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More than 110 business and civic leaders came to Westwood Country Club’s ballroom in Vienna, Virginia, Wednesday morning to confront hard facts and hopeful conjecture during the annual Capital Area Economic Forum.
Terry Clower, director of the Schar School of Policy and Government’s Center for Regional Analysis, started the program with an impassioned delivery of projected data for 2025 and listed a large number of things leaders should do in the coming year to stave off the worst of what might happen.
In order for the region to be competitive, he said, local businesses and industries must begin building the kind of housing the market craves; solve major transportation challenges, including the building of new bridges across the Potomac River; support workforce transitions as current jobs give way to new forms of work; and, above all, to be nimble, brave, and be quick about it, and understand there are “no sacred cows,” he said.
Bottom line, he told the audience, the disparate jurisdictions that share the geography and people within the area have to work together. “Our strength is as a region,” he said.
A panel discussion following Clower included Julie Coons, president of the Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce, who echoed Clower when she told the audience, “One of the joys of this job is that every day I work with world-class people and world-class companies. I think we can work this out.”
The program finished with regional business thought leader Bob Buchanan who did not mince words: If regional leadership did not follow the roadmap described by Clower and the panelists, “next year this meeting will not be so well attended because we’ll be disgusted with ourselves.”
The event was hosted by the Center for Regional Analysis and sponsored by the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance, among others.