Working to build pinnacles of success.

• Position: AdvantageWest: a North Carolina regional partnership

At 6,684 feet, Mount Mitchell is the highest point in North Carolina, and it looks out over the tree-lined peaks and valleys of the state's western mountain range, a scenic paradise beloved by tourists and film-location scouts. But the same scenery that makes this part of North Carolina such a hot destination for travel, movie making and retirement also makes it one of the toughest places for economic development.

Transportation to outlying areas is difficult, natural gas is unavailable in many counties, sensitive watersheds limit development, and in many places the landscape is so rugged that construction demands extensive and expensive grading - if building is possible at all. That helps explain why average earnings in western North Carolina, particularly in remote counties, are less than the state average, and the jobless rate is higher than the state's.

The regional partnership trying to reverse those shortcomings markets itself with a forward-looking name: Advantage-West. With 23 counties, it's the state's largest partnership, and it faces some of the toughest challenges in attracting new industry.

"Our challenge is quite different from the folks in the Piedmont Crescent," says Rick Webb, AdvantageWest's executive director until October, when he was named N.C. Department of Commerce assistant secretary over the regional partnerships. "We don't have that flat land that may be present in other parts of the state."

AdvantageWest has developed programs to help individual counties identify and prepare industrial sites and then market them. It has also sought to build on the region's strengths by pitching in on tourism and filmmaking promotions.

The result is, it's regarded as the most advanced of the "new" partnerships, those created by the state in 1993. "The model is AdvantageWest," says Brad Woodhouse, the Commerce Department's legislative liaison. "They have done a good job on a number of fronts."

AdvantageWest started out as the Western North Carolina Regional Economic Development Commission with 16 member counties. The state assigned it six more in November 1994. After some shuffling around with the Carolinas Partnership, it's been at its current size for the last year.

It has begun raising money from federal grants and private sources to add to the approximately $1.2 million it has been getting annually from the state. Its revenue this year is $3.2 million, including carryover from the previous year.

POPULATION (in 000s) COUNTY 1986...