Koelemay's Kosmos

Doug Koelemay


 

 

Connected Development

Southside and the Tobacco Commission are patting each other on the backbone for their just announced regional fiber-optic initiative.


 

There was more than a little pushing and shoving back in 1999 when the General Assembly created the 31-member Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission to compensate farmers for the decline in tobacco quotas and promote economic development in tobacco-dependent communities. The official record of the legislation patroned by then-delegate, now Secretary of Transportation Whittington W. Clement, doesn’t reflect fully all the discussions that swirled around the best use of master settlement agreement funds from tobacco companies to the states.

 

But there was little controversy June 18th in Danville at an announcement that the Commission would spend $6 million of tobacco funds to install 700 miles of fiber-optic cable connecting five cities, 20 counties and 56 industrial parks across southern Virginia.

 

Commission Chairman Sen. Charles R. Hawkins, R-Chatham, orated on the wisdom of the investment: “Coupled with our grants for the broadband telecommunications links in southwest Virginia, we are creating a seamless network that will literally connect most of rural Virginia to the rest of the planet.”

 

Gov. Mark R. Warner, fresh from a trade mission to China, assured the crowd at Danville’s sparkling new Institute for Advanced Learning and Research, itself a model of regional and multi-institutional collaboration, that the Regional Broadband/Roots of Progress Initiative (RBI) “will certainly get the attention of new employers and investors looking to tap the potential of Southside and Southwest Virginia. ... This project would not be possible if  Virginia had followed the path that so many other states followed and diverted our tobacco settlement revenues to other uses.”

 

High-speed Internet access for up to 700,000 people and 19,000 businesses at a 20 percent reduction in access costs is the goal of the project, which could be completed by January 2006. The network also will increase competition for local telephone exchange carriers and Internet service providers. Project participants suggest RBI will create over 1,500 jobs paying over $70 million in annual wages and drive $140 million plus in new investments.

 

These will be critical new links for a region that still rides an economic roller coaster. Unemployment stubbornly remains at over twice the Virginia average of 3.4 percent. Retail sales that are booming into double-digits elsewhere remain stagnant across Southside.

 

Joining the Tobacco Commission as partners are the Economic Development Administration (EDA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative, a Richmond-based nonprofit formed to manage the $6 million in tobacco funds and matching $6 million from the EDA. Virginia’s congressional delegation will be quick to point out that the EDA $6 million is the second largest single project disbursement from the U.S. Department of Commerce. Adesta, Dewberry and Atlantic Engineering Group will do the work.

 

The governor’s office notes in addition that the project supports four of its economic development and technology objectives – building the highest percentage of home broadband connections in Virginia, coordinating state and federal broadband resources, increasing Virginia’s attractiveness to biotech, information technology and telecom companies and expanding telecom and broadband services in rural areas.

 

Tobacco Commission executive director Carthan W. Currin III calls the project another piece of the puzzle to be put in place along with investments in education, workforce development, basic infrastructure improvements tourism and incentives for new enterprises. The commission has invested over $164 million to date in more than 400 economic development projects in rural Virginia. South Boston Del. Clarke N. Hogan looked forward to “industries of the mind” and the message from Southside, “From here, you can be anywhere.”

 

Such is the promise of innovative and imagination, which Southside and the Tobacco Commission now rightfully are staking out as a piece of their own future. The RBI may prove in time to be a national model for an open-access advanced broadband network to provide wholesale dark fiber and managed high-speed bandwidth. Leading the nation in RBIs, in fact, would be a worthy goal for every Virginia governor of the future

 

But the Southside-Tobacco Commission initiative already is a model of regional cooperation and bipartisan economic development in Virginia, networks that rival any fiber in real power to drive changes for the better. As Sen. Hawkins gaveled the May 20th commission meeting at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research to order, he took a minute to reflect on the value of regional cooperation, “(W)hat can take place when the counties and cities are willing to lay aside any differences and work together for the common good and benefit of all citizens.”

 

“We do not have the ability to waste assets, and when we work against each other we do nothing but waste resources and assets,” Hawkins suggested, “and we cannot afford to do that any longer, and those days are over. The future is here, and this is the first step in a direction that will change the dynamics of our entire population in an entire section of the state.”

 

-- June 21, 2004

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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J. Douglas Koelemay

Managing Director

Qorvis Communications

8484 Westpark Drive

Suite 800

McLean, Virginia 22102

Phone: (703) 744-7800

Fax:    (703) 744-7994

Email:   dkoelemay@qorvis.com