Lansing and Portland: How important are regional strategic plans?

It was obvious that I was going to love Portland; it was just a question of how much. The city is chalked full of individuals that love coffee, good microbrews and the outdoors… close to my three favorite things. Located centrally downtown, there’s a used book store that takes up a full city block that I spent hours in and would have happily spent hours more. I ate at a small breakfast dinner, an Indian foodcart, a chic vegan restaurant and saw a movie where the served you drinks and food. For my two nights out, I visited an older neighborhood school (Kennedy School) and a John Steinbeck-esque plantation called Edgefield. Finally, all I had to do was type #inpdx into twitter and locals answered my questions about what I should do around town. Instead of preach about why I think Portland is so great, I decided I’d prefer to focus on what is Portland doing to continue to improve.

Something important to understand Portland is that it is primarily comprised of a patchwork of neighborhoods. There’s no centrally planned out navigational system and even I, who is pretty adventurous when it comes to public transit, found it somewhat hard to navigate between neighborhoods. Oftentimes, we ended up driving between neighborhoods, which was kind of a bummer. Another interesting characteristic of Portland is that is actually has a pretty high unemployment and what I would guess would be an even higher underemployment, where degree holding young adults are working for minimum wage at coffee shops. Even Portland’s Economic Development Strategy report cites that “Despite the city’s leadership in sustainable living, Portland lags in creating jobs. With the region’s workforce expected to grow at 2.4% annually – about six times faster than in the nation as a whole, even in the face of job declines – the need for job growth will become even more pressing.”

Currently, Portland seems to be in the process of working on this major strategy of investing in four major sectors: clean tech/sustainable industries, advanced manufacturing, activewear, and software, investing in urban innovation and fostering neighborhood vitality. (Thanks to Semiosis for the easy breakdown.) The plan has an extensive list of strategy partners that support the goals of the report and strategy.

Interesting to me, the Portland strategy reads almost identically to Leap’s, Greater Lansing Next Plan, which was released November 11^th, after a 10 month study of regional assets and opportunities by the MSU Land Policy Institute. Like Portland’s plan, LEAP has a series of strategic partners identified as crucial for economic prosperity in the Greater Lansing region.

My concern is what comes next after these wonderfully researched and written out strategic plans? How do you implement broad recommendations like “strengthen and expand our regional mission?” Undoubtedly lots of money goes to creating these great far-sighted plans, but where does the money come from to implement tangible outcomes of these vague goals? Also who brings and coordinates the community that undoubtedly wants to see these broad goals come to being?? While I’d certainly like to see success on both Portland’s and Lansing’s strategic economic development plans, I worry about too broad/ambitious of goals and too much territorial fighting over who is there to achieve those goals. I suppose with any luck, I’ll be proven wrong and both cities will continue to prosper economically, while keeping and achieving even higher quality of living standards. The two cities may be at different starting points, but based on their strategic plans, they are heading towards the same finish line.

West Lafayette vs. East Lansing: The Battle of the Broken Towns?

My brother and I explored Discovery Park, a hotbed for innovation at Purdue

I sat in here and worked on this while my brother packed!

I’ve been to West Lafayette at least once a year for the last six years when my brother Sam decided as a high school senior to go to Purdue for Chemical Engineering. I’ve always thought of West Lafayette as a manufacturing town far past its prime and encapsulated with boring farmlands. However, after an economics professor, who has traveled around the world, came back from a long weekend trip and said West Lafayette was a “wonderful, cosmopolitan city,” I realized I better reevaluate. After all, I am sure many others hold a very similar perspective of East Lansing and just haven’t given MSU, East Lansing and the greater Lansing region a fair chance either.

So after exploring with my brother and striking up some conversations with the locals there are a few things that I think East Lansing would be well served to emulate. First, just about any restaurant in West Lafayette can get a liquor license. I worried about even writing about this because it could easily be misconstrued to GenY=Booze Hounds, however, a beer with your cheap slice of pizza is a nice social gathering. In East Lansing it’s just not even feasible for a place like Georgios to get a liquor license, or many of the sushi restaurants around campus. We, therefore, are regulated to the limited bars around campus that serve decent food. The more choices the better for us social young adults. After all, variety is the spice of life.

The union at Purdue University is also pretty nice! Now, it’s no University of Wisconsin- Madison union that sits on the lakefront but it does topple the somewhat pathetic MSU Union, which offers no food or seating area that I would ever take my family too. A central location on campus with comfortable seating, a plethora of work spaces and decent food/coffee is what unions should be all about. MSU’s union, unfortunately, is a place I do my banking and study in the basement of but would never actually consider meeting a friend for lunch. Purdue does seem to get this right.

The third thing that struck me is the large amounts of new buildings the University is constructing to house research laboratories and production sites. They created Discovery Park, whose primary goal is to transform a traditional academic culture into one that is more entrepreneurial and supportive of innovation. The Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship acts as a capstone for these different science and engineering labs buy creating entrepreneurship education programs to students and faculty and assessing the commercial viability of the research done. This impressive array of physical and program support marks Purdue’s proactive approach to turning West Lafayette and Indiana into a life and physical science hub of for the United States.

I thought I had studied campus entrepreneurship pretty thoroughly across the Big Ten network and bragged about the University of Michigan’s program, as well as the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but had never even heard of Purdue’s program, which is arguably the most impressive one. The program includes an entrepreneurial certificate, a entrepreneurship study abroad, events, such as speaker series and business plan competitions, entrepreneurial leadership training for faculty and staff, extensive linkages to University research (as indicated above) and a physical space for all these pockets of entrepreneurship to meet. Of those completing this program 23% said they are currently involved in a venture of some kind, while 88% reported that they are likely or very likely to become involved in an entrepreneurial venture in the future.

While Purdue’s physical amenities, like its Union and variety of restaurants may attract some students and young adults to the University/area, the University has certainly begun cultivating young talent that has the confidence and resources to act on their own entrepreneurial ventures in many disciplines. The city is certainly not perfect, even my brother is ready to get out after five years. However, spaces like Discovery Park will attract and cultivate the best and brightest entrepreneurial minds, particularly in the science and engineering arenas, and could very well push West Lafayette and Indiana to become a global leader in those arenas, if they aren’t already. If students have ground breaking research and facility/resources to commercialize that research, you can bet they aren’t peacing out after their four years here.

I’ve given West Lafayette and Purdue a bad rap these six years and realize anyone could say the same thing about my beloved East Lansing. The region is way more than farmland and a manufacturing town past its prime. It’s a hotspot for my beloved buzzwords: creativity, innovation and talent. And with its newest investments, it’s only going to get better. East Lansing versus West Lafayette? I can’t decide fairly decide winner but I do declare that neither is a town past its prime… They both are on their way up if they keep up their investments/development!