Ten years ago, this city was sharing a very different conversation about its future.
The Toyota Motor Manufacturing plant in Georgetown was gearing up to become the manufacturer’s first North American assembly plant to produce a gas-electric hybrid. The idea of downtown redevelopment and an urban lifestyle in Lexington was just starting to gain a foothold, with plans in the works for projects such as Main and Rose, Kimball House Square and Shelbourne Plaza. And Lexington was crossing its fingers at the long-shot possibility of becoming the first venue to host the World Equestrian Games on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.
We at Business Lexington’s parent company, Smiley Pete Publishing, could see there was a lot to talk about in the local business community. As we spoke with local leaders about our idea to launch a new business publication, we heard the same story over and over again, retold in many forms and from many different perspectives: This city has a lot of potential, and we are ready to make good things happen.
But it’s difficult to create new momentum without first building a new conversation. When Business Lexington published its first issue in May 2005, our goal was to fi ll that need for communication and to open that new dialogue for change.
First as a bi-weekly and more recently as a monthly, Business Lexington has published more than 200 issues over the last 10 years, chronicling the new ideas, the challenges, the disappointments and the successes of local businesses. In our print issue, through our Weekly Wire e-mail newsletter and on our website, we have brought our readers thousands of stories, highlighting the efforts of the people and companies that work to shape and grow our local and regional economy.
Business Lexington has been the product of an exceptional team of people over the years who have shared a strong love for our community and a drive to create a publication that could serve our business community well, including founding Editor-in-Chief Tom Martin and founding chief designer Chris Rosenthal; former Editor-in-Chief Erik Carlson and current Editor-in-Chief M. David Nichols; chief designer Drew Purcell; features editor Susan Baniak; and our advertising sales team, including Amy Eddie, Carmen Hemesath, Linda Hinchcliffe, Steve O’Bryan and Ann Staton. We have also benefited from the talents of a host of dedicated local writers over the years.
As a team, we have worked to give our community a new understanding of what our economy encompasses and to expand their vision of what business in Lexington can be. We have emphasized the growing role of the arts in our local economy, and as part of the downtown entertainment task force, we worked to define the benefits of a vibrant nighttime economy for the city in terms of revenue, quality of life and the growth of our creative workforce.
We have reported on the rise and fall of local music venues, and the emergence of vibrant new business corridors in once-languishing areas of the city, such as the Distillery District, Jefferson Street, National Avenue and North Limestone Avenue. We have covered the emergence of the dynamic restaurant scene along Short Street and the growing popularity of downtown initiatives like the expanding Lexington Farmers Market and Thursday Night Live.
As we chronicled the effects of the shrinking tobacco base on the region’s agriculture, we also shone a light on efforts to re-energize traditional Kentucky industries made new again, such as wine vineyards, small-batch bourbon distilleries and the potential for industrial hemp production. We have followed the birth of a burgeoning local craft beer movement, along with a booming surge in the region’s bourbon economy.
And perhaps most important, we have cast a much-needed spotlight on the innovative but often overlooked small-business owners who form the backbone of any local economy. In addition to our service in promoting local independent businesses as a founding member of Local First Lexington, we have shared the lessons that local business owners have learned on the pages of our publications, along with their concerns for our city and the challenges they have faced in a shifting and sometimes rocky economic landscape.
While we have worked to be fair and objective in our coverage of business news, we have not refrained from contributing our time and support to efforts that have benefited the community, including the philanthropic fundraising of the annual GoodGiving Challenge, an initiative launched by Smiley Pete Publishing in partnership with the Blue Grass Community Foundation. Through the GoodGiving Guide campaign, we have challenged business professionals at all stages in their careers to learn more about the philanthropic efforts in their community, to envision the change they want to see locally and to lend their tangible support to those efforts. Our community’s response has consistently exceeded our expectations. Since its inception in 2011, the GoodGiving Challenge has raised roughly $4.2 million to fund the philanthropic efforts of area nonprofits. That kind of response can only come from an energized and informed community that wants to help make good things happen.
Technology has transformed our industry over the last decade and helped us to expand these community conversations to include more voices more quickly than ever before. One of the important first steps in transforming ideas into reality is to get the right information to the right people — the ones with the insight, the connections, the determination and the wherewithal to move those ideas forward. Social media has enabled us to introduce new ideas and initiatives and encourage an active dialog among the varied stakeholders in Lexington’s economy. And the greatest satisfaction of the last 10 years for us has been seeing our community respond and connect and bring so many great ideas to fruition.
The last 10 years have shown a new attitude of cooperation among people in the local business community, among established business investors and entrepreneurial spirits, young professionals and baby boomers nearing retirement, longtime Lexingtonians and recent returnees — groups that previously viewed each other from distrustful and sometimes opposing viewpoints. We have worked to highlight and encourage that cooperation on the pages of our magazine.
Ten years is a long time in today’s highly competitive publishing industry. We have felt privileged to play a part in the new conversation and to have gained the trust and support of so many valued readers and business supporters. And we look forward to sharing the debates and the controversies, the ideas and the innovations, the possibilities and the realities, and the many as-yet untold stories of our local business community for years to come.