Inside IALR

Economic Development - Transforming a Region

• Institute for Advanced Learning and Research

Share episode

The fifth episode of “Inside IALR” focuses on economic development with Linda Green, Vice President, Economic Development and Executive Director of the Southern Virginia Regional Alliance (SVRA). She defines economic development, emphasizing that it is not a simple, short-term or one-size-fits-all approach. Linda shares how her team works to recruit companies and promote growth for existing industries, highlights the selling points they make to companies, and explains what economic development looks like in Southern Virginia. 

The Institute for Advanced Learning and Research serves as a regional catalyst for economic transformation in Southern Virginia. Our services, programs and offerings are diverse, impactful and far reaching.

Get updates from IALR on other channels:

Caleb Ayers:

Welcome to another episode of Inside IALR. I'm here with Linda Green, who's the Vice President of Economic Development and also the Executive Director of the Southern Virginia Regional Alliance. So, Linda, I'm going to start off and just ask if you can explain what in the world is economic development and then tell us a little bit about how you got involved in that.

Linda Green:

Absolutely. Thanks so much for doing this, Caleb. Virginia Economic Developers Association looked at what is economic development across the Commonwealth last year, and it was funny. We did a survey of people and what they considered to be economic development in their regions. I would say economic development to me is the professional practice of making sure that you transform a region for positive growth. So it really is the concentration of developing a community to be ready to grow. So you're looking at the gross domestic product and whether that increases in your community.

Caleb Ayers:

And how did you get involved in economic development?

Linda Green:

That was the second part of our question, and you're going to chuckle at this because we ask everybody what's your hidden economic development talent? And I would have to say that it varies immensely. There aren't a lot of professional tracks within colleges and universities for an economic developer. Typically, people come out of a marketing background or a public policy background and then go into economic development, but it ranges across the board. In my case, I was a quality engineer at Goodyear for many years. We worked on the Malcolm Baldridge Quality Award, and I worked with the Senate Productivity and Quality Awards. The Center for Innovative Technology was looking for someone who had expertise in the quality field. They had 12 people across the state that had a different expertise, each one of them. And then we partnered to work projects with industry and university with different disciplines. Mine was the quality engineering discipline. So it's funny, it was the manufacturing sector that I worked in, living on a tobacco farm. So it was the mixture of technical expertise and hard work that I think really landed well with economic development. We did technology-focused economic development. And over a period of years, I became the manufacturing director for the state. And that was partly because of my expertise and partly because of the predominance of manufacturing in the region that I started in. So we formed university labs around the state. We did corrosion expertise at the University of Virginia. We had advanced manufacturing at Virginia Tech. At Old Dominion, we had a manufacturing prototype center. So each one of those had a different expertise. And I know that's a funny twist to what does this have to do with economic development, but each one of those were economic development in its own way. So at Goodyear, I was looking at their capital investments and their processes and how did they grow internally. At CIT, it was a state inference on how we get the universities linked to the needs of the companies and the technologies they need. So again, it was around the gross domestic product. And then with the incubator, it was how do we do the startups? And we actually landed three key manufacturers in the incubator during that time, working with federal grants from federal sector research that could help this region. From there I worked with Congress for a little while. So that was a little different than the economic development times. And I was really pleased when I stopped the work with Congressman Hurt when Mr. Gualtney, who was at ILR at the time, actually came to my office and said, I'm looking for someone at the institute to do economic development. And I know you've got all the different matches that I need. And that was from the small business to the large business to the university. So I'm going to tie that back to what Virginia Economic Developers Association said. Economic development is everybody's business, but as a profession, it's a skill set that involves a network of expertise and skills that you acquire over time. So you and Daniel might might well be economic developers in the future.

Caleb Ayers:

I I've always thought it's very interesting since you know I've started learning about it working in local government and just seeing the different activities that you all are doing and you know, recruiting companies, working with existing companies. And as you said, there's a lot of different skill sets. And I'm sure in those surveys you said you mentioned everyone had a different answer. With with that in mind, you know, that economic development looks different for everyone. So in our specific context for Southern Virginia, which you market Southern Virginia and also working with the institute, what does economic development look like here specifically? What are we focused on? What are some of those, you know, I guess activities or things that you and your team and your partner organizations do?

Linda Green:

That's a great question, Caleb. We start out by doing sector analysis and looking at what exists here currently and what do we have the opportunity to grow into. So in that, we focus on four key sectors in this region. The probably most prominent and well-recognized is the high performance manufacturing. So that's whether it's energy, metal, you see auto manufacturing in the area now. You see advanced skills and skill sets that really catapult us to a new level in our school systems. So that makes advanced manufacturing or high performance manufacturing an important sector. We also do an awful lot in advanced materials, and those advanced materials might be the handling of rubber processing at Goodyear. It could be the plastics that you see at Stanton River Plastics in the northern end of Pittsylvania County, or Presto, or Innertape, and I always call them the bubble companies because they make this huge bubble of a polymer fabric that then becomes either a plastic bag or shrink wrap tape. But they make enough plastic at inner tape to wrap the world eight times. So, you know, we really have some very strong Presto, is very strong at what they do. We have Esel Propac in that area making laminated tubes for toothpaste, shampoo, different tubes that probably are sitting in your bathrooms now. But so many skill sets go into that in that sector. So you're looking at how you design the print on the outside of a tube. So they're doing the printing, they're doing the design, plus the makeup of the tube itself. So we have some very strong advanced plastics and rubber manufacturing companies. Goodyear is the only U.S. rubber manufacturer or tire manufacturer that's left. We used to have a lot of tire manufacturers in the U.S., but they're the only U.S. owned that's making critical tires for our Department of Defense on airplanes. And when I think about one of those aircraft landers landing on a ship, I want to count on those tires when they land. So that would be another important sector. Another one is our environmental and life sciences sector. So when you look at that one and you think about the fact that our number one and number three products in the state of Virginia are agriculture and forestry. So not only do we have the rampant source of raw materials in forestry and agricultural products, we also have the intersection of that manufacturing. So we have a lot of food and beverage companies across the region. We have a lot of new technologies like AeroFarms and combining that into controlled environmental ag. So that intersection of those two segments, and it also gets into pharmaceuticals. So you also have some companies that are interfacing in that pharmaceutical space. Then our fourth sector is ITN professional services, and that one crosses some areas that people may not even think about. CBN or Canadian Bank Note makes driver's license. So everybody that hears this probably has a driver's license in their pocket that was made in Danville, Virginia. They've been in production for years here in the Cyber Park. A claim to fame that I often share with prospects who talk about them. They've never lost a document. That speaks incredibly well to the quality procedures and checklists that are there because I dare say that you could not walk into many places producing that can say, never have we lost one product in our process. But in that space, you also have data centers in the region and a growing interest of putting data centers in the area. You have networking and cybersecurity companies. You have a plethora of those companies and logistics companies, like if you think about SRI Supply Resources International, they are a three-party logistics company that would actually be the company that a foreign domestic investor might utilize when they're coming to this region because they can actually do some final assembly, they can do packaging, but more importantly, they're going to know how to handle the logistics to ship that product anywhere in the world. And the way that we grow our gross domestic product is shipping more things around the world from this region.

Caleb Ayers:

I mean, you know, you just rattled off a lot of companies there who are, I know a lot of them are employing a lot of people. I guess to go back to, you know, our mission and our founding, you know, we were founded, the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research was founded sort of at a time where there was a lot of industries that were falling, you know, tobacco, textiles, furniture specifically, and and you know, the the economy was was bleak, um, I would say for for this region. So how have we come to have those those specific sectors be our focus areas? Talk to us about that.

Linda Green:

Sure. So within economic development, we look at what is actually already here. Is there a supply chain to support an industry? And we look at something called a location quotient, which is just a magic formula for looking at the growth of an industry sector. Does it have the potential to grow? What are the supply chains like that would feed that industry? Do we have the partners that they need to work with and succeed? So we looked at the location quotients of companies that could make it here. And then we were very fortunate to have a group of local leaders who looked at where they should commit resources. And I have to stop and give the Tobacco Commission credit and a plug as well, because a lot of this work was formed because we had legislators who were wise enough to invest back in the Tobacco Commission footprint and make sure that economic development recreated this region. As they did that, we had a group of very astute leaders who recognized that we needed a symbol that connected university research to this region and connected higher thinking, higher strategies of development of the existing regions and diversification of the industries that are in it. So at that point, we looked at precision machining, the strengths and legacy that we had that went back 50 years in that field. There was a strength in electronics that connected to that, but was not the immediate machining focus. We looked at things like, and I say we, this group of leaders, thankfully, looked at what do we need to put at their fingertips to help them succeed and to help us diversify. So we didn't, we had very strong skills in chemical analytics from the textile companies. We had very strong machining capabilities from all the works that they did. And at that point, we had a lot of corporate headquarters, we had a lot of research going on. So they looked at the formation of the institute. They looked at do we have the analytical capabilities of testing and supporting these industries as they come in? And how do we grow in a strategic manner? So they invested in programs within the school system that expanded the machine and programs. And it went all the way at that point through the high schools and the investment in the high schools in career and technical education and made sure that that was complementary to what we were doing at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research. ILR was one of the formations from that brain trust of people in Tobacca Commission funding that looked at investing in some of these high success potential industries that could grow and raise the wage base in our area. So when we're looking at it from an economic development standpoint, it's what is already here, what has the potential to grow, and what legacy skills could we work with to attract new industries that might be more diverse and have more potential of growth. So I'll use the ARFarms example. That's the perfect example of an indoor growth facility that's actually working on the agricultural side. It benefits FITS immensely from this commitment of resources at the Institute in controlled environmental ag, but it also takes the know-how and the agricultural prowess of a community that's really succeeded for a long time in the agricultural sector and looks at the future of agriculture and how you can grow 300 times more per acre by doing it in a manufacturing manner. So we had Jay Timmins here from the National Association of Manufacturers, and he actually helped with the ribbon cutting there. And he coined it best to say this is the intersection of agricultural engineering and manufacturing. So it is still farming, but it's farming in a completely different way, but it's one that could not be done in a better area than here because the research is here at the Institute, tied to Virginia Tech. So, and you have Scott Lohman working with federal labs, and you know, so it goes broader to make sure that the companies that come here have the state-of-the-art resources. Another good example would be Iperion X in Halifax, who came here, a company from Australia originally. They will produce titanium, which is the number one component used by aircraft vehicles. So it's something that our government considers a strategy to contribute to the national defense. It's producing a material that is lighter but more capable of being in the next generation of high-performance manufacturing. But it's also the things we're using here in additive manufacturing. So now we have the producer who owns a mine in Tennessee, who owns an intellectual property that came out of the University of Utah, but recognized that they could better adapt that because of the things that are being done with the ATDM program locally, and that they would have better applied resources and affiliations with university and research labs by coming here than in other parts of the country. So it's kind of the perfect intersection. I think it's the intersection of applied technology and theoretical research, and you can't do it better than you can do applied research in this region.

Caleb Ayers:

Talked with Scott about, you know, the the research that they do. And you know, he talked about the difference between applied research, which is a lot of what they do, but even translational research, he said, is like we need this right now. Um and that's that's awesome that you have that that you you market that to companies as that that capability, I'm sure. So talk to us a little bit about I know a big, a big component of what you do is trying to recruit new companies to come here and then also working with existing companies to see how, you know, how they can be supported so that they can grow and expand. Talk to us about those those two primary focuses. What goes into that? You know, tell us some stories about you know companies that you've gone out and recruited and how you know what that process is like.

Linda Green:

Absolutely. It's a fun process because it changes every day. Um, there was a time 10 years ago when a company consultant who's looking at a new area or a site consultant whose job it is to work directly with those companies when they're relocating, they would come to us and their questions were almost totally about the site. It was, you know, do you have the soil that we can put our plant on? Or do you have an existing building that this business could move into? It's a completely different profession today. It's very much internet-based. They're doing an incredible amount of research prior to even calling you. And when they call you, they're moving on a much quicker timeline because they've already kicked the tires to see what the areas are that have potential, and they're not looking to add communities to their list, they're looking to eliminate communities from their list. So we have to have at our fingertips answers on our workforce, on our labor shed, on the sites themselves, what they provide to the companies. But it goes a lot broader. If it's a foreign company, they want to know about the culture of the community, what it provides their community. Can you speak their language? Can you bring in translators as needed? Would you consider schools that cater to children of a different culture or of a different language? Um, so you have to have all those answers prepared somewhat before the call comes in. So I actually brought with me for you and Daniel some of the flyers that we're working on right now with the different sectors. So when we're working on a high performance manufacturing company, we're thinking about what are the certifications that we have that are industry recognized. We're thinking about all the programs from middle school to high school. And believe me, when we walk these companies through the Go Tech Lab and they see us investing in our students at a middle school level, that's something they don't see in very many places. But when you see that infrastructure that goes from the middle school and even the smart beginnings and the programs that go pre-K and start to work with the students before they get to that program, those things all are things that they're going to ask us about. They're going to ask us about child care, they're going to ask us about housing. So I would say that economic development today intersects with community development in a new and emerging way. In fact, for Vita, the Virginia Economic Developers Association, the theme this year will be the intersection of economic and community development. So those housing issues, those quality of life issues, all of those are going to be a key part of it. So if you back back to stories of a company that's looking at the incubator, I mean at the megasite, sorry, and we are thinking of incubation of a bigger company now. When they walk through, we had a company that walked through through the weekend, and they actually arrived on Friday night, wanted to visit on Saturday. So it's wonderful to have a flexible, dynamic organization like the Institute, where Todd Yates says, Fine, I'll meet you there for this tour. This was a company that we'll be working with the Department of Defense. So their questions were things like, Can you show us while we're here how we could do customized training that meets the needs of the industry? So when they walk through and they see the GoTech program, they're satisfied that we're working on their pipeline. But when they go on to see the things that are in the ATDM program, not only can this area do customized training, but it was targeted by the Department of Defense to do the prototype program and develop programs across the country for training on a short, customized basis, very specific niche training. Then that completely takes away any questions that they have about whether or not we can train their workers. And it goes further. It goes to the relationships we have with suppliers. It goes to the Skills USA banners that they see flying that says our students and faculty are among the best in the nation. So we don't have to sell them on being able to deliver beyond walking them through those facilities. And I may have strayed from your original question, but this has landed some very large companies who have looked at major investments in this region because they see we've already made an investment in our community.

Caleb Ayers:

That's important what you just said, you know, that they're they see our investment, so they're going to be more willing to invest themselves. So what I want to talk to you about too, and you've already, you know, you've touched on a lot of this, but I want to talk a little bit more in detail, is you know, what are the selling points for Southern Virginia? You talked about GoTech, you talked about ATDM, you talked about, you know, all those different workforce development programs as things that companies see and are attracted to. But what are some of those other things that you you really promote to these companies who are you're trying to convince to come here?

Linda Green:

No, that's a great question. We always say we're accessible, we're affordable, and we're skilled. We are fortunate to be in the mid-eastern part of the U.S. where a lot of the economic development is taking place now. When you look at the economy of the U.S., about just looking at the southeastern part, we would be the third or fourth fastest growing economy in the world when you look at the southeastern part of the U.S. And we're right in that. We're also right in the middle of that area. So for auto manufacturers, just as an example, if they're looking at Detroit or if they're looking at the growth in the southeast, where you're seeing Toyota, BMW, and other auto companies locate, we're located right in the center of that. So we're also seeing aerospace come into the southeast. You can access two-thirds of the U.S. industrial base or about 60% of the population within a one day's drive of this region. So all of a sudden, we are more accessible. So the logistics of our area is incredibly appealing to companies. When you look at that further, we can get to the port of Virginia, which is now the deepest port on the eastern shore. It also is uniquely positioned to be one of the best ports. It, because of the Navy, can never shut down the access to that port when we had COVID shutdowns at other ports around the country. It never happened at our port because it can't. We keep that port open because of the Navy at all times. But it has two-way traffic, which is something that very few ports have. So a vessel can actually turn and travel either direction from our port. It also is the most efficient port in the United States. It's been voted the most efficient because of the commitments. That port is less than, it's about three and a half hours from us. And with the federal requirements for transportation, a truck can actually drive there, unload, and reload, and return to their plant in a one-day trip. Very few areas have that access. So we're really blessed because of our distance to the port. We also have class one rail. Norfolk and Southern has class one rail. So when you think about the advanced materials companies that are here, most of them bring their polymers in through the rail. If they're shipping directly to the port, they can ship via rail or truck. Very few areas can do that. So we're just uniquely situated because of where we are. So then that would be the first, the accessible. The affordable, we're extremely affordable. We run about 40% less expensive than the West Coast or the northeastern parts of the U.S. And that's in our housing cost. It's across the board. Now, I will be the first to say we want to see those salaries raised. So we are looking at the higher wage opportunities when we look at that, but we're still going to be very competitive. When you look at us versus California, they're going to recognize readily that they could produce here about 40% less. We're about 18% below the average in the United States, no matter where you look. And when you look to Europe, we're about 40% less expensive. So the affordability is a big, big issue. But then skilled, and as I told you, we spend probably 75% of our time talking about the unique advantages they have with skill workforce. In our marketing, we develop the answers to the labor shed as well as the workforce. So when you look at our labor shed as a micropolitan area, people may have ruled us out thinking that we're not large enough, but our labor shed intersects with the labor sheds from Roanoke, from Lynchburg, from Raleigh-Durham area, and from the Greensboro-Winston-Salem triad. So when you think about that, we have over a half million people in that 60-mile labor shed of this area. That's something that people don't think about. They may think of us as somewhat rural, but when you get over a half million million people in the labor shed, we don't appear rural at all. So we definitely market that heavily. So when we bring them in and they see this state-of-the-art facility, first of all, it sets an initial impression that is very different than what they walked in thinking they were going to find. The second thing is we we were on the telephone just prior to this call with a prospect who looked at this area. They did the first visit in Charlotte. And I told you, economic development has changed drastically. They had four states come to them at the airport in Charlotte and did that initial visit there. The second visit, they came here, and they told us the day of the visit, we were totally unaware of what we were going to find when we got to this area. So I would say that we blow the image when they get here. If we can get them to this area to see what is here, it completely changes the mindset. So when they walked through, they were expecting to hear about how we could do the training for their industry and what we would learn about this. And this was an advanced electronics company, but they were working with the Department of Defense. That was important to them. So when they walked through the Institute and Matt. With Todd and learned from Jeremiah and some of the people there what they're doing in training and non-destructive testing, what they could do for them in the training that helped with the welding because they had some welding components. They went into DCC and saw the mechatronics programs, but then at the institute, they saw the optimization bay and recognized that they could work to optimize their mechatronics processes for conveyors, for carrying goods, for transporting goods through the plant. It completely changed the scope of what they were doing and what they were looking at. They shortlisted this area from Saturday to today. We got the call just prior to this call saying that we had been shortlisted and we're down to the final three areas that they're looking at. We were competing with Dallas, Texas, with Greenville, South Carolina, with areas known for immense resources. But it was the training programs and the customized training capability that the institute has invested in that completely changed their mindset. We actually pulled statistics for Scott on Controlled Environmental Ag over the last day because he's working with a grant with Virginia Tech where they are looking at our capabilities based on prospect activity and companies that are here. In pulling that, 24 CEA companies have looked directly at this region. It's predominantly because of the work done at the Institute. So taking Scott with us, bringing companies in that recognize we already have a network with the Department of Defense completely changes the mindset that they walk in with. And they see us as a partner, not just that can help them with the applied training, but that can help them with the network that they need to form around their company. So that's two examples. Another example would be Tyson's. When Tyson's Food originally came, they came with a top site consultant who had already looked at the statistics in this area. When he walked through with them and we looked at the training programs and what the institute provides, they actually changed their model. They made that the most technologically sophisticated of all the Tyson's facilities. And for anybody in this region who hasn't taken time to drive through Cane Creek and see that facility coming out of the ground or across the road, the Aero Farms facilities. Both of those were directly correlated to the things that we're doing here at the Institute and in the greater training scheme of the region. So that partnership's always there. The fact that they see they can do launch bays here. We have another company that's looking at the mega site, but they're going to need about 20 people working on site that first two years as they're building out the facility. They're looking at the potential of a launch bay. And if you think about Kia Sara, who already located here at the Institute, in that two years that they actually used a launch bay, they got their ISO certification, they were producing parts and hiring students from our programs when they went to work, they were already producing parts. For most companies, that would be another 60 days to up to a year delay. That doesn't happen in most parts of a country.

Caleb Ayers:

That's cool. Those crossovers that you're talking about, it's really cool to see that. And the clear impact of what you of what we do here. I mean, as you said, you know, those are, I know Tyson's hiring hundreds of people, Aero Farms having hundreds, over a hundred employees, you know, that's a clear impact, and that's a clear economic impact for our whole region. We talked about how economic development looks different everywhere. I think it's you you've talked about it, but it's it's obviously not just a short-term thing. This is sort of a long-term approach as well. It's exciting to see the work that you all are doing. And I know there's there's a lot more on the horizon. Um, but Linda, I mean, that's that's all the questions that I have. Is there anything else that you would want to add or anything else you think it's any any uh parting thoughts you would want to leave our listeners with?

Linda Green:

I think being thankful that our community embraces economic development. There are many parts of the country where people fight growth and fight economic development. Our residents, our community, the institute, and our leaders all embrace it and recognize it as the future for this region. They recognize we're working to bring in higher wage jobs and that they're part of economic development. I'm thankful for the commitment they made in the institute and the robust training that have has gone on across the area. And I think I can speak for all of the people at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research. It changes our lives that we're able to work on a platform that's touching lives across the region. So thank you.

Caleb Ayers:

Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, thanks again for being here.