Charlotte has a new economic development group. Will it make a difference?

The name of the new economic development group being formed from combining the Charlotte Chamber and Charlotte Regional Partnership was revealed Tuesday, part of a shakeup of two major groups tasked with bringing new businesses to the region.

In unveiling the name of the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance, officials said the organization would be focused on growing the Charlotte metro area as a whole and that the name signified a vision for more collaboration across the region.

“The Charlotte Regional Business Alliance will be a robust and effective economic development engine by uniting the exceptional and diverse strengths of all the counties in the Charlotte region,” Jesse Cureton, who will chair the new group’s board in 2019, said in a statement.

“Our mission is to collaboratively promote and advance economic development for the entire Charlotte region,” said Cureton, chief consumer officer at Novant Heath.

It’s still not known who will run the new group, which is expected to begin operating Jan. 1. Officials said Tuesday that a national search for the alliance’s first CEO is ongoing and that plans remain for someone to be named early next year.

The merger plans were announced in September, in a move that combines the chamber with a group it formed in the 1990s and later spun off. The union comes after decades of business growth in Charlotte — but also after losses under two groups that were sometimes viewed as not collaborating enough.

The merger of two economic development groups doesn’t automatically result in a more unified approach to economic development in a region, said Robert Radcliff, an Ohio-based consultant to economic development organizations.

“(It) doesn’t guarantee that you’re going to speak with one voice,” he said. “That comes from leadership. ... The presumption that you have to merge to be better aligned, I would suggest, is false.”

It’s not important whether a community has one or multiple economic development groups, he said. Rather, what matters is whether a community is using its business leaders as best it can to make the region grow and prosper, he said.

In announcing the merger plans, the two organizations said the new group would be a single source for businesses considering a relocating to or expanding in the region.

In his statement, Cureton called it a bold step forward for the region and “a milestone that will be remembered across our regional footprint for years to come.” The organization’s new logo emphasizes a theme of “One,” the release said: “One Charlotte, One Region, One Community.”

The new name is similar to those of other organizations around the country. Groups with “Regional Business Alliance” in their titles can be found in Colorado Springs, Colo; Taos, N.M.; Wake County, N.C.; and Lynchburg, Va.

The combination also comes after the regional partnership, which represents Mecklenburg County along with other nearby counties, oversaw Charlotte’s failed Amazon HQ2 bid last year. The partnership, known as Charlotte USA, also lost one county in February when the Union County board of commissioners voted to suspend the county’s membership in the organization.

“The reason in part that the community has gotten to this place is there was this sense that it might be time to hit the reset button,” said Jonathan Morgan, associate professor of public administration at UNC School of Government. In the Charlotte region, there have been concerns that expanding or relocating businesses might become confused over which economic development group to deal with, he said.

“That’s understandable when you have two local economic development organizations,” Morgan said. “Sorting that out I think is something that this new structure will permit, and ideally it will eliminate that kind of confusion for prospective businesses.”

It’s not unheard of for economic development grounds to merge.

Just last year, the Central Florida Partnership and the Orlando Economic Development Commission announced the completion of their merger, which formed the Orlando Economic Partnership.

In other places, groups have split up.

In 2016, the Economic Development Council of Tallahassee/Leon County in Florida broke away from the Greater Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce.

Radcliff, the Ohio consultant, said one benefit of merging groups is the consolidation and integration of leadership in a community into one organization focused on economic development.

“Anytime you have two major organizations that are separate and independent that play in the same space, you run the risk of dividing your leadership,” he said. “I think outside looking in, that clearly happened in Charlotte.”

But combining can also have pitfalls, he said. For example, there’s the possible loss of economic development leaders who get cut when groups combine.

“Anytime you go through something like this, the risk is that if you lose too much of the institutional assets, it kind of sets you back when you try to move forward.”