A gathering in Fayetteville last week could be hugely signifi cant.
Or not.
It depends on what develops.
The gathering was of business and community leaders from Northwest Arkansas and Central Arkansas, many of whose names are readily recognized here and in the Little Rock area. They are people who are and have been movers and shakers in their respective communities and in the state at large.
The meeting was akin to the start just over 20 years ago of the Northwest Arkansas Council. That’s when Walmart founder Sam Walton gathered corporate and civic leaders from this region together to see what they might be able to do as allies rather than competitors.
Their collaborative efforts have led to a regional airport and other major infrastructure improvements for Northwest Arkansas.
This week’s gathering in Fayetteville could also be compared to the beginnings in 1963 of Fifty For the Future, a similar collection of business and community leaders in the Little Rock area. The organization, staffed through the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce, numbers more than that now and has its own list of successes for Central Arkansas.
Neither group could have known at the beginning just what it would be able to accomplish. Nor can this collection of men andwomen who gathered in Fayetteville last week know what is ahead for them.
They come, however, directly from the ranks of the Northwest Arkansas Council and Fifty for the Future and got together to fi gure out what their common goals are and how they can impact the future of both regions and of Arkansas.
That these infl uential people can impact what happens in this state isn’t the question. Whether they can act collaboratively is the question.
This initial meeting, which has apparently been being talked about for years, was intended to launch a partnership between the regions that these organizations have separately served.
A couple of dozen folks from the Little Rock area joined about the same number from up here on Thursday and Friday to get to know each other better and begin this journey.
Only a Thursday night dinner, hosted by Chancellor Dave Gearhart at the University of Arkansas Alumni House, was open to the media; but it off ered a glimpse into what is possible with this otherwise private collaboration.
Gearhart, who also is cochairman of the Northwest Arkansas Council, broke whatever ice there was between the two groups when he immediately addressed one of the issues that tends to divide the regions - where Razorback football games are played.
Gearhart announced jokingly that future “home” games will all be played in Camden.
His joke brought laughter but it served, too, as a reminder that the regions still have competing interests, even about football games and their related economic benefi ts. (Note: Athletic Director Jeff Long gave the group advance notice the next day about the newly announced football schedule and the move of the LSU game from Little Rock to Fayetteville.)
Mostly, Gearhart and his counterpart, Elizabeth Small, president of Fifty for the Future, focused on the potential for a partnership to address problems these two regions share.
Friday’s closed-door sessions were, as Gearhart explained, about getting all these people into a room to start talking about their shared concerns.
Small stressed the need to move from just regionalism to a “super regional” approach that takes advantage of urban growth and infl uence in Arkansas.
A shared, global vision, she said, “can strengthen us all” as Arkansas competes in a truly global marketplace.
There was a lot of encouraging talk from them and other Arkansasparticipants. But an outsider who has looked in on similar collaborative eff orts elsewhere also off ered the group some plain-spoken advice.
“You trust people you know,” said Ted Abernathy, executive director of the Southern Growth Policies Board, the keynote speaker.
He emphasized the importance of this fi rst phase of the partnership as members of the two groups learn more about each other, what the two regions have to offer and what they each need.
“The future is not a place we’re going. It’s a place we’re making,” he said. His point was that no one can predict the future because decisions that will shape it haven’t yet been made.
He asked these people, who will be among the decision-makers, to dream what Arkansas can be in 2020 or 2030 and to prepare to make quick adjustments on an unpredictable road to get there.
This proposed partnership, he said, is their chance to lay out the future “and to make it happen.”
Abernathy also cautioned that people will really collaborate when it is in their interest to do so.
That all sounds about right.
The Fayetteville meeting and a reciprocal, yet-to-be-scheduled gathering in Little Rock are just the first steps toward finding a parallel path to satisfy the interests of both regions.
BRENDA BLAGG IS A COLUMNIST FOR NWA MEDIA.
Opinion, Pages 14 on 02/19/2012