Governor's conference draws 1,400 to Springfield

Editor’s Note: Springfield Business Journal reporters Jeremy Elwood, Cory Smith and Matt Wagner sat in on various seminars during the Aug. 27–30 Governor’s Conference on Economic Development at Springfield’s University Plaza Hotel and Convention Center.

Oxford, Miss., branded itself the “Literature Capital of the South.”

Columbus. Ind., earned recognition as the sixth-most architecturally significant city in the United States.

And Peru, Ill., bested its larger counterpart of LaSalle by installing infrastructure along an interstate dividing the two cities to capture $5 million annually in retail sales tax revenue.

Jack Schultz shared these success stories and others with some 1,400 people attending the Governor’s Conference on Economic Development in Springfield. The four-day conference featured 60 breakout sessions covering everything from housing to downtown revitalization to work force development.

Schultz, the keynote speaker, is founder and CEO of Effingham, Ill.-based industrial development firm Agracel Inc. He also wrote “Boomtown, USA: The 7K Keys to Big Success in Small Towns,” a book based on three years of research that examined more than 15,000 small towns across the country.

Schultz outlined the keys and cited examples of “agurbs,” or booming rural communities not within a metropolitan statistical area, that embodied each one.

Leavenworth, Wash., for example, reinvented itself as a Bavarian village after a sawmill, the town’s biggest employer, shut down. Despite the distinct absence of a link to Germany, the town doubled its population, opened boutique wineries and eventually became home to 40 Bavarian families.

Schultz said the next wave for agurbs will be direct air travel between smaller and medium-size cities, expanded telephone and Internet capabilities and a high quality of life paired with a lower costs of living.

Conference Highlights

Just the facts
Foreclosure crisis deconstructed
Employable skills
Agriculture adapting for ethanol
Wise working women[[In-content Ad]]