THE WARREN SENTINEL

Article Date: June 26, 2003  

Heavener to leave EDA on July 31

By:  Roger Bianchini

It’s not exactly the “call of the wild” but Stephen Heavener is heading west to tackle his next career challenge.

Heavener informed the Front Royal-Warren County Economic Development Authority Board of Directors on Monday that he would be leaving the executive director’s position he has held for nine years, effective July 31.  Heavener has accepted the executive director’s job with the Carlsbad, New Mexico Department of Development.

Heavener said on Tuesday that he had not been actively seeking other employment but found an attractive career opportunity available when contacted by a service consultant in his field recently.   The opportunity in New Mexico attracted Heavener because, he says, it will put him in a developmental position similar to the one existing here when he took his current position in 1994.

“In my career my expertise and my experience has been either helping to create an organization or to reestablish or re-energize an organization,” the 49-year-old Heavener said, “and put the community on the [economic] map.  So this organization [in Carlsbad] is in a similar position.

“I’ve been very happy here with the support, the political support and the board’s support has been fabulous over the years.  I’ve enjoyed myself,”  Heavener said on his nine, occasionally embattled years in Warren County.  “It’s not my decision to decide how successful I’ve been.  That’s for other people to decide.”

During Heavener’s tenure six major industrial clients invested $235 million in initial capital investments to locate in Warren County.  Those industrial clients brought jobs and eventually needed additional tax revenue to the community.

The most recent of those clients was the embattled SYSCO application.  The county planning commission split in its view of the preapproval process with the supervisors leading into court.  SYSCO was eventually approved by the board after Circuit Court Judge John E. Wetsel ruled the planner’s continued tabling of the matter amounted to a defacto denial of the request.

SYSCO’s estimated $75 million initial investment in its food cold storage, distribution facility is the largest of the six major client capital investments brought to the county between 1995 and 2002.

The others were: Pen-Tab, $10 million and Toray Plastics, $62 million in 1995; Family Dollar’s distribution center, $42 million in 1997; Bering Truck,$20 million in 1997; and Ferguson Enterprises, $26 million in 1998.

“We were very, very lucky with SYSCO,” Heavener said of the food industry giant, “because if you look at what the economy has done, particularly since 9-11, there has been a lot of volatility, a lot of uncertainty. A lot of corporations, particularly publicly traded corporations, which SYSCO is, are very, very reluctant to make large capital investments.

“We’ve been very fortunate,” Heavener says, noting hits taken in neighboring communities like Shenandoah County, “ when you look at the fact that we only lost Mead-Pentab after a seven year run .”  Heavener says the county “never really had” Bering, which went out of business after its initial capital investment before going into full production and establishing its estimated employment base of 60 people.

Heavener views himself as a cog in ta complex governmental organization.  “It’s easy to say ‘Heavener did this’, or ‘Heavener did that,’ but the reality is none of the successes we had would have occurred without the strong support of the political leadership of the town and the county and the EDA Board level.

“I’m the chief operating officer.  I work for the board and I work for the town and county.  I’m the facilitator.  I mean, I didn’t do anything because I couldn’t do anything.  The EDA board, the town and the county voted on every deal we did and provided the funds that we needed on every deal we did.  So my job has been to bring them the deal.  It’s their job to give me the tools to close it.”

Heavener said that the nature of the EDA’s work is at a turning point here and if there is such a thing as a good time to leave a position, this may be it in his current situation.  “We’ve finished the Avtex [Administration] building after two or three years; we’ve used all the demolition money at Avtex.  We’re in transition now where we can get to the next level of Congressional support, which is probably a year or two away.

“We are probably done doing big deals like the SYSCO’s and Family Dollars of the world,” Heavener adds.  “There’s just not a whole lot of land left.  So, by definition those sort of gigantic deals aren’t going to happen anymore.”  That fact and the fact that Carlsbad, New Mexico is on the threshold of such economic movement played heavily in Heavener’s decision to move on.

Heavener says the local EDA’s future focus is likely to be on retail-commercial, technology and implementing the EDA Strategic Plan.  Those are areas that Heavener says, “ are really quite different that my skill set.

It is the art of the “big deal” that attracts Heavener and that is what Carlsbad will offer him career wise.

“Nine years, in my opinion, in the economic development profession, I think the average is 3-1/2, 4 years [tenure].  So, I’m way off the scale as far as longevity.

“And the reason its been so long, as I discussed, is the tremendous political support and the challenge of the position.  It’s been a lot of fun.”

Now the EDA is making a transition to attract more diverse commercial-, retail- and technology-related companies.

“They’re not going to be as big in the way of capital investment, but the jobs in the future will pay more and there will be more variety,” he said.  “Instead of the Family Dollars employing 500 or Ferguson employing 200, we’ll have multiple companies with 20 to 100 people.”

While Heavener is confident he could evolve to take on the responsibilities at the EDA, he prefers a position that is more about organizational creation rather than organizational redirection.  He said Carlsbad will offer him that.