THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 24, 1996 TAG: 9610240007
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A15 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By Patrick Lackey
LENGTH: 86 lines
Forward Hampton Roads President Hans J. Gant has always had a good pitch to make to businesses and industries considering moving here.
We've got:
An international port - fastest growing on the East Coast - within a 750-mile radius of two-thirds of the nation's population and industry.
A largely non-unionized labor force of nearly 750,000 that is noted for its work ethic and low absenteeism. Ten thousand to 12,000 trained and disciplined military personnel become civilians here every year.
More than 6,000 acres available for new offices and industrial sites.
1.5 million residents. Fourteen states have fewer people than that.
Mild climate and a variety of urban, suburban and rural lifestyles. Amenities galore.
And so on and so on.
Gant has had the pitch but not the budget and the regional cooperation to make it as effectively as he must, if this region is to compete successfully with other regions in the race to recruit the best companies around the world.
As he put it, ``We've been outspent, outmarketed and outperformed economically.'' Those are three big ``outs.'' In baseball, the inning would be over.
Now, for the first time, a big-league team and budget are being assembled to sell Hampton Roads to the world. The team is called Hampton Road Economic Development Alliance. It will operate under Gant and Forward Hampton Roads, the economic-development arm of Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce. To ensure the Alliance's effectiveness, Forward Hampton Roads' five-year budget has been upped roughly fivefold to $10 million - enough to compete with the Charlottes and Atlantas of the world. Alliance members will include all five South Hampton Roads cities, along with business leaders and educators and some other organizations.
Half the $10 million is to come from private sources, the rest from the five South Hampton Roads cities, if all goes as planned.
As Gant put it, the private sector is ``hungry'' for the Alliance and the public sector is ``supportive.'' The five mayors and economic development directors have signed on. Already Portsmouth and Suffolk city councils have passed resolutions in favor of it. Plans call for each city to provide one buck per resident per year - a million bucks annually.
By this time next year, Gant intends to have sales representatives scouring the globe full time for prospects to bring here, especially high-tech companies that pay high wages. Also, corporate leaders from elsewhere will receive red-carpet tours here, preferably during festivals; and local business and government leaders will tour more prosperous economic regions to see what can be done.
In short, Gant said, the region's economic-development efforts will be upgraded from reactive to pro-active.
Much is planned, but the basic game plan is simple. Gant and his people draw prospects here, treat them right, answer their every question and generally sell them on the region. If a prospect chooses a city it's especially interested in, Gant will turn the prospect over to that city's economic-development director to complete the deal.
That's what Forward Hampton Roads has been doing on a smaller scale since 1984. Through last year, the more than 100 companies it drew here brought 17,905 jobs, occupied 6.9 million square feet and made capital investments totaling three quarters of a billion dollars.
The jobs were spread around like this: 34.9 percent in Virginia Beach, 30.6 percent in Chesapeake, 23.8 percent in Norfolk, 9.7 percent in Suffolk and 1 percent in Portsmouth.
The effort was worthwhile and fruitful, but small potatoes compared with current plans.
The obvious question about the new public-private Alliance is: Why didn't we do this sooner? A highly competitive global recruiting game has been going on, with Hampton Roads barely in it. All the winners have had public-private partnerships. Why not us?
Because of old and new grudges among Hampton Roads cities, public-private cooperation was impossible here until the region's leaders realized, as most have in the past couple of years, that individual cities cannot compete against entire regions and that this region is falling behind the state, the South and the nation - that's pretty much everybody - in salaries and job creation.
The Hampton Roads Planning District Commission provided the economic numbers that painted the picture of the region's decline. Private leaders have sounded the alarm repeatedly. Finally, it appears, the region - public and private - is uniting to recruit good jobs.
The wake-up call has been received. Action is being taken.
``We need to do something differently than we have in the past,'' said Alliance campaign chairman John P. Matson of Signet Bank, ``because the past results are simply not acceptable.'' MEMO: Mr. Lackey is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB