Harrisonburg gets a point we have been laboring to make about local economic development, as Augusta Free Press Editor Chris Graham explains as part of his work for River City 2020.

Check out his report here.

One of the highlights: Chris describes a meeting with the cofounder of a Web and software development company called Immerge Technologies, based in Harrisonburg’s Downtown Technology Zone. Justin Creasy and his business partners, all James Madison University products, were looking to start a business.

“They weren’t thinking Harrisonburg,“ Chris writes, “but that’s where they are.

“‘Basically the city recruited us,‘ Creasy told me. ‘The mayor at the time, Larry Rogers, met with us personally and told us that it was important to the city that our kind of business locate in Harrisonburg.‘“

Is anybody in Waynesboro listening?

The city recruited Creasy. The mayor led the charge. Great concept, that one.

It’s easy to suggest, as some board members did when Chris presented his report at our River City 2020 meeting last week, that Harrisonburg is aided by JMU’s presence. This is true, but only to an extent.

Allow me to enlighten from the perspective of a former Pittsburgher but only with two caveats: first, as a fan for more than 30 years, I accept any and all congratulations for the Steelers’ record-setting sixth Super Bowl victory; second, let me assert my Southern credentials, having been born in Atlanta and having ancestors from Prince William, family in Elkins, kids in Charlotte and a father who’s never lived north of the Mason-Dixon line.

Back to the point at hand:

Pittsburgh is home to several major universities, among them Carnegie-Mellon, Pittsburgh and Duquesne and others scattered throughout Western Pennsylvania. What Pittsburgh is not home to is a stable population of bright young minds. A Baltimore Sun columnist noted a few weeks ago, before the Steelers ended the Ravens’ season (ha!), that the reason there are so many Pittsburgh fans spread across the country is because there’s nothing to keep them in the City of Three Rivers.

True.

While it may be the City of Super Bowl Champions, Pittsburgh is a town in fast fade. Its downtown core has been depleted of young people forced to go elsewhere to find work. The problem revolves, in large part, around fragmented government and the turf wars that produces. Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, is made up of more than 130 municipalities and dozens, literally dozens, of economic development agencies. Waldo could more easily have been found at the presidential inauguration than a place in Pittsburgh to get one-stop answers on opening a business. So many businesses simply go elsewhere.

Harrisonburg is not luring in businesses such as Immerge merely because JMU is there. The town is reeling in such businesses because it is actively seeking them.

This is an example Waynesboro must follow, or else risk irreversible decline. Our city’s leaders must actively recruit businesses and they must actively work to be ready with a plan to make development happen.

We may lack Pittsburgh’s roster of colleges, but we are getting closer to them every day, which is not a good thing. Pittsburgh’s population has been graying for decades and so is ours. Pittsburgh is awash in debt, with fewer working people to drive the local economy and provide a tax base. That, too, could happen here if we do nothing.

It’s time to get to get a plan and hit the recruiting trail.

Harrisonburg shows us the way. Thanks to Chris for his work in giving us an inside look at a model that should inspire flattery by way of imitation.