Development has always been a touchy subject in the Bluegrass. Yet no he equine industry, manufacturers, educators and the urban-county government have formed an unprecedented coalition and are all taking part as
Lexington Strides Ahead

It's not easy to get a room full of leaders to agree. Like a boat full of captains, the challenge is to get everybody rowing in the same rhythm, going in the same direction. And like that vessel full of independent navigators, a region's survival and success can depend on finding that common drive.

For the partners of Lexington Strides Ahead, one drive has just ended and another has begun. At a luncheon in May, the combined forces of Lexington United, The Partnership for Workforce Development, and the Lexington Chamber of Commerce celebrated the attainment of their fund-raising goal: $3.2 million, raised in a scant few months, to back industrial recruitment, training, and retention efforts for the next five years.

Leading the way will be such stalwart and diverse Lexington organizations as Clark Material Handling Company, DataBeam, Jackson Plastics, Keeneland, and the University of Kentucky – all united in what Bill Allen calls an unprecedented coalition."

Getting real with Lexington's leaders

You won't see Mr. Allen's name on any of the brochures now, for his job here is complete. Like the best of old-fashioned Western heroes, he and his consulting firm come into a town, do their bit to set things right, and move on. In this case they set the table for Lexington Strides Ahead (LSA) by leading the fund-raising effort. It's a feat they've accomplished in other towns like Raleigh, Austin, and Savannah – all exemplars of positive community growth.

Although the Byrne/Allen firm formed in 1995, it already has plenty of experience under its belt. Allen himself grew up in Boston, and attended Iona College (during the Valvano years, pre-Pitino era, for you hoops junkies). He earned his law degree and practiced law for four years in Atlanta, where the company now makes its home.

Going one-on-one is the surest way to find out what kind of moves a player can summon. So Bill Allen led the interviewing of 99 of Lexington's top individuals, from Mayor Pam Miller to educators to CEOs.

"We wanted to talk to everybody – Keeneland, the horse farms, the manufacturers," explains Allen. "The three boards acknowledge that they don't have all the answers. That's a huge leap in itself – how many boards say that they don't have all the answers?"

The interviews started in September of 1997, and lasted for two months. "We found that there was a recognition that Lexington has been behind in economic development, and needed to be out there marketing and showing its wares and bringing in new companies," explains Allen. "The key is to get a consensus in the business community. You hear a lot of voices out there, but the manufacturers might be saying "X" and the utilities are saying "Y" and the banks are saying one thing and the equine industry is saying something else. If you took the top 100 companies in Lexington and put their leaders in a room, you'd never get a consensus. It's turfdom.

"On the other hand, if you don't have some sort of approach, you'll never get a consensus. The one-on-one interviews become the forum to build that. Ask a lot of questions, dig through the veneer, the knee-jerk reactions, like a manufacturer immediately saying, 'I don't like bringing in new companies because it cannibalizes my work force.' Or 'You're forcing up the price of labor.' That's the initial reaction, and we have to get under that and say 'Work with me here.'

"One of the biggest things in Lexington to come out of that process and I think it surprised a lot of people was that across the private sector, there was not an adverse reaction to growth itself. There was an acceptance that without some type of growth, the city would die, it would basically dry up. It takes the one-on-one interviews for people to say, 'I don't want to say this publicly, because I'd be seen as pro-growth and bulldozers. I don't believe in that, but I understand that a city has to continue to be viable just like a business.'

"Then you have to look at what kind of growth you want to pursue. A lot of people looked at Lexington United and said, 'You're the type of organization that will take anybody. If Ford wanted to mow down Calumet and build a plant here, you'd love that.' So we had to remind [people] that they're part of Lexington too and want balanced, responsible growth too. We have the horse farms – it's a big and viable industry and a trademark of what Lexington's all about. How many cities out there can you say that about?"

Approaching the first turn

Just under half of the rapidly raised $3.2 million will go directly toward marketing and recruitment of prospective companies. The next million goes toward the infrastructure of one of the prime places the organization hopes to bring those firms: Bluegrass Business Park. The 145-acre park is designed to house light industry, as opposed to UK's Coldstream development, which is zoned for office and research uses. The two parks also differ in their land arrangements. Coldstream's lots are for lease, while Bluegrass Business Park's land is all for sale, with Lexington United holding the options on all lots. The owner is Kentucky River Coal Company.

"This plan is very targeted," reports Allen. "The first objective is to put companies into existing sites. The MCI call center [in Winchester] is an example, a good use of an old Wal-Mart building. A lot of communities... have plenty of land for industrial parks. Here, we have to make the best of what we have."

The most recent feather in the cap of area economic developers is the announcement by the American Horse Show Association to locate their national headquarters at the Kentucky Horse Park, another example of maximum utilization of existing facilities and land. "The Bluegrass Business Park is another targeted geographic area. The idea is not to produce more traffic, but to attract quality company regional headquarters, that kind of thing. The manufacturers and the equine people both want to see the same types of companies: clean, low infrastructure, not a lot of trucks. It's a good match. The employees of these companies like to live in an area like Lexington."

The community's leaders also want to attract companies that complement the community's resources. For an area with such limited land and high educational attainment level, that means high-tech.

"The workforce is extremely tight on the manufacturing side," says Allen. "Right now we're exporting college graduates: UK engineering students, pharmacists. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out where to pinpoint our efforts. Having a resource like UK as part of this is critical. Tapping into the available workforce coming from there and elsewhere is crucial."

A case of lessons learned

For Allen and others associated with this effort, a bona fide training and education component was essential. Finding and keeping qualified employees is the primary challenge in all business sectors today. And it starts with the basics.

"Employers like Toyota said to us, 'We can take people and train them and make them into Toyota employees, but when they can't write and they can't read, it's a lot more difficult.' There's a certain level of skill that needs to be attained prior to walking up to their door."

To reach that level, LSA is working with such area programs as the Fayette County Public School District's Worker Warranty and Career Academy programs, and Welfare-to-Work and One-Stop Career Centers. Leaders are convinced that blurring the boundaries between the places of learning and the places of earning will help people to reach both of those goals.

For example, plans call for a Chamber presence on the campus of the University of Kentucky, apprenticeship and internship initiatives, and an effort to measure and encourage a constant cross-pollination of classroom and business experience.

"Lexington has a reputation for this kind of effort starting and then petering out," notes Allen. "You have to make sure the effort is well-rounded. For instance, I'm not sure Lexmark would have become involved had there not been a workforce development component as a strong piece of the puzzle. Workforce development is especially important in an area with such low unemployment.

"Marty Dorio of Clark Equipment tells of calling up Kentucky Tech and saying he had five people that needed specific training. He was told that five people do not make a class. You can't blame Kentucky Tech: five people in a classroom eats up a lot of time and space. The workforce development initiative will bring these private sector employers together, so one can say 'l have five,' and another says 'I have three.' That's a better use of public training money, one that addresses needs and doesn't have five employers out there trying to train only their own workers. The state pours a lot of money into workforce development, so it makes sense to train them the way the private sector wants them to be trained, because the whole point is to hire them.

"That's where the partnership comes in – without somebody coordinating things, everybody ends up going their own separate ways. That's not an efficient use of anyone's money."

Reaching in and reaching out

Currently, only 40 prospect companies visit the Lexington area each year. LSA hopes to increase that number by five percent, and to grow the area's jobs, locations, and capital investment by that same percentage each year. Other overall five-year goals include adding 1,700 to 2,800 new jobs to the area's economy, and the accompanying increases in spin-off employment, payroll and payroll taxes, and property taxes.

But not all of that growth is expected to come from outside the area. The organization also recognizes the need to build from within, especially when 80 percent of new jobs come from existing businesses. So $200,000 of the funds will go toward retention and expansion efforts. Through the Chamber's Business Innovation Network and other avenues, the LSA leadership hopes to foster homegrown companies as well. The goal is to identify and fund eight local emerging companies over a five-year period; such efforts will dovetail with education and recruiting initiatives so that enterprises complementary to major employers will in turn spawn their own networks of people, services, and supplies. The key is to capitalize on the intangibles.

"What you want is a good mix," asserts Allen. "Also, when a company is trying to recruit a top-level manager to Lexington, the more opportunities that are available for employing that manager's spouse, the more attractive Lexington will be. Spousal employment is a big deal in economic development right now. Many cities are putting together Trailing Spouses programs, to make sure that companies going after an executive are doing a good job selling to the spouse as well."

Similar details are crucial to locating here in the first place.

"It seems counter-intuitive to put a business park in Fayette, when companies might be prone to say 'I'll just take the cheaper land out in these outlying areas.' But there have been several companies that have located in other states because the land wasn't available in Lexington, and they didn't want to be outside of it. Often it comes down to the personal choices of the company's leadership, and you have to be sensitive to that."

Riding coattails

That is not to say, however, that the counties and towns surrounding Lexington have any less desirable locales. If anything, the economic development efforts of contiguous areas have served as an example.

"Every successful city area right now has a regional approach to growth, observes Allen. "What we saw was that Lexington was not the big player it should be. You can't build relationships with other communities if you're weak within. So we build up the credibility here, then go out and talk to Scott County, Winchester. The Chamber is trying to take the lead in this – not trying to take over, but trying to link up.

"In Raleigh, Northern Telecom put in a comprehensive communications system so that Raleigh could better communicate with its outlying counterparts. They probably need the same thing here, so that all the chambers are talking. The economic development people are already meeting on a monthly basis, but you can't e-mail them from this desk over here. That's what you need. They need to work as a region so that as prospects come in, the different agencies are putting them where they need to be, whether it's close to railroad access, or close to Fayette because a company owner likes it. We want to work together with these other communities so that no prospect ever gets away. We have companies, including banks, outside Fayette County that are on board with Lexington Strides Ahead. I think the private sector will motivate the economic development organizations to work together."

Not surprisingly, Allen sees economic development as the engine that feeds all other areas of concern, whether it's the airport or the underdeveloped areas of Lexington.

"The airport is not part of Strides Ahead. The leaders' opinions were varied on that," he says. "We didn't get into that debate – you can't solve that one with $3.2 million. Whether the airport stays or grows or moves, you need a driving economy. If you're a dying community, your options start to be limited by the airport. If you're a thriving economy, your options are more open."

Stepping into the future

In Lexington, forward progress ensues from not only the consensus on a plan, but the five-year time frame. That commitment locks in the funding so that LSA isn't out hunting for funds every year and being distracted from its mission. It also reassures prospects that there is some continuity in the process, and that the process involves the major local players.

Lexington is starting with 107 companies invested in the plan. Now it's a matter of broadening that base of support. To facilitate that process, Lexington United is once again in search of a director.

"It puts Lexington United in a much better position to hire a quality leader when you have $3.2 million in the bank over the next five years," Allen observes. "There are a lot of names in the hopper. You should see some quick action, and a very good candidate."

While Allen is now moving on to Sarasota, Florida to conjure up another coalition, he thinks Lexington is well on its way to realizing its mission.

"There is a tremendous amount of resource-sharing beginning to happen among Lexington United, the Chamber of Commerce, and the University of Kentucky," says Allen.

"When Keeneland saw where we were going, they hopped on early. Having them on board along with so many of the other leaders of the effort gave us great credibility. Tom Lamb of Lexmark would be the first to admit that he had to be won over to this effort. Now he's a champion of what we're doing. If no manufacturers jumped on board to fund this effort, how much influence would they have in deciding what we're going to go after? So we asked these leaders to help us define which industries we need to pursue, to complement our existing businesses. We had to keep the door open, so that companies like Lexmark and Toyota and Clark had a say. And companies considering Lexington have the opportunity to develop complementary relationships with the area's major employers.

"It was an unprecedented amount of money raised. In a five-year perspective, with the city's annual contributions, it comes to $4.2 million over five years. That's outstanding for a city of this size. Mobile had $4.4 million, Savannah had $2.5 million. The key is the leadership."

Lexington Strides Ahead calls itself a ' work in progress,' with the hope that the same phrase will be operative in describing Central Kentucky's bustle of economic activity. The initial stretch has raised expectations enough that the business community might echo Tubby Smith's thoughts about next season:

"Next year's team needs to be even more productive," said the coach of this year's national champions' need for goals. "I don't know how we're going to do that, but we'll give it a good shot."

Adam Bruns is a staff writer for The Lane Report.

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