Economic Development Update

December 8, 2006

During the past three years, I have had the honor to participate on the Oakland County Business Roundtable Economic Development Committee. 

The Mission of the Oakland County Business Roundtable is to provide advice to the County Executive on business, economic and land development matters in order to ensure the preservation of the county’s quality of life and economic vitality for the benefit of its citizens, communities and businesses. The Roundtable will work to ensure the implementation of its original recommendations, as well as identifying new issues and subsequent recommendations in order to successfully plan for the county’s future. 

The following are comments are from Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson in the 2006 Annual Report of the Business Roundtable released this past week: 

Few people in Michigan need to be reminded of the economic realities that surround us. Our manufacturing base continues to shed jobs in the hundreds or thousands while replacement jobs return at a fraction of the pace, if at all. But despite such adversity, Oakland County continues to be the one constant on the horizon – a beacon of hope on an unforgiving landscape. I need look no further than talented leaders and visionaries that comprise the Business Roundtable to understand why. 

During the past year, I had the honor to serve on a Task Force of the Economic Development Committee lead by a brilliant business visionary, Don Kegley, Jr. of Cunningham Limp.  The following is excerpted from the 2006 Annual Report on the activities of our task force. 

Business Climate Taskforce Update 

The only states in the nation doing worse economically than Michigan are ones that have recently experienced natural disasters. While Michigan has not experienced a natural disaster it is experiencing an economic earthquake. 

Many of our local elected officials and residents “get it,” but we need those that don’t to understand that they are at the epicenter of an economic disaster. Just like an earthquake, there are huge geopolitical forces building up pressure and changing the entire economic landscape in Michigan. 

Just as the domestic auto industry is finally waking up to the fact that it is no longer the only game in town, so too our local communities must wake up to that fact. 

Too many local municipal officials still believe it’s “location, location, location” that attracts businesses and that in Oakland County we have the location. In a world where businesses can choose the best business climate for each aspect of their business, it’s no longer a sellers’ market; it’s a buyers’ market.  Our competition in Georgia and Kentucky and China and India is effectively communicating to businesses the message “Please come to our community – what can we do to help you?” 

If jobs move to Georgia or Kentucky or China or India because they offer a better and more welcoming business climate, the effect on our local communities will be more devastating than a natural disaster. It can take years to rebuild buildings destroyed by a natural disaster. It will take decades to recover if we lose our job base to an economic earthquake. 

In light of this widening gulf and intensifying global competition, this task force is working to develop a set of marketing messages and a strategy for using them to affect a 180-degree shift in thinking among our residents and decision makers who don’t yet understand the positive effects that a welcoming attitude toward business can have on our economy and tax base. 

During the next several months, the Novi Economic Development Corporation will begin to re-examine it roles and responsibilities within our community.  As a member, I will work to carry forward the goals of the Business Climate Task Force to our community and its ED activities.

I am personally looking forward to the opening of the Grapevine in the Main Street area.  This new establishment recently received a liquor license from City Council and will feature fine wines and light appetizers.  The owners, Brian and Lori Burke, are Novi residents and expect to open in late Spring 2007.

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Benjamin Franklin US author, diplomat, inventor, physicist, politician, & printer (1706 - 1790)

In the tradition of Ben Franklin, the Novi Post provides informed political commentary on current events in Novi, Oakland County and all of Michigan.