Triad boosters need to bolster their number.

• Position: Piedmont Triad Partnership of Greensboro, North Carolina

For once, a chamber official downplays something, "It's a little bit of a shakeup," concedes Richard Beard of the Greensboro Area Chamber of Commerce. More like an earthquake. In one two-week stretch, Greensboro lost four of its top economic developers - two each from the chamber and the Piedmont Triad Partnership - in a bizarre coincidence of unrelated resignations.

It began in early January, when John Greuling, the chamber's VP of economic development, gave notice, citing "personal reasons." Two weeks later, Kenny Moore, president of the 12-county partnership since 1994, announced he would leave in May to seek the Republican nomination for governor. At the same meeting, his VP of economic development, Rob Marshall, said he was taking a job with a local company. The next day Peter Reichard, with the chamber 14 years, announced he was resigning as its president to run the finances of Democrat Mike Easley's gubernatorial campaign.

"Externally it looks like we're in pretty bad shape," says Beard, project manager for economic development. "But we're not having any more resignations that I know of." Good thing, given that the partnership staff is down to three, from six at the year's start. The city already had a high-profile vacancy. Late last year, Ed Wolverton, president of a downtown-revitalization group, left to take a similar job in Charlotte.

The exodus caught business leaders off guard. "It was shocking," says Norman Samet, partnership...