Putting all the pieces together.

• Author: Silverman, Alan
• Position: Regional partnerships

The state tries solving the puzzle of economic development with regional partnerships.

In 1987, Forsyth and Guilford county commissioners met to discuss a matter of critical regional importance. Namely, a postmark. Out of that meeting grew an economic-development plan that has transformed the way the state's cities and counties recruit industry. But back to that postmark ...

All mail in the region was processed at the U.S. Postal Service's Greensboro Bulk Mail Center and stamped with a Greensboro postmark. Folks in Winston-Salem and High Point bristled at this, and the two commissions formed a committee to discuss regional cooperation. They made a formal request with the Postal Service, asking that all mail heading out of the mail center, whether from Greensboro, High Point, Winston-Salem or surrounding towns, be postmarked "North Carolina's Piedmont Triad." The Postal Service acquiesced, but like a lot of other committees, this one didn't disband just because it had done its work.

After their success with the Postal Service, the commissioners decided they needed a regional planning organization. Piedmont Triad Horizons was formed in 1987 with a staff of one and a number of the original committee members as volunteer members. Along the way, the organization added the counties of Davidson and Davie and the city of Burlington in Alamance County. In 1991, the focus shifted from problem solving to putting together an economic-development strategy.

Horizons' first goal became assembling a population base of a million people, the critical mass needed to attract the attention of major employers. It took in Randolph, Caswell, Rockingham, Stokes, Surry and Yadkin counties and changed its name to the Piedmont Triad Partnership. It received a three-year, $900,000 commitment from business and government in the 11 counties. "That really was the birth of the public/private partnership," recalls Kenny Moore, the Piedmont Triad Partnership's president.

So much for the birth regional partnerships. But it took a couple of more years for them to reach maturity. Dave Phillips, former chairman of the High Point Economic Development Corp. and now secretary of the N.C. Department of Commerce, has both spurred and shepherded that growth. During the Piedmont Triad's infancy, he was instrumental in marketing the young partnership. By the time he went to Raleigh in 1993, similar alliances had developed around Charlotte and the Triangle. A year later, a 16-county public/private partnership emerged in Eastern North Carolina around the Global TransPark project.

Convinced that the future of economic development lay in regional partnerships, Phillips created three legislative...