A new economic partnership is underway. At a special meeting Friday, a resolution was jointly passed by the Guilford County Board of Commissioners, Greensboro City Council, and High Point City Council to create the Guilford County Economic Development Alliance (GCEDA).
The alliance keeps High Point, Greensboro, and the County autonomous, but they will share information and resources to make the area more competitive for project and companies to locate there.
For this week's business report, Mark Sutter with the Triad Business Journal speaks with WFDD's Emily McCord about its significance.
Interview Highlights:
On how the new alliance is structured:
The cities of High Point and Greensboro and Guilford County will all contribute $100K, for a total of $300K. That will be used for marketing efforts and for common staff. There's also a 12-person advisory board and an 8-person group that works directly with the alliance. So, there's a lot of layers to it. I think that has a lot to do with making sure the right people are at the table, the right resources are there, and probably lends itself to the comfort level that High Point, Greensboro and Guilford County, they're all being represented in equal measure.
On the history behind the new group:
This is unique to our county. It's been talked about for a while, but never came to fruition. There's a history – there's been some distrust between High Point and Greensboro to some extent. Greensboro being the bigger of the two... just this idea that you needed to have representation for both. So, if you're from High Point, you want someone selling your city.
What can we expect to see from this:
That remains to be seen. The proof always is in whether we bring prospects in and we sell them on the county. But I think a win for them would be to look back and say 'we were able to put our best foot forward' and weren't fighting over it and that they had a unified approach. I think there's a lot of faith that a unified approach will bring the best results.
The Business Report on 88.5 WFDD is a partnership with the Triad Business Journal.