Emporia needs to actively recruit commercial businesses, four of the five city commissioners said at a goal-setting session Thursday.
The discussion on getting and keeping retail businesses took up most of the two-hour session at the water treatment plant. Most of the Emporia City Commission agreed that waiting for industrial businesses to draw commercial ones wasn’t working anymore.
“I think that approach was valid 15 or 20 years ago,” Commissioner Jeff Longbine said. “I don’t think it’s valid now.”
“I don’t think the market is going to come to us,” Commissioner Jim Kessler agreed.
That could mean the use of incentives to attract retail businesses, although most commissioners seemed to favor “back-door” incentives that would have the business pay up front and then get some of the money back if they performed well. That route had been suggested as a possible option by City Manager Matt Zimmerman.
“Economic incentives are not a bad thing, because they bring us what we want,” Zimmerman said. “But the deal has to be that we’ll give them back some of the money they gave us, not money up front. And unless it’s something we really, really want, it’s not worth it.”
The one dissenter was Commissioner Julie Johnson, who remained uncomfortable about using incentives to sweeten the deal for a business.
“Isn’t that what the capitalistic system is about?” she asked. “People in private enterprise see an opportunity and seek to reap the benefits, and if they’ve miscalculated, they take the loss?”
“Yes,” Longbine said.
“So how do we justify reducing their risk with incentives?” Johnson asked.
The other commissioners considered incentives a possible tool. They are an increasingly common way of doing business, Zimmerman said, but there’s also a risk: when you give something to one company, others want the same deal or better.
“It becomes a race to the bottom,” he said. “I can’t tell you how many companies call and say ‘If I come to your town, what will you do for me?’ It’s an uncomfortable way to begin a relationship. But it’s how the game is played.”
Commissioner Kevin Nelson said Emporia’s current strategy has mostly resulted in missed opportunity.
“The 10-cent question is, how much do we think we can get back, now that we’ve been beat to the punch?” he asked.
The commission and Zimmerman also discussed more general ways of marketing the community, such as directional signs and development of destination spots. Right now, Zimmerman said, the absence of signs keeps Emporia from capitalizing on its attractions, such as the William Allen White home.
“I’ve been in Emporia three weeks and I still don’t know where the William Allen White house is,” he said. “My point is, if we have the William Allen White house and we don’t have signs showing visitors how to get there, aren’t we shooting ourselves in the foot?”
Other discussions looked at ways to spruce up Emporia’s commercial areas, such as the downtown, the west side and Sixth Avenue.
“I think our biggest challenge in redevelopment is going to be the Sixth Avenue corridor,” Longbine said. “That’s going to be a tough one.”
Agler described the area as a “hodgepodge” — a mix of homes and businesses with no overall plan for development. Many of the businesses, Zimmerman noted, are “impulse buy” sorts of places, such as fast-food restaurants.
By the same token, Zimmerman said, it is a busy area.
“There are very few vacancies that I can think of on Sixth Street,” he said.
“There’s the fairgrounds,” City Attorney Blaise Plummer joked.
“Blaise!” Johnson warned quickly, as everyone laughed. The issue of development or restoration of the fairgrounds has been a controversial one in the past.
The session is the second meeting Zimmerman and the commissioners have held to set goals for 2007. The group had hoped to set those goals Thursday but ran out of time. On Wednesday, the commissioners will talk about setting up a third session.
Some of the priorities that have already been identified include finding ways to motivate and develop the staff, and to look at outcome-based budgeting.