No room for rivalries or egos on BRAC team

ARLINGTON, Va. - Whether battling for highway dollars or football trophies or land for annexation, cities compete.

For cities to thrive, they must focus on their own prosperity, even if it is to the detriment of neighboring communities. That's how roads get widened, auto plants come to town, and schools get built.

The 21 Tennessee Valley communities represented on a federal employee recruiting trip in Arlington, Va., the past few days have no doubt vied for the same state and national money. Certainly someone has gotten mad at someone over not getting funding that went to somebody else.

But the almost kumbaya kindredness during the BRAC recruiting trip belied the naturally competitive nature among these cities.

It was a three-day cooperation fest.

"Someone coming through the community trade show said they'd never seen so many competitive cities work together," said Joe Ritch, head of the Tennessee Valley BRAC Committee. "They said it made them want to live there."

Communities as far south as Cullman and as far north as Lincoln County, Tenn., and everywhere in between manned booths to answer questions of Missile Defense Agency employees whose jobs will move to Redstone Arsenal in coming years.

They touted their test scores and real estate prices and recreational amenities. They pitched themselves, but they refrained from degrading their competitors. Sometimes, they even pointed out how a different city might better suit the employee's wishes.

"Not everybody wants to live on the lake or on a golf course or in a downtown condo or out in the country," said Madison County Commission Chairman Mike Gillespie. "What I witnessed was that if it was not the right fit, they would recommend them to someone who was.

"The more options we give them, the more they seem to like it. Whatever community they decide to live in, everyone is going to benefit."

It hasn't always been this way, Gillespie said. Some cities' rivalries have hampered growth in the past.

He said collaboration is the key to success and always has been.

"BRAC just really exemplifies it to the community more than some other projects because it's so much bigger than anything else," Gillespie said.

Collaboration doesn't come cheap. The nearly two dozen communities that comprise the Tennessee Valley BRAC Committee donate thousands of dollars to the project aimed at convincing Washington, D.C.-area employees to give this area a look.

Plus, they pay their own way to the recruitment meetings, which translates into thousands more dollars for airline tickets and hotel rooms.

The town hall meetings/trade fair last week was the third in the Washington area since Congress voted to move the Missile Defense Agency, Army Materiel Command and Space & Missile Defense Agency to Redstone. Current estimates are that 4,500 federal jobs will move to Huntsville, with as many as 5,000 contractor and support jobs to follow.

But the number of federal employees who came to hear the Tennessee Valley message this time wasn't as large as in past trips.

Was the trip worth the price?

"We would've liked a larger audience, but almost everyone we did talk to seemed excited about the prospects," Ritch said. "Nearly every one of them said they were moving. They didn't necessarily know which community they wanted to live in, but they said they were following their jobs.

"We're content to get them one at a time."

Ritch said the next recruiting trip won't happen for another 18 months, when federal workers get their notices about whether their jobs are moving to Redstone or staying put.

MDA director Gen. Trey Obering said overseas trips and a ramped-up missile-testing schedule likely kept away many potential transferees.

For some, the word "Alabama" kept them away.

Tharon Honeycutt, 48, knows how that works. When he was offered a job in Huntsville seven years ago, the Sacramento, Calif., native was not at all intrigued.

"My parents had told me what a hard time they had growing up in Mississippi, and I just wasn't interested in the south at all," said Honeycutt, one of the speakers on the recent recruiting trip. "And my wife was born in Brooklyn. Alabama was not on our radar screen."

They came to visit anyway.

He said they were pleasantly surprised by the "mountains, lakes and smart people."

"It's been a great move," Honeycutt said. "My family would have missed a great blessing if we had not come."