Trying to get beyond the name.

• Position: Global Transpark Region: a North Carolina regional partnership

The first thing you have to understand about the Global TransPark Development Commission is what it's not.

It's not the agency that runs the Global TransPark, the ambitious, 15,000-acre industrial-park project around Kinston Regional Jetport. That's the Global TransPark Authority.

The commission, with offices at the same airport, is the regional economic-development partnership charged with promoting and recruiting new business to the 13 counties around the TransPark. "We constantly are trying to explain what our mission is," says Thompson H. Greenwood, the commission's executive director. "The Global TransPark is not our responsibility. But a lot of people thought we were responsible for the development of the park."

The commission's name has caused enough confusion that its governing board recently considered whether a change was in order. After much discussion, the organization altered its marketing name to North Carolina's Global TransPark Region. If that doesn't seem like much of a change, it's because the TransPark remains the focus of the region's economic-development efforts. "We all hope the Global TransPark becomes a reality," Greenwood says. "It is going to be the one thing that will make a difference in Eastern North Carolina over the long haul."

Greenwood speaks the language of the region when he takes a defensive posture on the TransPark, which has had difficulty gaining support. "We just feel like so many people are against it," he says. "It's a shame. Haven't [the urban centers] got enough? Can't they share a little bit?"

There's little question that the region is among the needier in North Carolina. The N.C. Department of Commerce reports that the TransPark region's per capita income and average wages are below the state's, while unemployment, poverty and business-failure rates are above the state average.

In trying to spur economic development, the commission has accepted that it can't go head-to-head with Charlotte, Raleigh or the Triad for major corporate headquarters or relocations. But smaller business expansions are another matter, Greenwood says. And with clients that don't need the airline connections and cultural offerings of a major city, the region can more effectively pitch its low cost of doing business and its abundance of labor. "Unemployment is a plus for us," he says.

The commission started in 1993 as a grass-roots group. It got from the state a one-time $7.5 million appropriation and permission for the...