Greetings and welcome to Friday. Looks like a gorgeous day out there today and hopefully we’ll get a pretty nice Saturday as well – I hope so, because I plan to grill out a hanger steak tomorrow and that’s WAY less fun in the rain!

Here’s the EDALC update for the week –

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Paul’s week:

Project Associate Search – So the tale of the tape: out of 25+ applications, we ended up with 13 qualified applicants – most of those came from Indeed, Facebook and CraigsList postings (none from the Chamber of Commerce job listings which was curious to me). I did five interviews, and we had three standouts and I checked the references on those. Yesterday, I reached out to Cindy Bruckart (the top candidate in my mind, on paper, from our connection during the interview and from her references) to offer her the position, which she enthusiastically accepted. She’ll be coming in next Thursday for an initial introduction to the position and getting the paperwork rolling. I feel great about the process and that we’ve got an awesome new teammate to help us do our best work possible.

Port of Toledo – I had a meet and greet Zoom call with new Port Director Lorna and we talked through ways to collaborate down the road. I also provided a letter of support to her for a grant application to repair and upgrade public dock parking and the docks themselves. Bay Area Enterprises – a company I was working with to locate some commercial rental space so they can expand into Lincoln County – has located within the Port of Toledo office building.

Destination Trail Work – Jesse Dolin invited me into a conversation at Bike Newport with the NEWT group to discuss their plans and efforts to create destination-worthy mountain bike trails around the Big Creek reservoir. I was able to share some of the work we did in Michigan to develop trails to capture folks who were trekking up to Marquette for their destination trails (and we also discussed the economic value of those trails).

Newport News Times – I met with the Newport News Times publisher Jeremy Burke this week, both as a meet and greet but also to explore some possible collaboration. We discussed the possibility of me writing a regular economic development column for the paper and well as potentially setting up a marketing support grant program for local entrepreneurs. We’ll be following up in the next week or so to dial in the details.

Programs Going Forward – Jalene Case and I met twice this week to discuss possibly developing a series of value-added programs for our members (virtual at first) that look to be unique offerings in the business development space (as in, not duplicating any of the programs of the SBDC or RAIN). We’ve got a little more research to do but hopefully we can land on a test program to implement.

Rogue Brewery – Next Tuesday, we’re set to do a video shoot at Rogue with President Dharma Tamm to discuss their early COVID pivot to develop Helping Hands hand sanitizer. It’s part of a series we’re developing through our Leadership Lincoln team focusing on the great work being done by businesses and organizations here in Lincoln County.

Toledo ART – This week, we met as a committee to select the “inaugural class” of artists for Toledo’s Main Street Phantom Galleries. Nearly thirty different artists with over 100 pieces of art submitted for consideration!

Unexpectedly Cool – A couple of weeks ago, I submitted a proposal to deliver a short talk and moderate a round table discussion at the Spring Game Designers Workshop session, which will be held virtually on March 27th. The topic I submitted was “Gameifying the Strategic Planning Process”, and I received word yesterday that it was accepted for the event – which is SO cool. I’ve been brainstorming and jotting down notes for a few months on how we can energize and improve the economic development strategic planning process and moving it away from traditional “visioning” and looking at ways to employ rule-sets and challenges to enhance the process and improve the results, and this session will allow me to test out and explore those ideas with some of the most talented game designers in the world (I’m also pretty darn nervous!).

Timber that doesn’t go “Timber!” – Here’s a cool piece on engineered timber being used to develop a larger multi-story, multi-use building called “The Dutch Mountains” in the city of Eindhoven in the Netherlands: https://www.thedutchmountains.nl/en/

Just wanted to share an experience last night – Susan and I went out to Sorella’s for dinner (we usually do their Thursday special pizza for take out, but decided to eat it there) – it was packed and LOUD! I can’t remember the last time I heard a room full of loud happy people, talking, laughing, toasting their glasses – it was… almost… normal!

FYI – I’ll be off on Monday. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks and quite some time since I’ve had a day off for some mental R&R, so I plan to do some reading and play some blues guitar!

Thanks for ALL that you are doing out there! Please reach out to me if you need anything at all. Have a wonderful weekend!

Cheers,

-Paul 🙂