels of private property, and do it quick.
Sterling orchestrated the massive land acquisition, clinching the deal for a state with about half the population of Virginia and beating out 250 communities across nation, including sites in the Old Dominion.
``That was the No. 1 economic prize of 1992,'' said Tim A. Venable, associate editor of Site Selection, a leading economic development trade publication based in Atlanta. ``He's widely respected as a state economic development leader.''
Even among South Carolina beat reporters and taxpayer watchdogs.
``There was a feeling among some tax groups, ?`Had we bought BMW?' '' said Don Weaver, executive director of the South Carolina Association of Taxpayers. The BMW deal reportedly cost the state's taxpayers in excess of $100 million in incentives. ``Yes, it was an expenditure by taxpayers,'' Weaver said, ``but quite frankly, sometimes you have to spend money to make money in the long run.''
Under Sterling's tenure, however, South Carolina did draw the line on incentives. In another cross-country derby a year after the BMW deal, South Carolina lost a giant Mercedes-Benz plant to Alabama, which reportedly offered more than $200 million to land the prestigious German automaker.
Sterling also played hardball on a South Carolina deal that hasn't been announced yet, offering fewer incentives than the company originally requested to locate there.
``I'm sure he was looking to get the company to make a bigger commitment to the state,'' said James A. Schriner, a partner in a Maryland consulting firm that helped the company locate a South Carolina site.``He always leaves the door open, but he's not the easiest person to deal with. At the end of the day, we shake hands, but we go our separate ways.''
That seems to be Sterling's operating philosophy. ``A state,'' he said, ``should only incent projects it really wants and needs. If you're going to spend revenues (for a project), then an appropriate test might be how much in revenues comes back.''
Gov. Allen used that test earlier this year and came away with a $163 million incentives package to strike a deal with the Walt Disney Co. In return, the state expects Disney's proposed $650 million theme park in Northern Virginia to return $47 million in revenue annually.
Sterling hopes Disney is only the beginning. ``There's no reason we cannot be successful,'' he said, ``And I fully intend to be successful. I did not come all the way to Virginia to be a failure.''
{KEYWORDS} VIRGINIA'S DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT
by CNB