http://66.225.205.104/LM20100621a.mp3
Charlotte community and business leaders spent part of last week talking about using transportation, health care, and small businesses as ways to drive a region's economy. They did it not in Charlotte, but a plane flight away in Boston as part of the Charlotte Chamber's annual trip. WFAE's Lisa Miller has more on what Charlotte may get out of it. The Charlotte Chamber thinks of these trips as first-hand comparisons between Charlotte and other cities. It's a costly comparison. The city of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County spent about $41,000 to send 18 elected officials on the trip. So what did they take away from it? Mecklenburg County Commissioner Dan Murrey says what intrigued him was the way Boston integrates roads and public transit with parks. "The reason it's important for Charlotte is that we're rapidly losing our open spaces," says Murrey. "It's a critical time to be sure that the uses we have for the spaces are the right ones and a continued emphasis on not just roads but transit will lead to a very livable city." Commissioner Harold Cogdell says Boston officials drove home the importance of having businesses and universities coordinate their efforts. He says Charlotte needs to do a better job of capitalizing on its higher education. The Chamber group heard from some of Massachusetts's leading authorities on housing, health care, parks and transportation. The president's top economic advisor Larry Summers even addressed the group. Several regular trip participants say sessions like these are informative, but the real value of the trip is getting business, non-profit and government officials on the same page. "It did give new life to it seeing the results of the Big Dig and having a conversation with a hundred other leaders from Charlotte and having us all consider it in the context of the same information," says Murrey. Take medical schools as an example. Boston has a handful of them, Charlotte has none. In the past local hospitals have pushed to start one in Charlotte, but there wasn't much of a public conversation about it. Murrey says on the trip several business leaders outside the health care field were the first ones to pitch a medical school as a way to drive the economy. Ultimately, past efforts to start one failed because there wasn't enough money. That's a situation that's not likely to change any time soon.