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Business Summit About Listening

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By KEVIN WIATROWSKI

kwiatrowski@tampatrib.com

Published: March 14, 2009

NEW PORT RICHEY - Friday's economic summit didn't produce the earthshaking ideas some had hoped for, but that didn't mean it was a total loss, organizer Greg Armstrong said.

"The best thing that I got out of it was listening to people talking to each other at the end," said Armstrong, president of the West Pasco Board of Realtors.

With Pasco County's service-based economy struggling under nearly 11 percent unemployment and construction-related employment nearly dead, Armstrong hosted a meeting of the minds among county leaders Friday morning and invited all comers to offer ways to turn the local economy around.

"I think everybody saw we've got a lot of challenges," Armstrong said. "That also means we've got a lot of opportunities."

Few ideas rose to the surface.

Several attendees urged everyone to shop locally, ensuring their money goes to local businesses and their taxes to Pasco County.
Pasco County Commissioner Jack Mariano raised the possibility of recruiting solar-panel makers or other clean-energy companies to the county. With that in mind, other people suggested turning the county's busted, unbuilt subdivisions into solar farms to generate power.

For the most part, however, the three-hour session was a way for government leaders, business owners and educators to hear what the others were doing economically. In the long run, the meeting might help build the kind of connections that could shift the county's economic trajectory, Armstrong said.

County officials long have sought to turn around some of the 80,000 workers - half the county's work force - who commute to jobs elsewhere. To that end, the county has set aside land for employment centers and, more recently, offered millions in subsidies to lure financial giant T. Rowe Price to a site on State Road 54.

Beyond its borders, Pasco suffers from an identity crisis, seen as a good place to raise a family but not a good place to put high-wage jobs.

Mary Jane Stanley, president of the Pasco Economic Development Council, told the gathering the county needs to focus on changing that view. One step in that direction is the effort to set up the junction of S.R. 54 and the Suncoast Parkway as the new gateway to Pasco County.

The interchange is about 20 minutes from Tampa International Airport.

"We're closer than you think," Stanley said.

Reporter Kevin Wiatrowski can be reached at (813) 948-4201.

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