By Peter Galuszka

Economic regions go through natural iterations of what makes money and creates jobs. But that “what” can be transitional if not ephemeral. Consider industries for Dutch tulips or New England ice.

Ditto Virginia. It’s been through tobacco, apples, battleships, retailing, furniture, textiles and moonshine. A couple of decades ago, with proponents of the so-called “Knowledge Economy” waxing eloquent, Northern Virginia burst forth with America Online and a host of other information technology firms. Many were linked to the defense sector (the Internet came from DARPA), but the IT rise was significant.

Other parts of the state tried to mimic that success. Richmond, despite its weak academic research base, tried to boost biotechnology. It ended up with a big downtown park that three spun off companies that either moved away or went bust. It did attract a $350 million research center as part of the deal when tobacco giant Altria left New York for Richmond. But much of that research is secret and may not exactly be healthy.

Before that the big computer chip buzz of Gov. George Allen went bust after Motorola decided not to locate after all and Quimonda fizzled.

Now, the hope is advanced manufacturing, which actually might make some sense. Lured by a whopping $56 million in goodies in 2007, British aerospace giant Rolls Royce agreed to move its North American headquarters to NOVA. The deal included Rolls building high tech manufacturing plants near Petersburg and the formation of the Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing (CCAM) which just opened its new facility in September.

I went to look. Here is a story I wrote for Style Weekly this week about it.

The short version:

• Rolls is investing about $200 million in plants to make high tech parts for its Trent 1000 line of jet engines to go on the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner and several Airbus models. There seems to be a good market for the product. Other potential markets include high precision blades for natural gas pipelines enjoying a current boom or Newport News Shipbuilding where nuclear warships are built.
• Rolls and other firms need a limited crop of highly trained blue or white collar workers. CCAM will help provide them. Other major tech firms such as Sweden’s Sandvik and Switzerland’s Sulzer Metco are donating gear for their researchers, college students and perhaps ones from community colleges to get real world experience.
• The University of Virginia, Virginia Tech and Virginia State University are all part of CCAM and will have engineering students take internships at the center. Their professors will also be there from time to time.
• There is a reach down to community colleges. John Tyler in Chester will send students to work at the Rolls factories about a quarter mile from the CCAM. They can enroll in a U.Va. program whereby if they maintain a 3.8 grade point average, they are guaranteed a spot at U.Va.’s engineering school for their last two years and a bachelor’s degree. And, they can handle that step on an online, distance learning basis if they choose (does anyone have Helen Dragas’s email address?)

This is part of the revival of advanced manufacturing in parts of the U.S. which may be a bit of a surprise. Similar approaches are being tried in South Carolina and the Rust Belt area near Youngstown, Ohio. The idea is to produce highly skilled workers who have the brains to operate a lot of sophisticated automated gear. Their work is less likely to be offshored.

The downside of advanced manufacturing is that the play is to a limited number of new rivetheads. That’s to contain labor costs and keep U.S. jobs competitive. To be sure, most highly skilled blue collar workers are  long-in-the-tooth, 56 years old. And manufacturing in general has dramatically contracted since 2000. Still, one can’t deny the renaissance of American auto-making and the demand for oil and gas related products for the current petroleum boom.

The Rolls deal was put together when Democrat Tim Kaine was governor. Republican Gov. Robert F. McDonnell kept it going. President Barack Obama campaigned at the Rolls suite early this year, but then, as we know from reading this blog, he never created any jobs, did he? And, didn’t he try to kill off the fossil fuel industry or is it just me?