THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 12, 1995 TAG: 9511100002
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
Old Dominion University is preparing to provide quarterly and annual forecasts of Hampton Roads economic activity. The first forecast is scheduled for release in January. The forecasts will be welcome. They will be helpful to businesses, investors, municipal and state officials, job seekers and consumers.
Being helpful to the Hampton Roads economy is the project's purpose. ODU President James V. Koch has been initiating university-based programs whose mission is to help advance regional prosperity. The forecasts, which will convey useful information, will be an instrument that can be employed to that end.
Hampton Roads' economic growth is sluggish compared with that of many other regions. The end of the Cold War hit local shipbuilding and ship-repair yards hard. Although the transfer of some Naval activities (and, soon, Coast Guard activities too) to Hampton Roads is offsetting economic damage caused by the falloff in defense contracts, area business and governmental leaders have been devoting considerable thought, talent and time to encouraging private-sector economic development. Such development is essential if Hampton Roads is to lessen its dependence upon defense-related dollars.
Old Dominion University is in the thick of institutions and groups trying to assure that happens. Plan 2007 is The most conspicuous effort to speed the strengthening of the regional economic base. Not surprisingly, Old Dominion University is, along with other local institutions of higher education and the Peninsula and Hampton Roads Chambers of Commerce, a sponsor of that broad-based push to identify potential job-creating economic-development opportunities.
Meanwhile, ODU's Entrepreneurial Center has assisted more than a hundred new or fast-growing private businesses since opening its doors in 1988. These businesses, as we reported in an August editorial, gross more than $1 billion in revenue annually and generate more than $30 million a year in salaries. Local business people have contributed more than 10,000 hours of service to the center.
The ODU economic-forecasting project will be led by Gilbert R. Yochum, chairman of ODU's Economics Department, economics professor Vinod B. Agarwal and finance professor Mohammad Najand. Drs. Yochum and Agarwal recently calculated the annual economic impact of Eastern Virginia Medical School at more than a half-billion dollars, or roughly half the economic impact of the 2 million visitors to Virginia Beach (impact they also measured).
The ODU researchers have developed an economic model of Hampton Roads that is applied in their many economic studies, including a study of port commerce. Their forecasts will chart and forecast tourism, retailing, employment, unemployment, shipping and homebuilding activity.
ODU's has at hand a trove of data, analyses and economic and entrepreneurial expertise. That ODU is exploiting this treasure for Hampton Roads' benefit is no small contribution to the common welfare. by CNB