andrew.kantor@roanoke.com

981-3384

The New Century Technology Council is gone. As of Wednesday, the NCTC - as most people know it - officially became the NewVa Corridor Technology Council.

Gordie Zeigler, the NCTC's executive director, made the announcement Wednesday at Virginia's Technology Capital Access Forum.

The effort that led to the NewVa brand was conceived in 2002, when the Fifth Planning District Regional Alliance's economic strategy report suggested that "the region's economic growth is impeded by size, self-image, and lack of identity." One result was an effort to create a brand, and the winner (beating out "WEVA") was NewVa, unveiled a year ago.

"NewVa was developed as a brand identity to hopefully bring together the New River Valley and the Roanoke Valley and hopefully the Alleghany Highlands," Zeigler said. "We think it's important that there be one identity," he explained, describing NewVa as "one region with a mountain range in the middle."

By formally making the NewVa brand part of the NCTC's identity, Zeigler said he hopes to influence other organizations and businesses to incorporating the brand.

"By ... influencing the collective conscience of the residents, [the NCTC] wants to get people to think of us as one area," he said.

"Eventually we'd like to be able to point to us on a map and say 'This is NewVa'" in the same way that people think of Virginia Beach, Hampton, Chesapeake Bay and Newport News as Hampton Roads.

Victor Iannello, president of the Fifth Planning District Regional Alliance, said he was was glad to hear of the NCTC's decision.

"I think this is a big step towards the recognition and acceptance of the brand throughout the region," he said, although he considers it "one of the preliminary steps for a more general rollout that we're now planning" over the next several months.

Wayne Strickland, executive director of the Roanoke Valley-Alleghany Regional Commission, said that even in this early stage, the rollout of the NewVa brand is proceeding well.

"[NewVa] is similar to what other communities of our size are trying to do as they move through this transition to the new economy," he explained. Unfortunately, budget cuts over the past several years have prevented the state from continuing to fund the initiative - to promote the new brand identity.

"For the state there are some basic kinds of need they have to take care of," Strickland said. "It's not just an issue of money, but with any new idea it's always good to have some funds to promote it."

The NCTC's long-term hope is to have the NewVa region recognized as a metropolitan statistical area. That could increase the appeal of the area to businesses and potential residents as they see a single, larger entity on a map similar to the way New York City's five boroughs joined together to form a single city.

The U.S. Office of Management and Budget considers an MSA to be a core area (a "substantial population nucleus") with adjacent communities that are tightly integrated with that core. In 2003 the OMB designated Blacksburg, Christiansburg and Radford as an MSA for the first time, but those places could not be joined to the existing Roanoke MSA because there isn't enough commuting between the two areas.

For NewVa to be a single MSA, each of its counties would need to have 15 percent of its work force commute to another county or city in the region. According to the 2000 Census, 9.2 percent of residents of the area commute between the Blacksburg-Christiansburg-Radford and Roanoke MSAs.

Until the region meets the OMB's criteria, Zeigler and the NCTC will help carry the NewVa banner.

"We're in a unique position. We're one of the few business organizations that straddles both valleys," he said. "Whether people agree with the name is inconsequential to us. We want people to get behind the NewVa brand."

Changing the technology council's name, he hopes, will give the organization some street credibility. "Now we can come to the table and say 'We did it'."