A decade ago, High Point and Greensboro were still sniping at each other for jobs. Companies would fly in, meet in High Point and hear one set of population and wage numbers, then cross over to Greensboro and get an entirely different set. The two cities were competing against each other so often that they were sometimes the biggest obstacles to their own success.
This month marks the 10th anniversary of the formation of the Guilford County Economic Development Alliance, the partnership created in late 2015 to end the cross-county turf fights and present a united front to companies considering locating or expanding in Guilford County. The alliance brought together three local governments – Guilford County, the City of Greensboro and the City of High Point – along with the High Point Economic Development Corp. and the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce.
It was designed as a way to share information, coordinate recruitment efforts, and keep the two cities from undermining each other.
Former Guilford County Commissioner Hank Henning, who was chairman of the Board of Commissioners at the time, remembers the environment clearly: He said the political bodies had just undergone major leadership changes back then and a lot of newly elected officials were still learning how things worked. What they heard early on was that the region needed a different approach.
“We had a new county manager, and I’ve got to give a lot of credit to Marty Lawing,” Henning said. “He was the one who didn’t think that the old way was the best way to do business. Companies would meet with one group and get one set of data, then meet with another and hear something totally different. And there we were at the county – sort of disengaged in the whole process – while we were massively funding both organizations. It just seemed like it could be better.”
Henning said that while High Point was doing very well at the time – and Greensboro wasn’t – there was still an appetite across the board to stop competing against each other.
“We weren’t competing for the Toyotas of the world,” Henning said. “We weren’t competing for the JetZeros. Everyone wanted to step up their game.”
Henning also said the decision to keep large regional megasites intact, rather than chopping off pieces for smaller early-arriving companies, was critical to securing the kind of major transformational projects that came later. He credited not just the elected officials but the professionals who carried it out.
“You have to bring in professional economic developers who understand how recruiting companies works,” Henning said. “There’s a science and an art to it. You need the right people on your team. We hit a home run with Brent Christensen and Dave Ramsey, and they worked really well with Loren [Hill] in High Point.”
Henning said the alliance and the cooperation it built helped unlock the region’s modern run of large-scale projects.
“I’d absolutely say the big projects wouldn’t have happened without us working together as a region,” he said.
Brent Christensen, who helped create the Guilford County Economic Development Alliance in 2015, said the cooperation it established changed the trajectory of the county.
“I thought it was definitely a good idea,” he said. “Having an economic development program in a county that was splintered was just not going to be good for anyone. Our allies at the state level were confused by it; the clients were turned off by it; and it just wasn’t working for anyone.”
Christensen said the split system – Greensboro on one side, High Point on the other – made no sense to companies evaluating the area.
“For us to be successful, we were going to have to find a way to work together, and the Guilford County Economic Development Alliance allowed us to do that and incentivized us to do that.”
He said the shift to cooperation required buy-in from both public and private leaders.
Christensen noted: “My leadership at the Greensboro Chamber said, ‘If a company chooses High Point over Greensboro, that’s not a black mark—if you worked together, that’s a win.’ In the past the scoreboards were kept separately. Now the scoreboard was being kept together.”
According to Christensen, the results speak for themselves.
“I would argue that this is the most successful decade for economic development in Guilford County’s history. We went from having multiple scorecards to having one – wins in both communities were being counted for the entire county.”
He also said the turnaround couldn’t have happened without key early voices pushing for change.
“Marty was the impetus behind us working together,” he said. “He challenged us to come up with something that would work and be done with the old ways, and he helped usher it into existence.”
Christensen said the alliance only succeeded because leaders across the board committed to the idea.
“You had professional leadership, public leadership and private leadership who were all bought into that concept,” he stated. “It doesn’t work without that.”
And looking back over ten years, he said the vision paid off.
“It’s been nice to see their vision and their trust play out in the successful way that it has.”
Loren Hill, who led the High Point EDC when GCEDA was created and now works as the Carolina Core Regional Economic Development Director, had a front-row seat to the friction between the two cities before 2015. He said companies frequently had to schedule separate meetings on different sides of the county and would hear entirely different presentations.
At the time, there was a lot of competition between the two cities – High Point and Greensboro – and it made sense not to duplicate everything when someone was interested in coming here, Hill said.
Some companies would schedule a time to look at facilities in Greensboro and then schedule a time with a different set of economic-development officials in High Point to see what they had to offer.”
Hill, like Henning, credits former Guilford County Manager Marty Lawing for pushing the three governments toward the partnership.
At the time, High Point had more to lose. The city had been on a very strong run, landing new companies and expanding existing ones, while Greensboro’s results had been less impressive.
However, in the years since, both the High Point EDC and the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce – under President and CEO Brent Christensen – have been gangbusters.
The alliance is widely viewed as one of the turning points that helped get the region everything from manufacturers to aviation and logistics companies and helped pave the way for megasite activity across the Triad.
Henning, now with Duke Energy, still looks back at the alliance as one of the most important initiatives he worked on.
“It’s great that I got to be involved with an organization that brought so many companies here and transform the area, and now I get to work for Duke Energy, a company that powers them,” Henning said.
Duke Energy sometimes works with the county, the cities and the state to help assemble incentive packages for companies considering locating in the Triad.
On Wednesday, Nov. 19, the GCEDA leadership and dozens of current and former officials will gather for a 10th-anniversary program at the Blue Heron Event Venue in High Point. The event will bring together many of the players who helped build the alliance over the past decade. Speakers include Brent Christensen, Loren Hill, High Point EDC Director Peter Bishop and a panel of former and current GCEDA leadership members.
Keynote speaker Jay Garner of Garner Economics will deliver a presentation titled “What a Difference a Decade Makes.”
Ten years after the alliance formed, the once-rival cities now work so closely together that it’s easy to forget just how divided the economic-development landscape once was.
Looking back, Hill, Henning and others say the partnership didn’t just improve the county’s competitiveness – it altered the trajectory of the entire
