THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 17, 1996 TAG: 9603150570
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 136 lines
What kind of jobs do you want in Hampton Roads?
Do you want a large electronics company, like Motorola in Richmond? Or a major new mall in downtown Norfolk? Or would you rather concentrate on building small businesses?
These are not academic questions. Across the country, there are communities that decide what kinds of businesses they want to attract and what kinds they don't.
One such town is Tupelo, Miss., best known as Elvis Presley's birthplace. But while Elvis was shakin' his way to fame in rock-and-roll, Tupelo was quietly building a reputation for knowing what it wanted and how to get it.
Today, Tupelo has more jobs than people, low poverty, cultural amenities, and top-rated schools. Local businesses and clubs donate about $500,000 a year to the schools.
What really sets Tupelo apart is how deeply involved its citizens were in making those things happen. Numerous local organizations sprang up where people could discuss the town's future and connect with each other.
This is especially urgent for South Hampton Roads, where our division into five equal cities - in addition to the Peninsula cities of Newport News and Hampton - may be holding us back economically.
``You all are falling behind, not moving forward, in terms of other places realizing they have no choice but to work together,'' said J. Mac Holladay, chief operating officer of the Governor's Development Council of Georgia, who researches economic decision-making. ``There are places in this country where they are overcoming those kinds of boundaries.''
Hampton Roads cities have sometimes worked in unison: They slowly came together on a regional tourism pitch - ``the Virginia Waterfront.'' Several cities joined forces, with considerable squabbling, to bring about the Lake Gaston water pipeline. Right now, the cities are working on a joint agreement for a major sports arena.
But the region's dominant theme for the past 30 years has been cities working separately, even competing against each other.
The result is that today, Hampton Roads finds itself a more obscure point on the map than regions of similar size - New Orleans, Portland, San Antonio, Orlando and Charlotte, to name a few.
Hampton Roads is most often compared to Charlotte, N.C., particularly since Charlotte gained both NFL and NBA pro sports franchises. Employment in Charlotte is similar to Hampton Roads, between 600,000 and 700,000 jobs. But according to the two state governments' figures, the average weekly wage in the Charlotte region is $547; in Hampton Roads it is $445 (although the figures do not include the military payroll, which would increase that figure somewhat).
Norfolk has two Fortune 500 company headquarters, Norfolk Southern and Smithfield Foods. Charlotte has five.
Those are incentives for finding ways to talk with each other, rather than finding reasons not to.
Holladay and others who have studied Tupelo have boiled down its success into lessons other communities can learn. With the help of the Kettering Foundation in Dayton, Ohio, they're preparing a practical booklet to send to anyone who's interested.
Holladay and Robert McKenzie, a professor at New College at the University of Alabama, have identified three decisions that a community has to work through before it can begin to guide its economic future:
What is the community's definition of prosperity?
``OK, you need jobs,'' McKenzie said. ``But you don't need just any jobs. For instance, people will say they need jobs that will keep kids here so they don't move away and we get to see the grandchildren.
``Do you want a large factory? Vance, Ala., is where Mercedes-Benz located, and they've been overrun by it. Tupelo has rejected large companies. They're not out there chasing the smokestacks, they want to remain in control.''
A question for Hampton Roads, then, could be: Is a major sports arena, or a professional sports franchise, part of the region's vision of prosperity?
Like the Vital Signs project, Holladay is trying to measure the community's health in different ways. He said, ``What I've tried to do is move away from the routine ribbon cuttings and groundbreakings and go to some reliable measurements to determine how the community is doing.
``The community is the product. That's what they have to sell. If the product isn't improving, what can you do about it?''
Holladay measures teen pregnancy, unemployment, the high school completion rate, the infant mortality rate, the crime rate index, the number of adults employed, the poverty rate, the average weekly earnings in manufacturing, and what types of jobs are already available.
What does security mean to its residents?
``Do they want, say, a Japanese model where the corporation takes care of you from entry to retirement?'' McKenzie said. ``Or are they thinking of encouraging entrepeneurship, getting kids in a career achievers group, that sort of thing.''
Holladay pointed to the example of Motorola's plant in Richmond.
``What was different there was the willingness of Virginia to create the educational training that the company needed,'' he said. It showed an awareness of how business and the university system could work closely together.
What is the residents' definition of fairness?
By this, McKenzie said, he means who should be included in the discussion? In many communities, he said, ``so-called leaders develop plans for economic development, but it doesn't necessarily benefit everybody. How broad is the participation in the community?''
In Tupelo, Holladay said, ``When you look at their service clubs, they had three times as many as anybody else. They participated in the community so they were part of the community.''
In Hampton Roads, such a discussion might ask what place small business owners have in the debate over whether to draw large plants or a pro sports team.
There may be benefits to the community just from having this kind of discussion.
``In talking through and engaging one another about these decisions, we begin to establish different relationships among ourselves,'' McKenzie said. ``We may not agree, we may not like one another, but we need each other.
``One thing we say to people is, `Look at your own family. Do you like everyone in your family? Do you agree on everything? And if you don't, do you find that you still have things in common, you can work things out? That's how you could think of your community.' ''
Just as with families, Holladay said, ``This is lifelong work.
``Tupelo's story is now 40 years old. They didn't do it in two weeks. Sadly, we still have people who can't get beyond the next election or the next quarterly statement. And that isn't how this works.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo illustration
HUY NGUYEN/The Virginian-Pilot
Graphic
1. Talk to your friends and neighbors about what you want to
happen. Don't just chat; clarify what you think is valuable and try
to figure out what the major choices are.
2. Volunteer for the Chamber of Commerce or city boards.
3. Look for examples. Find places where you think things are
going the right way - in newspaper stories, at shops in your
neighborhood, even in another city.
4. Start a study group. The National Issues Forum helps people
organize a productive discussion of issues. Call 1-800-433-7834.
by CNB