THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 30, 1995 TAG: 9504290232
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MYLENE MANGALINDAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 279 lines
Twelve years ago the cities of this region were suffering an identity crisis. There was no sense of community. Each city stood alone; without a map, few outside the region even knew Norfolk, Portsmouth, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Suffolk, Newport News and Hampton were neighbors.
One solution was adopting a moniker everyone would identify with, something that would cast the area as one. From that emerged ``Hampton Roads.''
The name stuck, but seems to have done little to give the region a sense of place. The federal government recognizes it as the Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News metropolitan statistical area. In Richmond and elsewhere throughout the state, many still refer to the region as Tidewater Virginia. Others remember when it was marketed as Colonial Beaches or just simply southeastern Virginia.
Folks from other states often call it the Norfolk area and act surprised to learn that Virginia Beach or Newport News is nearby. When national magazines and others recognize Hampton Roads, they sometimes embarrass us and themselves by referring to the region as Hampton ``Rhodes.''
``Hampton Roads is not a place,'' said Norfolk resident Vincent Meesein in a phone call to the newspaper. ``Someone ought to look it up in the dictionary and print it like it should be.''
In an era when cities, states and even countries compete for business and international money, Hampton Roads' obscurity hurts its residents' quality of life and eventually will catch up with their pocketbooks, business people and political leaders say.
Business executives have said they're unwilling to locate their companies in this corner of southeastern Virginia because it lacks name recognition. Entertainers sometimes skip this venue because they don't think it can draw big audiences. Some Chinese business people hosting Virginia Beach Mayor Meyera Oberndorf recently did not know Hampton Roads even has a port.
Surveys show Hampton Roads conjures minimal name association. Less than half of the Eastern Seaboard households interviewed for a survey last year recognized it as being in Virginia.
Travelers recognize individual cities by name because they associate Norfolk with the world's largest naval base, Virginia Beach as a tourist destination and Williamsburg as the cradle of democracy. But Hampton Roads eludes strict definition.
Different names for the region dilute its identity and confuse even residents.
Most use Hampton Roads to describe the 15 cities and counties that comprise the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission's jurisdiction. Others, like the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce, use the name to refer to less than the entire region. The Chamber draws its members from the Southside but not the Peninsula.
``I'm not sure it's a tremendous benefit, but I'm not sure it's a deterrent,'' Donald Maxwell, Hampton's development director, said about the name. ``It's not recognized internationally unless associated with port activity. Outside of that, we haven't found a strong familiarity with Hampton Roads. I'm not sure people know it's a region. It's an unusual name because it has `roads' in it. A lot of people still aren't sure if it's a land area or a region.'' PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE
Webster's New World Dictionary defines Hampton Roads as a channel and harbor in southeast Virginia linking the James River estuary with the Chesapeake Bay.
Local folklore tells us the nautical term Hampton Roads, describing the confluence of the bodies of water here, has been used by mariners for hundreds of years.
No wonder confusion exists over Hampton Roads' definition. Its origin dates to the 1600s.
Its active use as a regional moniker began in the 1980s, when the Future of Hampton Roads, a group of influential business and community leaders advocating regionalism, decided to lobby political leaders and federal agencies to use the historical name.
Their reasons were twofold: to unify the area of 15 cities and counties and to gain greater national and international prominence.
But the process of choosing a name boiled down to the path of least resistance.
``We decided Hampton Roads might be the least provocative,'' said Henry Clay Hofheimer, a business magnate who owned numerous companies and pieces of real estate.
1983 proved to be the watershed year in their efforts as three key events forged the foundation of a regional identity.
The Office of Management and Budget designated Hampton Roads as a single metropolitan statistical area - ranking 34th-largest in the country at its debut and now 27th, with 1.5 million residents. The OMB fused two formerly separate MSAs on the Peninsula and the Southside.
The MSA expanded last year when Isle of Wight, Mathews County and Currituck County, N.C., were added.
Secondly, the five Southside chambers of commerce joined under the name Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce. And the U.S. Postal Service changed its postmark to ``Hampton Roads, VA'' instead of the more traditional ``Tidewater,'' which only encompassed the Southside. EMBRACED BY SOME, SNUBBED BY OTHERS
Although the name is obscure outside the region, prominent examples of its widespread local acceptance abound.
Three professional sports teams - the Hampton Roads Admirals (hockey), the Hampton Roads Mariners (soccer) and the Hampton Roads Sharks (semi-pro football) - share the name. The American Automobile Association, one of the most-recognized travel organizations in the country - provides members with a map under the name of Hampton Roads.
More than 100 listings of companies and groups that contain the name grace the white pages of the South Hampton Roads phone book.
Within the commonwealth, state agencies like the department of economic development call the area Hampton Roads.
Most significantly, the nautical roots of the name have been recognized for a long time, thanks to the term's seafaring nature.
``The name Hampton Roads has a lot of importance to people we do business with in the shipping industry. The name Hampton Roads carries a lot of prominence with it,'' said Robert Fort, a spokesman for Norfolk Southern Corp., a Fortune 500 transportation company based in Norfolk.
Yet, at the same time, several examples of the name's failure exist.
Area residents have failed to completely buy into the name or rally around it. The Virginia Peninsula Chamber of Commerce, for instance, still markets itself separately from the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce. And most of our cultural organizations and the arts - like the Virginia Symphony and the Virginia Opera - advertise themselves to a wider audience, despite being based here.
Even the port - cited as the best example of solidarity since the separate ports of Newport News, Norfolk and Portsmouth were all marketed under one name - doesn't use the one most recognized by mariners. The Virginia Port Authority and Virginia International Terminals Inc. advertise Hampton Roads under the Port of Virginia.
Research done more than seven years ago by Wong & Associates for the port authority confirmed this suspicion: Even among the audience that best understands the historical significance of the name, Hampton Roads is obscure.
``Most shippers, the exporters, the manufacturers, most people had not heard of Hampton Roads. Some people asked, `Is it a parking lot?' '' said Peter Wong, head of the Richmond-based public relations firm that conducted the survey for the ports.
``When you're in an international trade, in the West or Europe, you need to pinpoint where the location is. On the map they have Norfolk, they have Virginia, (but) there's no Hampton Roads.'' IMAGE IS EVERYTHING
The name poses no problem for large, regional companies like Norfolk Southern - a $4.6 billion firm - that are firmly based here with an established clientele.
But companies considering relocating their headquarters here question the value from associating with a name that carries little weight in the global market.
``Hampton Roads is very, very desirable for any application with the exception of headquarters,'' said Bill Harris, president of White Plains, N.Y.-based Harris Publishing. ``I think there's a concern what a company's ability is to attract and keep a top-quality management team. I think it's an unfounded concern. (But) if you're a major, major company, the Tidewater area is not looked upon as a major metropolitan area.''
Harris Publishing has more than 1,000 employees at its Norfolk operations. But it maintains its headquarters in New York with fewer than 100 people.
Some businesses enjoy the draw of an internationally renowned city like New York, said David Hochberg, spokesman for Lillian Vernon Inc., a mail-order company whose distribution operation is located in Virginia Beach. Hampton Roads, in comparison, is not perceived as an international metropolis.
Some people like it that way.
``The very goal of drawing more growth is an anathema to some people who think we're growing too fast anyway,'' said Professor Theodore Smith, area coordinator for Old Dominion University's business school marketing department. ``They don't embrace the goal of greater name recognition because they're not tied to economic growth and don't see their future tied to economic growth.
``They don't realize that without economic growth, their kids are not going to have that great a career in this area and will have to move somewhere else. But some people don't look down the road.''
That becomes a greater, looming worry about the area's economic viability as the government continues its military cutbacks and related private-sector jobs diminish.
``Where are the jobs coming from?'' asked Dan Ballard, a retired advertising executive who spearheaded the Virginia Waterfront campaign, marketing the area to tourists. ``We'll be operating from an extreme handicap of not having an awareness of where this area is.''
As jobs diminish, other service and support-related jobs will disappear, real estate taxes will increase and the cost of living will rise, Ballard predicted.
``There's a growing sense that something's wrong,'' he said. ``People in this area have a low self-esteem, and they shouldn't.'' AFFINITY FOR CITIES, NOT REGION
Some effort has been made in recent months to coordinate marketing under a joint economic development agency, the Hampton Roads Partnership. The Mayors and Chairs Caucus, a group composed of the leaders of the region's 15 cities and counties, is reviewing the idea proposed initially under the chamber's Plan 2007, an outline for the area's growth.
Proponents of Plan 2007, sponsored chiefly by the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce and members of the business and educational communities, have tried to coordinate regional efforts like the Hampton Roads Partnership since the plan's inception more than a year ago.
Past attempts at unifying the region, however, have fallen short because cooperation from political leaders has been slow in coming and residents don't identify with Hampton Roads.
Residents and city leaders continue to share an affinity for their cities, rather than the entire region. One of the most glaring examples is the Norfolk Tides, the New York Mets' Triple-A team that plays out of Harbor Park.
Norfolk put up all of the $17 million in 1991-92 to build the new park, located downtown on the Elizabeth River. As part of the deal, the city insisted that the team dump its former Tidewater moniker and replace it - not with Hampton Roads - but, rather, with Norfolk.
``As long as we view ourselves from a particular city as opposed to a region, we'll communicate ourselves as part of a city or county, and that's not unreasonable. These names have a lot of emotional tug to them,'' said Arthur Collins, executive director of the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission, a clearinghouse of information and data for the 15 cities and counties in its jurisdiction.
The lack of emotional association with the region contributes to the name's failure, said advertising executive Taylor Bridgeport at J. Walter Thompson, a national advertising firm based in Chicago. That's why some technology companies place a premium on having an address affiliated with San Jose, Calif., or Research Triangle Park, N.C.
``(Brand equity) is everything that's offered to a customer that pulls on them emotionally,'' said Bridgeport, whose family traveled to Williamsburg two or three times a year as a youth but who had no idea Williamsburg belonged to Hampton Roads. ``It's the difference between Oscar Mayer bologna and high-grade bologna. It's everything associated with a brand, what a brand means. It's what allows some products to charge a premium.'' GOING BIG MEANS SPENDING BIG
Lack of money behind focused marketing efforts has prevented widespread national recognition from developing in Hampton Roads, said Greg Wingfield, president of the Greater Richmond Partnership, a joint public-private economic development agency.
Wingfield resigned from Forward Hampton Roads, the economic development arm of the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce which he headed, last year out of frustration over the lack of progress made in regionalism.
Only Forward Hampton Roads funds active marketing of the name when it tries to ``sell'' the region. Its budget - $500,000 - is a fraction of that of other cities half the size or population of Hampton Roads.
Through the Greater Richmond Partnership, Richmond commands a $2.4 million war chest, which helped land Motorola's new semiconductor plant in Goochland County. Even the Roanoke Regional Economic Development Partnership has a $600,000 budget for a region one-sixth the size of Hampton Roads.
``Why don't we do this?'' asked Michael Barrett, a former chairman of the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce. ``Parochialism.''
``You keep going back to the fact that some leaders, particularly political leaders, want to keep us parochial, and consequently we suffer as a region,'' Barrett said.
Some propose scrapping the name and choosing something more people can associate with, like the Greater Norfolk area or something related to Virginia Beach, the largest city in the state.
Others say it's only a matter of time and an extension of natural growth.
``If you have a high growth rate, the area's going to gain recognition somewhat on its own,'' Hampton's Maxwell said. ``If the area becomes stagnant or declines, I'm not sure there's anything we can do. If there's positive things, from tourism to economic development, I think you can promote the area.''
Jack McNamara, senior vice president with Sentara Health System, advocates effort by word of mouth to reintroduce the area as Hampton Roads.
Twelve years of investment in the name Hampton Roads would be the chief obstacle in starting from scratch, said former advertising executive Ballard.
``The No. 1 problem is that Hampton Roads is not going to go away. The reason is because of a cottage industry,'' he said. ``There are a lot of people employed for the sake of Hampton Roads. When you've got a lot of people employed for the sake of a name, you're kind of stuck.
``As long as you continue to have growth, it's going to catch on. Historically, it's difficult - you almost need to go through a generation.'' Others say there needs to be more commitment on everyone's part, not just in funding.
``The key there is, will everyone use it?'' Wingfield said of the name. ``Last year, they created the Virginia Waterfront. That took away synergy and money from marketing Hampton Roads.
``Somewhere along the way, the public sector has to ask, `What are we going to call ourselves?' and put in money to pay for it. Because that area is so diverse, so fragmented . . . there has to be some sort of tie-in with some sort of collective identity. Hampton Roads does that,'' said the former head of Forward Hampton Roads.
``It simply is we haven't marketed it well enough,'' said retired Adm. Harry Train, president of the Future of Hampton Roads. ``The only name we have discovered that will receive acceptance from everybody is Hampton Roads. If we don't stick with it, we might as well give up because it's too late to start over again.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
ADRIANA LIBREROS/Staff
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
by CNB