Vision 2020 brainstorms for growth
Vision 2020, a $150,000 effort meant to improve the regional economy, has some broad goals. But it also has some specific ones.
For example, it seeks to raise incomes in northeast Indiana and revitalize the region’s downtowns.
But do business leaders need a regional consensus to raise wages and attract businesses downtown? Why can’t they just move their offices and give their people raises?
The objectives of Vision 2020 are far broader than those two goals, and even the goals themselves aren’t as simple as they sound, according to leaders of the initiative.
Michael Packnett is president and CEO of Parkview Health, the third-largest employer in Allen County. He’s also co-chairman of Vision 2020.
So, if Packnett wants to add life to downtown Fort Wayne, why is Parkview spending $500 million north of town to expand Parkview North Hospital into Parkview Regional Medical Center?
And if one of the goals is to increase worker pay, why don’t Packnett and his co-chairman, Steel Dynamics Inc. President and CEO Keith Busse, increase their payrolls?
Would that it were that simple, Packnett said. In the case of the medical center’s location, Parkview needed 150 to 200 acres and wanted a site easily accessible to patients from 14 counties.
“The biggest issue is access,” Packnett said, adding that Parkview North’s location at Interstate 69 and Dupont Road makes it ideal.
And though it might sound appealing to just give everybody raises, Packnett said a business can quickly become a former business if it does so heedlessly.
“For businesses to grow and thrive, the economic equation has to work,” Packnett said.
Vision 2020 is intended to determine what that equation looks like for a 10-county region.
“There’s the basic issue of what does the region want to be when it grows up,” said John Stafford, director of the Community Research Institute at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.
As a manufacturing powerhouse, the region used to be a place where many could graduate high school and find jobs that would allow them to buy homes and raise families.
But judging from wages that have fallen for more than a decade, those days are over.
For 2008, per-capita personal income in Allen, Wells and Whitley counties was $33,578, 204th among 322 metropolitan statistical areas in the U.S., according to Labor Department statistics. Nationally, the average income was $39,582.
As the name implies, Vision 2020 will seek to develop a vision of the region and develop a measurable set of goals for getting there.
TrustBearer Labs might be one vision of what the region wants to be. Operating in a loft in downtown Fort Wayne, the firm develops security software for the use of government-issued smart cards on the Internet.
“We’re focused on recruiting talented and bright people from around here,” Steve Pepple of TrustBearer said. “But it would be good for us if there were more postgraduate engineering programs around here.”
Vision 2020’s goals cover 10 areas and will be accompanied by deadlines and ways to measure success.
“That’s a critical part of it,” Packnett said.
If a consensus emerges that more postgraduate engineering offerings would help the region meet its goals, it will end up in the Vision 2020 plan, along with a way of measuring whether the goal is met, said Mark Becker, executive director of the Northeast Indiana Foundation, which helps sponsor the initiative.
Some area defense contractors such as ITT Corp. say they could add jobs in the region if they could attract more top-flight engineers – or if more were produced locally. And attracting those jobs could create others.
In past attempts at economic planning, smaller counties in the region have been wary of being dominated by Allen County, which is far bigger, said Stafford, who’s participated in planning efforts for decades.
Keith Gillenwater, executive director of the LaGrange County Economic Development Corp., said the idea has sunk in that northeast Indiana is all in the same boat economically and each county has a unique role.
“I think we bring something to the table that (the other counties) don’t have,” Gillenwater said.
For example, LaGrange County’s woodworking and recreation industries will benefit if the rest of the region grows, Gillenwater said.
At the same time, Allen County businesses can bolster efforts to land talent by selling the region’s recreational assets, he said.
“We have 67 lakes, and I’m sure Allen County would love to have that,” Gillenwater said. “We all stand to gain from each other.”
Developing and marketing such quality-of-life resources are crucial if regional employers are to land hot young talent, said Michael Barranda of the Young Leaders of Northeast Indiana.
“They choose the city where they want to live first, and then try to find a job,” Barranda said. “And they are not choosing northeast Indiana currently.”
To get a handle on why young adults don’t perceive northeast Indiana as cool, Young Leaders of Northeast Indiana is conducting an online survey. To participate, go to www.ylni.org.
Barranda’s organization will share the results with the Vision 2020 group, which will use them in creating its plans.
