DATE: Thursday, September 11, 1997          TAG: 9709110738

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MEREDITH COHN, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   82 lines

PENINSULA GROUPS TO MERGE FOUR GROUPS THAT WERE CREATED TO MARKET THE PENINSULA'S CITIES WILL CONSOLIDATE THEIR EFFORTS AND RESOURCES.

Banks, computer companies and drugstores are doing it. Even the groups that work to bring those businesses to town are doing it: merging to form more productive and larger organizations.

A plan to meld Peninsula groups responsible for marketing area cities and counties and improving residents' quality of life has picked up steam among local officials. Supporters say it will be more efficient because the groups' funding, administration and goals will no longer overlap.

That idea is not new.

Just about every city and county in Virginia is represented by an economic development person or office, and increasingly Hampton Roads' competitors within the state and around the country are pooling their resources to go after the really big fish of the industrial sea.

The areas surrounding Lynchburg and Roanoke have formed alliances for economic development. So have Virginia's Eastern Shore municipalities, Franklin and Southampton County, and other cities and counties.

Five South Hampton Roads cities and numerous local businesses recently bought into the Hampton Roads Economic Development Alliance. The Peninsula already had a public-private partnership among its businesses and seven cities and counties, called the Virginia Peninsula Economic Development Alliance. Local leaders said its record of luring an annual average of $82 million in capital investment and 2,000 jobs makes it a success.

For the Peninsula, Newport News Mayor Joe Frank said the new organization is the next step. It will do more than pool resources to attract new businesses, it also will work on business retention, job training, technology transfer and financing.

``It will eliminate groups and consolidate administrative functions under one roof,'' he said.

The Peninsula Economic Development Alliance, as it has been named, will merge the Virginia Peninsula Economic Development Council, the Peninsula Ports Authority of Virginia, the Peninsula Advanced Technology Center and the Peninsula Industrial Finance Corp.

The idea came from a consultant's report that said the groups did not work efficiently as separate organizations. The cities and counties still must officially endorse the alliance, but many government and business leaders who would fund the effort have already said they support it. A president should be hired by the beginning of January and the group fully operational by July.

Frank said the group's funding would not exceed the total of the four groups' current budgets, which is about $1.3 million.

That would put the alliance's funding behind South Hampton Roads' economic development umbrella group's marketing budget of about $2 million a year. But it's still in line with annual budgets of the region's major competitors, such as: Richmond, $2.4 million; Atlanta, $2.2 million; Charlotte, $1.5 million; Jacksonville, $2 million; and Orlando, $1.2 million.

``We have seen a growth in the number of regional organizations in the state,'' said Rick Richardson, a spokesman for the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, the state's marketing arm. ``And we've seen an awful lot of localities in other states pooling their resources. It's not a local phenomenon.''

Richardson said there may be more umbrella groups forming, because they seem to work. He called the South Hampton Roads and Peninsula economic developement groups ``two outstanding allies.''

The Peninsula group stopped short of initiating a Hampton Roads organization that would include the Peninsula and South Hampton Roads. But Frank and other officials said they would work with the Hampton Roads Partnership, a group aiming to improve the product economic development officials have to sell.

Barry E. DuVal, president of the partnership, said he supports the Peninsula's move to consolidate. He said cooperation on economic development between the two sides of the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel is not out of the question.

``On the Peninsula, it's a matter of efficiency,'' DuVal said. ``The Virginia Peninsula's total population is less than the one city of Virginia Beach on the Southside. But I expect the two sides to explore some joint marketing and business recruitment in the future. First, it's important for the Peninsula to be appropriately organized.'' ILLUSTRATION: SIDE BAR

Joining Forces

For complete copy, see microfilm KEYWORDS: MERGER

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