How Regional Thinking May Chart our Preferred Future

Should local regions see themselves as economic unions or strategic partners, instead of competitors?  That is a question that many in positions of leadership in the business and civic arena are grappling with.  For a growing number, the days of adjoining counties contending with one another for the biggest slice of the economic development pie has got to end.  Instead, counties must work together to encourage business expansion from a regional perspective.

“A regionalized approach to economic development certainly has its advantages,” said Lynda Weatherman, president and chief executive officer of the Economic Development Commission of Florida’s Space Coast.  “Combining our leveraged resources and competitive advantages, as well as our collective population and buying power, puts us head-to-head with other major regional global economies.

Florida Tech President Anthony Catanese said he believes, “technology, transportation and a global economy are rapidly pushing us into a new way of thinking and planning regionally.  All economic development is regional, so we should plan regionally.”

The concept of regionalism is nothing new, but it has taken on added importance with the economic downturn and current jump start of a slow recovery.  “Collaboration is essential in this economy to broaden our horizons,” said Christine Michaels, president and chief executive officer of the Melbourne Regional Chamber of East Central Florida.

Canaveral Port Authority Chief Executive Officer J. Stanley Payne said Brevard County needs to push hard at regionalism, so that it does not fall behind other areas in economic growth.

“Whether it is the geography of Brevard County or its political history that has hampered a truly unified economic development effort, regionalism must begin at home, within county boundaries, before our county can be an effective regional partner,” Payne said. “A great fear is that Orlando’s regionalism thrust will eventually focus westward, toward Tampa, leaving Brevard out of the equation or as a second-level player.”

Brevard Workforce President Lisa Rice also said she believes regionalization will have to be initiated at the county level.  “If the county officials can agree that regionalizing economic development is the best thing for our area, then they can incentivize their economic development organizations to work together to draw industries that will benefit the entire region,” she said.  “Without understanding and then working together to draw specific industries to our region, we will fall behind those regions already implementing this strategy.  We must share and cooperate in our recruitment activities with our neighbors.”

Weatherman added, regionalization “requires the understanding that when companies are looking to locate in an area, they are not looking at county boundaries.  Companies are looking at the complete package – all of the competitive advantages of any particular region’s footprint.”

Organizational Efforts

There are various efforts underway to promote regionalism involving Brevard, including LEAD Brevard and myregion.org.  “We no longer just live in neighborhoods… we live in a global economy.  And Brevard needs to be poised to remain competitive from a regional view,” said Kristin Bakke, president and chief executive officer of LEAD Brevard, an organization that develops and launches leaders for positive change.  She said LEAD Brevard supports regional thinking and approaches to issues that have a regional perspective.

Regionalism is a key focus of Orlando-based myregion.org, a regional development program formed in 1999 that includes Brevard County and six other counties in Central and East Central Florida.  The organization works with that area’s individuals, organizations, businesses and governments to help make the region globally competitive.  “Business connectivity isn’t based on county boundaries,” said Shelley Lauten, president of myregion.org. “As leaders, we need to understand these economic relationships” that extend beyond county lines.

One local example of note is the huge “Medical City” health and life sciences development in the Lake Nona area of southeast Orlando that will create an estimated 16,200 jobs and $5.2 billion in annual economic activity by 2017.  The project isn’t in Brevard, but the people filling jobs there could be living – and spending their salaries – in Brevard.  At the same time, Brevard businesses could get spin-off benefits from Medical City’s various hospitals, research facilities and educational institutions.

Looking at things a different way, from Brevard to outside the county, North Brevard’s space industry workers might live in Volusia or Orange counties, and employees of Harris Corp. or other high-tech giants in South Brevard might live in Indian River County, generating economic benefits to multiple counties.

Payne said Port Canaveral is another example of how regionalism can work.  “Ports generally, and Port Canaveral in particular, are by their very nature regional resources, regional assets.   While Port Canaveral generates substantial economic activity in Brevard County, we clearly serve as a conduit for moving people and goods to and from Orlando, Orlando International Airport and Central Florida.  In other words, while ‘regionalism’ seems to be a popular buzzword, you can see it in practice today at Port Canaveral, and it has been for some time.”

Common Issues

Bakke said there are many common issues affecting multiple counties in the region that come into play when talking about regionalization, among them water supply, protecting green spaces and general quality of life.  She added that regional planning needs to take into account what might happen five, 10 or even 20 years from now.

Bakke compared the individual counties of Central Florida to neighborhoods in a community of Central Florida.  “What happens in one neighborhood has an impact on another neighborhood.  Getting all the right people around the table to solve the problems” together is better than “solving it neighborhood by neighborhood by neighborhood.”  With a regional approach, “You get more people to generate the solutions.”

But the key question is: do efforts to regionalize economic development truly generate benefits for the different counties or cities working on the effort?

“One of the difficulties in regionalizing economic development is that you have to give up ownership and draw business to your area,” Rice said.  “If a business is drawn to the region and the entire region does not benefit, yet they cooperated to bring the business to the area, then you will see the collapse of the collaboration.  However, if a business is drawn to the area and there is benefit gained by the entire area, then more cooperative activities will occur.  This requires overcoming territorialism and it requires a sharing of resources that has never been done before.”

There also are efficiencies created through regionalism for the members of a regional development coalition.

For example, Larry Wuensch, director of land development at Melbourne International Airport, said regionalism allows for extended marketing outreach not possible by individual localities and can be very effective if there are some real economic clusters, such as aerospace or biotech.

“The pros (of regionalism) are in marketing and establishing a stronger economic identity,” said Wuensch, who has extensive experience in economic development and government. “The cons are having the localities giving up a large measure of control of their development goals, and there is always the problem of being overshadowed by a dominant area of the region. I was never too excited about tourism marketing with Orlando, since they would almost surely overpower our individual message.”

Weatherman said that, while regionalization “allows us to leverage our resources, thereby increasing our competitiveness with other regions,” a potential shortcoming of regionalization is containing each community’s unique and individual identity.

Pulling Both Ways

Wuensch said there are significant pulls both ways between the Space Coast and the Orlando-area economies.  “Orlando pulls to Brevard for Port Canaveral, which is the world’s second-busiest port, as well as for the beaches, the quality of life and the aerospace cluster.” Meanwhile, he said, “Brevard pulls to Orlando for its large metro amenities, the University of Central Florida, the tourism attractions, its airport and increasingly, it will also be for the biotech and computer-simulation clusters.”

From a workforce viewpoint, Rice said, “the availability of a high-skilled workforce is definitely pulling Orlando toward us, yet, at the same time, we are reaching out to Orlando-area businesses as a mechanism for retaining Brevard’s workforce” after the space shuttle program’s retirement.

“Talent is the first thing that businesses are looking for, and we will have a surplus that the region should capitalize upon,” Rice said.

In Weatherman’s view, the region’s attractiveness is “the collective environment of our stellar, highly-skilled, highly-educated workforce; research and development capacity leveraged with the strength of our colleges and universities; and a quality of life that is second to none.”

East-West or North-South

Working together is all well and good, but there isn’t unanimity on how to build the framework to achieve that.  For example, myregion.org recently changed its approach somewhat, reorganized its leadership structure into eight “economic centers,” including two that include parts of Brevard and three other counties.  Each economic center will have its own board of advisers.

In other economic couplings involving Brevard, there is the question of what makes most sense: an east-west “Interstate 4 corridor” regionalism approach stretching from the Space Coast to the Tampa area, or a north-south “I-95 corridor” approach stretching along the Atlantic coast.

Wuensch said he believes that, from a planning and development point of view, the four coastal counties in a potential I-95 corridor – Brevard, Indian River, St. Lucie and Volusia – “have very similar issues and challenges.”

He isn’t as sold on Brevard’s presence in an I-4 corridor that includes the Orlando and Tampa areas.  “The I-4 corridor is really too big for us to be a key player, and we will never be more than a footnote,” he said.

Catanese, though, said he envisions a region from Melbourne/Palm Bay to Tampa, particularly as high-speed rail service is developed.

Rice is among those who take the middle ground on this issue.  “I really believe it depends on the issue and recognizing that regionalization should be a fluid approach, rather than a static approach.  While we have many things that draw Orlando to our area, we probably share more similarities with our neighbors to the north and south with regard to high-tech industries and skilled workers. Our endeavor to grow our economy has to be evaluated based upon what resources are needed from around the region to make it successful.”

According to Weatherman, “Each region offers its unique attributes and advantages.  Defining which approach makes sense would depend on the needs of the target industry.”

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