Logan County Big Table: Big concerns - Big assets

 

[February 04, 2020] 

On Thursday, January 30th a special “Big Table” event was held at Lincoln College and hosted by the Greater Peoria Economic Development Council. The new local economic development organization Lincoln Economic Advancement and Development, Inc. (LEAD) served as co-sponsor of the event.

Sixty-one guests attended the meeting and included several members of the Lincoln City Council, a Logan County Board member, Logan County Airport, Logan County Tourism, Community Action, Abraham Lincoln Memorial Hospital and the Community Health Collaborative, District 27 Schools and Lincoln College. There were several local business owners present, a number of concerned citizens, and others.

The evening began with Tory Dahlhoff of the GPEDC thanking all for coming and then introducing Lincoln College President and local LEAD member Dr. David Gerlach.

Dr. Gerlach spoke about LEAD, the people involved, and that LEAD now has $100,000 in hand to use to move forward with projects. They have hired a consulting firm to get started and plan to hire a director of economic growth in the community.

Dahlhoff explained the Big Table discussions have taken place in the five-county CEDS Region of the GPEDC - Peoria, Woodford, Tazewell, Mason and Logan. Logan is the final Big Table event for the GPEDC.

The Big Table started with a singular event in Peoria that brought in more than 700 people to share ideas. From there, the GPEDC decided that the day had been such a success that they wanted to conduct something similar throughout the five-county region.

The GPEDC is currently working on the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) 2020, which must be updated every year and filed with the United States Economic Development Administration.

The CEDS provides a means to draw federal attention to specific projects within a region. When projects are listed in the Regional CEDS it becomes “a nice big check mark for federal funding.”

The goal of the evening in Lincoln was to outline the function of the economic Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) Analysis for the area.

Dahlhoff said that following the SWOT was suggested, but ultimately the individual groups would set the tone and drive the discussions in whatever direction would be effective. Those in attendance would also select the topics of the evening.

As the audience introduced themselves, each was invited to share a topic and some were asked to consider leading a topic table.

The next 45 minutes allowed small group discussions of topics. When groups completed their assignments, the room came back together for the last hour of the evening.

Focus group representatives share information from the discussions.

Quality of life

Brittney McLaughlin and Beth Kavelman brought forward the topic of 'Quality of life.'

McLaughlin said the group had recognized that there are some excellent ‘strengths’ within the community. The size of Lincoln is an advantage as well as a disadvantage. Many people want to live in a small community, and our community does have a lot to offer.

In addition, the city has good schools and good parks. The people of the community are also a strength in that this is a place where good ideas flow from many people.

She added that one of the city’s big needs is self-promotion. There needs to be an organization that promotes the assets of this community. We need to “promote us.”

Weaknesses, McLaughlin said, were that there are organizations and structural issues, and a lack of public awareness of protocols and how to navigate through some of the local bureaucracy. It is hard for people to know what they need to do in regard to city permits and other legal issues when starting a business in the community.

For opportunities, McLaughlin said, there is a lack of story tellers in our community, and there needs to be a single organization in lieu of a local chamber that could work with local businesses and business prospects. There needs to be more local involvement in promoting Lincoln.

She concluded that overall, the community very much needs an organization that will gel everyone together. She also mentioned that the new LEAD organization is attempting to answer some of those needs and they would in the future be coming together with a strategic statement.

Dahlhoff asked how the city could do that? How do we get other people to share our vision? McLaughlin said that another community in Mississippi implemented a community mentor project. She said, for example, 10 mentors could share the vision with 10 people each (for a total of 100), then the second tier could share with another ten (a total of 1,000) and so on and so forth until the entire town knew the vision for the future of the community.

She said that mentors could also be assigned to all new businesses that came to the community. That mentor would be one person who knew how to navigate through the bureaucracy and could assist the new business getting settled into the community.

Kavelman said there also needed to be more volunteerism within the community and less apathy. She said there needed to be the promotion of a positive attitude in our town toward our town.

Central Illinois Technology Triangle

Lothar Soliwon spoke for this group. Soliwon is the President and CEO of ZG Worldwide: Software & Subject Matter Experts, Business Consultants.

He discussed Agricultural Technology. The group had recognized that agriculture was the core industry in Logan County and that technology is having a lasting impact on ag.

The community could exploit the agriculture aspects of the county with an ag museum.

The group also discussed the need to train local youth in technology with the vision of keeping them in the community with technology jobs.

He also suggested that the community might call on Howard Buffett in Decatur to invest in agricultural promotion locally.

Entrepreneurship and outside the box thinking

Ashley Reed spoke on this topic. The group had recognized that taking risks is a big step for anyone, and risk equals fear. People need to overcome their fears of trying something new and one way to do that is to recognize that it is okay to fail.

Support is needed for new businesses that helps them to get off the ground and gain support from the community.

The cost of doing business is also a stumbling block. She noted that brick and mortar businesses are expensive, pointed out that the old buildings downtown are hard to take care of and it gets really expensive when the interiors have to be remodeled to accommodate the business.

In addition, she said there are no real stereotypical definitions of how to start a business. New business ventures can come from any idea.

One local business that is doing very well in the community is Top Hat Creamery. She said that owner Lisa Mestinsek started her business in a manner that Reed herself would never have chosen, but for Mestinsek it worked and that was what mattered.

The group talked about engaging more people. She said that when activities such as this are held, it is always the same group of people who come forward, and there needs to be more engagement and more involvement from those who are not coming forward.

Local food systems

David Bishop of PrairiErth Farms of rural Atlanta spoke for this group. He noted that steps are in progress to do more with local foods including he is working with District 27 Schools in Lincoln to create a new model for food acquisition and service in the public schools.

Mount Pulaski is working to provide a local food source and has been labeled as “the little town that decided to feed itself.” Mount Pulaski is working to have a local grower’s supply vegetables and meats to a new marketing concept that will open up for operation in 2020.

There is work ongoing to bring a new food receiving hub coming to Peoria. Food hubs are locations for local producers to market their products on a wholesale level.

Route 66 and Historic Preservation

Derek Reed and Cindy Smith led the table discussions. Reed presented the group's findings.

This is a very unique community with a strength for tourism and history.

The group identified one weakness, a lack of collaboration about businesses, groups, organizations, etc.

In Historic Preservation, there is the need for a local documentary or series of documentaries about Logan County past and present to help promote tourism and also to educate those who live here about all the things that do make us unique.

In the audience there seemed to be a lack of awareness of what is going on in the community with promoting Route 66 and the centennial event. Suggestions to contact people on a state level to find out more led to the room learning that there are already groups formed in Lincoln. Lincoln has formed a Route 66 Centennial Commission, and was in fact the first municipality to do so. That group is working on promoting and planning for 2026. The tourism bureau is also working toward the same goal of making sure that Lincoln becomes a stopping point and not just a pass-through on the way to somewhere else.

The discussion also led to talk about the Logan County Courthouse. The audience was talking about historic preservation and protecting our historic structures.

Dahlhoff asked where the community should start, and it was suggested that a very good starting point would be for everyone to get behind the one-half cent sales tax to save the historic Logan County Courthouse. The courthouse has great historic value, is also very unique compared to other courthouses, and it sits on the corner of the original 1926 to 1936 Route 66 drive through Lincoln.

Several persons present were not aware of what was going on. Guests in the room who had been part of the one percent school sales tax and said the had made door-to-door visits to every residence in the community with information and answered questions.

It was mentioned that one percent tax was the driving force behind the new high school in Mount Pulaski. One lady from that community spoke up and said that another good idea would be to offer a tour of the decaying courthouse. She said that when the Mount Pulaski School District offered a tour of their old high school, it was a real eye-opener. Parents had been shocked and somewhat appalled that they had been permitting their kids to spend their days in a building that was in such bad condition.

County Board member Jim Wessbecher shared that there is a new video being circulated that shows the damage and a second video is in the works.

Dahlhoff said that topics such as the courthouse were very important for the GPEDC to know about and understand because there is always the possibility that it can help. He added though that first it takes groups and individuals locally to speak out about it and own it here at home.

Youth, children and teens - Building community

Jennifer Keith presented for this group and spoke about the need to keep our kids in our community.

Keith said her table had worked the SWOT – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, and listed the local schools as a strength in our community.
 

There is a need to engage the youth at the table for discussions about the future and the vision for the community. She noted there is a tendency among the teens that the best thing to do is get out of town. She said that she was the same way and she couldn’t wait to get out of Lincoln and do something big. But after living in New York for a while she came to realize that Lincoln wasn’t all that bad, and that New York was not where she wanted to raise a family, so she came home.

Keith said that people like Brenda Chapman left home because she wanted to make films and she couldn’t do that in Logan County, but today kids can do that without leaving home. It is just one example of how technology makes things possible here at home that were not possible before.

She suggested creating a resource directory that would be an all in one information center for whatever the need might be.

When trying to engage youth, Keith shared a lesson with the audience. Often times as a teacher, she would ask a question and get the answer “I don’t know.” It is a thoughtless answer. But she said she would then say, “Well if you did know, what would you say right now?” Keith said that provoked thought, and with thought comes ideas. So, we can use that everywhere.

The group had also suggested that there needs to be a “fix ourselves” movement locally where the community identifies the needs, and then works to educate the youth to fill those needs.

Industry

Neal Patel talked about the need for new industry in the area. At his table the group on the whole had recognized that Lincoln has a lot to offer from a good location and interstate highway system to good schools and colleges.

To attract industry, the key would be to identify the workforce that is already here and available, then utilize those numbers to go after industries needing that number of employees.
 

The group talked about technology and online retail, which continue to grow. So, a good target would be distribution centers or warehouses that could translate into shipping, and shipping into workforce.

Ashley Reed wanted to know how this community could market to such big business. Patel said that Amazon for example, has a requirement for one million people within a certain range, and Lincoln can qualify for that.

But, he added that there are other companies doing similar things that require less population concentration and also less workers. The key is to fit the distributor to the assets of the community, it's available workspace and its location.

Reed then asked how the community was supposed to attract such companies when it couldn’t offer good schools, good health care, or parks?

Patel said that the community does have a good hospital and medical care, and a good educational structure with schools and multiple colleges.

Reed said that for her family she knew that she drives out of town twice a week for medical care for her child. Patel then asked if she was suggesting that there needed to be more offered at the hospital. Reed said she wasn’t suggesting anything.

The last portion of the hour had gone over time allotted, so the conversations stopped, and Dahlhoff explained that the GPEDC would be working to compile all the information collected across all five counties of the region and putting together the 2020 CEDS. He said that the GPEDC would put the document together in a manner that was readable and “easy to digest” and not just an 80 page document of facts and figures.

Dahlhoff also hoped that the discussions would lead to future action locally. He said that the topics and discussions had shown that there were needs within the community that could be approached on a local level and that bringing to light issues like the courthouse could be the starting point for a group to take action.

He thanked all for coming and participating, and with that the evening was concluded.

[Nila Smith with photos by Jan Youngquist]