Dell and Triad cooperation
Marta Hummel and I spent about two months reporting the Dell deal analysis that ran Sunday. Naturally, we're not going to be able to publish everything we get. Sometimes that means some relevant topics get squeezed or cut.
The Dell deal was a key example of how cooperation in the Triad worked and perhaps didn't work at the same time. The Piedmont Triad Partnership did exactly what it's supposed to do when it squired Dell around last year when it was only expressing interest in the region.
But when Dell confirmed it would come to the Triad, the individual
communities went after the factory tooth and nail. And some local economic development leaders would like to see that tempered with more cooperation, which they say gives the region ultimately more negotiating power.
Advocates of Triad cooperation feel that the incentives battle that pitted several counties, most prominently Guilford and Forsyth, against each other, can only be destructive.
But for the people in the trenches, Dell's tight deadline made broader cooperation impossible in this case.
Here's a part I wrote that didn't make it into the story. It features Pete Brunstetter, the former chairman of the Forsyth County Commissioners. He's a champion of Triad cooperation. But because of his experience, he also knows more about what it will take to to get real results:
He is emphatic that with Dell's short deadline, it would have been impossible for the Triad’s communities to have significant cooperation in the Dell deal.But making agreements where one county provides water service, one county provides land, and both counties offer tax incentives and share tax revenue sounds like a good idea.
"Now we have more time. Does that kind of possibility pick up some momentum?" Brunstetter said a few days ago.
But the governments that naturally divide this area aren't structured in a way to easily allow that kind of cooperation."The challenge is the closer you get to something like that the harder the work is. These are very difficult issues to overcome. Even if everybody’s heart is right, these are difficult. But we’ve got nothing but time."
That's something to think about as we watch the Dell factory go up and ponder what's next for the region's economy.
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