Rolling, Rolling, Rolling…Keep Momentum Rolling…Rolling, Rolling, Rolling…Downtown

Sorry about the “Rawhide” head­line, but I have seen the “Blues Broth­ers” a few hun­dred too many times in my short life and any time I hear a phrase phrase with “rolling” in it my mind con­jures up images of Jake and Elwood’s Coun­try and West­ern ren­di­tion of the tune. But I digress.

I was for­tu­nate enough to attend the Town Hall Meet­ing at Sin­clair today put on by WDTN, Sin­clair, and the Day­ton Busi­ness Jour­nal. The event fea­tured var­i­ous stake­hold­ers from the area and revolved around a dis­cus­sion of down­town Day­ton. I was happy to be a part of the event. It was great to see the panel, rep­re­sent­ing so many dif­fer­ent inter­ests, cohe­sively sup­port­ing the growth and devel­op­ment of down­town. I firmly believe that while our city faces an abun­dance of chal­lenges, there is a tal­ented, pas­sion­ate group of elected and appointed offi­cials at the helm– all of whom are work­ing to make our city and the sur­round­ing region a bet­ter place to work and live.

I took the oppor­tu­nity to share my delight, and that of my fel­low employ­ees here at Hafen­brack, about our move to down­town with the panel. It has truly ener­gized our orga­ni­za­tion. As part of the 14% of jobs cre­ated by new busi­nesses in down­town, I say thanks to all who have wel­comed us. We are happy to be down­town, and look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing to add to the growth of the city both directly and indirectly.

While the meet­ing focused on down­town, there was atten­tion paid to the region as well. I strongly believe that we need to be atten­tive to the needs of down­town Day­ton, but in the broader con­text of the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties. Day­ton has unique ameni­ties to offer that other com­mu­ni­ties do not. Arts, enter­tain­ment, his­tory, diver­sity, loca­tion, etc… Con­versely, each com­mu­nity in the Miami Val­ley has its own fla­vor and serves to add to the over­all attrac­tive­ness of the region. It is not a zero sum game — or at least it does not have to be. By cre­at­ing a won­der­ful down­town, sur­rounded by unique and won­der­ful com­mu­ni­ties, we can bring in jobs and peo­ple from out­side the area — spark­ing real growth. In doing so, we all ben­e­fit. I feel good about the fact that there appears to be a great deal of effort going into improv­ing our city, our county, and our region. I am a stake­holder in all of the above. I hear so much neg­a­tive about the area, that it is nice to hear more about the pos­i­tive. There is an abun­dance of it.

I would like to extend my thanks to all of the pan­elists who gave of them­selves to talk about the future of our com­mu­nity. The panel was com­posed of the fol­low­ing mem­bers (taken from the DBJ)

Day­ton Mayor Rhine McLin; J.P. Nau­seef, pres­i­dent and chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of the Day­ton Devel­op­ment Coali­tion; Deb­bie Lieber­man, pres­i­dent of the Mont­gomery County Com­mis­sion; Sandy Gudorf, pres­i­dent of the Down­town Day­ton Part­ner­ship; Rashad Young, Day­ton city man­ager; Phil Parker, pres­i­dent and chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of the Day­ton Area Cham­ber of Com­merce; and Richard Stock, direc­tor of the Uni­ver­sity of Dayton’s Busi­ness Research Group.

Below is an arti­cle from the Day­ton Busi­ness Jour­nal about the event. It does the event more jus­tice than I can, and con­tains the “rolling” quote that inspired the head­line. Give it a look.

Area lead­ers gather for town hall forum on down­town Day­ton — Day­ton Busi­ness Journal: