At the same time, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee is putting the finishing touches on a $300 million headquarters facility, while Unum and Memorial Healthcare are ramping up to undertake major building projects.
I believe these projects will help insulate our community from some of the impact of the national economic downturn.
Our task is to make the most of recent economic successes. How can we leverage Volkswagen and Alstom to recruit other companies? What can we do to make sure that current residents have the skills to successfully fill the jobs offered by both existing employers and newly recruited companies? How can we position our community to grow while preserving our outstanding quality of life?
To answer those questions, the Chamber developed a research and planning process focused on the Greenville-Spartanburg, SC area, which landed a BMW auto assembly plant in 1992.
We have much in common with that area. We’re both mid-sized communities (most other foreign auto plants have located in rural areas), and both of us attracted a German company with no pre-existing supplier network or other manufacturing operations within the U.S.
As a planning and information-gathering initiative, the Chamber has organized an expedition to Greenville-Spartanburg. Participants include our top leaders in key focus areas such as education, workforce preparation, industrial development and issues related to quality of life (the arts, green spaces, downtown redevelopment, etc.).
What we learn during our stay in Greenville-Spartanburg will form the basis of an action plan that will be used to coordinate our community’s response to the unprecedented opportunities that we now enjoy.
That action plan will focus on the near-term, specifically what we should be doing during the construction and first few years of operation at Volkswagen and Alstom. But this action plan will also serve as a good starting point for a broader, longer-term visioning process in answer to the growing sense that it’s time for us to re-invoke the practices that have helped us achieve so much as a community.
The Chamber stands ready to work with others in support of a public visioning process. Our community spirit was a key ingredient in creating the kind of place that could attract Volkswagen and Alstom, just as collaboration was the key ingredient in recruiting them and supporting our existing companies in continued growth.
I feel certain that public visioning and pubic-private partnerships -- two community-building tools which our leaders and citizens have utilized effectively for decades -- will continue to support our forward progress in the next few years and for decades to come.
