We believe in Springfield and Clark County’s future
At this year’s annual meeting, the Greater Springfield Partnership honored Alicia Sweet
Hupp with the Richard L. Kuss Lifetime Community Achievement Award. We honored a longstanding company named Jeff Wyler Springfield Auto Mall, which happens to be celebrating 50 years in business. We also honored the Peanut Shoppe, The Turner Foundation, ambassador Michele Hemphill, and Gov. Mike Dewine, who was born in Springfield.
Congratulations to all our award recipients!
The theme for this year’s Annual Meeting was “Believe!” As you might surmise, we ripped it from the popular comedy series called “Ted Lasso,” a streaming show about an American football coach hired to coach an English soccer team whose owner secretly wants the team to fail.
Like in the show Ted Lasso, we must believe before we can move forward. According to Chat GPT, “Belief can serve as a powerful catalyst for individuals, communities, or even entire societies to embark on new endeavors, overcome challenges and strive for improvement. When people believe in a vision, goal, or collective purpose, it can inspire determination, resilience and coordinated efforts to move forward.”
We must believe first that we can be better as a leader, as a city or county, and yes, as a business com- munity. All these things are inextricably tied together. One of the most interesting things a former cham
ber board chairman ever said to me was, “Over my longstanding time working with the chamber, sometimes we moved forward as a community, and some- times we didn’t.” No one wants to be a part of going backward, but each of us plays an important role in which direction we ultimately go.
As Ted Lasso laments to his team, we collectively choose whether we move forward or backward. The good news for us is that, even with the challenges associated with higher interest rates and inflation facing our community today, we are still moving forward! Our community is becoming more vibrant. We have stakeholder alignment around five key pillar areas, and we are working on them together.
In 2024 the GSP team will continue to be focused on seven strategic pillars. We will continue to work towards the realization of vision projects like the Champion City Sports & Wellness Center, a 100,000-square-foot regional sports tourism facility that would attract 3,000 sports team participants and associated visitors on weekends while serving as a community youth and adult recreation center during the week. The flat space would provide room for many different youth sports opportunities, which includes room for eight basketball, 16 volleyball, or 24 pickle ball courts.
We continue to experience incredible job growth at companies like Topre and Gabe’s. That is in addi
tion to the several thousand jobs already created or expanded over the past several years. With next-generation job attraction opportunities on the horizon in the advanced air mobility, manufacturing and technology spaces, the sky is the limit for Springfield and Clark County!
Our ability as a state, a region and as a community to attract the right kind of talent to take the jobs being created will be the key. That is why the Greater Springfield Partnership continues to work on a nationally recognized program it created called “Con- sider Clark County” that utilizes an associated website Clarkcounty.jobs. This program combines YouScience, a student aptitude and career assessment tool,
with a 16 career cluster video series that highlights area job opportunities. These ongoing efforts are gaining momentum in the schools, as well as with area employers. These collective efforts will be a game changer in providing the right answer to our future workforce needs.
Our area’s massive job growth has helped to create a housing market surge for the first time in several decades. GSP is partnering with Forty Partners on the Melody Parks project, a 400-acre development that includes the Melody Drive in and Nextedge Tech
Park. The project, which broke ground recently, will include 1,250 upscale housing units along with a mixed-use retail and restaurant development located along Route 40 east near I-70.
GSP continues to partner in a downtown catalytic fund called Springforward. This group of investors in our downtown’s redevelopment includes Mercy Hospital, Speedway, The Turner Foundation, Quinlan Foundation, the Springfield Foundation, the city and county. The fund works primarily with mixed-use developers to help make this area a hotspot lifestyle community opportunity in the heart of the county seat. In the next five years there are plans for more than 200 market rate apartments with associated entertainment, retail, and restaurant opportunities to be in downtown.
GSP continues to receive statewide awards that recognize destination marketing excellence. We are also focused on major downtown events like MustardFest, Indiecraft, Jazz Fest, First Friday Events, and of course the month-long Holiday in The City. GSP is in the final year of a threeyear commitment to buy the popular outdoor ice rink for a total of $300,000 with the help of major sponsors Speedway and the Clark County Convention Facilities Authority.
Yes, like Ted Lasso, “WE BELIEVE!” We are dreaming BIG, and our hard work is paying off. We have the right ingredients for success as a state, as a region, and yes, as Springfield and Clark County. We are building a vibrant community. We have momentum and we simply need to keep it moving forward in 2024. Onward!