Breaking up is hard to do: as they vie for an earth-shattering economic-development project, Triad leaders wonder if the benefits of regionalism have been oversold.

• Author: Martin, Edward

After driving through the farms of northern Randolph County, flanked by fields dotted with round bales of hay, visitors on Troy Smith Road bump across railroad tracks where the pavement turns into a dusty country lane. From here north to the Guilford County line, a coalition of business leaders, local governments and economic developers is assembling a 2,000-acre, $30 million tract intended to lure an automobile manufacturer that could create thousands of jobs and billions in economic impact.

Within a 45-minute drive of Winston-Salem, Greensboro and High Point, the countryside near the small town of Liberty scantly resembles the trio of cities that give the region its name. This is the Piedmont Triad, where the principle of regionalism was born more than 40 years ago and has since dominated North Carolina's industry-recruiting strategies. It's the theory that rural communities, small towns and cities with skyscraper skylines can join hands, wallets and marketing programs for mutual benefit. "We started it in the Triad," says Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce CEO Gayle Anderson, referring to the 1968 formation of the 11-county Piedmont Triad Council of Governments. It's now called the Piedmont Triad Regional Council and serves 12 counties. "The state copied us" in the 1990s, she says, with the Triad becoming a model for seven state-designated and state-funded regional partnerships.

Now, in the Triad and other regions of North Carolina, the benefits of regionalism are deemed suspect by politicians, who have reduced state spending for economic development, and civic leaders more focused on their own communities. The debate is pronounced in the Triad, where developing a regional spirit has proven difficult. "When I came here in 2008, I'd certainly never heard of the Piedmont Triad," says John McConnell, CEO of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, the region's largest employer. He's a urologist who had been a senior executive at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. "When we were trying to recruit businesses and grow businesses within [since-renamed] Piedmont Triad Research Park, it was clear we had an identity issue. We found 200 organizations in America with the term Piedmont in their names."

THE DIFFICULTY OF SELLING REGIONALISM isn't surprising, considering the different cultures and histories of the area's three major cities. Greensboro, settled by Quakers, is known for an openness that welcomed the Cones, founders of the former Cone Mills Corpv once one of the world's largest textile companies, and other Jewish families, who helped develop a strong textile-manufacturing base. Winston-Salem, settled by German-speaking Moravians, was for much of the 20th century a company town heavily dependent on R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. High Point, proud to be distinct from neighboring Greensboro, was the state's furniture-manufacturing hub. But fast forward to the 21st century, and the region's growth trajectory is confounding. To be sure, the Triad's economy is robust by national standards, with an April unemployment rate of 5.1%, and a stellar lineup of colleges, universities and prominent companies including apparel giant VF Corp., Honda Aircraft Co.'s new jet-making business and Qorvo Inc., the successor to RF Micro Devices Inc. Yet population in the Charlotte and Raleigh metro areas grew more than twice as fast as the Triad between 2001 and 2015. Average wages, unadjusted for inflation, climbed about 10% faster in Charlotte, and 20% faster in the tech-heavy Triangle. Perhaps most important, the number of people employed in the Triad has declined by 44,000 since 2001, or 6%, compared with gains of 9% in Charlotte and 28% in the Raleigh-Durham area.

Something is amiss--but it's nothing that can't be solved with a big new auto plant, says the region's biggest booster. Requests to discuss economic development with many Triad business leaders produces the same response: Call Jim Melvin. "I've been...