Kentucky Unbridled Future: New State Economic Plan aligns well with Owensboro Stategy

I attended the unveiling of the Cabinet for Economic Development's "Kentucky Unbridled Future" economic development strategic plan yesterday in Frankfort.

Overall the plan, presented by Boyette Strategic Advisors, is very well done. The plan lines up really well with many of the initiatives that are being implemented currently in the Greater Owensboro region. For example, there is a significant emphasis on growing the entrepreneurial climate in the Commonwealth as well as creating strategies for existing companies, especially Second Stage firms, the tools they need to grow.

With budget cuts looming, the big unanswered question in the room is how much money will be available to insure that the Cabinet, which has faced significant budget cuts over the past few years, can effectively implement the aggressive recommendations.

The plan can be viewed at http://www.kentuckysunbridledfuture.com/

Facts about Interstate 67 as Owensboro's interstate

The new Interstate 67 Corridor is perhaps one of the most important and exciting opportunities for the Greater Owensboro region. I-67 is a top priority of the City of Owensboro, Daviess County Fiscal Court, Greater Owensboro Economic Development Corp and Chamber of Commerce. These organizations will be working closely with the Interstate 67 Development Corporation and leadership in Spencer, Dubois, and Daviess counties in southern Indiana to make I-67 a reality.

The following are some key points about I-67:

• North-south interstate link between Indianapolis and Nashville, TN that will pass through Owensboro, Kentucky.
• I-67 uses mostly existing corridors from I-69 at Indianapolis and the Natcher Parkway to I-65 near Bowling Green, KY
• One major Greenfield section remains, 38 miles of US 231 from I-64 to I-69 in Dubois and Daviess counties in Indiana
• I-67 would use the underutilized Natcher Bridge to Kentucky near Owensboro as well as the existing Natcher Parkway and Owensboro By-Pass Extension to connect with I-65 in Bowling Green.
• I-67 would leverage investments in I-69 in southern Indiana and around Indianapolis.
• I-67 would leverage the recently completed US 231 corridor in Spencer County, Indiana. Funding would be used to upgrade and eliminate existing grade intersections.
• I-67 would provide a less congested route from Nashville to Indianapolis avoiding the delays on I-65 through Louisville.

The view a map of the Interstate 67 corridor, please visit: http://edc.owensboro.com/_documents/owensborointerstateflyer_final.pdf

Owensboro -Daviess County one step closer to Work Ready designation

The Work Ready Review Panel gave the Daviess County Work Ready application a favorable recommendation to the Kentucky Workforce Investment Board (K-WIB) for certification as a Work Ready Community.

Community representatives, including Judge Executive Al Mattingly, Co-Chair Helen Mountjoy and EDC president Nick Brake made a presentation to the panel yesterday. The presentation was supported by representatives from the education, workforce, Chamber and business community.

The final hurdle will be consideration by the K-WIB for actual certification on February 16 in Frankfort.


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Angel investment tax credit bill will help Owensboro

This year, once again, legislation has been prefiled that would establish an angel investor tax credit program for individuals who invest in certain small businesses.

The Greater Owensboro Economic Development Corp. has supported the legislation in years past, and EDC officials are hoping the bill will gain traction this year. It could help Owensboro’s efforts to nurture and retain high tech and life sciences start-up companies that require a lot of capital on the front end, local EDC officials said.

“We’ve been supportive of this for several years,” said Madison Silvert, vice president for entrepreneurship and high tech development at the Greater Owensboro Economic Development Corp. “It would provide incentives for qualified investors to invest in Kentucky start-up companies.”

The state incentives already are available for groups such as Lexington’s Blue Angels and Louisville’s Enterprise Angels and Louisville Angels.


This legislation, however, would provide the same incentives to individuals, and that is important for Owensboro and more rural areas of the state where there are no groups in place, Silvert said.

Generally, angel investors supply venture capital to companies that show high-growth prospects or fit well with their own business or are competing in the sector in which they made their mark.

In recent months, Daviess County showed up at No. 9 among 20 counties nationwide on web magazine BusinessInsider.com’s list of counties identified as potentially the next Silicon Valley.

Two areas the online magazine found in fleshing out the counties were broadband availability rates near 100 percent and unemployment rates beating their peers and the nation.

Silvert said recently that having a culture of entrepreneurial investment is a crucial next step for the Owensboro region in attracting and retaining high tech companies.

The EDC and its partners are providing some breaks for several high tech and life sciences companies within the framework of Emerging Ventures, an innovation center/business incubator and the office and lab space offered in the Centre for Business and Research at 1010 Allen St.

“What we hope people understand is that high tech and life sciences companies require large amounts of capital for start-up, but the jobs they create are high quality and high paying,” Silvert said. “And it’s cheaper to incentivize these companies at the start than to try to relocate a mature company.”

The legislation is important for Owensboro, said Nick Brake, the president of the Greater Owensboro EDC.

“We have a healthy interest in the high tech, biotech and food safety companies we have churning here, and this legislation could turn that interest into investment,” Brake said. “It’s a matter of legislators seeing this as a viable option.”

Brake said he thinks getting a bill passed for angel investor tax credits is a learning process to educate people about how it can help.

Rep. Arnold Simpson’s legislation is prefiled as BR322. If it is filed when the Kentucky General Assembly convenes and becomes law, it would direct the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority to establish the application process for small businesses to participate.Angel investors who qualified could tap into the Kentucky Investment Fund Act tax credits that would be capped at $40 million.Simpson is a Covington Democrat.

The KEDFA would have to maintain a website listing all businesses and investors and the tax credits awarded. The prefiled bill also would require the small businesses to provide an annual report, and it would allow for tax credit recapture under some circumstances.

Community Campus Engineering Academy excites Students

Gorged by a golf ball and soaring over the moon, the bespeckled, fist-size Chick-fil-A cow landed with a thud against the window in Apollo High School’s front lobby.

“Not a bad shot,” mused Landon Meserve, squatting behind his homemade catapult on Friday. “It’s all about the distance from the arm to this crossbar, here,” he said, pointing to a complicated maze of screws, rope, wood and bungee cords.

Meserve is one of 24 regional students in Daviess County Public School’s Project Lead the Way, a national curriculum marrying reality-based college courses with local, hands-on instruction. Students from DCPS, Owensboro, Trinity and Owensboro Catholic high schools are dropped off at, drive or are bused to Apollo’s campus for first period before joining their home schools the rest of the day.

Technology educators Aaron Yeiser and Steven May challenged the teens to calculate distance, displacement, speed, velocity and acceleration from data and to design, build and test a vehicle that stores and releases potential energy for propulsion — all in two weeks’ time.

“We do a version of the competition every year,” May said. “This year, we thought of using cows and getting corporate sponsorship, and it worked out.”

Chick-fil-A sent out their mascot and donated small, stuffed cows for the event, while Mays and fellow teachers honored students with the farthest overall shot and gave points for a series of 10 accuracy shots.

No slingshots were allowed, Mays said, and students only got five practice shots. They got 25 points to shoot the cow over the hand-painted, 6-foot-tall moon; lesser points for landing in one of three 5-gallon buckets; and 10 points per pin for cow bowling. The points doubled for bowling, he said, if students got a strike.

Meserve aimed, pulling back four and a half inches — 10 feet worth of distance —- at a time. He missed, and then a strike. He and his OHS partner, Buxton Johnson, took first with 375 points, Catholic High junior Kali Paul rounded out the bottom with only 70 points.

“Ours is tiny, so it’s like the underdog,” Paul said, pointing to her own, cow-painted creation, at least two feet shorter than Meserve’s. “We didn’t do so well. My catapult is going to Chick-fil-A, and it’s going to retire there.”

Paul and her partner make up a growing minority of women interested in engineering, a statistic college and career readiness coordinator Marcia Carpenter said they’re working to overcome.

“Right now, the national average is 11 percent, and we have 7,” she said, “but hopefully programs like Project Lead the Way will help that.”

Megan Harris, 691-7302, mharris@messenger-inquirer.com

Owensboro EDC and Chamber pass Joint Resolution on the Work Ready Community effort

The boards of directors of the Greater Owensboro Economic Development Corp and Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce passed a joint resolution supporting the application that Owensboro-Daviess County be considered a "Work Ready Community."

The Work Ready Community program was launched by Governor Beshear and the Kentucky Workforce Investment Board (K-WIB)in August of this year. The Owensboro application, which was submitted last week, will be among the first applications considered.

The new program is designed to transform local economies and give counties a competitive advantage in attracting new businesses and jobs.

“We have business and industry in Kentucky that require a skilled workforce. This program provides us with a way to prove it, county by county,” said Gov. Steve Beshear in August. “In addition, the program promotes collaboration among key community stakeholders including education, economic development, elected officials, employers, workforce agencies and community organizations as they work toward common community goals.”

To earn certification, counties will have to meet established criteria in six specific areas. Highlights of the Owensboro application include the following:

· high school graduation rate- Work Ready standard: 82.32%, Owensboro region: 83%;
· National Career Readiness Certificate holders- Work Ready standard: plan to raise to 15% in three years, Owensboro: current 8% with plan to grow to 15%;
· educational attainment (2 and 4-year degree rate)- Work Ready standard: 25%, Owensboro: 32%;
· soft skills development- Work Ready standard: plan to address, Owensboro: a plan is in place;
· digital literacy (percent household with broadband available)- Work Ready standard: 90%, Owensboro: 96%.

The regional Work Ready Community effort was co-chaired by Helen Mounjoy and Judge Al Mattingly in conjunction with the EDC. The K-WIB will consider the application at their February meeting.

Study: Owensboro a high performing small metro

A new U.S. jobs growth report lists Owensboro as a “high performance” small metro based on summer employment trend data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Headlight, LLC, which provides economic and workforce development companies with data and software systems, conducted the analysis.

Owensboro’s annualized growth from June to September was 5.8 percent, and its actual growth was 1.4 percent.

The study also provides a look at how close cities are to their employment status in December 2007 — the start of the recession. Owensboro has a 1.9 percent deficit. This data indicates it would take Owensboro 17 months to get back to the December 2007 employment level.

“Any time you look at comparable data to see where other communities like ours are, and we’re in the top quartile, that’s good,” said Nick Brake, president and CEO of the Greater Owensboro Economic Development Corporation. “And any time someone labels you a high-performing metro, it’s a good thing. It shows we have growth, actual and projected.”

The report analyzed 386 metros — 269 were categorized as small. Owensboro fit the criteria of a “micropolitan” area as defined by the BLS. This group has an average population of 50,000-60,000 but can be as high as 195,000. And they are typically single-county “ex-urbs” that can be located close to large metros.

The report is organized by population size.

Only a couple of other Kentucky metros show up in the study.

Louisville-Jefferson County is a “high performance” metro in the medium category for summer 2011. It’s annualized growth was 4.7 percent; actual growth 1.2 percent. It has a greater deficit from -- or further to go to get back to -- the prerecession employment level than Owensboro does. Its rate is -3.4 percent, meaning it could take 37 months to reach that December 2007 point.

The conversion of the job deficit data into “months remaining” to reach the prerecession rate does not suggest that the recovery will take this long, the study states. It is another data point of reference on the speed of the recovery.

The study also shows that 45 percent of the small metros still were in crisis during the summer. And 41 percent of medium and 35 percent of large metros also showed negative job growth.

Elizabethtown ranked in the bottom 5 percent showing -2.9 percent actual job growth.

“That’s almost half the small cities that were in recession this summer,” Brake said. “If you look at the average job growth by metro size, the top 25 percent are doing pretty well, and the bottom are doing really poorly.”

The report indicates that Owensboro has a good strategy in diversifying its economy and pursuing different options for growth including “quality of place and quality of life,” Brake said.

Not surprising, Brake said, is that it also shows a corollary -- many cities in the top 25 are college cities or are focused on quality of place or quality of life issues.

“They’re focused on creating a strong workforce, attracting young people and attracting entrepreneurs,” he said. “Anything we can do to focus on aligning with this sector is important.”

“While growth has appeared slow but steady for the nation, the recovery has been far from uniform across metros in the U.S.,” the study synopsis states.

The public release about Headlight’s growth report is at http://www.headlightllc.com/bestsummer2011/.

Joy Campbell, 691-7299, jcampbell@messenger-inquirer.com