EDAP’s new executive draws on varied experiences

GREELEY – Before Larry Burkhardt stepped onto the career path that led him to become an economic developer, he spent 11 years preparing for the priesthood.

“You’re going to ask, ‘How do you make that jump?'” Burkhardt said, anticipating the line of questioning. “In my mind it’s very logical. What attracts me to the world of economic development is the work of community building. I’ve done it my entire life.”

Burkhardt, 56, recently hired as president and CEO of the Greeley/Weld Economic Development Action Partnership – he starts in September – gets high marks for what he built in his current job in Grass Valley, Calif.

Hired in 1996 as the first employee for the Nevada County Economic Resource Council, Burkhardt was handed “a card table and stapler,´ said Judy Hess, a banker in Grass Valley who chairs the Nevada County ERC. He’ll leave California after compiling a track record for business retention, savvy use of the Internet, and a track record for orchestrating regional cooperation in northern California.

“You’re lucky to have him,” Hess said. Burkhardt’s latter skill was evident as chairman of the 20-county Upstate California Economic Development Council, a post he’s held for the last four years (Nevada County is located roughly between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe).

Regional coordination with other economic development agencies is near the top of the priority list for the Greeley/Weld EDAP board of directors. When it came time to whittle down from about 50 applicants, the board took notice of Burkhardt’s resume.

“He has experience doing that with other economic development arms in California,´ said Larry Wood, chairman of the Greeley/Weld EDAP. “We feel that was real positive.”

Said Burkhardt, “We established some ground rules about working together that I think might be transferable out there.”

Regional considerations also caused Wood and the selection committee to be drawn to Burkhardt’s history in Colorado. Before he left for California, Burkhardt lived in Longmont for 20 years, spent 11 years on the Longmont City Council and five years at the head of the Economic Development Association of Longmont (now called the Longmont Area Economic Council).

Burkhardt said he plans to draw on his Longmont connections in his new post. Wood also hopes to Burkhardt’s cultivated EDAP’s ties to communities in fast-growing southwest Weld County, some of which falls in the Longmont sphere of influence.

“Larry will add to that,” Wood said. “He understands Longmont. He understands southwest Weld. Perhaps we can do a better job down there than we have.”

Another factor in Burkhardt’s favor was his use of the Internet as an economic development tool.

Wood referred to consultant reports that 87 percent of corporate site planners – agents that help companies pick relocation sites – start their search on the Internet.

“In looking at the Web site he has for Nevada County in California, he has an excellent Web site that gives a tremendous amount of information,” Wood said. “I think that’s a positive. We need to make sure we aren’t looked over before we even know we’re in the race.”

Career track

 Burkhardt was born in Dayton, Ohio, and later went to high school in Cincinnati. From the time he was 14 years old his studies were tailored to a future as a priest, but he left the Franciscan order at age 25, two years prior to ordination.

He left the seminary in 1973 and moved to Boston to take a job as a hospital emergency room orderly. Two years later he moved to Longmont and took the same job at Longmont United Hospital. He eventually was promoted to the hospital’s patient representative, a post he held until 1986.

After leaving the hospital, Burkhardt was self-employed as a sign painter and calligrapher. His calligraphy included traveling to art shows to sell his work at summer festivals.

In the meantime Burkhardt entered local politics. He was elected to the Longmont City Council in 1981, becoming mayor for a two-year stretch between 1985 and 1987. He left the council in 1991 to take over as full-time executive for the Economic Development Association of Longmont.

Among his key successes in Longmont were the attraction of biotech company Amgen – still a significant employer in Boulder County – and a high-tech company Adaptec.

“They were good years,” Burkhardt said of the Longmont tenure. “Toward the end I could see the work we were doing had a pretty dramatic impact on the community.”

In California, Burkhardt’s major coups were retention of local employers that were on the cusp of relocating, including the headquarters for Networked Insurance Agents.

Burkhardt’s zeal for keeping businesses in town caused him to make about 250 site visits to employers over the last two years.

“For the client he did a really good job of zeroing in on their needs and fulfilling their needs, whether it be on the advocacy side or something that was actually deliverable,” Hess said.

In one case Burkhardt assisted a small business that was facing the burden of a $50,000 deposit to the local electricity utility at the same time it was with crippling workers compensation costs. He got the utility to waive the deposit.

“I watched how he takes care of small businesses in town,” Hess said. “It always comes back to their interest versus self-interest. I’m convinced that’s one of the reasons he was successful with them and for them. It was their interest, not his interest.”

Among his various roles in Nevada County, Burkhardt also anchored a weekly call-in radio show that focused on economic development and served on the editorial board for the Sacramento-based Comstock’s Business magazine.

Time to move on

While Burkhardt said he’d miss the connections he built in California, he was compelled to come back to Colorado.

“You kind of get the sense in your own personal life there are windows of opportunity,” he said. ” This was clearly one of them. I’ve had success in Longmont. I had success here. The Weld County challenge is particularly appealing to me. It’s an area that has such promise.”

Burkhardt’s not ready to declare personal goals in his new post.

“I want to establish a working relationship with my board of directors and my new staff,” he said.

Similarly, Wood said the Greeley/Weld EDAP board wants to wait for Burkhardt to get settled before developing precise marching orders.

“We are going to meet on that as soon as Larry gets here, so he has buy-in and input.

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