With good reason, Lawrence and Douglas County tend to look at Wyandotte County as a business competitor. With last week’s announcement that Google will locate its first ultra high-speed fiber network in Wyandotte County, local officials should start immediately to find ways to make their neighbor a business partner.

It’s only natural that Beth Johnson, director of economic development for the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce, would take note of the edge the network would give Wyandotte County in the competition to attract new businesses. However, she and other city leaders also are seeing the opportunities. Certainly, being 20 miles down the road from the Google experiment puts Lawrence and Douglas County way ahead of many other communities across the country.

Not only do we have proximity, the Kansas University Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan., gives us an important foot in the door. Although many details remain to be worked out, the Google network is almost guaranteed to be a boon for KUMC, which was singled out in Google publicity as an important partner in plans to develop applications for the high-speed network. In addition to faster processing of patient and research data, the network has huge potential in the area of telemedicine. It also could be a boost to faculty recruitment and KU’s effort to become a designated National Cancer Center.

But the potential doesn’t stop there. As City Commissioner Aron Cromwell pointed out, KU’s Lawrence campus provides “the closest intellectual hub” to the Kansas City area. That puts KU faculty in a prime position to participate in research and development projects related to the Google project. If and when Google expands the physical boundaries of its network, Lawrence is barely a hop and skip down Interstate 70.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of communities across the country worked hard to attract this Google project. If the new ultra high-speed network isn’t the “next big thing,” it certainly is in the running. This has the potential to be a defining moment for Wyandotte County, and Lawrence and KU officials need to work quickly and aggressively to tie into the opportunities that lie just down the road.