Now, for Northeast Indiana’s good news
Posted on Thursday, November 10, 2011
Regional agency's leader presents a positive report to local economic development panel
It’s important to know where we’re going, John Sampson said Wednesday morning, but it’s rather important to know where we are, too.
Sampson, the president and CEO of the Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership, came to Bluffton to update the members of the Wells County Economic Council on what the 10-county group — which includes Wells County — is up to.
While the national economy is sputtering, Sampson said things are looking up in northeast Indiana.
He wanted to emphasize that as he talked to the Wells County group Wednesday morning.
“This region has trouble celebrating when things are going well,” he said.
Before he got to the good news, he recited a short history of the NEIRP. The group had its origins
in a desire to ensure cooperation among local economic development organizations in the region;
he noted that many business site evaluators, thinking globally, will consider a “community” to be an
area of eight or nine counties.
“When we started five years ago, the question was, ‘Could we work together, as a region, to market
this region?’” Sampson said.
The original goal of the NEIRP was to generate leads for business opportunities. However, when it
became obvious that more was needed, the partnership adapted.
“It was insufficient just to find project leads, we wanted to win deals,” he said.
He recalls one nationally-known economic development expert who came to the area a few years ago. He went around and took a look at the business sites being marketed in northeast Indiana, and the best he could offer was: Nice try.
“I wouldn’t show any of your sites to my clients,” the man said.
Now, Sampson said, the Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership operates under this formula: Leads, plus having the right projects, plus working together as a team, leads to business investment.
“We always had strategy and plans. We were famous for planning and writing great documents,”
he said. “We’ve not been so good at following through on those documents.”
As to where things are now, Sampson made note of five recent facts:
- In June 2011, it was noted that northeast Indiana was the region that was coming out of the recession faster than any other region in Indiana. Economic activity was up 3 1/2 percent over 2010.
- In July 2011, over the previous 12 months, 30 percent of Indiana's new job commitments have come from northeast Indiana, a region that has 10 percent of the state's population.
- In August 2011, Area Development magazine, a periodical for site selectors, noted that Indiana is now No. 5 in the country in terms of being attractive to business. "These are the same site selectors that you are paying us to work with," Sampson said.
- In September 2011, the real gross domestic product in northeast Indiana was growing at twice the state average and the manufacturing GDP for the region was growing at four times the national rate.
- More recently, the Fort Wayne Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area-which includes Allen, Wells and Whitley counties-gained 8,900 employed residents. That was the top growth in the nation, by percentage.
"I wish to close with that," he told the Wells County group. "I don't think people recognize the significance of what we're doing and the progress in the region."
Article by Dave Schultz, courtesy of the News-Banner
Posted in Business News
