The Observation Deck

In turbulent economic times (aka, at all times), a City is better off with 100 businesses with 10 employees each than one business with 1,000 employees. Most communites devote a lot of effort to get the one big employer. It's not always the best development strategy.

Lakewood is not going to win a competition for a company with 300 or 400 hundred employees. The City has no vacant land, little available office space and no white knight in Columbus or Washington to hand out free money. (The feds just spent $16 million per mile to build the Crocker extension. What are the chances the feds will spend $16 million per mile in Lakewood?)

But Lakewood can win a competition for new and existing small business. What needs to be done to make the CITY a small business incubator?:

http://pods.dasnr.okstate.edu/docushare ... 905web.pdf

Bill

Merry Christmas

I would encourage you to look back to some of the earliest posts on this website, for words like, "VAL," "pants," "fullfilment zones."

All of these had a part of a plan that was to help get businesses started in Lakewood and grow. Some of the plan even took home based businesses to store front to national and international. A presentation was even made to the Chamber and their Home Based Businesses by myself. I was told the Home Based Business group was about hime based businesses, and not about moving them out of their homes.

Currently MAMA and DADA have begun looking for home based businesses to move into some storefronts we have identified, and we are working to get them in. Unfortunately, we are also working desperately to keep some Lakewood businesses open in these tough times.

Lakewood is perfect for this.


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Jim O'Bryan wrote:l

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!!

It's going to be a great year!