FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
February 8, 2005
CONTACT: Keith Taylor (757) 253--6658
The Hampton Roads Economic Development Alliance (HREDA) and the Peninsula Alliance for Economic Development (PAED) will merge effective March 1, 2005, under the HREDA name. As a member of PAED, James City County supported the merger and will participate fully in the newly constituted HREDA. As before, the individual jurisdictions will continue to have their own economic development staffs and programs, but HREDA’s purpose will be to market the entire region nationally and internationally to businesses interested in relocating or expanding into the region from elsewhere.
Although the Peninsula and Southside each have certain distinct features and attributes, they also share many features in common, and businesses and site selection consultants tend to view the region as one area. The boards of the two marketing organizations felt that promoting a single regional identity through a consolidated organization would be a more successful approach than competing to differentiate between the two areas.
Michael Brown, 2005 Chairman of the James City County Board of Supervisors, expressed enthusiasm for the merger. “In the fiercely competitive arena of business attraction, communities must constantly evaluate their strengths and strategies and adjust accordingly. This merger should improve our ability to bring our region to the attention of businesses in a favorable way,” he said.
County Administrator Sandy Wanner agreed. He noted that “It just makes sense that a combined budget and staff presenting a single regional message can have a greater impact than two organizations that are essentially touting the same features to the same people.”
Merger of local and regional economic-development alliances like HREDA and PAED is a trend that began in the 1980s and has been reignited by forces such as the mergers of huge national and international companies, which provide significant funding for economic-development agencies.
Keith Taylor, James City County's Economic Development Director, sees on a daily basis how sophisticated the research, marketing strategies, and marketing materials for business attraction are becoming. He notes that the merged HREDA will have a marketing budget and staff comparable to those of the State and of Northern Virginia jurisdictions, and he is expecting to see an increase in prospect activity for the region because of the merger. “Today, we don't just compete with other States or other communities in Virginia for deals,” he said. “We also compete with other countries. We need as strong a regional marketing arm as we can support, so this merger holds great promise.”
Jones Hooks, who will remain as CEO of HREDA, and Richard D. Weigel, outgoing president and CEO of the PAED, say other advantages include greater opportunity to tout such common and shared assets as the ports, colleges, research facilities and major employers; greater attention from the state in lead referrals; elimination of intra-regional competition; and the ability to present business prospects with statistics that are more impressive because they reflect the true picture of the region and the actual boundaries of the metropolitan statistical area defined by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
With offices in London; Bremen, Germany; and Garches, France, the new HREDA will continue to have its headquarters at 500 East Main Street in Norfolk and will operate its Peninsula office at 21 Enterprise Parkway in Hampton.
The very successful workforce development initiative begun by the PAED will split off and be retained on the Peninsula as a separate operating entity. Matthew James, PAED Vice-President of Workforce Development, will head the new organization. It will remain at the present PAED location at 21 Enterprise Parkway in Hampton.