On Feb. 17, just two days after his 30th birthday, Mikal Getz hopped in his VW Jetta and motored out of Asheville, perhaps for good.
“I may come back here to live in 30 years, when I retire and can fully appreciate this place,” said Getz, who hails from Pennsylvania and had lived in Asheville for two years. “But right now, I have to focus on my career and making some financial headway. If I felt like I could do that here, trust me, I would. Unfortunately I can’t.”
Getz considers himself an intelligent and prudent person, though he admits that his move here had not been well thought out. With degrees in electrical and computer engineering, Getz figured he’d be able to find a good job in his field before the $20,000 “vagabond fund” he’d accumulated dried up. But that didn’t happen, so he took a stab at freelancing. “I’m just not cut out for that,” he says now. “I need the structure and security of a job.”
Getz says he knows of at least five other people who have left the area in the past year in search of greener pastures. All but one were highly trained individuals frustrated by the paucity of good jobs in their respective fields.
“It’s a shame,” says Getz, “but after a while, you have to wonder if the sheer enjoyment of living here is worth it. So I’m heading to work in Cambridge [Mass.]—same cool Asheville vibe, but with way more jobs, way more upward mobility and way, way more pay. Unless you bring your own job or make your own job, the business environment here is just too scary. I still think Asheville is a sleeping giant, because of all the talent here. It just needs something or someone to wake it up.”
Waking the giant
Jim Roberts is leaving too—to work as a business-and-marketing consultant in Austin, Texas. As head of the Blue Ridge Entrepreneurial Council, Roberts used his marketing skills to help promote local businesses and attract millions of dollars in venture capital. Like Getz, however, Roberts says he sometimes feels stymied by the local business climate.
“I’m a type-A personality … and there’s just not a lot of those type of people here,” he said recently over beers at a downtown watering hole.
And while others in the bar were dressed casually and kicking back after a day of work, Roberts’ motor was still humming. He had managed to take off his suit jacket and roll up his shirt sleeves, but his tie stayed in place as he spelled out some relatively simple things Asheville/Buncombe could do right now to raise its business and economic profile—and help ensure that more people like Getz don’t take their talents elsewhere.
With the right moves and an attitude adjustment, says Roberts, Asheville could become the diverse economic engine that local leaders and businesspeople continually say they want to create. A marketer by trade, he maintains that while the area has been wildly successful in branding itself as an arts-and-tourism destination, it hasn’t presented itself to the outside world as a place open to—and even hungry for—business and investment.
Here are Roberts’ ideas for helping heat up the local business climate:
1. Leverage the demographics of Biltmore Estate. Place an eye-catching, artfully rendered billboard or sign in the now-vacant space at the entrance to Asheville’s biggest attraction. Why? Day to day, it draws the largest number of out-of-state visitors of any single spot in the city—many of them prosperous businesspeople, argues Roberts. Many estate visitors are “either a businessperson or related to a businessperson,” he says. “If you created a very classy [sign] that said something like ‘Asheville Loves Business,’ I think you would just have an audience that you’re completely missing today. Because how many of those people never go downtown? That’s an opportunity to send a message to people who are in the business community but don’t think of Asheville as a business destination today.”
2. Find and promote local leaders under the age of 50. “If you want to know where the economy is going, it would be better to ask the people of the future than the people of the past,” says Roberts. Asheville is swimming in bright, young, highly skilled people in various disciplines, many of whom feel a strong attachment to this city, and their ideas could help transform the region, he believes.
3. Actively recruit female business leaders, especially in the tech sector. In Roberts’ view, Asheville could be effectively marketed nationally as “She-ville.” The city already stands out—both nationally and within the Southeast—as a welcoming place for women, he maintains. With more than 9,000 women-owned small businesses and a reputation as a haven for lesbian women, the Asheville metro area is well-positioned to attract females and should jump at the opportunity, argues Roberts.
“Women are very aware of the Asheville community, but it’s been my experience when I go to conferences that the perception of the South [as a place] for business-related women is not good,” he says. “But I think there’s a real opportunity to recruit those technology-related women—especially type-A women—here.”
4. Exploit our vistas. Stunning mountain views are among the area’s greatest assets. So why aren’t there more places downtown where visitors can enjoy them?
“Where can you get a rooftop drink downtown?” asks Roberts. “The people come here for the view, but they can’t see the view from downtown.” Such public gathering spaces, he notes, would also be effective recruitment tools. Places such as the Grove Park Inn do offer such views, but Rachel Ansari, director of communications at the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce, confirms that downtown does not have any rooftop bars or eateries. “There are lots of rumors [of creating such spaces], but none actually exist,” she says.
5. Give the very rich something to do. “There’s all this wealth coming to the area, but they stay behind the gated communities,” says Roberts. “It’s great that all this money is moving here, but if they’re not involved in the community and they just come here to play golf and leave town, has that money really done you any good?” Wealthy retirees and second-home owners—the kind of folks who could single-handedly give the economy a boost by investing some of their assets in local business ventures—need more ways to engage with the community, he believes. For starters, the city could use more restaurants and stores that cater to the super rich, says Roberts.
6. Give them ways to blend business and pleasure. Charlotte has pro sports and other big events to use as calling cards, says Roberts. Asheville may not be big enough to compete in that arena, but it needs some kind of big event or events conducive to conducting business or cutting deals that could be used as a selling point for business recruitment. It could be a major golf tournament or perhaps something comparable to Austin’s South by Southwest festival/conferences, which combine music performances, films and related trade shows and conferences over several days.
“If you want to recruit businesspeople, they expect a certain amount of amenities in the city they’re going to live in,” he says.
7. Tap the network. Although the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce and other business groups do promote networking, those efforts barely scratch the surface of what could be done, Roberts maintains. The wealthy, successful baby boomers in the community are not sharing their contacts in the business world, he says; local leaders could help change that by identifying these folks and actively seeking their help.
That may require some legwork, he concedes. “You need to build a rapport and have a relationship with the persons who have the contacts, build their trust, and then they’re willing to open those doors,” he says. “But those doors seem to be shut in the Asheville community, and that’s a real problem. … If [well-connected people] keep their contacts so close to the vest, they will die with those contacts never helping local businesses.”
8. Give up-and-coming businesses a boost. “There are around a dozen good, local technology companies that the business community is keeping their eye on to see how they do,” Roberts reports. “If we could make one of them—or all of them, or some of them—successful, it would highlight what is possible in the area.” In other words, prove that success can happen here by providing promising local companies with infusions of venture capital, promotion and other forms of help, kicking them up to the next level—and thereby spurring further growth and investment.
9. Identify the area’s “business titans.” Besides elected leaders and bureaucrats, every city needs a group of go-to people whose imprimatur helps ensure that deals get done, Roberts believes.
“I’ve asked about 100 people in the last few years: If the next Microsoft type of company came to Asheville and said, ‘We are thinking about having an office in Asheville; who are the five most influential people in town who [could give us] an idea of the culture and character of the city?’ Most people could only name four people, and the only person on every list was [Vanderbilt heir and Biltmore Farms President] Jack Cecil,” he says. Why is that in such a small community? In Charlotte, everyone knows who those five people are. If you can pinpoint certain people and say, ‘These are the five leaders of the community; I need one of them to bless my project,’ then everyone will get on board.”
CEO Scott Sonnone of the Asheville-based Sweetwater Capital agrees with many of Robert’s ideas, especially when it comes to providing capital for business growth. Not so long ago, there was virtually no venture capital coming into the area, notes Sonnone; now, millions of dollars are beginning to flow in. But Asheville, he says, has only begun to tap the money spigot, adding, “My challenge is to educate the business community that we’re here.”
If Sonnone has any criticism of local economic-development efforts, it’s that he feels too much effort is put into persuading businesses to relocate, and not enough attention is paid to those companies that are already here and in need of assistance—whether financial or technical. “Every day I get calls from folks looking for capital,” says Sonnone.
Beyond this year’s bottom line
Others in the local business community take a broader view, however, maintaining that job creation can’t be separated from larger social concerns.
For example, Chuck Tessier, the CEO of local real-estate-management firm Tessier Associates, feels economic-development efforts must be balanced, rather than focused exclusively on high-end, high-skill jobs. “There’s plenty of people at the bottom of the ladder here who need good, entry-level jobs,” says Tessier, who chairs the city’s Sustainable Economic Development Advisory Committee. “It’s not always about providing high-paying jobs; it’s about providing meaningful jobs for people with low skills.”
David McConville, co-owner of Elumenati Immersive Projection Design in West Asheville, also advocates a more holistic approach, albeit with a distinctly Asheville twist. “Don’t look at economic development in the classical, capitalist sense,” he advises. “Help people expand the concept of what economic development [really] is.” McConville, who founded the Media Arts Project, is involved with several local civic groups.
To build a sustainable economy for the long term, he argues, local leaders need to look beyond the purely financial and incorporate the cultural and environmental components as well. To achieve this, McConville suggests things like carving out special districts for artists and small businesses, and reining in rising real-estate costs that threaten to push these people out of downtown. “They are, in a lot of ways, the soul of the city,” he says of the city’s industrious “fringe” culture of artists and entrepreneurs, citing the up-and-coming River Arts District and the West Asheville renaissance as examples of the economic benefits of enabling these local artists and entrepreneurs to flourish. “You have to think about support and infrastructure and jobs for them,” he notes.
But perhaps the most crucial step, says McConville, is taking care of the area’s environment. “We’re killing the goose that lays the golden eggs,” he laments. “Asheville is not a cheap, throw-away theme park.” Ultimately, air and water quality, steep-slope development and other environmental concerns ultimately have to be factored into the economic equation, he argues, as part of incorporating the concept of sustainability more deeply in the culture.
“The important thing to do, if we’re trying to develop the economy, is to think of it in terms of a system, instead of simply looking at ways of exploiting [it],” McConville maintains. “Look at these Mcmansions being built: The implications of that alone are severe. They require thousands and thousands of kilowatt hours a year that will pollute the air, so then entrepreneurs and others won’t come here anymore. People just don’t make those connections.”
For his part, Getz says it was the area’s physical beauty and culture that originally drew him here. But in the end, that just wasn’t enough to make him stay.
“Maybe it has something to do with turning 30,” he says. “If I was 21, maybe I could convince myself to hang on here long enough doing whatever till I found real work. But at some point, you just have to grow up and move on.”
That’s right, this is just more of the same ole thing. How long have we been hearing from these same characters about developing the area economy? Too long, for sure. The only businesses that are thriving here are real estate developers and those associated with them. Organizations like Advantage West and the Chamber of Commerce do absolutely nothing, yet they have well-paid and large staffs who simply push paper around and “talk the talk: about economic development. Someone should take a look at how much taxpayer money is spent yearly to fund organizations like the Chamber and Advantage West. Both organizations are just places where washed-up political cronies (of both parties) wind up. They do absolutely nothing to earn their substantial salaries. Jim Roberts was one of them, but he was fired from Advantage West because all he did was distribute press releases about himself and how much he was doing — when the end result was very little indeed. Asheville is Not an Austin, Raleigh or Charlotte. Never was, and never will be.