‘At best Columbus is holding steady’: Leaders promote prosperity plan for region’s future

As chairman of the Columbus 2025 initiative, Billy Blanchard informed a group of community leaders about the region’s state of affairs on Monday and said the area has some work to do, and a plan to get it done.

“The Greater Columbus MSA’s population grew by 24 percent from 1970 to 2013, which sounds OK, except that was 58th out of 61 metro areas in the Southeast over the same period,” he said. “The total non-farm jobs in the MSA increased by 1.7 percent in the 10 years from 2005 to 2015. That percentage was the second lowest of the nine peer communities that we compared ourselves against.

“Approximately 21.2 percent of the region’s population over the age of 25 has a bachelor’s degree or higher,” he continued. “That number is less than the national average of 29.6 percent and less than the nine communities that we evaluated in the study.”

Blanchard presented the statistics at a Coalition for Sound Growth meeting, where he stood in as guest speaker for Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce President/CEO Brian Anderson. The meeting, held at the Spencer Environmental Center on 12th Street, drew coalition members from various local agencies. Some organizations represented included Trees Columbus, Columbus Community Foundation, Midtown Inc., Keep Columbus Beautiful and Columbus Water Works.

Blanchard said the numbers came from a Regional Prosperity Initiative study conducted by the chamber in 2015.

“There was some good stuff in there as well,” he said. “We realize that we have an unbelievably philanthropic community. We have great corporate citizens who really encourage their leadership teams to get involved and become champions of different things going on in our community.

“We have Fort Benning, $4.7 billion of annual economic impact, and 40,000 people a day on Fort Benning working,” he said. “ … And we have a quality of life that most people feel pretty good about.”

Blanchard also said there’s significant room for improvement. The Regional Prosperity Initiative included a competitive assessment that compared the Columbus region with nine peer communities: Augusta, Ga.-South Carolina; Chattanooga, Tenn.-Georgia; Clarksville, Tenn.-Kentucky; Fayetteville, Ark.-Missouri; Fayetteville, N.C.; Greenville, S.C.; Huntsville, Ala.; Montgomery, Ala.; and Savannah, Ga.

Among other findings:

▪ About 22 percent of the region’s population lives in poverty. The child poverty rate is at about 33 percent.

▪ Just 4.8 percent of jobs are held by self-employed workers. That compares with 6.1 percent in Georgia and 6.6 nationally. When compared with the nine peer cities, Columbus had the lowest percentage of total employment in firms less than five years old.

Blanchard said Columbus 2025 is a strategy developed from the Regional Prosperity Initiative to address the problems. It focuses on increasing prosperity, reducing poverty and improving the quality of life for everyone in the region.

“Columbus 2025 is a comprehensive strategy and it touches on multiple facets of our community that need to be addressed to try to help grow jobs and investments in our community and improve the quality of life,” Blanchard said later in an interview with the Ledger-Enquirer. “ … It’s a five-year strategy; but I think over the next 25 years, if we continue to do five-year strategies, we’re going to see this whole region transform, grow, develop. It will be a real quality place where people will want to live, work and raise a family.”

Will Burgin, a CSG executive committee member who introduced Blanchard, described Columbus 2025 as “the most interesting thing that we’ve got regionally going on.”

“Columbus finds itself in a hole in a number of ways,” he said. “ … They got together and really looked at an assessment across multiple fields and found that we are not winning. At best Columbus is holding steady.

“But if we’re not actually moving forward, if we’re not gaining talented people, if we’re not gaining new businesses, if we’re not gaining a larger tax base, if we’re not gaining better diversity initiatives … then we’re going to go backwards,” Burgin said, “because the cities where our children want to go are accomplishing those missions.”

Blanchard said Columbus 2025 addresses the problems through five action areas with specific key objectives, recommended strategies, timelines and scorecards. He described the action areas as follows:

▪ Targeted Economic Growth: Growing existing businesses, attracting new firms and investment, and pursuing special opportunities for growth and diversification. Blanchard said the chamber is forming a Business Retention and Expansion program to connect with local businesses. It’s also developing a GIS-enabled website for site selection consultants looking for good locations for companies to do business.

▪ An Enterprising Culture: Creating an ecosystem for entrepreneurs in the region. He said leaders plan to create a center for entrepreneurship in the community, which will help provide resources, including access to capital.

▪ Talented, Educated People: Aligning education and workforce systems, developing homegrown talent, retaining the best and brightest talent and attracting quality workers to Columbus. He said a cradle-to-career partnership is being developed as part of that project.

▪ Vibrant and Connected Place: Maximizing the impact of the region’s greatest natural resource, the Chattahoochee River; promoting vibrant and attractive neighborhoods, corridors and activity centers; connecting people and places with expanding opportunities for walking, biking and transit.

▪ A Cohesive Image and Identity: Establishing a unified community brand, promoting Greater Columbus to audiences outside the region. Blanchard said Columbus 2025 leaders hired a company that recently developed a brand that’s being rolled out to the greater Columbus community. He presented a colorful logo with the words, “Columbus: We do amazing.”

“This brand tells the story of who we are,” said Blanchard. “ … We’re a diverse community. We have an amazing skyline. We’ve got historic preservation. … We’ve got blue for the river and green for the military, and the brick color for our old history with buildings of brick.”

This story was originally published October 30, 2017 at 5:12 PM with the headline "‘At best Columbus is holding steady’: Leaders promote prosperity plan for region’s future."