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Thursday, May 17, 2012

Learning by Doing in Watertown, South Dakota

By Evan D. Robertson, Project Associate. I’ve been as far north as Bird Island, Minnesota. Just two weeks ago, I can now claim to have been as far north as Watertown, South Dakota. Watertown sits on the stretch of I-29 between Sioux Falls, SD and Fargo, ND. Much of the land between Minneapolis and Watertown is primarily agricultural: the view from thirty thousand feet reveals neatly subdivided plots of land with undeviating roads vanishing far into the horizon. As we approached the City of... Read More
Posted by erobertson@marketstreetservices.com at 8:00 AM
Workforce development Higher education

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Beyond Test Scores: Engaging and Empowering Kids in Community Initiatives

By Stephanie Allen, Project Assistant. The city of New York has an interesting new way of dealing with its water-quality challenge. Nope, it’s not more storage tanks or deeper tunnels, it’s sixth graders. Sixth graders at Stephen A. Halsey Junior High School are learning about techniques to prevent stormwater runoff into an antiquated combined sewer system that overflows during heavy rains, spilling raw sewage straight into the Flushing Bay. A partnership between five city schools and the ... Read More
Posted by sallen@marketstreetservices.com at 10:49 AM
Sustainable Development Education Parks and greenspace Community Development

Tuesday, May 08, 2012

Smorgasblog

 By Matt Tarleton, Project Manager.   I’ve stumbled upon a handful of noteworthy stories in the last week or so – too many to weave into a single, coherent blog entry about a particular topic – so this month’s entry is a smorgasbord of articles for your reading pleasure. Or perhaps I was really just looking for an excuse to use the word smorgasbord.   “Beer bubble” in Bend?   An i nteresting story about the growth of microbreweries and their relative... Read More
Posted by mtarleton@marketstreetservices.com at 9:45 AM
Education Downtown and neighborhood development Tourism Talent Pipeline

Friday, May 04, 2012

One Year Ago…

By Jonathan Miller, Project Associate. Tomorrow, May 4th, is one year, to the day, that I started at Market Street Services. In my first year I have learned more than I could have ever imagined. I have worked in a variety of communities, including Vestavia Hills, AL; Gwinnett County, GA; Madison, WI; Henry County, GA; and Austin, TX. While each community is unique, the one common thread that binds them all together is a commitment to make their community better – the status quo is... Read More
Posted by jmiller@marketstreetservices.com at 8:16 AM
Commentary

Wednesday, May 02, 2012

The Tennessee Williams Economy

By Christa Tinsley Spaht, Project Manager.   We all know America's postwar era saw major, major changes in the economy, especially in the Deep South which had not benefited from the earlier Industrial Revolution as dramatically as its neighbors to the north. And no one made dramatic changes into must-see melodrama like celebrated writer Tennessee Williams. Each spring my friends and I revisit several of his works committed to film—both famous and obscure—in honor of his March... Read More
Posted by cspaht@marketstreetservices.com at 3:07 PM
Commentary The Economy

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Some Retail Therapies More Effective Than Others

By Ellen Cutter, Director of Research. In my household, there are two distinct groups of magazines that arrive at our house. The first group belongs to my husband and includes *serious* reads like The New Yorker, Harpers, and assorted literary journals. The second group is mine and includes less serious reads things like Vanity Fair, People, and Cooking Light. On a recent foray into the less illustrated world of my husband’s preferred reading, I discovered why the simple thing of purchasing... Read More
Posted by ecutter@marketstreetservices.com at 11:52 AM
Retail

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Can Your Community Go “Viral”?

By Alex Pearlstein, Director of Projects. One of the great challenges of economic development marketing in today’s wired, information-overloaded world is how to penetrate the noise and get opinion-makers, corporate executives, entrepreneurs, investors, and top talent to notice your community. While site selection and corporate real estate-focused publications and websites still reach a certain percentage of relocation professionals, they will probably not compel a prospect to consider your... Read More
Posted by apearlstein@marketstreetservices.com at 4:17 PM

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Don't Call it a Comeback

By Kathy Young, Director of Operations.     Earlier this week, two of our staff ( Ellen Cutter and Christa Spaht ) were in Joplin, Missouri for a meeting with the Steering Committee of the seven-county Joplin Regional Prosperity Initiative . Even compared to other regional strategic processes that Market Street has facilitated over the years, the Joplin regional effort is an impressive undertaking. The region's seven communities span three states, which changes the dynamics... Read More
Posted by KYoung@marketstreetservices.com at 3:58 PM
Small business and entrepreneurship Disaster recovery

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

I Believe the Children Are Our Future, Even the Poor Ones

By Ranada Robinson, Senior Research Associate.   Since graduate school, I have had an interest in social norms, how to quantify them, and if it’s possible to intentionally steer them. Today, I came across a report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Data Snapshot on High-Poverty Communities and started thinking again of social norms. It’s one thing to live in poverty, and it’s another added layer when concentrated poverty is considered. Almost eight million kids under 18 in this... Read More
Posted by rrobinson@marketstreetservices.com at 3:06 PM
Education Philanthropy and volunteering Income Disparity Social Capital

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

To Drive...or Not to Drive

By Stephanie Allen, Project Assistant.   I was all ready to write a blog post on this interesting article from the Atlantic last month drawing parallels between US employment and US consumer spending, when I saw a link to this article by Richard Florida posted this morning on the Atlantic’s “Cities: Place Matters” blog about the decline of car ownership among young Americans. It caught my eye. Why? Personal reasons. After years of being carless (and loving it), I’m seriously... Read More
Posted by KYoung@marketstreetservices.com at 5:00 PM
Transportation Quality of Life

Wednesday, April 04, 2012

Higher Education Goes Open Source in America

By Evan D. Robertson, Project Associate. If you’ve spent more than two straight decades in some form of educational system then there is only one word to describe your relationship with education: ambivalent. On the one hand, the complete dominance of your time, constant stress to perform, and general shenanigans that accompany it begin to wear you out. On the other, there is something truly magnificent about the process of discovery. Upon my graduation, there has, admittedly, been a pull... Read More
Posted by erobertson@marketstreetservices.com at 2:36 PM
Education Technology Talent Pipeline

Monday, April 02, 2012

Clackety-Clack, Please Come Back!

By Alex Pearlstein, Director of Projects. A couple of years ago, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece on the anticipated proliferation of rail cargo as the volume of overland goods shipments skyrockets and our nation’s roads and highways grow ever more congested. It was a convincing article and got me excited again about something I’ve long wondered: why is America’s passenger rail capacity so pathetic? I emailed the reporter about whether he had asked any of the rail executives he spoke to... Read More
Posted by apearlstein@marketstreetservices.com at 8:43 AM
Transportation Infrastructure

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Lessons Learned from McKesson’s Move from Memphis to Mississippi

By Matt Tarleton, Project Manager. I am guilty of having an abnormal affinity for alliteration (see what I did there?), so let me apologize for the blog title in advance. A few weeks ago, I wrote about Brunswick County, North Carolina and the heartbreak associated with finishing runner-up for two 1,400+ job projects. One of those projects, a Continental Tire facility, ultimately went to South Carolina due to the state’s unwillingness to grant comparable incentives. The second, a... Read More
Posted by mtarleton@marketstreetservices.com at 5:33 PM
Incentives Taxes Business retention and expansion Recruitment

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Degrees of Snobbery

By Jonathan Miller, Project Associate.   Rick Santorum, in a criticism of President Obama’s push for universal access to higher education, was quoted as saying, “President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob.” Snobbery and elitism are not new barbs with which the right is now attacking the left, but in this case, it takes on a new connotation: college, in general, is a partisan issue. Fortunately, the bit played poorly with Santorum’s own party... Read More
Posted by jmiller@marketstreetservices.com at 1:11 PM
Higher education

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Teach Your Children Well

By Kathy Young, Director of Operations.   Not long before I graduated from high school, an unexpected bestselling book was published titled An Incomplete Education . While I'm long overdue for a new edition (as are the authors, since the most recent update was in 2006), I still appreciate the book's ability to present concise explorations of a wide variety of topics without reading like straight encyclopedic reference set. Which, by the way, is soon to be history, at least in... Read More
Posted by KYoung@marketstreetservices.com at 3:19 PM
Education Workforce development Talent Pipeline

Friday, March 16, 2012

In the Trenches

By Matt Tester, Project Associate. We talk about communities having to do more with less these days. Look no further than your local library to see what this looks like in practice. According to a March 2012 Pew report, “The Library in the City: Changing Demands and a Challenging Future,” local libraries are providing an ever-increasing range of functions to an increasingly demanding public – even while budget cuts threaten their ability to maintain current levels of service. By tracking... Read More
Posted by mtester@marketstreetservices.com at 1:13 PM
The Economy Libraries

Thursday, March 08, 2012

Not in Kansas Anymore but Still Daydreaming about the Technology

By Ranada Robinson, Senior Research Associate.   Last week, my colleague Christa Tinsley Spaht and I traveled to the “Heart of America” to tour various sites that are major assets for the Joplin region, which encompasses seven counties in three states. The region, which is the focus of our most recent regional economic development strategy process ,  has several impressive assets, but the one that made me feel like an excited school kid was the Kansas Technology Center ... Read More
Posted by rrobinson@marketstreetservices.com at 10:05 AM
Technology Client communities Higher education

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Score One for the Liberal Arts

By Stephanie Allen, Project Assistant.  We spend a lot of time focusing on STEM education in economic development. We worry that as a nation, a state, a county, a community we’re falling behind our peers in STEM education so we create STEM focused programs for K-12 students. We lament the fact that fewer and fewer students are obtaining college degrees in STEM areas so we encourage our young adults to major in STEM areas and we tell them about all the job opportunities there will be... Read More
Posted by sallen@marketstreetservices.com at 9:08 AM
Education Commentary Talent Pipeline

Thursday, March 01, 2012

Measuring recovery

By Matt Tester, Project Manager.   I like to think of Market Street as a “human scale” community and economic development consultancy. As with most organizations (thinking specifically of college hoops), our corporate identity reflects the identity of our top leadership (which explains my disdain for Duke). And Mac has never been keen on using the flashier measures of economic development – e.g., ribbon cuttings, relocation announcements – to tell a community’s story. Since its... Read More
Posted by mtester@marketstreetservices.com at 4:30 PM
Research and Analysis The Economy

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Always the Bridesmaid, Never the Bride

By Matt Tarleton, Project Manager. Some of my earliest and fondest childhood memories were set in Brunswick County, North Carolina : fishing with my father and grandfather, learning the art of developing “ drip castles ,” and discovering what it feels like to swallow a mouthful of saltwater. Since those early days as a child, Brunswick County, and more specifically Ocean Isle Beach, has become an incredibly special place in my life. Having moved throughout North Carolina and Georgia... Read More
Posted by mtarleton@marketstreetservices.com at 8:00 AM
Incentives Manufacturing Marketing Recruitment

Thursday, February 23, 2012

A Forest of Food

By Stephanie Allen, Project Assistant.   As an avid baker and cook, I find little more satisfying than harvesting my own ingredients. I have been fortunate enough to hide out from the Wisconsin winter for the last few months in Los Angeles with friends who have a huge garden in the backyard of their Echo Park home and a neighborhood full of fruit trees (isn’t telecommuting wonderful?). I basically feel like I’m in heaven. So, imagine my excitement when I heard about a seven-acre... Read More
Posted by sallen@marketstreetservices.com at 4:03 PM
Parks and greenspace Food

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Arts on the Go

By Kathy Young, Director of Operations.   I'm still pretty excited about the food truck movement, recently blogged about with savory enthusiasm by my colleague Evan Robertson , so you can imagine my delight upon learning of Dance Truck , an Atlanta-based organization formed in 2009. I stumbled across Dance Truck while facilitating a focus group for a good friend and founder of another innovative Atlanta dance troupe, Zoetic Dance Ensemble , during an outreach project they've... Read More
Posted by KYoung@marketstreetservices.com at 2:27 PM
Arts

Friday, February 17, 2012

What’s in a Name? The Answer Can be Tricky

By Alex Pearlstein, Director of Projects.   In our client communities, we very often work with regional organizations to develop strategic plans for their areas. In most cases, these regional organizations – be they chambers or economic development corporations (EDCs) – represent broad geographies with multiple component cities and counties. They also – more often than not – contain a central city or cities that hold most of the population and employment concentrations... Read More
Posted by apearlstein@marketstreetservices.com at 2:06 PM
Commentary Regionalism Marketing

Monday, February 13, 2012

Going Home

By J. Mac Holladay, founder and CEO. Earlier this week I had a chance to return to my roots in North West Tennessee. After flying into Memphis (my hometown) we drove north to Dyersburg. I was addressing a nine county economic development group started by the local developers and Chamber Executives. They had worked hard on a regional plan and had engaged the state in reviewing and continuing to work on the plan. There are no big cities in that part of Tennessee. My two grandfathers... Read More
Posted by mholladay@marketstreetservices.com at 8:45 AM
Strategies Commentary Rural development