Community summit results in ideas
JANESVILLE — A better transportation infrastructure, social activities for younger adults and producing alternative sources of energy while making Janesville an eco-friendly community are a few of the top ideas to emerge from a community summit on Janesville’s future.
The communitywide brainstorming session in June resulted in almost 400 ideas from nearly 200 participants who were asked what Janesville can do in the coming 24 months to improve the local business climate and attract new business investment.
The results were assigned to 11 categories. A group of community leaders then analyzed the ideas and ranked the top five from each category.
According to the community leaders, the best ideas by category are:
-- Community: “Enhance and promote social activities for those between the ages of 18-28.”
-- Downtown: Adopt the downtown Business Improvement District proposal.
-- Economic development: Gather the top 20 area employers for a dialogue on possible expansion plans and what the city can do to help.
-- Education: Expand vocational and technical training tied with the retraining of displaced workers to meet the needs of the job market.
-- Energy: Produce alternative sources of energy.
-- Environment: Take an active role in becoming an eco-friendly community.
-- Government: Improve the business climate at the state level, specifically less red tape and better tax policies.
-- Labor and workforce: Advertise nationally the quality of the local labor force.
-- Regionalism: Host a collaborative meeting between Janesville and Beloit to build community cooperation.
-- Tourism: Ask the Janesville Area Convention & Visitors Bureau to expand and do more to market Janesville as a destination city.
-- Transportation: Improve transportation links, such as a four-lane Highway 14 and a six-lane Interstate 90/39.
The full set of data, available at www.forwardjanesville.com, will be presented to the city, where staff will use it to formulate Janesville’s long-range economic development strategy.
“This is not the end of the process by any means,” said Rich Gruber, chairman of Forward Janesville’s board of directors. “We’ll hand this off to the city, say, ‘Here are the results,’ and, ‘Now is the time to step forward as a community and get involved in a broader sense and organize a regional summit.’”
Gruber said the organization of the downtown BID, marketing the community more effectively, retraining displaced workers and pulling the city’s major employers together stood out for him.
“We have a strong history in this community of thriving businesses that were started in basements and garages,” said Gruber, a vice president at Mercy Health System. “We need to get our major employers together around one table and see what we can do as businesses to foster that kind economic development.”
Gruber said a change in government’s agenda also is warranted.
“When you look at the tools available in Wisconsin for economic development and compare them to the states around us, we have a pretty meager toolbox,” he said. “Our job is to challenge our legislators to beef up that toolbox.”
Aug 13, 2008 at 8:59 a.m.
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I like this one-
One of the more creative ideas markets Janesville as "Wisconsin's restaurant capital," because of the large number of restaurants located right off the interstate, WISC-TV reported.
"Janesville, City of Trans-Fats"
or "Janesville, City of Cholesterol"
Good thing we are getting another hospital!
Aug 12, 2008 at 3:39 p.m.
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(Sorry, I went over the limit!)
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The only really outstanding idea on this list that I see are the ones about making Janesville a green, eco-friendly city with investment in alternative energy. It is still something in which we could be a leader and it would be a fantastic "story" for us to have in the wake of losing GM. Obviously what is lacking is specific proposals. Recycling? Biofuels? Greener city vehicles including buses? It would probably take 5-10 years to really become a hallmark but we could see ourselves as an incubator and innovator of such ideas. It might take 20 years for it to really start to pay dividends in terms of both our city image and actual returns on capital investment. We'd have to make a commitment to do this, but facing the loss of major manufacturers is a time for renewal and changing course. It's too bad there's so much local pushback on biofuels and wind energy, and that we lost Ken Hendricks. But if I were to choose one great new idea to focus on from all of them, this would be the one.
Aug 12, 2008 at 3:35 p.m.
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A lot of these are fine ideas, but they fall into several categories. Things we should be doing anyway, for instance, includes promoting our labor force, or cooperating better with Beloit. Things we may never stop hearing includes more activities for young people. (Although I would say we've vastly improved on that score over 20 years.) Things that are largely out of our hands includes improving transportation links, which also counts as something that's pretty good to begin with. (I-90 is already slated to be widened 5 years from now, and it's unlikely we could move that schedule up; and improving US-14 is already under study.)
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Things that I'm not sure would really do much good (or fishing expeditions) include talking expansion with our top 20 employers -- in the middle of a recession. I'm sure they all want to expand and I'm sure we'll help them when they do, especially if it involves something like TIF financing or a land swap. But businesses don't expand because the community asks them to.
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We already have a fine educational system in Wisconsin and two fine facilities in Rock County, not counting Beloit College, or the nearby UW-Whitewater and UW-Madison. I don't see the four-year college plan (not listed here, but in the full list) either contributing much in the long run or having a lot of viability. That's something that needs to be founded by educational and business leaders with a lot of dough to survive the first 50 years, before alumni endowments begin to help.
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I say this not to criticize any one individual idea or disrespect the contributions of the participants. I just want to introduce some critical thinking to the process.
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For example, promoting Janesville as a destination is meaningless if there's nothing for tourists to enjoy when they get here. There's the Tallman House and ... Bessie the Cow? What we should promote better instead is our quality of life for residents. That's an actual advantage we have. Recognizing it and making sure people know about it are the next steps. We have the Rock River, and we have numerous historic districts. What are we doing to promote those, even to ourselves? There's a glacial plan to convert the riverfront into parks, but I don't even see in the new Janesville comprehensive plan anything centered on the river as an entity. Work from our strengths, simply, and not our weaknesses.
Aug 12, 2008 at 2:15 p.m.
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Janesville - gateway to Edgerton
Aug 12, 2008 at 10:53 a.m.
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Janesville is NOT a destination city by a LONG SHOT. It won't be, either unless there is something more to offer than Rotary Gardens and a tavern every 15 feet.
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