On Saturday, sitting there on the brick terrace, I finished reading the 2004 Economic Vision for Page County. To be honest, as a consultant, reading background material such as this always leaves me with a few questions. While I have this post, and one other tomorrow, hitting some highlights of the action plan, the questions and next steps elements are always where the hard work is – the consultant delivers the reports, packs up for home, leaving the client to execute the recommendations.
By far, the driver of this plan is “business attraction” – five pages out of a total of 25. The discussion begins with the quote, “…one key to a sustained economic future will be Page County’s ability to attract new economic development…,“ before moving into a discussion of how Page competes with other destinations in the state for this kind of investment. The key concept is being ready, focusing on land prices, a resident labor pool, and accessibility via highways and rail.
There is an honest assessment of the probability of success for a plan like this. Apparently Page County has traditionally created marketing plans like this without taking the step to explore what industries are suitable, or where high priority investments should be made. This kind of targeting contributes to a higher probability of success. To do it, the community begins by asking itself questions such as:
· What is our niche?
· What types of businesses do we want to attract?
· What should be our strategic priorities: manufacturing, tourism development and promotion, or retail development?
There is a recommendation to take this key step of a market study and consensus building effort to answer these questions. The goal is to identify the industrial sectors and business types that would be most beneficial in the County. A second goal outlined in this area is an analysis of the types of export opportunities that might exist based on proximity to the Virginia Inland Port in Front Royal.
The rest of the goals in this section – invest in better communications infrastructure, and the transportation infrastructure issues keeps coming up in various ways – address getting the table stakes together before being dealt in to the big hand. Coming down to earth, there is no assessment of how likely a small county like this, 30,000 or so people, is going to attract the kind of economic development investment needed to do these things, simply the observation that Page County must do them.
These recommendations are alternatively “easy ones” or “throwaways.” I found some interesting references to establishments I haven’t heard of before, that I am going to check out: the “Wrangler Annex” and the County Industrial Development Authority. I’ll look into these and make them the subject of a future post when I return to this topic.
The “attract new business” section closes with a sensible recommendation about supporting the expansion of the county’s tourism and retail base. As I’ve mentioned before, the thoughts on tourism seem the most logical to me, with the river, the mountains, the Park (1,000,000 visitors annually) and Forest nearby, not to mention Luray Caverns (500,000 visitors annually). The county was just awarded the state’s designation as “Cabin Capital of Virginia” highlighting the opportunities for a rustic and outdoors form of recreation.
That seems to be where the most leverage is, at least to me. It’s what brought Mary and me here in the first place. In the absence of the kind of investment study outlined in this report, the critical mass seems to be with tourism and related services and retail.
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