The James City County Economic Development Authority will create a plan for conducting research to reassess its tactics in attracting businesses, with a focus on enticing and retaining a younger professional workforce.
The EDA formulated a list of items to focus on this year and next, and will consult with professionals and other localities to narrow down the list and figure out an order of priorities. By shifting its focus and researching, James City County should develop a clearer idea of where its business community is headed in the future.
The list of focus items includes a group meeting to figure out how to attract younger professionals, focusing on the difference between generating business leads and getting results, researching healthcare, and a possible focus on tourism.
The county needs to determine whether the quality of life is hurting James City County to keep graduates from the College of William and Mary in the area, said Russell Seymour, EDA secretary and director of the county’s Office of Economic Development. The EDA agreed the county is not an area young graduates want to stay in or move to, but this is an area for people who want to have kids or who are retired.
The New Town lifestyle, where a job applicant can go to an interview and then leave and walk to lunch or go shopping is what’s appealing to people in their 20s, Tom Tingle, EDA member and president of Guernsey Tingle Architects said. He suggested a regional effort to bring young people here, and to talk to Young Emerging Professionals — a group of 21- to 40-year-olds committed to professional development and social and business networking — to find out how to make the area more desirable.
In order to have somewhere for the young professionals to go, the EDA needs to shift its focus on the types of businesses it wants to attract.
The EDA pays to participate in the Hampton Roads Economic Development Authority, a regional group working toward attracting new businesses to the area and helping them find locations to open. HREDA President and CEO Darryl Gosnell was at the March 14 EDA meeting and indicated about 50 prospective businesses visit Hampton Roads annually, and about five new businesses locate in the region annually as a result of those visits.
Tingle asked Gosnell how many prospective businesses have located in James City County as a result of discussions with the HREDA. As of Friday, that information had not been supplied.
It’s important to know the product before trying to sell it, Seymour said, emphasizing the EDA and HREDA need to be aware of the types of buildings and land available in the county before marketing them to prospective businesses.
The HREDA primarily brings in companies looking to manufacture or distribute products, and the county does not have much room for them, according to data compiled from CoStar.com, a commercial real estate and land listing site. As of February, 21 industrial buildings and 78 office buildings were listed for sale in the county on CoStar.com. The database also showed 23 available pieces of land, with the largest piece being 620 acres.
Using this information, the EDA tailored its discussion toward the building availability: large industrial businesses have a lower chance of finding a location here than businesses seeking office space.
Robin Carson, EDA member and Kingsmill Resort general manager, wants to look into whether HREDA can work with James City County to bring in the right types of prospective businesses. She also wanted to figure out a way to make visitors and businesses clear that when they come to the county, they are not in in the City of Williamsburg despite several county addresses that list Williamsburg.
Seymour explained a request for proposals will be written soon to find a local company to help create brochures and other marketing materials to adapt to different business prospects. Creating the material would give businesses a sense of James City County and what the area could do for their business.
Much discussion centered on tourism and how to use that to get new businesses to come to the county.
Carson said the EDA cannot put its entire focus on tourism because of how easily that market can be disrupted. All it takes is one scare or one roller coaster accident to severely cut down visitors to a destination, she said.
“A destination can’t live with a one-pronged stool. We’ve got to find some other prongs for that stool,” Carson said.
Medical offices are becoming a focus, as EDA members discussed the two hospitals in the area: Sentara and the soon-to-open Riverside Doctor’s Hospital. There is no level one or level two trauma center in the area, which means people suffering from certain conditions have to be airlifted to Richmond or another location for treatment.
A lack of specialists in some fields, such as in certain types of dermatology or orthodontics, or a too-large number of patients and not enough doctors, leads to a need for either more medical offices or people will leave the county to seek treatment, Carson said.
