CEO Roundtable: Regionalism

Each month, we gather around the table with a different group of Springfield business leaders to discuss industry trends, workforce and company operations. Join us as we get a behind-the-scenes look into our business community from the C-suite.

Springfield Business Journal Executive Editor Christine Temple sits down with Jonas Arjes, economic development lead at the Branson/Lakes Area Chamber of Commerce & CVB and incoming senior vice president of economic development for the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce; Erin Danastasio, executive director of the Hatch Foundation and co-founder of Leaders for Ozarks Region Evolvement, or LORE; Kristen Haseltine, executive director of Show Me Christian County; and Macy Mitchell, executive director of the Republic Area Chamber of Commerce and small-business owner.

Christine Temple: Springfield Business Journal this year and for the past six years, we’ve been taking an Economic Growth Survey. We asked a new question this year, asking business leaders and executives what assets of the Springfield region need to be developed to better compete for business and talent. Many themes emerged: quality of life improvements, housing and affordability, business development, infrastructure and transportation, expanded public amenities, and regionalism and developing a marketing strategy. People have a lot of ideas for what our region needs. Wondering how you guys would answer that question?
Kristen Haseltine: Infrastructure. A lot of that will follow if you have the infrastructure. We have a lot of rural communities, we have land, but we need the funding to be able to build it up to be able to create the assets to draw on new businesses. That’s where your homes come. That is the highest priority for Christian County, in particular, but I feel like overall in the region, that is what is holding us back.
Macy Mitchell: Besides infrastructure, we’ve got to cater to families a little bit better. As a business owner, who do I want through my door? Most of the time, family members with that two-to-five-people range. Why? Because you have buyers there, then you have generational buyers, and then you have commitment and then you have growth and then you keep them here.
Erin Danastasio: We did a SWOT analysis and asked a lot of individuals to provide their input. What are the things that you think that we need to be focusing on? And child care is definitely one that rose to the top. Attainable housing was another. But I would also argue that to keep people here, I mean we’re trying to attract them to come, but to retain them is such a crucial piece. Quality of life, quality of place is what the Hatch Foundation specifically focuses on. That’s a lot of what our conversations with LORE have been around as well. How do we highlight the things that we have here that, as you’re saying, parks, outdoors, recreation, but then also our arts community is thriving and it’s so incredible. We have so many attractions. There are so many great things that we can really build upon and focus to be able to keep individuals here and the right people here.
Jonas Arjes: I’ll take the simple way out: All the above. To be competitive as a region, we have to be good or score well in all those categories. If I were to pick out one thing out of that, I would lean more toward the housing, attainable housing. Just for the simple fact when you look at talent retention and recruitment, we could have the best program and if they don’t have anywhere to sleep, it doesn’t matter.
Temple: As we talk about this concept of regionalism, I think definitions are really important. What is the region when we are talking about Springfield area, and that might even be controversial about the Springfield area, but geographically and by assets, how do you define this Ozarks area?
Arjes: I think southwest Missouri is the region. We encompass all the way over to Joplin, all the way over to West Plains. For the Springfield Regional Economic Partnership, it’s specifically that 10-county region, which mirrors Southwest Missouri Council of Government. Then you look at how commerce works within that region and where folks are coming and doing business. That can even expand it out. To add another layer to it, what does the laborshed look like? You talk about Republic and you look at Amazon, I would love to see a heat map of where those employees are coming from to go to work at that facility since it’s new and a little bit different. We did a laborshed analysis early on with the Taney County Partnership, and it really opened our investors’ eyes to see that we drew employees from 19 counties in Taney County for the Branson market.
Danastasio: I agree. For me it’s that 10-county region. But there are a lot of conversations around that, and also the geographic make-up, when you look at the waterways and our trail systems, we’re all just so interconnected. I know a lot of organizations will look at that five-county metro area.
Mitchell: I don’t really think of location. I grew up in a family that achieved the American dream, on the brink of poverty. My dad was a tire builder, got laid off; all of a sudden you start seeing success. As I got older, I always told my dad, I said, “Hey, man, you’re quiet. You could dig ditches for a living and be happy and you wouldn’t tell anybody about it. But I want to be your megaphone.” That’s why I took the director job at the chamber. I want to be your megaphone for small-business owners and families that are scrimping by, the people who are looking at profit losses at 2 a.m. with a kid on their leg they’re trying to put back to sleep and they’re wondering how they’re going to make it. When I hear regionalism, I hear we just want everyone to win. We want prosperity for everybody. Just because we’re in Republic and we’re growing and that takes a lot of time, don’t get me wrong, but it’s important for me to go see the new businesses in Nixa and in Ozark and in Springfield. When I hear regionalism, I think it’s just about encouraging the human spirit. It’s important that we all win where we are, but at the same time, we realize that prosperity is when we all kind of bring it together and we take care of each other.
Temple: Can you point to examples of how regionalism has led to business growth or how you’ve seen a lack of regionalism, a lack of conversation has made us lose something?
Haseltine: This kind of plays into the question of boundaries because internally I’m working with seven municipalities, and so even just in there, there’s a subset of regionalism bringing all of them together. We have a lot of collaboration within our own county, crossing over community lines to bring a business in. As far as leads that we get, sometimes it might not be a good fit for Taney County or for Christian County and we’ve worked together on almost passing along a business opportunity. Currently, I am working with the economic development professional in Boliver. He called me and said, “Hey, I have a need. This is what we’re looking for. Do you have a contact? “ He sent me some properties, and so I forwarded that onto our contacts. Sometimes there are opportunities there where we are collaborating that is behind the scenes. On the other hand, there are things that we are doing that I think are hurting us. I’m going to go out on a little limb; we had a $2 million road that we were needing, and if we got this $2 million road, then we would get a 50-acre development. It would’ve been very high-wage jobs. We went to the state legislator; we asked for money. That would’ve been a big regional win if we could have got the funding. Thank goodness, we recently applied for a grant and did receive it, so we will see that development happen. But to me, that was a big miss. Regionally, if we could have collectively been having that discussion of how could we help as a collective? We could have won. We could have done that, moved forward quicker.