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Kent 360 - Kent, Ohio

Blog of Dave Ruller, Kent City Manager

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Building Community Through the Arts

May 21, 2006 by dave

Ever since Richard Florida wrote his book “The Rise of the Creative Class” there”s been a race to see who can attract those funky, nonconventional “20 to 30 somethings” who have for the last 10 years at least been excellent markers of economic vitality.  Dr. Florida wasn’t trying to start a revolution but in a way that’s exactly what he did in the world of city economic development.  Whether you agree or disagree with his findings, he has forever changed the way we look at our cities as catalysts for propserity.

I heard Dr. Florida speak 2 years ago and he is quick to point out that he’s an academic not a politician.  He studies not promotes.  He explained the all he tried to do in his work was to connect the dots, not script a social/political economic agenda.  Yet in highlighting the remarkable economic success of cities that had large gay populations and other counter-culture elements, his conclusions drew immediate reaction from both the left and right side of the political spectrum.  To some he became a hero while others saw him as public enemy number one.

Irrespective of political persuasion, his insights have certainly broadened the lens through which most cities viewed their economic development strategies.  His book suggested that economic vitality in our multi-media, globally competitive, hyper-information-knowledge-is-king world is more than dark blue business suits; it”s also got room for green spiked hair and alterative lifestyles.

He noted that being able to mix a lot of different people, from different places, with different likes and dislikes brings a lot of economic horsepower to a city but it also takes a high degree of tolerance for everyone to all get along.  He discovered that the mix seems to work best in cities with that a lot of cultural amenities like art, music, and theater.  I”m not sure if the arts comes first or follows, but either way it legitimized the role of arts and culture in business development and gave a whole new crop of people a seat at the economic table.  Art became more than pretty pictures, it was fuel for the economic engine.

Here in Kent, we have an active and growing arts community that is contributing to cultural tourism.  The Kent Stage hosts music events all year long that bring people into Kent from hundreds of miles away.  DICE sponsors competitive ice carving, outdoor movies, cider fests and much more in downtown Kent.  Standing Rock Art Gallery has become a center for cultural creations in Kent and we have our very own glass blowing academy just a mile down the road from downtown.   Woodsy”s Music brings in over 400 students a week from all over northeast Ohio to learn the musical trades.  Kent State hosts the annual Folk Festival and KSU has it’s own downtown art gallery.

The good news is that culture is being made every day here in Kent.  Maybe we haven’t officially unveiled our strategy for cultural tourism — but it’s already alive and well.

But the arts does even more than just stimulate the local economy.  It helps build community.  That”s why I love the adopted phrase of Standing Rock, “Building Community Through the Arts.”  That says it all.

Support Kent Arts every chance you can.  If not for business reasons, then for the Kent community.  I can’t think of a better cause to rally behind than that.

Filed Under: General

Sports Tourism: Show Me The Money

May 19, 2006 by dave

Sports Tourism:  Show Me The Money

$6.48 million in 2005.
That’s how much money was brought in to the local economy in my last city (Kingsport, TN) from hosting youth sports tournaments in just one year.  That’s $12 million over 2 years, $30 million over 5 years.  That’s a lot of new dollars.

In case you have any doubts of the economic power of sports tourism, the National Association of Sports Commissions (NASC) reports that every dollar spent to support a sports event produces $2.37 of new revenues in return, with an average expenditure of $150 spent per person per event in the host community.

In Kingsport sports tourism was an integral part of our overall economic and community development initiatives. I include the community reference on purpose because the facilities we built there were not just used for special events; they were used by all the local kids as well, so our kids got to compete on some top flight fields against some of the best student athletes in the nation, and a percentage of the proceeds from the tournament events also went directly back to support the local schools.

Here’s the breakdown on the Kingsport dollars in 2005:
Total Local Economic Impact from Sports Tourism (new dollars injected into local business) = $6.48 million

15-under/9th Grade Boys Basketball Championships had the biggest impact — $3,854,520
USSSA Baseball World Series: $1,585,733.
AAU Wrestling: $505,906.
USSSA Baseball NIT: $397,497.
NAIA Baseball: $137,317.
Event Sponsorship Dollars Produced for Local Schools in 2005 – $50,000

Read All The Kingsport Details

In Kingsport we built our own minor league baseball stadium, we issued a 1/4 cent regional tax increase to pay for a new hotel and conference center (visiting sports teams and families need a place to stay), we redeveloped the municipal golf course, we built two new sports complexes with multiple soccer and baseball fields at one site because that’s what the tournament officials look for — and as you can see from the numbers, when you add it all together, it really worked to bring new dollars into the Kingsport economy.

Obviously our ability to fund new facilities here in Kent is constrained but if you look around you’ll see some exceptional facilities already here on the Kent State campus, as well as Kent City schools and our own Parks and Recreation fields. I can’t help but wonder if we’ve been able to leverage all those facilities into a competitive sports tourism strategy.

The good news is KSU Athletic Director, Laing Kennedy, Kent Superintendent of City Schools, Dr. Marc Crail, and I are all committed to working together to make sure we do just that.

Filed Under: General

Not All Development is Created Equal

May 17, 2006 by dave

Not All Development Is Created Equally

Kent works hard to encourage quality development.  We promote sustainability and seek to strike a balance between environmental protection, historical character, quality of life, development rights and business opportunities.  We want growth and redevelopment that complements and improves upon what we have today.  We don’t want growth for growth sake.  We want growth that makes Kent better.  As simple as all this sounds, doing it is actually quite a tall order.  One thing I’ve learned along the way is that not all development is created equal.

First off, development is not for the faint hearted nor for those with a weak constitution.  It’s a roller coaster ride that can carry you all the way to the top only to take you  crashing down the other side in a matter of seconds, leaving you with no other choice than to throw your hands up and scream.

It’s misunderstood and much maligned when we don’t agree with it but it can also be the saving grace when it all works out to our favor. It’s definitely got that wolf in sheeps clothing thing going on with promises made at every turn and heartbrakes over deals that didn’t pan out. Frankly it’s a lightening rod no matter which side of the fence you sit.

So why do we do it?  Because Darwin was on to something when he noted that those animals that are most capable of adapting are most likely to survive and thrive.  The same holds true for cities.   Unfortunately, the hands of time move in only one direction so resting on the laurels of our past success is not an option.  If we’re not moving forward, we’re losing ground like a melting ice cube.

The trouble is there is no instant pudding in development yet there’s a contagious fever to development prospects that dangle the promise of better days with the next deal of the cards. The winner has got to be in this next hand.  This creates a mania for those that work in it everyday.  They’re close enough to see and smell it but they just can’t grab it.  Meanwhile the pressures mount, expectations rise and the community need for the revenues from new development grows desparate.

I’m reminded of a scene from Where the Wild Things Are and Max shouts “Let the rumpus begin!” It’s easy to slide down this slippery slope and on some level come to believe in development at all costs.  But that’s the beginning of the end.

Somewhere in the middle is that ground where we find the right project and take bold actions to make it happen.  One of the things that I find very interesting is the balance between revenues and expenses from different types of development.  There’s actually been quite a bit of study of how much different land uses bring in new revenues versus how much they consume in service expenses.  A few of the findings of these “Cost of Service Studies” are displayed below:

Development can bring in new revenues but it’s not free.  These are just a few more balls to juggle as we try to find the right development mix for Kent.

Filed Under: General

Idea City

May 16, 2006 by dave

Idea City

One of the great things about the internet is the chance to stumble on cool ideas in a totally, surprisingly random sort of way.  It’s like finding a $20 bill in your pocket. Sweeeeet.

In that spirit I had my own moment of serendipity when I bumped into the IdeaCity web site.  Idea City is a conference that is more a running dialogue of ideas from people of all walks of life than the typical procession of research findings.  It’s practicing group think in a post modern, meeting of the minds, genuinely constructive way.  In this way, it became a model of everything I hoped we can create here in Kent — not just once a year for 3 days — but every day all year long.

With so many smart people living and working in Kent I’ve been thinking for some time that we’ve barely scratched the surface of one of our greatest assets — the idea power of Kent.  The really unique twist to Kent is the combination of theoretical research and practical know how.  A lot of university cities are dominated by  academic researchers and most non-university cities are dominated by business practitioners.  Kent actually occupies that high ground in between with plenty of both types sharing the same home town.

That’s the cold fusion equivalent for entrepreneurship that kick starts the chain reaction sequence transforming ideas into products.  Just like fusion, the key is in the strength of the networks or the bonds between the links in the chain.  Interestingly, our constraint is not on either end of the innovation pipeline, it’s in the middle where ideas bottleneck and have a hard time connecting up with prospective businesses.

The city, the university and the Kent Chamber are working hard to blow the middle wide open and turn imagination loose here in Kent in order to take full advantage of the abundance of opportunities waiting here. I really believe our future will prove to be a product of the quality of our innovation network that we build.

That’s why when I read about the IdeaCity Conference I was intrigued.  It brings together smart people to talk about important issues.  In the unscripted mix, concepts emerge and take on a life of their own based on the common narrative of the attendees. If we could harness and channel that format productively, this seems to represent the ultimate expression of our democratic ideal as practiced in local government.

For me Kent is already a practicing idea city.  I don’t think we give ourselves enough credit for what we’re doing because that’s not our style.  We’re doers not talkers but that humility undersells the economic horsepower that is available in this community.  But horsepower on ice is ineffective.  My goal is to build the traction we need to engage that horsepower.  It’s time to move forward rather than spinning our wheels.

I wanted to share the kinds of comments posted on the “Great Wall of Ideas” at the conference and invite you to offer your own ideas for our wall of Great Ideas to Transform Kent.

Filed Under: General

Making a Case for Change

May 15, 2006 by dave

Making a Case for Change

In my job I get a chance to meet a lot of people from all walks of Kent.  Unofficially, I’d say about 25% of the people I meet are optimistic for Kent’s future, 50% seem a bit uncertain with the remaining 25% disillusioned and even cynical about the prospects for the future.  Somewhere along the way we’ve all met frustrations, been disappointed, or just got beaten down from banging our heads against that wall of inertia day after day; so even though I disagree with the critics, I fully appreciate the source behind their sentiment.

The challenge for me as City Manager is figuring out how to shine the light on Kent’s optimists, fan the flames of our undecided, and hopefully be the spark that reignites the Kent torch held idle in the hand of the skeptics.  Arguing for meaningful transformation of our community is hard work.  Study after study shows that the odds of making lasting changes are almost always working against us, even when our lives are at stake (think of quitting smoking).  That challenge underscores the difficulty of changing the direction of a community of 25,000 people with 25,000 different agendas.

I’m not arguing change for change’s sake.  What I’m talking about are doing those things that need to be done to keep up with a changing world.  If we fail to stay fresh we run the risk of becoming irrelevant and losing the spirit of the legacy of those whose shoulders we stand on today.

In a great book, Self Renewal, John W. Gardner points out that most of us construct our own prisons and serve as our own jail keepers.  To me that’s the danger of pessimism.  By focusing only on our shortcomings we strengthen the ties that hold us down.  In Alexandria Virginia I worked with a secretary who had worked as an elephant trainer (don’t ask) and she told me that adult elephants can be held by the same small ropes that were used on them as babies because the adult elephants believe they can’t break them when in truth they could pull them out at any time.  That’s the power of our beliefs.  I worry that’s what we do with our beliefs about our community when we back down from the risks of change.

On a personal level we seem to know how important it is to change, to grow and to learn.  Likewise, we look for businesses to invest in that are able to continually reinvent themselves in order to stay competitive and produce economic results.  Yet, we have a hard time accepting, much less leading, change in our communities.  But communities are nothing more than people and businesses both of whom we know need change to survive.

I just finished an interesting article that shares insights into change.  It noted that “Real change isn’t motivated by crisis or fear.  The best inspiration comes from leaders who create compelling and positive visions of the future.  Small, gradual changes rarely lead to transformation. Radical, sweeping changes are riskier but are also far more effective.  And narratives, not facts guide our thinking.”

I think we have a chance to lead transformative change in Kent. Together we need to decide where we want to go and what we want to be as a city.  Our window of opportunity is open and we must began to climb through before it narrows.

I’ll end with another two of my favorite John Gardner quotes that keep me inspired every day.

“Life is an endless unfolding, and if we wish it to be, an endless process of self discovery, an endless and unpredictible dialogue between our own potentialities and the life situations in which we find ourselves.  By potentialities, I mean not just intellectual gifts but the full range of one’s capacities for learning, sensing, wondering, understanding, loving and aspiring.”

“We need to believe in ourselves and our future but not to believe that life is easy. Life is painful and rain falls on the just. Leaders must help us see failure and frustration not as reason to doubt ourselves but as reason to strengthen resolve. . . . Don’t pray for the day when we finally solve our problems. Pray that we have the freedom to continue working on the problems the future will never cease to throw at us.”

To me that is exactly why we musn’t give in to the call of cynicism. Kent deserves better and it’s up to us to deliver on that promise.

Filed Under: Recent Releases

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