Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 9, 1995 TAG: 9504130005
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: G-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
If the Roanoke region expects its young people to make their lives here, it must provide them a way to make a living, supporters of growth say. That means developing more businesses and more jobs; it also means better cooperation among local governments and better economic planning.
Emily and Jennifer Rappold are seniors at Cave Spring High School in Roanoke County and are among the hundreds of teen-agers who will graduate from the region's high schools this spring.
For now, the 17-year-old twins intend to leave the area for college. Emily, who like her sister has played on the Cave Spring girls basketball team, plans to attend Shenandoah University in Winchester and prepare for a career in sports medicine or physical therapy.
Jennifer may go to Shenandoah, too, but hasn't settled on a college yet. She loves math and has been thinking about a future in accounting; she's also considered a career in psychology.
After college, both girls said, they'll go wherever job opportunities take them. "If it's here, I'll stay here," Jennifer said.
Patricia Rappold, the girls' mother, has more definite feelings about Roanoke's place in their future. For the careers that her daughters are considering, Roanoke offers some good opportunities, she said. "I'd like to see them come back; it's a nice city to live in."
Patricia Rappold and her husband, Tom, an assistant vice president with Norfolk Southern Corp., said the other parents they talk with are, like themselves, more focused now on getting their kids into college than where they'll settle after they finish.
Tom, who has had to move in his railroad job, said it would be great if the girls could come back to Roanoke; moving elsewhere, though, "is really not that bad an option."
The Rappolds and other parents with children graduating from high school may look to economic growth to provide jobs to keep their kids close to home or draw them back after they finish college.
But some people argue that the region has already grown enough: By inviting more growth, they say, we risk the quality of life and attractive surroundings that make the region a good place to live. Growth for them has become a tumor sucking the life from this part of Virginia.
`Eye of the beholder'
The reality, however, is that the Roanoke region is growing - although not as fast as the state as a whole.
One measure of growth is employment; another is population.
Between 1980 and the end of 1994, the number of people employed in the Roanoke region jumped by 23 percent to 249,893. The region's population grew by 10 percent during the same period to 488,544.
The region's wealth index - a composite per capita measure that incorporates adjusted gross income; retail sales; and real, personal and public utility property values - increased from $23,479 in 1980 to $51,109 in 1990. That's an increase of 118 percent, well above the inflation increase for the period of 47.5 percent, but not as robust as the statewide increase in the index of 145 percent during the period.
Growth and decline within a region's economy appear to be natural processes whose direction can be influenced but not totally controlled by people.
"People who study regional economies have generally concluded that economies are sort of like ecological systems," said Roger Stough, who holds an endowed chair in local government at George Mason University in Fairfax County.
Businesses are dying all the time and others come in to take their place. The important thing, Stough said, is the balance between dying industry and growing industry.
Generally, Stough said, regions tend to have the same rate of business failures; growing regions, however, have more business start-ups than other regions and replace businesses faster than they lose them. That's why there's so much interest in entrepreneurship, he said.
An economy doesn't necessarily have to grow to remain healthy, he said. Some smaller rural areas have managed to maintain a balance between dying and newborn businesses.
The question, then, that needs to be asked about the economy of the Roanoke region is whether its growth is, on balance, a good thing or a bad thing. How do we judge whether a ballooning regional economy and population will bring us a happy, secure future or, as the critics warn, blow up in our faces or our children's?
A series of stories in this newspaper earlier this year showed that people are already concerned about the impact of growth on the region's environment and with the strain that it puts on public services such as schools and highways.
What's good growth and what's bad growth is "in the eye of the beholder," said Tom Johnson, a professor of economics at Virginia Tech. Johnson, who has done extensive research on rural economies, said he would rather draw a distinction between economic growth and economic development.
A region can grow by creating more and more of the kinds of jobs it already has but still not have development, Johnson said. Development occurs, he said, when job opportunities are broadened and better-paying jobs are made available to residents.
"If you're creating jobs that are better than the current average jobs, then you're accomplishing something," he said. If a community's leaders bring in only poorer jobs through their economic development efforts, they haven't done the community any good, he said.
But if a community concentrates only on landing better jobs, what happens to the people who lack the skills to fill them? "If we create the good jobs, the good jobs will create the other jobs," Johnson said.
Development is an evolutionary process that changes the broad nature of a community and is sometimes costly and painful, he said. "Growth is easier. It doesn't require somebody's skills to become obsolete."
One of the problems faced by rural areas - and Johnson classifies the Roanoke region as rural - is that developers need to protect against growth that compromises the quality of life, he said.
"The juggling act in economic development is how do you find the kind of industry you want," said Wayne Strickland, executive director of the Fifth Planning District Commission, based in Roanoke.
Nobody wants bad growth; and people who are "pro-growth" generally want the kind of growth that fits the community, Strickland said.
And people seem willing to accept some of the costs of growth.
Strickland notes that, in a 1991 poll of 1,000 leaders of communities along the Interstate 81 corridor, more than 50 percent of those responding said they were willing to give up some environmental quality in exchange for jobs.
Just as significant as the willingness of people to accept the costs of growth is that the region's residents may not fear the impact of growth on their quality of life as much as one might expect.
In a 1993 poll conducted by Roanoke College's Center for Community Research, almost half of those surveyed thought the population growth in the Roanoke Valley in the past 10 years had been about right; roughly one-fourth thought it had been too slow. Over half said they thought moderate population growth would actually improve, rather than detract from, their quality of life.
Good planning, rather than sitting back and letting things run their natural course, is the one obvious answer to those who fear growth will dirty the air, clog highways and destroy the natural beauty of the region.
Planning, however, is not something we do very well or even think about that much.
Take the case of the Roanoke Valley Regional Partnership. Its staff has been given a mandate to find better jobs for people of the Roanoke region. The people of the partnership, however, do not talk much about what kind of growth and what kind of future they want for the region, executive director Beth Doughty says. The partnership's bylaws contain no policy on growth, she says.
A failure that is common not just to the Roanoke region but to the country as a whole is that its people don't plan what they want the future to be, says Strickland, who as head of a planning district knows planning better than most. "We anticipate in this country that things will always be OK ... that things will be fine if we keep plugging away," he said.
The hardest thing about planning, Strickland said, is getting people involved and sustaining their interest.
Planning is more of a problem for Americans than it is for people in other countries, Stough of George Mason said. "The values of culture in America make it more difficult for people and institutions to use planning."
The Founding Fathers, Stough said, designed the country's government to be a "weak actor" and made a strong commitment to individualism. Those two decisions come into conflict with the notion of planning. So, maybe, do the remnants of a Cold War mentality, which equated planning with many of the ills of Communism.
One way to compensate for the philosophical and structural barriers to planning is to move planning from the public sector to the private sector, Stough said.
That's exactly what's being attempted through the New Century Council, a public-private effort to develop a vision for the economic future of a region that encompasses the Roanoke and New River valleys and Alleghany Highlands. The council has involved hundreds of citizens in the effort. The results of their work will be released to the public later this year.
"In some respects," said Beverly Fitzpatrick of Roanoke, director of the council, "the New Century process has been a self-evaluation of who we are, what we want to be and how we get there."
One of the region's biggest problems, Fitzpatrick said, is that it's not creating enough jobs for young people who grow up here. "If we want our grandchildren here, we've got to admit that growth is essential," he said. Sound familiar?
The restaurants and bars of downtown Roanoke are full of evidence that the region may not be creating enough jobs for young people. In those businesses you'll find many twenty-somethings with college degrees working as waiters, waitresses and bartenders. They are young people who want to stay in the area and have looked for work in their chosen fields but so far haven't found it. Mike Caudill, a 24-year-old graduate of Cave Spring High School and Roanoke College, tends bar at Corned Beef and Company on Jefferson Street.
Caudill majored in English in college with a minor in communications and has been trying to land a job with a brokerage firm in Roanoke.
"I was told they don't hire anybody under 30," he said. "It's the same old story: 'We want somebody with more experience.'"
He has many friends, Caudill said, who went away to college and returned to Roanoke and find themselves in the same predicament. It's the same story for young people from out of the area who have come here to college and would like to stay, he said.
Emily Erlandson, a 23-year-old Mary Washington College graduate, works alongside Caudill as a waitress. She moved to Roanoke to be close to her boyfriend, a Virginia Military Institute business economics grad from Roanoke who was recently hired as a Roanoke County policeman.
Erlandson, who majored in sociology in college, is looking for a job in advertising and public relations. People she interviews with in Roanoke advise her to go to Richmond or Washington, D.C.
Caudill worries that when he goes to job interviews now, employers will look at his resume, see he's been tending bar for two years and conclude he's lazy. Now, along with the job hunting, he's started thinking about opening his own restaurant someday.
About 15 people he knows have landed jobs with First Union Bank, but many have been transferred to the bank's headquarters in Charlotte, Caudill, whose father was the No.2 man in the old Dominion Bank, said.
Caudill wants to stay around Roanoke. "I'm kind of content on this area," he said. "It's kind of a disability in a way."
A union for the region
The New Century Council's Fitzpatrick said the region needs a balance of different kinds of jobs. He said he would like to see more homegrown industries with their headquarters in the region and hopes the region will eventually gain a better sense of where it's going and start producing the leaders who are needed to get it there.
You can control growth or let it overrun you, Fitzpatrick said. If you have the right kind of labor force, you can control to some degree what kind of industry the region gets and education is the key to developing the labor force, he said.
Like Fitzpatrick, each person brings his or her own perspective and concerns to a discussion of how growth should be managed for the common good.
It's important that all segments of the community are involved in its growth and development, said Ted Edlich, executive director of Roanoke's Total Action Against Poverty. Access to training, education and resources for the poor as well as the affluent is the key to accomplishing that, he said.
He would like to see a future, Edlich said, where every low-income child could be in a Head-Start program. Now, one of every five eligible children attends.
"It's very important that ways be found to nurture development of black-owned business in this community," he said. "There's a relationship between black-owned business and increased opportunities for black employment."
The Rev. Charles Green, president of the Roanoke chapter of the NAACP, said the region has too many low-paying jobs. "People are working, but a lot are working two or three jobs to survive."
The black community needs to be included when plans are made for the future, Green said. Now, however, a discussion of growth is almost irrelevant to the black community, he said.
Walter Wise thinks there's a bigger role for unions in economic growth and development. Wise is business agent for the Iron Workers Union and president of Roanoke's Central Labor Council.
For the region to have a sound economy, a diversity of manufacturing needs to be at its core, Wise said. The region needs to take care of its existing companies as well as seek new ones, he said.
When low-wage companies locate in the region it may be good for the company but it doesn't help the region any and may add to its social-service costs, Wise said.
Wise says he sees a contradiction in politicians, such as Gov. George Allen, who support economic development in one breath and call for cuts in educational funding in the next. Having an educated and well-trained work force is one of the best ways to attract new industry, Wise said.
What's good growth partly depends on the place and why it is seeking growth, said John Levy, a professor of urban affairs and planning at Virginia Tech. If new industry is being sought to provide jobs for the existing labor force, it should offer jobs that fit with those workers skills, he said.
If growth is being sought to increase the tax base and help hold down taxes for existing taxpayers, Levy said, it must be remembered that growth can add to a locality's expenses as well as its tax revenues. Job growth adds to population growth, which will require an increase in services, he said.
Additional costs come from the competition between localities for new jobs, a subject that Levy has studied and written about. He compares such competition to an arms race, which inevitably snowballs as each community seeks an advantage over the other.
Many of those interviewed for this story said less competition and more cooperation among the localities is crucial to the region's future.
Alvin Fink, a long-time Roanoke businessman, said he would like to see the Chambers of Commerce consolidated in the Roanoke Valley and said it's "just a shame" the consolidation of Roanoke City and Roanoke County wasn't accomplished.
Tom Rappold, the father of the twin girls about to graduate from high school, said the region's governments have not made the investments in roads, utilities and other infrastructure that are needed to foster new industry and jobs. The lack of cooperation among regional governments, he said, sends the wrong message to industry interested in coming into the area.
TAP's Edlich hopes that, in the future, governmental functions such as providing water, transportation and industrial development are done regionally.
A more regional approach to solving problems is in the region's best interest, the Iron Workers' Wise agreed. "Basically, the region needs to form its own union," he said.
GOOD VS. BAD GROWTH
It's possible to summarize the things that people think growth should and should not do for the region or, in other words, to make a distinction between bad and good growth. Good growth, they say:
Creates a diversity of jobs and a balance of low-skill and high-skill jobs.
Raises the standard of living of area residents.
Provides job opportunities for the young people who want to make their lives in the region.
Adds to the quality of life of the area's residents through such things as improved public services and recreational opportunities.
Generates an increased sense of independence from Richmond and Washington and of more local control over the region's destiny.
Results in increased cooperation among the people and governments of the region.
Leads to increased educational opportunities for all segments of society and to a better understanding and tolerance for differences among the people who take part in the growth.
Minimizes damage to the environment.
Does not destroy natural beauty.
Is planned so that congestion on highways and other public facilities is anticipated and avoided.
by CNB