Aka, the plan...
When I began my series, Incentives In Greensboro, it was in-fact a critism of a News & Record article by Mayor Nancy Vaughan entitled City Handles Incentives Effectively. Quite honestly, I think our new mayor took what city staff and local economic development agencies were telling her and believed it all to be true. She has since come to the decision that Greensboro's economic development policies must be completely rewritten and after I posted Part 31: A Different Light, Councilwoman Marikay Abuziwaiter agreed to allow me to present my economic development ideas to Greensboro's Economic Development Board.
In Part 36: Laying The Foundations and Part 38: Baby Steps, Giant Steps I explained my ideas for what an economic development plan should look like. Today I'll summarize those ideas and begin a list of what I believe are the types of businesses Greensboro most needs in order to secure our future and make us competitive in a global market place.
Before I continue I'd like to mention the Leadership for Urban Renewal Network, a 5 year old non profit in Los Angeles, California which helps people get their start in business by becoming a minority partner in each business they help and providing many of the services I mention below. They were featured on 90.9 WBUR Boston's Here and Now Radio Show just today which I've embedded at the bottom of this post.
The following are ideas for economic development for Greensboro that I will be presenting to the City. Feel free to add yours in the comments below or e-mail them to me at RecycleBill@gmail.com
Summary:
From Part 31:
**Focus on the long term unemployed.
**Builds small, locally owned businesses
**Supports existing locally owned small businesses
**Jump start the local economy from the bottom up
**Get new businesses started now
**Immune from competing with other cities.
**Fill up the empty sites we already have like this, the largest building of its kind in North Carolina.
**Put jobs where people live.
**Focus on manufacturing
**Stock exchange
**Loan programs
From Part 36:
**Points
**Accounting
**Studies
**Insurance Pools
**Accountability
**Mentors
**Teams or Pods
**Buy Local
**Microloans
**Mall
**Marketing
**Location
**Networking
**Taxes
**Previous falsification
**Co-operatives
**New and Existing
**Long Time Residents First
From Part 38:
**Put Regional On The Back Burner
**Tax The Incentives
**Metrics And Performance Standards
**Daycare
**Crime
**No More Storefront Churches
**Flexibility and Standardization
**Review And Monitor
As an example of the Teams or Pods I mentioned in Part 36: a local steel industry would supply the bicycle factory which, besides making bicycles, would be the frame vendor for the moped factory. And of course the automobile factory would be supplied by the steel mill and the 3 D manufacturers who would also make parts for the moped and bicycle factories as well as other local industries and industries outside of Greensboro. Of course, a steel mill-- even a mini mill-- is a huge investment; luckily most Pods won't require something nearly so big. But if we had say an auto plant building the Greensboro Car, a bicycle factory, moped factory, motorcycle factory and other Team members up and running it might not be hard at all to attract a steel mill to one of the many empty industrial parks along the county lines. That, my friends, is putting the horse before the cart.
Another way to look at that is this: I once worked for a company called Greensboro Auto Parts, at the time the largest seller of used auto parts in the Southeastern United States. Tom Bigham's approach to building a business was to find people who would be good customers and put them in business for themselves. While making deliveries for Tom from Maryland to Florida I heard time and time again how Tom had provided buildings, tools and sometimes even the capital necessary to put in business, the garages and body shops he sold his parts to. These shop owners remained loyal to Tom until his death, many of them refusing to buy anything from other vendors unless it was something GAPCO didn't sell. Tom went so far as to find areas that were lacking in automotive services and send people there to start their own businesses rather than a branch of Tom's business. You see, unlike many vendors today, Tom never competed with his customers. Greensboro Auto Parts is gone now but the parent company, Bigham Inc, lives on quietly providing employment to several families in Greensboro and beyond.
New Businesses And Ideas Greensboro Needs To Grow
**Homegrown competition to Time-Warner Cable/Internet. (Did you make that call, Nancy?)
**Steel mill of the type known as a mini mill
**Glass recycling (bottle and plate glass)
**Intermodial rail yard in east Greensboro
**Aquaponics and hydraponics (Space for floating aquaponics could be leased on Greensboro's city lakes.)
**Other forms of agriculture including vertical agriculture
**Energy in the form of solar panel manufacturing, urban solar farms, wood pellets and leaf pellets. (In case Greensboro is still wondering what to do with all that wood and leaf waste.)
**Technology
**Manufacture of tangible goods with a focus on long lasting high end goods
**3 D Manufacturing, specifically auto parts
**Bicycle factory
**Moped factory
**Motorcycle factory
Suggestions From Others
**George Hartzman suggested a locally owned, homegrown auto manufacturer-- the Greensboro Car.
**Kathe Latham suggested communities of small scale tiny houses at less than $10,000 each.
**Creating stronger transportation hubs that would close downtown to traffic like they have done in San Jose California.
**A think tank of non-profit folks with local businesses and community colleges to mesh the needs of the unemployed with businesses and skill development.
**More people willing to be mentors and volunteers to places like the Interactive Resource Center who could be one-on-one mentors for people left in between the cracks.
**If we placed more money on providing quality child care more women could return to work supporting their families economic stability and these families would then spend more that would also include more taxes paid and people traveling and able to participate fully in pubic art and environmental survival.
**Kathe also suggested we follow the work of Gar Alperowitz and David Korten.
**Modernized Craft Guilds is an idea I found on the web.
**Kody Holt suggested industrial hemp products, specifically rope and fiber. This may take a couple of years to get over legal hurdles but the trend seems to suggest we should start preparing to be on the ground floor.
**Don Moore suggested Aviation related businesses saying, " We're definitely Blue Collar with some Education thrown in." I've made the point before that most aviation manufacturing doesn't necessarily have to be located at PTI. As a matter of fact, locating manufacturing away from PTI frees up more room for aviation maintenance and assembly operations such as Honda Jet and Timco to grow. Hem them in too quickly and they'll have no choice but to leave Greensboro in order to expand.
**Kate Dunnagan suggested contacting Carolina Community Energy Partnerships (also on Facebook ) "for info about sustainable solar ED."According to Adam Lovelady of the NC School for government, North Carolina is 2nd in the nation for solar photovoltaic capacity added in 2013 with " solar energy systems are filling pastures and cladding rooftops" and yet Greensboro has almost none of it.
**More home based businesses. Greensboro needs to ease restrictions on home based businesses so that more new businesses can get a foot hold, get their start and eventually out grow their locations and move to bigger locations in commercially zoned areas.
To be continued...
