Recently the Hampton Roads Community Foundation has created an initiative called Reinvent Hampton Roads to increase economic opportunities and entrepreneurship with a focus on convincing established companies to relocate here. Since 1950, HRCF has donated 230 million dollars towards such non-profits as Hurrah Players and the Up Center. Their grants support the arts, public schools, libraries and various charities. These efforts are important, but I fail to see how an organization that only helps businesses that do not pay income taxes and only pay about 5% of their staff really help the economy of any region. Voluntary and prison slave labor was a paradigm of the socialist regimes that terrorized the Cold War Era. Free Market Economies are based on free enterprise and so should our economy. We need grants and angel investments that support start-ups and early-stage companies founded by local people for locally and internationally-based business endeavors. The 757 Angels Group says that their purpose is to fund businesses that will “derive the majority of revenues from sources outside of Hampton Roads.” Why do they charge people $100 to tell them that they don’t fit the criteria of not being focused on customers outside of our area? Why can’t they just give their funding to the best ideas and concepts instead? Several movies have been filmed here over the past 3 decades such as Mission Impossible III and Captain Phillips, but no one feels like setting-up a company here to make it a real home for movie and TV making. Book and music publishing companies are also surprisingly absent from our area as well. The only record companies I am aware of only release hip hop and R&B and haven’t made any singles or albums that people have purchased or streamed in any great number. Most rock, pop, R&B, hip hop, country, and blues artists here struggle to be heard on local radio stations or to get national attention. So what will it take to reinvent Hampton Roads? It will take money being available to internet, bio tech, media, entertainment and major league sports enterprises. The new arena slated to be built in Virginia Beach will be a great addition, but more is needed to make a change that we can believe in because it is real and tangible. Reinvention is something that artists like Madonna and David Bowie are attributed with, so then you should understand why I think we need bolder initiatives then what has been presented thus far. Asking established companies to relocate to set-up factories here and giving money for certain reasons only sounds like the same ole thing. Einstein’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
I have a plan for a new local search engine that will list business, real estate, jobs, coupons, events and classifieds listings all together. It is called www.757pages.com. I’m looking for a partner or partners to make it a success for myself and the region. That is exactly what every concerned citizen needs to learn how to do – work together with the smartest and most inspired people to create something that is greater than the sum of its parts. That is what it will take to truly Reinvent Hampton Roads.
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Lionel "Luciano Illuminati" WhiteAuthor of Wealth Building Strategies of the Super Rich & The Boss, Alternative Rocker, Founder/CEO of SPOIO ArchivesCategories |