Cheyenne seeks to jump-start local economy

CHEYENNE – Laramie County economic-development promoters have launched a new effort to jump-start the community’s economy and take it into the “next dimension” by creating new, high-quality primary jobs to keep the community’s young people from leaving the state.And their first step has been to bring in a nationally known community-development specialist who says Cheyenne and Laramie County can be winners in their effort to bring economic growth – but it will require a communitywide effort and some new thinking.
“It may be time to step up to that new dimension, get your arms around a fresh vision, to become more aggressive, more focused, more targeted,” consultant Howard Benson told a recent gathering of community leaders. “That’s what winning communities are doing. This looks like a winning community to me.”
Almost 200 business, political and education leaders turned out for a recent conference featuring Benson, founder of National Community Development Services Inc., and his thought-provoking ideas on what successful communities are doing to expand their economies.
The meeting was called “Progress and Prosperity – The Next Dimension” and was sponsored by the relatively new Laramie County Quality Growth Alliance, an umbrella group of more than 20 groups involved in some aspect of economic development.
Jack Crews, president of Cheyenne LEADS, the community’s economic-development corporation, said the meeting grew out of concern by alliance members that Cheyenne’s economy is not growing fast enough and is not creating enough primary jobs to keep its young people from leaving.
“The sad thing is we’re not performing in this city, this county and this state,” Crews said. “We’re losing our young people. We’ve got to turn that around, we need to create some new opportunities, and we need to do something to carry us into this next dimension. We can’t be complacent, because a complacent community will die, and we’re not going to let that happen.”
The first step was to bring in Benson and his company’s vice president, Tom Ralser, to look at both the positives and negatives in Cheyenne’s economy and outline what successful communities are doing to bring quality economic growth. The next step could be to hire Benson as a consultant, though that has not been determined yet by alliance members.
Benson has been much in demand since telling a statewide economic-development conference last spring that Wyoming wasn’t hungry enough or focused enough to be a real player in economic development. Since then, state business groups and Gov. Jim Geringer have been trying to hire Benson’s company to help the state develop a new business plan, and other communities also have expressed interest.
“It was astounding to me that wherever I went in Wyoming, people pointed to Cheyenne as the success story,” Benson said. “I wonder what those people would say if they looked in on this meeting and saw this many people concerned, knowing that what was yesterday is not good enough for today and certainly is not going to make it for tomorrow.”
Benson and Ralser noted that Cheyenne’s manufacturing sector – the best indicator of primary jobs – is only 4 percent of the work force, compared with 16 percent nationally, and the community faces a growing income gap. In 1984, Cheyenne ranked 80th among metropolitan areas in per capita income, but it had slipped to 119th by 1994. It ranked 301 in total personal income in 1984 and 304 in 1994.
Based on national average of 1.0, Cheyenne is at .96 compared to Billings at 1.04, Grand Junction at 1.05 and Greeley at 1.23, according to a National Community Development Services snapshot analysis based on various economic indicators.
One of the most glaring problems is what Benson called “the brain drain,” the lack of job opportunities for new high-school and college graduates. “Your best products are leaving the state seeking opportunities,” he said, noting that it costs about $150,000 to educate a child from kindergarten through high school.
On the plus side, Benson and Ralser said, Cheyenne’s economic-development effort is cost-effective, the jobs that are being created are helping to offset that income gap, and there appears to be widespread interest in the community in economic growth and better jobs.
Over the past 20 years, Benson’s firm has worked with more than 300 communities and helped them expand their job growth by almost 12 percent on average over a five-year period, compared with a national average of slightly more than 4 percent.
Benson said his firm works with “hungry” communities where there is a need or a problem, communities that haven’t realized their goals yet but that have vision, commitment and a willingness to work together.
Winning communities, he said, are willing to embrace the fact that change will occur and develop strategic plans based on broad shared vision of what the community wants. They form strategic alliances and think regionally, they recognize impediments and address them, and they find ways to create competitive advantages. They find different, non-traditional ways to measure progress, such as improving literacy or reducing teen pregnancies.
“Most of the communities are aggressive, but they realize that if development only means a buffalo hunt – going out to that diminishing, dwindling herd of companies that are looking for new quarters and facilities – then you are limiting your chances of long-term sustainable economic success,” he said.
“So they’re focusing on expansion and assistance to local operations, recognizing that 70 to 80 percent of any community’s growth comes from those companies that add that second shift, that acquire the new product line and decide to build it or process it here instead of somewhere else.”
“All economic development is local,” he added. “Every deal is made in some community.”
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