Digital Corridor revered as best practice community

Charleston Business Journal > April 17, 2006 > News

By Shelia Watson
Contributing Writer

The Charleston Digital Corridor, the city’s creative effort to attract, nurture and grow knowledge-based companies and industry professionals in the Charleston region, has been recognized as a city agency ahead of its peers.

It was recently invited to participate at the Intelligent Community Forum’s “Building the Broadband Economy 2006” to be held June 8-9, 2006, at Polytechnic University in New York City.

The Intelligent Community Forum, a partner of the Innovations Group, is a nonprofit think tank that focuses on job creation and economic development in the broadband economy.

“The value of going to this forum is that it’s an open environment where we’ll be talking about what we do and why we do it and forming a community where we can go when we need advice,” said Ernest Andrade, director of the Charleston Digital Corridor.

The invitation to the forum came after an August 2005 presentation on the Charleston Digital Corridor given at the eCommunity Government Summit at Virginia Tech’s campus in Blacksburg, Va.

The goal of that summit, which was hosted by the Innovations Group, was to guide communities across the United States through the next phase of technology advancement. Based on the digital corridor’s presentation in Blacksburg, the Innovation Group requested that the city of Charleston be featured as a Best Practice Community.

The city of Charleston will be one of three Best Practice Communities represented at the international conference, along with Bellevue, Wash., and Virginia Beach, Va.

The three will be part of the “e Government and Intelligent Community” panel, a roundtable discussion of their municipalities’ successes in pioneering efforts to create innovative opportunities for building a broadband economy in their communities.

What are intelligent communities?

A study funded by the Province of Ontario, Canada, defined five critical success factors for the creation of intelligent communities.

• Broadband infrastructure—the ability to connect to the Internet at broadband speed.

• Knowledge workforce—a determination to develop a workforce qualified to perform knowledge work.

• Innovation—attracting and fostering innovative companies that will grow in terms of employment and contribution to the tax base.

• Digital democracy—enlightened policies and effective programs created by governments at the local, regional and national levels.

• Marketing—effective messaging based on the knowledge of competitive offerings of other regions.

Louis Zacharilla, director of development at the Intelligent Community Forum, said “these indicators provide communities with a useful framework for assessment, planning and development as they work to build prosperous local economies.”

Forum attendees are expected from the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa. Conference planners said they are drawn to the conference by the shared challenge of how to adapt to the broadband economy in light of today’s economic realities.

What’s best about Charleston?

The city of Charleston, via the Charleston Digital Corridor, works to attract knowledge-based businesses through a combination of initiatives and business incentives, private business support and member-driven programs.

Andrade’s team has “a relentless focus on business needs. We’re almost exclusively focused on implementation. We’re in the trenches, figuring out what the specific needs are. Our job is to make it happen for the companies,” he said.

Helping the small business is critical, he said.

“We put the little guy first. There are a lot of entrepreneurs that are doing really important work, no less than the huge companies, and they have needs as well. At the end of the day, there’s value in what everyone does.”

One of the initiatives Andrade will almost certainly share at the conference is the recent endeavor to install Wi-Fi over the peninsula.

“There’s a lot we’re learning about this process,” he said. “You have to remember that we’re trailblazing to some extent here. There’s no rear-view mirror on Wi-Fi, especially one like this, one that will cover the whole area and will not cost the taxpayer a cent.”

Andrade is open to sharing Charleston’s best practices with other communities.

“That’s a bit different from the traditional model of economic development in which you compete with other communities for large corporations” he said.

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Charleston a knowledge-based model

By Shelia Watson

Contributing Writer

A casual chat during the holidays turned into a road trip to Charleston for four economic development officials from Pennsylvania looking for ways to nurture a knowledge-based economy in their area.

David Sciamanna, president of the Greater Chambersburg Chamber of Commerce, said a conversation with Charleston businessman Tim Latsbaugh sparked his interest in some of the city’s initiatives, particularly those of the Charleston Digital Corridor.

“Tim is originally from Chambersburg, so we had an opportunity to see him when he was here over the holidays,” said Sciamanna. “He outlined some of the things that were occurring in the Charleston area and told us about some of the projects with Ernest (Andrade, director of the Charleston Digital Corridor), how the city had developed this digital corridor concept, and we thought it was intriguing.”

Also along for the ride were Donald Krysakowski, senior e-business consultant with the Pennsylvania Technical Assistance Program at Penn State University; Mary Beth Hickenberry, executive director of the Greater Waynesboro Chamber of Commerce; and Michael Ross, president of the Franklin County Area Development Corp. The area that comprises Waynesboro, Chambersburg and Franklin counties is similar to the tri-county area of Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester counties.

“Charleston is comparable to Chambersburg in size, so that makes it a perfect model for us to study,” Ross said. “As Charleston is looking to expand and increase its number of knowledge-based companies and employees, we’re engaged in similar efforts.”

The two areas have other efforts in common. Like Charleston, Chambersburg was a target for the Base Realignment Committee.

“In this round of BRAC, we’re a net gainer,” said Ross. “We were significantly realigned in 1995 and lost 3,000 workers. Going in this time, we felt that we were low-hanging fruit. As it turns out, with 9/11 and the war and so on, we were able to respond effectively and got a commander who was able to turn around production at the Army installation. It was a remarkable transformation, and it has re-emerged as the county’s largest employer.”

Part of the Chambersburg area that was realigned in 1995 was turned into a mixed-use industrial park where 45 businesses are located—much like the redevelopment of the Navy base.

The visit to Charleston was “incredibly productive. It allowed for us to better understand the concepts and, to some extent, validate some of the things we’re trying to do. Overall, we concluded that we’re facing a lot of the same issues, and that’s helpful,” Ross said.

The group, here for two days, visited several companies on the peninsula and on Daniel Island, gaining a perspective on technology and what is needed for a community to enter the knowledge-based era.

They also spent time with Andrade, discussing the mechanics of the corridor and its day-to-day operations.

“Charleston has made tremendous inroads in both growing a knowledge-based economy and implementing technology that’s needed to support it,” said Krysakowski. “Sometimes it can be difficult to create an awareness of what you’re doing and rally around the whole technology expansion. But Charleston seems to be doing it well.”

Hickenberry noticed how effectively Charleston markets the city’s charm, she said.

“Our area has beautiful mountains, very picturesque. Coming here I realized that we just don’t let people know that enough,” she said.

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