Diamond Visionics
software development engineers Tim Woodard, left, and Greg
Amend watch a computer-generated tank Monday as it moves
across dynamic terrain in a simulation. Their software changes
the terrain as it is damaged by simulated explosions. Diamond
Visionics has benefitted from a close partnership with
Binghamton University -- a key provision of the BC
Plan.
WAYNE HANSEN /
Press &
Sun-Bulletin
By its own
admission, Broome County has no excuse this time if its economy
stumbles through the next decade as it has the past 10 years.
It has a goal for its economic development agencies. It has a
plan to follow. It even has the money and resources previous efforts
lacked.
And with the announcement Monday morning of an eight-person team
of business and community leaders to put all that together and get
things done, the last piece was put in place, Broome County Deputy
Executive Terrence M. Kane said.
"This is our war room," he said. "Our only 'excuse' will be
success."
Broome County has heard excuses from community leaders for
economic failure several times over the past dozen years. It didn't
have a goal. Then it didn't have a good plan to get there. Then it
didn't have the resources to make it happen. And never did it have
the full support of all the players.
That's changed, Kane said.
"We've got complete buy-in. That's what we've lacked before," he
said.
It also has the BC Plan, completed last summer, and $500,000 set
aside from the county budget since 1999 to market Broome County.
However, while community leaders support the concept, they have
some misgivings. Town of Union Supervisor John "Jack" Cheevers said
the coalition made no mention of solving two key problems:
inadequate air service and too little sewage treatment capacity.
"They don't want to face up to it," Cheevers said of the
coalition.
The members of the eight-person Greater Binghamton Coalition have
been major players in Broome's economic development for years. But
not until the BC Plan was introduced did they sit down to work
together.
The latest effort at economic development, the Economic
Development Alliance, lost momentum after the Town of Union and the
City of Binghamton opted out of what was supposed to be an umbrella
for development. Kane was the last president of the alliance.
And if individual elements of their action plan -- cleaning
brownfields or selected key development sites -- sound familiar,
they should.
"You may have heard some of it here and some there, but not all
of it in one place," said Frank Kelly, executive director of
Partnership 2000, a consortium of business leaders supporting
development.
He has been working since 1999 to help rebuild the development
machine.
Instead of starting with an umbrella group, this effort started
by tallying up all the prime development locations -- both
brownfields and never-developed land -- and saving money for a
marketing program.
Next came the reorganization of the development teams,
eliminating the development alliance and tying the Broome Chamber to
the county by hiring the Industrial Development Agency -- an arm of
the Chamber -- to act as the county's economic development
department.
The third step was hiring AngelouEconomics of Austin, Texas, to
create a step-by-step plan of action. Monday's announcement is the
last step of the planning phase.
"We know more about ourselves than we ever knew before," Broome
Chamber President Alex DePersis said.
The next step is action.
That's what attracted dozens of community leaders Monday to
Binghamton University, including BU President Lois DeFleur, a
coalition member. The coalition, an informal group designed to act
on other agencies' policies rather than set its own, announced 10
goals for the next year, including:
* Establishing industry-specific incubators,
* Selecting key developable industrial sites and
* Raising money to keep development going.
The group has no by-laws, no real authority and no chairman. But
it's made up of leaders from the county's public and private
economic development groups, so if it agrees on a course of action,
the other agencies have the muscle and money to make it work.
"We want to continue to play a key role in enhancing the work
force and helping to retain the bright young people," DeFleur said,
highlighting the university's purchase of a New York State Electric
& Gas Corp. building adjacent to the Vestal campus.
The building will be used for research and development on the way
to creating new biotechnology products for companies to make and
sell. DeFleur hopes for similar facilities in the future.
The university already has partnerships with local companies in
the sort of working environment the BC Plan envisions and the
coalition will pursue.
"It's certainly working in my case," said David Gdovin, president
and founding partner of Diamond Visionics, a simulation company that
has averaged 40 percent annual growth since it was founded in April
1996. "We've hired students full time after trying them out at a
favorable rate."
But Diamond Visionics is still a small company -- about 20
employees -- and Gdovin could still use a mentor. That would suggest
that two industry-specific industrial incubators the coalition hopes
to help create in the next year could help, too.
The goal, and the effort, has the support of Deborah A.
Williamson, a member of the Broome-Tioga Workforce Development
System board of directors. But her support isn't enough, she said.
"This will work only if people replace individual survival for
total survival," said Williamson, also president of the Broome
County Urban League. "Greater Binghamton by the plan is one thing,
but acceptance is another."
Binghamton Mayor Richard A. Bucci wants to be sure the coalition
addresses the BC Plan's core recommendations, particularly urban
revitalization.
And if he sees opportunity in what the coalition can do, he has
seen disappointment in what the individual members have done so far.
"Binghamton University has to become a key player in downtown
Binghamton. There are a number of ways they can achieve that
objective," Bucci said. "DeFleur has been lukewarm to visioning the
role BU can play in downtown Binghamton's revitalization. I'm
hopeful her role is a re-examination of that."
Neither Binghamton nor Union has a direct role in the coalition,
though both have economic development departments.
Organizers said that was a deliberate attempt to make certain a
municipality's more self-oriented responsibilities don't cause the
coalition to shift its focus. Municipal development leaders will be
brought in on individual projects, Kane said.
If it does lose focus, the coalition will likely fall by the
wayside, too. In fact, the group isn't meant to be a permanent
organization and will act only as long as it needs to, said Patrick
Doyle, executive director of the Broome-Tioga Workforce Development
System. His staff will support the coalition.
The future, county officials agreed, is never certain, but they
said the informal coalition represents the best chance for
development success in a decade, if all the members keep working
together.
Williamson, who came to Broome County from St. Louis, has seen
these efforts before and knows what makes them succeed: teamwork.
"When people work together, people work together," she said.
"They don't agree on everything, but they get together."
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