Thinking ahead a key to our success (10/24/05)

For small towns and rural communities, economic development is all about thinking ahead.

Focus on the past, and you're dead. Rest on your laurels, and you can forget the future. Even enjoying a moment of success can be fatal if it keeps you from thinking about the next step, the next challenge, the next potential success down the road.

The fact is, small towns and rural communities have to run hard these days just to stay in the same place. Decline and macro-economic trends aren't working in our favor, and they haven't been for decades.

In that climate, the communities that will succeed are those that can adapt, those that think creatively, those willing to put hard effort into planning, but — most of all — those that are thinking ahead.

At the moment, for instance, things are looking pretty good for Portland's short-term future. Employment is at relatively high levels, and there's an abundance of commercial growth on the horizon if every project sketched out on a drawing board comes into fruition.

But what's the next step? And what are the community's leaders doing to position the county seat for a sustained period of growth?

Specifically, where will Portland's next industrial park be located? How will it be equipped with the necessary infrastructure? And how will it fit with the existing community?

These days, it's fashionable to dismiss the notion of growing manufacturing jobs in the Midwest. "The days of landing a 400-job factory in a cornfield are over," is the repeated chorus.

Maybe so. In fact, those 400-job factories haven't been popping up for a long time.

But smaller plants, entrepreneurial, knowledge-based manufacturing operations with fewer than 100 employees continue to make their mark.

And, for our money, they're a better fit for small communities than any Fortune 500 mega-factory could ever be. The question is, where do we put them?

Take a look at a map of Portland, and you'll understand this is not a simple problem.

Look to the south and you'll find high-end housing, the type important for the community's growth and not a likely neighbor to an industrial park. Look to the east, and you run into complications from the Salamonie River. Look to the north, and you find challenges figuring out how commercial development around XPLEX Extreme Competition Park and future industrial growth can live side by side. Look to the west, and you find similar challenges balancing residential properties and commercial development.

With XPLEX now incorporating all of the remaining land in Portland's sole industrial park, it makes sense to start figuring out where the next industrial park should be located. And it's a question that needs to be focused on sooner, not later. — J.R.[[In-content Ad]]