That festival is just one of many attractions that lure visitors to Somerset.

Along with light, Cumberland tourism is big business in this southeastern Kentucky region.

Somerset Mayor Alan Keck boasts of more than just outdoor recreation and arts, but a thriving downtown and major business development district.

I had a chance to catch up with Mayor Keck yesterday at City Hall.

The, big cover story for Kentucky Monthly headline says Somerset Pulaski County charges Ahead as one of Kentucky's leading economic engines and talks about how you have become so not by waiting for change, but by creating it.

Yeah, that's pretty good.

I like that.

You like that?

Yeah.

Yes.

How did you do that?

We've been incredibly intentional.

For anyone that knows me or our community.

We talk a lot about our story.

And you know, I've said for a long time that it's important for small, rural communities, to tell your story proudly, to be proud of who we are and not apologize for what we're not.

And so we're selling ourselves.

Not just regionally, not just across the Commonwealth, but across the country and specifically economic development.

We've seen victories from companies, from Florida to California, quite literally choosing southeast Kentucky, choosing Somerset as their permanent home.

We're really proud of that.

And in some ways, while we've been at it for a few years now, we still sort of feel like we're getting started, right?

As I said, you're in your second term when you inherited this office and you earned this office.

What did it look like?

What did the economic development picture look like then stand on stagnant?

We weren't intentional at all.

We would get the things that were coming to us anyway, organically.

Good things were still happening.

I mean, we're blessed to have a great community.

We're located in a pretty strategic spot in a great state.

Kentucky is having a lot of wins.

But we weren't really doing anything proactively.

We had also given up on, what I call sort of the heartbeat of small town America, which is your downtown.

And we've spent a lot of focus on enhancing quality of life and quality of place and then telling that story of why it is such a special place to live.

None of that was happened, and I deserve a little credit, but but candidly, we had a community that was sort of bubbling, and I took the lid off and said, you know what?

Let's let our best and brightest shine.

Let's unleash this potential that we have, and then be aggressive doing so.

Yeah.

And tell us about your background that lent itself to having such bold posture when it comes to economic development.

I'm an entrepreneur and a businessman at heart.

You know, my father is an entrepreneur.

My grandfather was an entrepreneur.

Granddad, would move to, like, communities and develop small resorts and then sell land.

And he, you know, he was sort of a visionary in that era.

He was a simple man.

And didn't like any attention.

Was a little bit of a recluse.

But I learned a lot.

And I learned a tremendous amount from my father, who had an unbelievable amount of grit and perseverance, struggled for a long time, candidly left to a nice career to start his own thing.

And I got to watch that journey.

It did a lot for me.

One to appreciate how hard that can be.

But then to to sort of look now in this role, to just be so grateful for those that are willing to invest their own time, talent, treasure, not just the, the money capital, but everything else that it takes to invest in a business.

Yeah.

And, I thought, man, it could be kind of special if I could take those lessons, my private sector lessons, and really put them into practice every day as mayor.

Not just from a gratitude appreciation standpoint, but a real understanding of what it takes to to run, grow business, create jobs.

Politicians love to talk about how many jobs they create.

We shouldn't create any, the private sector creates jobs.

We foster, create an environment where it's possible.

Right?

Right.

And and you've done that.

Right.

Because downtown revitalization has been the thing that we've heard a lot about, as we have had our crews here over the last several weeks.

And people are very proud of the downtown.

I mean, it's quite impressive.

I appreciate that.

I am super proud of it.

I love it, and I love the opportunity to get to talk to you.

As you know, I've admired you from afar for a long time.

But I'm a girl, dad, and I like to tell that because most of the new businesses in our downtown are female owned and operated, and in small town America, it wasn't always that way.

You know, we hear about the good old boys, and that's not the case in Somerset.

I truly believe regardless of race, gender or socioeconomic status background, everyone believes they have a chance if they invest their hard earned capital to succeed here.

Now.

And that's cool.

It's it's inspiring.

I get goosebumps talking about it because I know my girls now have something to see that, that they can, they can quite literally point to.

And, I love to, to frequent most of these downtown businesses as well and support them.

So what are the numbers people are thinking, oh, this sounds great.

But, you know, let's, let's really talk money here.

Dollars and cents.

What does it bring down to the.

We've broken tourism records every year I've been in office except Covid.

That's a huge credit to Michelle and Leslie in our our tourism economy.

Our population grew in the last decade at double the state average.

We were one of only, two counties, I think, in the entire district that grew.

And we we grew faster than, than the county by about two weeks as well.

So more people are living here.

More jobs have been created.

Almost half $1 billion in investment in five years.

You know, for small town Kentucky, that's staggering.

And what's really cool about that number is it wasn't one company at 450 million.

And then a bunch of little ones.

We've seen existing business expansion.

We've seen multigenerational businesses expand.

As I mentioned, we've seen corporate headquarters from California.

We've talked about horse soldier bourbon a lot with our nine figure investment.

People were responding to this, and we can quantify it.

Revenue at the city, is a $4 million a year, and we just passed an occupational tax increase.

But that doesn't even affect that increase.

Over $4 million of new money coming into City Hall without a rate increase.

That's powerful stuff.

And I think it's proved to other towns in Kentucky that this can work, you know, embrace exactly who you are.

Be proud of it and go tell that story boldly.

As you'll recall, Mayor Keck ran for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 2023, unsuccessfully.

So will he shoot his shot again for higher office?

Well, on Monday, I asked him back about his aspirations politically going forward.

Tune in Monday to hear his answer.