Gotham City: Harrisburg Regional Chamber?

Gotham City:
Telling Tales of Our Capital Region's Politics

by Frank Pizzoli

Harrisburg Regional Chamber?

“Yoo-hoo, over here. Thanks for finally catching up.” The economic development organization formerly known as Susquehanna Alliance’s morph into Harrisburg Regional Chamber (HRC) is a most welcomed development. But we’ll wait and see. As Harrisburg Mayor Stephen Reed reminded the 100 or so gathered on Whitaker Center’s mezzanine on Monday, this is an area “not used to thinking like a region.”

We’ll wait for outcomes. We’re choking on “process”. That’s a spin word for turf wars. When warring parties can’t stop lobbing flamers at each other, they tweak process, look busy, reward busy, and make a zillion copies of whatever — but still no outcome. And why? They’re still haggling.

So, perhaps the brightest outcome to roll forth on the last day of the first month of the so-called new millennium is the fact that Dauphin, Cumberland and Perry Counties will have one dynamic marketer with HRC. “Our new name makes us more identifiable with the area we serve and more closely reflects our mission,” says Patrick C. Conway, the new chamber’s president and CEO. He hopes to create “a dynamic regional organization for business and economic development.”

The new organization’s tagline is “Central Pennsylvania’s Partnership for Business & Economic Development.” A new board of directors will guide one central staff of 20 in operating four departments — economic development, business and community development, leadership development, and minority business development. The board also has responsibility for the ENVISION Program, an admirable community-driven effort based on “regionalization” apparently so far mired down in the muck of existing, unyielding, fiefdoms. Maybe at last we have in place an organization that will face at least some of the real (and/or imagined) threats to getting along for the good of the order. The region’s holding ground — forget about growing for the moment — rests on confronting the all too familiar obstacles spawned by the individual counties’ interests.

Three affiliate organizations have thrown in with HRC: the Technology Council of Central Pennsylvania, the Venture Investment Forum of Central Pennsylvania, and the Harrisburg Young Professionals, described in a press release as “not directly part of the Chamber’s formal organizational structure,” but “aligned with its mission.” We sure hope that’s not a signal for a future “Here we go again” sigh. This “not directly part of” but “aligned with” stuff is getting old. Meanwhile, the economy booms, global markets explode and here in Gotham City we’re still fending our back yards as if each other is the enemy.

Ever notice something else? We seem to be, oh, at least 10 years behind the times —Hollywood filmmakers note so, outsiders beamed here also notice. Yet, why is it that at every regional press conference, the unveiled plan is so cutting edge that other regions around the country nation are imitating it? How does it happen that we start cutting edge and still end up behind? “It’s called spin, dude,” one seasoned observer at the press conference said.

One last item. It was truly nice to see an African-American business executive, Vince Hill, Salomon Smith Barney, Inc., at the podium. Maybe that’s a good sign, as we truly hope this week’s love fest is the real McCoy.