New Partnership Expected to Tackle Crupi Report

When strategic consultant Jim Crupi returned to Richmond last year to deliver his assessment of the region's challenges and opportunities, it came as no surprise that he not only laid out some specific ideas for the region but that Crupi took Richmond area leaders behind the woodshed for their proven inability to consistently lead with a vision or move ambitious strategic initiatives forward.

For a while, it felt like Crupi's November report would be another set of good ideas to fall through the cracks in the region's overly tactical leadership playbook. But behind-the-scenes, key members of the Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce -- including outgoing Chamber president Jim Dunn and current chairman Ted Chandler -- have been hard at work trying to turn Crupi's suggestions, and other key regional proposals, into reality.

I sat down with Dunn several weeks ago to discuss the Crupi Report, which was funded privately but delivered to the community in November as a Chamber of Commerce initiative.

"The biggest takeaway from the Crupi Report was the disconnect we still have as a region," Dunn said. "Our real challenge, if we're going to evolve as a world-class region, is to connect the elements that create a community and move them forward."

"What people really began to understand is that we have got to get out of the silos and see how each of the issues we face fit together hand-to-glove," Dunn continued. "Crupi said we're doing good work in a lot of areas, but we have got to emerge the next generation of leadership and to move forward some of the things on the table that matter to the region."

In order to do that, Dunn and others believe a new mechanism is needed to create collaboration on those key issues, which include transportation, education and tourism. With the working name "Capital Region Tomorrow," that proposed mechanism is a new entity that spans not only the nine jurisdictions of the Richmond Regional Planning District Commission (Ashland, Charles City, Chesterfield, Goochland, Hanover, Henrico, New Kent, Powhatan and Richmond) but potentially include representatives from the rapidly growing Crater Planning District Commission that surrounds Petersburg.

The goal of the proposed new group? To create "a future vision for the capital region and the oversight to achieve it."

Dunn believes that Capital Region Tomorrow is needed in part to help the region shake off past baggage.

"We're saying let's hand this off to a group that doesn't have the baggage that you'd have if, say, the Chamber owned this," Dunn said. "And to have a communication strategy that reaches out to everyone in the region and not just the typical cast of characters who tend to show up."

The idea for a new entity to provide regional leadership is just taking form, Dunn said. "I think we're doing to right thing by taking a step back and figuring this out -- not just jumping off the cliff. There's going to be a process as we develop this, but there won't be a lot of public movement on that process for a few months," he said.

Comments

[CelebratingLGBG]

Thanks for this post. I'm encouraged to hear that the Chamber may be open now to the idea of a larger conversation--both geographically and socially. We need a genuine cross-section of the region working together to fit all the puzzle pieces together--convenient and reliable regional transit system, vibrant downtown, plentiful jobs, affordable housing, environmental sustainability, soul-nourishing aesthetics, protected farmland, public open space, James River preservation--to make this metropolitan area work for everyone. Other communities have made progress with the kind of approach that is now under consideration. Business leaders and government officials can't do it by just talking to one another, and they have to understand that the region is far larger than just the big four localities. It has taken a long time for this message to sink in. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

[Craig Love]

The Crupi Report and its handling by local leaders continues to illustrate the issues limiting Richmond's growth. An overall reluctance, hesitation, and skepticism about change, and moreover an inability to create leadership that would drive it, is the single inhibitor of growth for the city. What ensues is more talk, more planning, more soliloquy and less challenging dialog. We research, we study, we submit plans, we offer opinion. Richmond has gained a notoriety of sorts for this reputation and it is this person's fear that the Crupi report will be yet another earmarked example of why other city's continue to drive forward with growth and tourism, while Richmond continues to mire in its own mental masturbation.