Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 6, 1990 TAG: 9006060227
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY BUSINESS EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Hevey, back in Fairfax after his first visit to Southwest Virginia in six years, said he found "a can-do spirit . . . a much higher spirit of optimism" about new job prospects in the Southwest counties.
He was one of five Northern Virginia business executives and a group of state officials who spent 2 1/2 days last week visiting industrial parks and plants and meeting with local development leaders.
At the end of the trip, the visitors said, "we've got to keep this going," said Larry Framme, secretary of economic development and leader of the state officials.
The Northern Virginians came away with "a fairly enlightened view of Southwest Virginia," Framme said. They saw good industrial parks, some hewn out of the side of a mountain, he said, but they saw a professional approach and cooperation between business and state and local governments.
"We have to find an application [for Northern Virginia companies] . . . We've got a region that is serious about making itself available for business," Framme said.
He sees the economic bridge concept between Northern and Southwest Virginia, long promoted by George Mason University, as "very useful."
Hevey, formerly a tax partner with KPMG-Peat Marwick in Roanoke and now in the firm's Vienna office, said during the telephone interview that he found Southwest Virginia "very promising" for development.
"I don't foresee companies picking up and moving, but more probably, as companies expand, they may just as well expand into Southwest Virginia."
Ralph Cantrell, commissioner of the Virginia Employment Commission and one of the state visitors, said Northern Virginia has "thousands of jobs and nobody to fill them." The link with the labor-surplus region of the state is "a match made in heaven," Cantrell said.
by CNB