Lexington, KY - For 71 years, Commerce Lexington Inc. has led inter-city visits to communities across the United States and even into Canada. These trips are designed as a learning opportunity for community leaders to study another city and apply the best of what they see and hear to the Bluegrass region.
Over the years, area business professionals, government officials, education and community leaders, and entrepreneurs have participated in visits to a variety of cities, such as Portland, Raleigh, Austin, Madison, Nashville, Boulder, Minneapolis, Baltimore and many more. While we have studied the successes and challenges of each city that we've visited, we also take the important opportunity to look inwardly at our own community in terms of what is currently working well, what could be improved and what partnerships between organizations could be effective for our region.
There is a common misconception among some people that, by visiting these cities, we somehow want Lexington to become an Austin or a Raleigh or a Boulder, or even a Madison. While all of these cities appear at the top of many economic rankings for business and quality of life, they all have their own issues, and in many cases, Lexington is already an equal or doing better in the areas of comparison. Lexington is unique in its own way, and we certainly don't want to do anything that would diminish it.
For 2010, we decided that we'd do something just a little bit different. Continuing a focus of regional collaboration, the chambers of commerce in Kentucky's two largest cities came together for a joint Leadership Expedition to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on May 10-12. Roughly 325 people from Lexington and Louisville took three days away from their businesses and families to travel to the "Steel City" in search of opportunities for improvement and collaboration among the two cities.
Again, do we want to be exactly like Pittsburgh? Not at all. But we can certainly learn from some of its transformational efforts that have turned the city into one of the "greenest" cities, one of the best for venture capital investment, a top city for job growth, and the number one Most Livable City in America.
A highlight of the three-day agenda was a higher education panel that featured University of Kentucky President Dr. Lee Todd, Jr.; University of Louisville President Dr. James Ramsey; Carnegie Mellon University President Dr. Jared Cohon; and University of Pittsburgh Chancellor Mark Nordenberg. Presidents Todd and Ramsey called on Kentucky state legislators to properly fund public universities so they can do more to contribute to the state's economy, while striving to meet the goals set out by the legislature (i.e. UK as a Top-20 research institution).
In turning itself around, Pittsburgh recognized the important connection between education and a strong workforce, which ultimately becomes an attractor for new business and a retention tool for existing industry. A $250 million program created by the city of Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and many corporate partners provides college and trade-school scholarships to each public school graduate with good grades who has lived in the city for the last four years.
We also heard from the visionary Bill Strickland, who established the Manchester Bidwell Center right in the inner-city neighborhood where he grew up. This training center aims to provide kids and unemployed adults with real-world skills in an environment that gives them the best chance for success. Preliminary plans are already being talked about in Lexington for a similar model here.
Grant Oliphant of The Pittsburgh Foundation may have said it best when describing the impetus for change over time. He said it was the appeal of a large transformational idea that got people excited about it.
"If it's compelling enough, people will figure out how to do it," he said. The same thought can be applied to Lexington and Louisville; it doesn't have to be a large benefactor, but a collective will and cooperation that can make it a priority.
Our final day in Pittsburgh featured a brainstorming session among the Louisville and Lexington participants, exploring ways that the two cities could work together. Individuals were asked to come up with three ideas for collaboration and then exchange those ideas with multiple groups of three to four people.
Some of the ideas included: