and good evening.

>> Welcome to Prime Time.

I'm Bruce Haines.

Fort Wayne community leaders are rolling out a new blueprint to build Allen County into a nationally recognized economy with the name Allen County together the plan charts a course for a decade of growth for the area.

>> And with us to share more about Allen County together is John Urban's Greater Fort Wayne's president and CEO.

And you can join our conversation just by calling your questions and comments into the number that you see on the screen as we widen out and say good evening, John.

Thank you so much for being here, Bruce .

>> Thanks for having me.

Love to come and talk.

My pleasure.

And before we get to the content of the plan, if you would share give us some context what greater Fort Wayne is and does.

>> Sure.

Greater for winning because the Economic Development Agency and Chamber of Commerce for Allen County.

So we are we're focused on supporting local businesses where business organization but the same time we're the economic development agency for the city of Fort Wayne, town of Hunter town city of New Haven, Allen County focused on growing jobs, growing wages here in Allen County.

>> And when it comes to doing that, this is as I've heard you referenced before, a real team sport.

There are a number of agencies and organizations that all are grabbing and really yeah, economic development.

>> I call it a team sport and we play our role.

We have other organizations that help us in that.

>> I love the name of the plan Allen County together.

First of all, it's about all of us working together.

>> We can accomplish so much more when everybody's kind of rowing in the same direction but at the same time it's the acronym is APT and now's the time to act on a number of these fronts to continue the momentum that we have in this community.

When I talk to people around the country, around the state that look at what's going on here, they're amazed at the momentum we have and I think our job is really focused on continuing to push the community forward.

>> And so even though there's a show that carries this title, it's an appropriate question to Segway to the plan.

>> How did we get to know to looking ahead to the next 10 years seems to be built in part on what all took place in the last yeah.

So one of the things that you know, I talk about the momentum that we have, how do we continue to build off of that?

We've seen a lot of growth in this community over the last decade, whether it be downtown, whether it be on our smaller communities in a number of different industry segments.

So how do we build off of that?

And that was what we really when we went through this planning process we wanted to to challenge ourselves and challenge the community of how we can make it better, how we can continue to push forward and accomplish even greater things.

>> What I noticed too in some of the data supporting the plan is how Indiana has come out on top in terms of net persons with in migration I guess it's called yes.

>> We really focus our work on on two things.

It's about people.

Capital is what we focus on and that's about creating an opportunity for people that live here to realize their dreams.

>> It's about looking at folks that are maybe moving here and giving them the opportunity to find their dream here.

So you talk about that in migration.

If you look at one thing as we talk a lot about is domestic migration and that's about people moving around within the United States.

>> We're all tracked you know, we all file our tax returns and they know where I lived last year versus versus this year.

>> When you look back from nineteen eighty one to two thousand to twenty sixteen and I say ninety one because that's when they started tracking it we were negative every year in domestic migration so we were losing more people than we were gaining within the United States.

When you look at the last five years Indiana has been positive now for four years in a row Allen County has been positive for five years in a row.

>> So we are really Indiana's really leading the Midwest in domestic migration and Allen County is really leading the state in that domestic migration as this graphic is referencing now Fort Wayne is leading the region is the in terms of Metro.

>> Yeah.

So for the last two years we were either number one or number two for the fastest growing metros in the Great Lakes region which is is fifty nine metros.

So you look at that we're outpacing the growth not just the country but of fast growing economies like Columbus, Ohio and Indianapolis, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Madison, all those you know the five Great Lakes states.

Fifty nine metros.

Fort Wayne has been one or two each of the last two years.

>> Yeah.

So before we look forward and these are the three components of the plan we need to to to focus on and in fact as this is with us, this is these are the planks.

These are the buckets.

These are the you know the headings but there could be many but getting them to three key ones I'm sure took some careful.

Yeah we took the better part of last year really working with a steering committee of public private nonprofit community partners to develop this plan and really boiled it down to three core areas that high growth innovative, inclusive those were the things that we wanted to focus on to move the economy forward.

We chose three because we really felt that that by focusing we could we could get things done.

>> And within each of these pillars we identified three bold projects.

You know, when you look back in Fort Wayne's history, especially over the last two decades, we've identified some big bold projects electric works, Harrison Square and Park Field, the riverfront, the land .

We've identified some very big projects and we figured out a way to get them accomplished.

So that's why we put out we put out these bold projects to really challenge the community and say these are the things that we need to do to keep the economy moving forward.

>> And one of those under high growth let's get to it with number 12 is to reference what's going on and just to keep that momentum moving ahead with that part.

>> Yeah, so in the high growth area it's really about continuing to build off that that momentum that I talked about and you look at what we're already seeing down along the riverfront with just Promenade Park just phase one of the riverfront put in place we really feel it over the next ten years as the community finishes face to face three of the riverfront we can attract a billion dollars of private investment down along the riverfront that's going to continue to grow our economy.

When you look at some of the projects that have already been completed or underway, there's about a quarter billion dollars already taking part there on Promenade Park and I know they they put a slide up there of a survey that we had done back in the fall of twenty nineteen because some people ask, you know, why so much focus on downtown?

Why so much focus on riverfront?

Well when we did a survey 90 percent of the businesses in Allen County responded that downtown development and riverfront revitalization has had a strong impact on their talent, attraction and retention.

>> So allowing them to keep employees and grow employees that scored higher than the traditional K through 12 education and safety which are always the big the big factors when you look at communities know I recall there were outside consultants looking at this.

Some of them were referencing Fort Wayne following a public policy perspective in developing the plan.

Others we're looking at the sense that San Antonio has its Riverwalk Fort Wayne can have its prominent park and its riverfront as well and to make it a destination driven and this is curb appeal, right?

>> Absolutely to curb appeal.

It's a it's attracting people in so when you look at people that are coming here not just to visit but moving here, they're doing it because we're investing in ourselves and we're creating more opportunities here.

>> And so before we go forward, another point we're looking back at that growth in this region with two percent employment, unemployment in in the county alone and in this region overall there is a competition for talent which is referenced in in some of the supporting aspects talk about yeah.

>> So I talk all the time about a war for talent.

There's a war for people.

There's going to be communities that are growing in communities that are dying through domestic migration because we're not growing through international migration and through just traditional increase throughout the US.

>> So we have to be better than other communities and we need to continue to keep our foot on the gas that we're a community of choice and people are choosing to locate here and if people choose to locate here, jobs are going to locate here and that's that's what we've seen with the job growth and the and the talent attraction over the last several years.

>> And when it comes to jobs when we look at number 15, you've got no referencing that as well to grow not just jobs in general but high wage ones.

>> Yeah, one of the things that we're really looking focusing on is is higher wage jobs.

So really getting back to the research and development, the high tech that we have a history of in this community and this is not just you know, you don't just hang the shingle out and say oh I want higher wage jobs.

You create a community where higher wage jobs want to be and we've already seen that over the last couple of years winning projects over Kamal phishers Indianapolis, Tulsa projects that in the past would have probably gone to those other communities.

But as we've created a better community here in Fort Wayne , we're starting to land those types of jobs.

>> There has been a little bit of a reaction under this section relative to when it comes to high paying jobs, if it's advanced manufacturing or if it's in research and development and I'm wondering why you can't be a breath mint a.k.a.

MIT.

Can you have both?

It's definitely both.

That's that's one of the things that we really focus on.

People ask us all the time what do we do this or do we do that?

>> We do both.

We've got to figure out how to attract both because the deliverables out of apparently then it looks like the winning formula for success in any community high educated workforce home close to universities, business friendly government leveraging technology, access to capital it's all referenced in the plan and it causes people run out of oxygen when they're trying to.

>> Absolutely.

There's there's a lot in here but there's a lot of things that we truly believe that we can get done.

We wouldn't have put it in here.

You know these are 10 year goals with five year tactics.

>> So there's a lot of work to be done and that's where I go back to the name Allen Co together it's going to take all of us it's going to take whether it be visit Fort Wayne or the Regional Partnership greater for winning the public sector, the private sector.

>> We've all got to be taking on key pieces of this working together to implement on the education side there is a reference to additional student housing development.

>> How does that play?

Yeah, so one of the things if you're going to grow the workforce, if you're going to grow especially higher wage jobs in the local economy, we need to make sure that we have the talent to fill those jobs so you look at Purdue, Fort Wayne University, St. Francis, Indiana Tech residential campuses all have opportunities for growth in the university.

They need student housing to do that.

They're ready.

They're right next door here.

They're there full every year.

They can't admit more students that want to live on campus.

They're starting to attract more students nationally.

So we have to have a place for them to live.

So we're proposing twenty five hundred additional on and off campus student housing units over the next ten years to support that growth at the reference there to that if you build it they will come and apparently they will stay.

>> Yes.

So people why?

Well when you look at the local universities seventy five percent of the students that come here to go to school stay here.

>> So if we can get them here and we can get them educated, we can get them to fill jobs in the higher wage economy and in that too I can't help but think of like the question Quester Education Foundation and others where there is already this pay it forward kind of thing where there is the return of service for that education for that degree is the willingness to find an employer and stay.

>> Absolutely.

Programs like Questa where people get some help with going to school but then they're committed here.

If we can keep somebody here for a few years we're going to keep them here for a lot longer than that.

>> Your second pillar is about innovation.

>> Yeah.

Which certainly you can't grow by standing still.

>> Innovation in what way?

So innovation and getting back to some of our innovative roots helping entrepreneurs grow but at the same time maybe being a little bit more creative.

So one of those first factors on the innovative side is is being recognized as a top 10 music city and you may say what's innovative that are the group that we worked with Type Strategies is based in Austin, Texas and one of the things that they they heard is they talk to site selectors around the country that help companies locate or or grow jobs is everybody knew Fort Wayne if for no other reason than Sweetwater Sound.

Twenty five hundred employees.

Twenty five hundred musicians frankly and they said you've got an asset that you can build off of and really challenge us to to look at that and figure out how do you grow that music economy we've got we've got industry and education with obviously with Sweetwater with the Purdue Fort Wayne School of Music, the St. Francis School of Music Technology.

We've got great venues and festivals.

They said you have more assets in Fort Wayne than we had when we started building the music economy in Austin.

So when you think about what they have, they said you can be much more than that.

So that's we're working with Fort Wayne around that.

>> We're working with Sweetwater and others to figure out how do we grow this music economy and it seems is following its own path but not necessarily Nashville's path or Austin's path to to suggest that if it has to happen organically we have been creatively blazing that trail all on our own it seems.

>> Yeah.

And I think it's not about being like somebody else, it's about being ourselves.

And that's one of the things that we've also heard is really the diversity of the music talent in Fort Wayne is amazing.

So it's not just country.

It's not just it's not just gospel.

We have music across the board in diverse talent that we really think we can help help grow the economy here and then being able to move forward with jobs in general but particularly in a segment that keeps us in the Midwest with automotive.

So automotive tech is a is a key focus of this plan.

We've got a rich history of automotive not just in Howard County but throughout northeast Indiana.

How do we make sure that that we're growing jobs in the technology side of the automotive?

>> You know, you today I was looking at electric vehicles with one of our local companies that's going to be happening.

How do we make sure that we're producing things that are in the next wave of automotive and that's helping our companies realize that that's helping make sure that that we're working to build the assets here locally to attract more technology within the automotive sector.

>> And with that as well, the doors remain open to those who have the idea and have the desire to see that idea come through.

>> The entrepreneurial spirit of this region is is probably one of its greatest assets.

>> See, entrepreneurship is a key aspect.

How do we make sure that we're helping entrepreneurs grow?

One of the one of the tenets of the plan is really focused on event on a venture fund identifying funding that can help local small companies grow.

>> When we look at our at our our competition, you look at Green Bay, Wisconsin, you look at Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo all growing twenty five to 50 million dollars of funds to help their local entrepreneurs.

How do we do that?

Because when you look at when you look at venture funding fifty one percent of the entrepreneurs in our community say they they know they lack the capital or they're unsure they have the capital to sustain their business or grow their business the way they think they can and there's this statistic which is is a wake up call.

>> It's a wake up call that fifty one percent of 600 plus entrepreneurs don't feel they have the capital to grow their company the way that they think they can.

>> And from our position if you have a company that's potentially going to grow fast, you only think about some of the local startups.

You think about steel dynamics, you think about do it best.

You think about Ruoff Mortgage very Bradley Sweetwater.

What if they had to go off to Grand Rapids or Kalamazoo to chase venture funding back in the day when they started?

There's a good chance they grow there and they don't come back and those are thousands of jobs that are here in our community that maybe wouldn't have been if they couldn't get couldn't have gotten their start right.

This might be a good opportunity for 30 seconds about the bridge program which has been a part of greater Fort Wayne yes.

>> To the bridge program as a great program that our team has put together right now we have about twenty five entrepreneurs going through the program.

We're in our third cohort of entrepreneurs.

It's a five year program for each entrepreneur and what we've done we have a great entrepreneurial community.

We've got a great business community, corporate community but they never really meshed together and so we said let's get some corporate sponsors to work with an entrepreneur not for not to come and do some business planning not to help them for a couple months but but partner up with them for five years and really be their champion and we've had a number of great companies that are entrepreneurs that are already in brick and mortar businesses now you know, within a year of starting up which isn't normal but when they've got a great corporate sponsor that is working with them that's been around the block knows how to grow a business, it's amazing to see what's happening and we're looking forward to starting a fourth cohort next year.

>> Congratulations on that.

Thank you.

That's very wonderful.

And it also allows for that door not only to be open but also to allow as many in as possible which gets us to pillar three which is inclusively.

>> Yeah.

So one of the one of the things that we are very focused on is you know we talked a lot about downtown earlier.

It's not about just about downtown.

It's about all aspects of our community and how do we ensure economic growth and economic opportunity for all parts of our community?

Is that is that focus on exclusivity, you know, really dialing into focusing heavily on Southeast, you know, looking at some significant projects, putting out putting out a goal just like with a billion dollars of riverfront.

>> Let's focus on a quarter billion dollars of investment southeast and this is where it should be noted too that Allen Co together is itself inclusive of other economic development plans of which a Southeast study was one.

>> Absolutely.

So the Southeast strategy is a good example that the city adopted early last year when you look at the Southeast strategy nineteen percent of of residents live southeast.

>> Eight percent of the building activity has occurred southeast.

>> So when you talk about looking at how do we how do we close that gap if those numbers mirrored each other, that would have been about a quarter billion dollars of additional investment southeast over the last several years.

That makes a big difference in a community and that drives what we believe there's some key catalytic projects southeast there's one that was just approved by the Redevelopment Commission Village premiere which is going down Anthony McKinney.

It's about a fifty million dollar project being done by house investments out of Indianapolis.

So bringing dollars in from the outside, investing in our community, that's the type of project that's going to lead to additional private investment around it.

But that can't be the only project.

So we're working with developers on a number of projects in the southeast area that I believe will leverage additional private investment and help us achieve that achieve that number.

>> Some of the grease for those wheels includes something I'm assuming called fine lending.

So community development financial institution which is a mouthful acidify lending is more mission based, very focused lending that can occur outside of the traditional banking industry.

So it's more patient capital that maybe can take a little bit more of a risk go into a project for a little bit longer partner with bank lending.

>> What we found we took an inner city visit to Louisville back in twenty nineteen found nine crucifies working in their market found came back and said well how much activity is going on here in Allen County and we found that about fifty three dollars per capita we were attracting and CDV lending sounds good but the national average is one hundred and eighty two so we're about twenty eight thirty percent the national average that to me doesn't scream nationally recognized economy so we're working with City Fort Wayne the Community Foundation on how to attract additional KVI lending into the market that can help projects that maybe wouldn't have been able to go and can partner with a bank partner with a private individual to get going.

>> So we're going to be focused on that over the next several years and if you build it they will come additional jobs in that quadrant as well.

>> Yeah, that's another one.

We're really putting a stake in the ground and saying we want to attract twenty five hundred new jobs se when you look at a map if you go to slide thirty four and take a look at major employers throughout our county you'll see there's a few in New Haven, there's several downtown there's several dozen sixty nine corridor and up north but really on us 27 and east as you go through Fort Wayne where there were traditionally large employers you think about Frewer if you think about Harvester you think about others those aren't there anymore and we see some great opportunities in that that quadrant of the county really focused on on four sixty nine US 27 Adams Center Road to create opportunities for additional growth.

So as we're looking at utilities and land those are key corridors for us and prime space if you will because in many respects additional building occupancy is at an all time high where the vacancy rate is at an all time low.

>> Yes.

So the vacancy rates in all time low Steve Steeves and the Zakar Company every year as the report comes out in December and I think we're at three point nine percent vacancy rate industrial space I'll tell you that right now is probably sub sub one percent when we look at the number of projects that have been filling up buildings here locally, we're going to be working very closely with our corporate and civic partners to continue to increase the opportunities here in Allen County.

>> So why 10 years?

Why it's it's something you can see.

It's something that like I said, it's five year tactics, ten year goals but it's something that everybody can we can look forward and say where am I going to be in ten years?

>> Where's the community going to be?

>> And it's something that we're going to continue to look as we go and we may change some of these you know, we may hit some of these goals very quickly and say, all right, we need to double that goal.

It's not going to stay static.

>> The goal here is to create an environment where we're pushing forward in the communities pushing forward and if we hit these, we're just going to keep going.

>> Well, and what was the line I heard the other day that ten years isn't as long as it used to be ten years is definitely not as long as it used to be here before we know.

>> Yeah.

>> Now about the whole plan so far the reviews have included words like bold, audacious, aspirational.

>> How do you like those descriptors?

I love them.

I want to be bold audacious.

I want to I want to challenge the community and that's one of the things I think that as you look at why Greater Fort Wayne was put together with thirteen hundred plus members with with major civic with major corporate sponsors, we were put in place to help challenge the community and help the community realize that they can do more than we're doing.

So we've pushed hard on a number of things and we've made no apologies for that.

>> We're going to continue to push and I think when you look at you the riverfront development, when you look at electric works, there's things that we have tackled.

>> We've we've worked with our public sector partners figured out how to get them done and we're going to keep that up.

Yeah, some of the additional development now underway, some of the ribbon cutting coming soon to a project near you.

>> All of those things will be what variables to to track to see how they impact some of these objectives.

>> Yeah, absolutely.

We'll be tracking on this.

I think, you know, one of the things I look at and I'm a planner by trade and what we really need to focus on is the implementation of those plans.

So that is very key to this plan as it was to the downtown plan.

You know, what is the Matrix look like?

How we holding each other accountable when you've got so many people taking on different pieces we need be able to sit down and have the conversation and say Bruce , why haven't you gotten this piece done?

Why aren't you moving forward on it?

And we expect to have those conversations.

We expect those conversations to be two way two ways.

So we expect people to hold us accountable to get this done if they don't see movement on these, I should hear about it and I should be challenged.

What are you going to do if you're not moving forward as fast as everybody thinks you should do and if you would like to follow along we've been doing a rather fast flyover of L.A. County together but I would share with you the information on the screen right now you can find the full plan at aked dot G.F. w Agency.com obviously grateful we dotcom otherways in fact you can follow along there you see it always interested the additional folks to move on down the road in strength and style and you can find more information about that and of course plenty of digital platforms available as well.

>> It was a fast half hour.

It was thank you for getting it out here and I challenged a team to when this plan rolled out I challenged him to get in front of 10000 people with this plan we're about halfway through and we're going to get it done and all who are watching now wave at John that you'll know that he can count you to.

John Earbuds is the president and CEO of Greater Fort Wayne .

Thank you again, sir.

Thank you for all of us with prime time.

Thank you for watching.

Take care and we'll see you again next week.

Good night