Economic Developers Play Down Any Rivalry
By Bill Brubaker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 1, 2005
Martin J. Briley, director of the Prince William County Economic Development Department, trumpeted a planned $50 million luxury waterfront hotel and conference center on the county's Cherry Hill peninsula.
"It'll have a Jack Nicklaus signature golf course," he said.
Larry Rosenstrauch, director of Loudoun County's Economic Development Department, spoke of the recent trend of international companies moving to Leesburg.
"Surely, Leesburg has the International House of Pancakes," he said with a smile. "But you wouldn't have thought that international businesses would be there . . . [such as] companies from Germany in computer science."
And Gerald L. Gordon, who heads the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority, boasted of his county's corporate diversity.
"Black Enterprise Magazine lists the top 100 African-American-owned technology businesses in the United States," he said. "Seven out of 100 are in Fairfax County."
Three counties, three salesmen, speaking one after another at a recent luncheon hosted by the Committee for Dulles, a 39-year-old group that promotes business around the Washington region's largest airport.
"The Larry, Curly and Moe show," Rosenstrauch joked later.
Rosenstrauch, Briley and Gordon are hardly the Three Stooges, of course. Each has been a key figure in attracting businesses, large and small, to their counties. Taxes paid by the companies they have attracted have helped support such vital public services as schools and police and fire protection.
In many ways, they are fierce competitors, though, and they couldn't resist poking fun at each other in their speeches at the Washington Dulles Airport Marriott.
Briley -- first up -- muttered something about helium, implying that Gordon, who runs Northern Virginia's largest economic development department, is full of hot air.
Gordon -- up next -- suggested that the Loudoun and Prince William school systems aren't up to snuff.
After offering a projection that Fairfax's population will increase by 200,000 over 20 years, he deadpanned, "If you went to school in Prince William County, that's 10,000 a year."
Noting that 19 percent of Fairfax's roughly 100 million square feet of office space is vacant, Gordon said, "If you went to school in Loudoun County, that's 19 million square feet."
Rosenstrauch -- the last speaker -- struck back, asserting that Loudoun will become a major scientific research center when the Howard Hughes Medical Institute opens its sprawling campus in Ashburn next year.
Nodding in the direction of Gordon, Rosenstrauch said: "I don't know, Jerry, maybe we'll be able to do that 19 percent [calculation], after all."
Turning serious, the trio downplayed the rivalry among their counties to attract businesses.
"Rarely do we compete against our neighbors," Briley said. "Rarely are they competing against us. We're competing with Charlotte, Atlanta, Ireland and Puerto Rico. We're competing with Maryland."
He quickly added: "Occasionally, we do compete with Loudoun and Fairfax."
Gordon played up the region's strength in creating jobs.
"There are 51 major metropolitan areas in the United States, defined as a million or more residents," he said. "Of those 51, 48 had net job losses in the first three years following 9/11. Two -- Atlanta and Philadelphia -- basically broke even. Atlanta, I can see. Why anybody would go to Philadelphia, I don't know! Only Northern Virginia had a net job gain. We had a 36,000 net job gain in that period of time."
Gordon attributed the gains largely to companies that do business with the federal government, particularly in the defense sector.
"One of the early strategies of the [Fairfax ] Economic Development Authority -- very, very clever -- was to locate next to Washington, D.C.," Gordon said with a thin smile. "A brilliant strategy!"
For decades, Fairfax cast a giant shadow over lesser-developed Prince William and Loudoun. But in recent years the shadow has shrunk as homebuyers and companies alike have looked to the west and south for more space and less expensive (though by no means inexpensive) land.
Briley, Rosenstrauch and Gordon supported their stories with dozens of statistics, displayed on an overhead screen.
Loudoun's population growth?
"We're about 200,000 now, up from the 1990 Census of 86,000," Rosenstrauch said.
Prince William's housing boom?
"Executive housing is a big, new story in Prince William County," Briley said.
"I think we had 5,000 new housing starts, more than any other community in Northern Virginia, last year," Briley said. "And the average value of these homes . . . every time I say the number somebody corrects me and adds $50,000 to the number. It's going up and up and up and up."
Gordon said Fairfax's population has grown from 455,000 in 1976 to about 1.1 million today.
"The expectation is that by the year 2020 we will be at 1.2 million, so expect 1.25," he said. "You'll see a similar trend, maybe even a steeper slope, in Loudoun and Prince William."
Three counties, three salesmen. Or as Rosenstrauch put it: "Welcome to the dueling PowerPoints."