Hillsborough and Pinellas counties have long been rivals. The sort of rivalry that results from one county (Pinellas) seceding (1912) from the other (Hillsborough). Over the years they were spanned by multiple bay bridges, but turfdom was never really transcended.
Those of us who have been around a while know that the two counties competed with each other for a regional airport, a main university campus, athletic facilities, sports franchises, a major theme park and business relocations.
We knew in our gut that we were better off marketing ourselves as an area, with our collective amenities and diversity, than as individual cities and counties. But the devil was always in the regional details if it didn’t involve pitching a Super Bowl or national political convention.
But when it comes to exports, we could all agree: Selling more goods and services internationally would be a regional plus: a boon to the economy. Only problem: Exports, according to the Tampa Bay Partnership, were only accounting for 8 percent of this area’s gross regional product. As a result, we rank 88th among the top 100 metro areas in exports as a percentage of GRP. The national average was 12 percent of GRP.
Enter Rick Homans, the CEO of Tampa Hillsborough Economic Development Corp., and Mike Meidel, the director of Pinellas County Economic Development. They were catalysts in the formation of the Tampa Bay Export Alliance. Its unnuanced, proactive objective: Sell more stuff and do it together.
“If we just get up to average, that’s another 40,000 jobs,” points out Meidel. And job-one, the formation of a TBEA, is now behind them.