A crowd of more than 60 community leaders from Brevard County gathered last week to hear myregion.org President Jacob Stuart provide an update of some of the latest regional findings to date. Members of the Space Coast Tiger Bay Club listened attentively as he shared data collected on the 13 areas of study, including tourism, economic development, transportation and demographics.

A story published in Florida Today, Brevard County’s premier newspaper, carried the headline “Regionalism is Key to Economic Success.” A very positive review of the event by reporter John McCarthy, it quotes University of Florida County Extension Director Jim Fletcher rating the presentation as “excellent.” See the full article below.

Project to identify local strengths

Regionalism key to economic success

John McCarthy
Florida Today

COCOA BEACH -- Brevard County's economic, environmental and quality-of-life concerns don't end at the county line.

That was the point Jacob Stuart drove home to the members of the Space Coast Tiger Bay Club during a luncheon meeting in Cocoa Beach on Thursday.

Stuart is president of myregion.org, a two- to three-year project designed to identify key priorities for the seven-county Central Florida region, and plans necessary to tackle those priorities.

"It's about regional cooperation," Stuart said. "Regions are now the hubsof economies."

Stuart, who also is president of the Orlando Regional Chamber of Commerce, said the United States has gone through two prior waves of "regionalism," once following the Civil War, the other during the Great Depression.

Just as those two were driven by extraordinary events, so is this wave, he said. This time it was the collapse of communism and the subsequent rise in global trading that has spurred the movement. That has forced local industries to compete in the worldwide marketplace. Individual cities or counties can't go it alone in that marketplace, he said.

"The world today, giant global trading blocs . . . Are we going to compete with China or Tampa?"

To emphasize his point, he displayed an overhead map of the Central Florida region showing the county boundaries, which for the most part were drawn in the 19th century. "How many people would redraw those lines the same way today?" he asked. Not a single hand among the crowd of several dozen people went up.

"Economies don't end at the county line," Stuart said after the luncheon.

Stuart says myregion.org is going through a three-step process:

• Create an understanding of the region's needs and strengths.

• Evaluate challenges and opportunities for the region.

• Prepare the area's leaders to act upon those challenges and opportunities.

myregion.org has spent the past year studying the region and polling residents about how they felt about their communities, as well as about their hopes for the future.

Among the highlights of the findings:

• Eighty-three percent of Brevardians said they wouldn't live anywhere else, a higher percentage than in the region's other counties. "That's incredible," Jacobs said.

• Forty-six percent said Orlando was the economic engine of the region. Driving that, of course, is tourism. "We are the single largest tourist destination in the world," Stuart said.

• Local economies in the Central Florida are the strongest in the state. "The powerhouse of Florida is right here in Central Florida.," Stuart said. "Tampa Bay to Cocoa Beach, that's the action."

• The region's population is dominated by two age groups, children and senior citizens. And both groups are growing. Both these groups typically are very large consumers of public services, Jacobs pointed out.

• People in the region wanted leaders to work more closely on two areas in particular, health care and jobs.

University of Florida County Extension Director Jim Fletcher said Stuart hit the nail squarely on the head.

"I think it was excellent," he said of Stuart's presentation. "Definitely regions are driving the economy. No doubt about it."