Roanoke Regional Partnership, and other regional groups in Virginia, and then down in the local areas, where you have the city of Roanoke’s economic development, Franklin County, Botetourt County — those groups as well. It’s a partnership to work with everybody to make things happen. One of the key things I do on a daily basis is staying in touch with the regional groups on projects they’re working on, on some of the marketing activities they may be performing, to make some new contacts, to build those relationships. I attend their marketing meetings. I meet with the local economic development groups on a kind of a regular basis, depending on the situation, help them out.
RB: How do you go about bringing new business and industry to the area? Smolak: We market directly to companies that are targets of the areas we serve. We work with site consultants. A site consultant is a person that a large company or even a small company would hire to help them fi nd a new expanded location or a new location for their business in the U.S. We work with them in many ways, making sure they understand our service area, who we are, what we do, the benefits, the strengths and weaknesses of the areas we serve. We would provide complete location type of services to them. We would make the introductions to the regional partnership. We would make the introductions to the city of Roanoke. We would talk to them about infrastructure that’s here, the type of industry that’s here. We can arrange for them to have a site tour of the area. We would arrange for them to talk to existing industry in the area, talk about the labor force, skill sets, those kinds of things as well. It’s kind of a comprehensive look at what a company might need.
RB: Is there a certain type of business or industry that you’re looking for? Smolak: We work with the state and local and regional groups on all the projects they bring to us, but our particular focus happens to be on … the energy-intensive industries: automotive, chemical, data centers. We’re making some concerted efforts to meet and discuss our service area with some of those larger energy users as well.
RB: Do you have a standard pitch? Smolak: One of the great things is the quality of life type issues. Some of those are more important to certain industries than others. Others are very cost driven. If those cost factors are satisfactory to them and reasonable, they’ll locate there. You have to have a good dialogue and discussion with those industries to find out what is the decision-making process they’re going through, fi nd out more about their business model. What’s driving this project? Is it because they want to be closer to their customer base? Do they want to establish a new customer base? Is it because of raw materials? It’s kind of a laundry list of things that you try to draw out of them so you understand their needs. You can tailor then the kind of location and property that they would require for their new operation.
RB: What’s a typical work day like? Smolak: I have to say there‘s probably no two days the same. That’s what makes this job really fun and really interesting. There will be some days where you’re doing research on companies that you want to contact. Some days you’ll be making calls to companies you want to talk with. Some days I’ll be out in the fi eld on a site tour with a prospect. Or I’ll be meeting with a regional group to talk about their marketing activities, what they’ve been doing.
RB: Would new infrastructure sometimes be part of the conversation? Smolak: It’s possible. What we try to do
RB: How many miles a year do you put on your car? Smolak: Fifteen or twenty thousand a year
is to show them proper ties or locations that have good infrastructure in place already. But if their requirements are a little bit more than what’s there, we have those kind of discussions about how we would upgrade a substation, or upgrade a distribution or a transmission line to that location, and we would provide them a cost estimate and how long that would take and how that would play into their decisionmaking process.
… With today’s world of electronics and email, there’s a lot that can be done. Prospects today also want information quickly. We have to have information that we provide them in an electronic format so we can email that to them that day. They don’t want to wait several days to get information. They want it now. The information exchange is quite rapid, and you’d better have your information on your website, or have information that you can send them quickly.
RB: Who are you competing with for new business and industry? Smolak: Everybody. Specifically, we’re looking at North Carolina, Maryland, all the adjacent states around. It’s kind of a regional perspective.
RB: Isn’t this an unusual thing for a company to do — recruit other businesses? Smolak: Utility companies were probably one of the first companies that did economic development work. In the 1950s and ’60s and ’70s it was called area development versus economic development. A lot of utility companies had people assigned to certain areas within their service area to do some of the very basic things we’re still doing today; to identify the sites and locations and strengths that certain industries would be looking for and to focus on energy-intensive companies that would be a good user of our product. There’s a long history of the utility companies being involved in economic development. The key to everything, I think, is working collaboratively together in a partnership. Everybody wins. When you have a 200- or 300-job company come to your area, it’s a domino effect … It becomes a regional type thing, and you really have to focus as a region for new growth. It’s got to be a concerted effort of people working together to make it happen.
RB: Any successes that you’re particularly proud of? Smolak: Yeah, I do have a few. Toyota Motor Manufacturing is one of those, their engine facilities and transmission facility in the Charleston area, and several Japanese suppliers that actually supply components to them, was a big thing that I was involved with during my tenure up there … It’s always good to know that you’ve helped in some way provide somebody a job, or a community to grow. It does provide a lot of job satisfaction. It’s not always that way. When you do succeed, it is a great feeling. It’s a fun thing.
RB: Is there anything you can talk about that’s in the works right now? Smolak: Not really. We are working with several prospects. There are several that are in the final stages of trying to make a decision. And so you may hear something in the future. ROANOKE BUSINESS
27