By: Maggie Comstock
Via: Sustainable Cities

Earlier this month, the World Bank hosted a Smart Cities for All workshop in Washington, DC which convened experts from the United Nations, academia, government agencies, non-profits and industry. The purpose of the workshop was to share insights and experiences of equipping cities with the tools for intelligent growth. Additionally, the forum established a public-private partnership for collaboration in pursuit of shared goals for global sustainability. But what does it mean to be a “smart city”? Is this distinction only reserved for cities starting from scratch? Can an established city boost its IQ?

First, we must take a step back to reflect upon what it means to be a “smart city.” While there is no official definition, many have contributed to this debate. Industry leaders, such as Seimens and IBM, believe that stronger use of technology and data will enable government leaders to make better informed decisions. Whereas others, including the Sustainable Cities Blog’s very own Dan Hoornweg, consider the social aspects as a component of what it means to be a smart city. In his blog, “Smart Cities for Dummies,” published last November, Dan contends: “At its core a smart city is a welcoming, inclusive city, an open city. By being forthright with citizens, with clear accountability, integrity, and fair and honest measures of progress, cities get smarter.” Though I agree with both the data-driven and socially-conscious approaches, I’d like to propose my own definition of a smart city.

At its most basic level, a city is comprised of a government (in some form), people, industry, infrastructure, education and social services. A smart city thoughtfully and sustainably pursues development with all of these components in mind with the additional foresight of the future needs of the city. This approach allows cities to provide for its citizens through services and infrastructure that address both the current needs of the population as well as for projected growth.


Source: Clearing the air in Atlanta: Transit and smart growth or conventional economics?, Alain Bertaud, 2002. http://alain-bertaud.com/

Many of today’s largest metropolises are an organizational and infrastructural nightmare. Take the city of Atlanta, for example. The greater metropolitan area of Atlanta supports a population of about 2.5 million people and spans 137 kilometers between its two furthest points. By 1990, this sprawl had established a density of six people per hectare. Now, compare Atlanta to a city with a similar level of population, Barcelona. The furthest distance of built up area in Barcelona is 97 kilometers with a density of 176 people per hectare (World Development Report 2009, 211). The contrast between the densities of Atlanta and Barcelona can be observed in the diagram left from Alain Bertaud, 2002. The respective densities of Atlanta and Barcelona greatly affect the cities’ ability to serve their citizens. For example, in order for Atlanta to accommodate as many people as Barcelona’s public transit system, Atlanta would need to build an additional 3,400 kilometers of track and about 2,800 new metro stations. Atlanta could then support 30% of trips through mass transit which Barcelona accomplishes with only 99 kilometers of tracks and 136 stations (World Development Report 2009, 211).

Of course hindsight is 20-20. It’s easy for us to tell the City of Atlanta should have predicted its population boom and planned for it appropriately. But it’s not as easy as it sounds.

Are well-established cities, like Atlanta, doomed to fail in the race to be a smart city? How can a city boost its IQ and make the decisions of a smart city moving forward? City governments should create policy incentives for developers to build high-density housing with a small building footprint. In the U.S. many local governments have a similar policy, awarding developers of LEED certified buildings a height or density bonus as an incentive to build sustainably. This is a positive first step but we need to go one step further in order to combat urban sprawl in our cities around the world. In order to plan for population trends in a city, data and technology play a critical role in understanding and predicting the needs of its citizens. Knowledge and data-sharing platforms, including the World Bank’s Urban Knowledge Platform, are empowering cities and citizens, alike, to change their consumption and development patterns in favor of smarter and more sustainable habits.

As for Atlanta, the USGBC Atlanta Branch of the Georgia Chapter has done a stellar job on this front, including facilitating the passage of a LEED green building policy for public sector buildings. The City of Atlanta has since signed up to be one of the three pilot cities for the President’s Better Buildings Challenge, which charges cities to make commercial buildings 20% more energy efficient by 2020 and to accelerate private sector investment in energy efficiency.

Of course it’s easier and more cost effective to “go green” and develop intelligently from the get-go. Emerging economies and developing countries have that advantage. However, it is not only doable for an established city to rise in the ranks of smart cities, but it’s already been done, and cities like Atlanta are paving the way.

By: Amy Liu and Richard Shearer
Via: The New Republic

It’s game day. Kentucky’s two largest metro areas face off tonight as the University of Louisville Cardinals and the University of Kentucky Wildcats, of Lexington, go head-to-head in New Orleans in the final showdown before Monday’s NCAA championship game.

As this legendary rivalry reaches its boiling point this weekend, you won’t see a punch fly between Mayor Fischer of Louisville and Mayor Gray of Lexington. Instead, behind their playful wager and exchange of good-luck bourbon and IPA, these two mayors and their metros are acting in stark contrast to their teams’ fierce on-court competition. Louisville and Lexington are collaborating to compete economically.

Fischer and Gray are two former-businessmen-turned-mayors who took office right at the tail of the recession. Both inherently understood that rising competition abroad required them to act boldly to innovate and grow jobs at home. It didn’t take long for these two entrepreneurial mayors to look across Interstate 64 and recognize the opportunity to bring their metro areas together in ways that will put their combined region – and assets – on the global map.

Last summer, these mayors, with their high-caliber private and public sector partners, launched the Bluegrass Economic Advancement Movement (BEAM), an effort to create a metro business plan for growth that will unify and leverage their common markets assets – such as manufacturing, university innovation, transportation/logistics – to boost the economic prospects of their two metros. To demonstrate their commitment to an historic alliance, the mayors jointly appointed Jim Host as chairman of BEAM, an influential statesman and Lexington businessman who chaired the Louisville Arena Authority.

Lexington, Louisville, and the surrounding counties represent a mega region of over 1.9 million people, roughly the size of Las Vegas, NV. Encompassing 22 counties, including the four southern Indiana counties in the Louisville metro, the BEAM region comprises roughly half of the commonwealth’s population, jobs, and economy. This makes the BEAM effort of vital importance not only to the economic prosperity of the two metros but the entire commonwealth.

To date, the region has been hard at work undertaking a rigorous market analysis of the strengths and opportunities facing their two metro areas and adjoining counties. The Bluegrass region boasts over 100,000 manufacturing jobs, anchored by global giants like GE, Ford, and Toyota. Both metro areas benefit from the UPS Air headquarters in Louisville, which provides an easy port of entry to the world for area firms and travelers. Both these assets may explain why both Louisville and Lexington are major exporters, besting the nation on their share of economic output generated by exports. And the presence of both University of Kentucky and University of Louisville helps the region attract talent, especially among skilled immigrants.

But the challenges are clear: Despite these assets, the Bluegrass region has been lagging the nation in economic output and productivity growth, and median household incomes have fallen faster than the national average. This is the right time for a forward-leaning vision and plan of action for making the Louisville-Lexington super region a true hub of manufacturing innovation and growth. Mayor Gray and Mayor Fisher, with their rare leadership and genuine friendship, are the right CEOs to drive this plan forward.

No matter the outcome of tonight’s game, Louisville and Lexington make a winning team.

By: Molly Bryant
Via: The Pampa News

Consultants from TIP Strategies, Inc. unveiled the Pampa Economic Development Corporation’s (PEDC) plan to energize economic growth in Pampa during a meeting yesterday at 3 p.m. at the Pampa Chamber of Commerce.

The plan identifies the vision for Pampa as “the premier destination for the northeastern Panhandle, offering a diversified energy economy, expanded educational opportunities and excellent community assets that will retain and attract a talented workforce.”

“We toured the community several times and went through the Pampa Energy Center, but also went through other sites in the area,” said Tom Stellman, president and CEO of TIP Strategies.

By: James R. Hagerty And Alistair Macdonald
Via: The Wall Street Journal

MUNCIE, Ind.—Jerry D. Bumpus Sr. was a member of the United Auto Workers union for four decades and earned as much as $28 an hour at a General Motors Co. car-parts plant before accepting a bonus to retire at age 60 five years ago.

On a recent Saturday morning, Mr. Bumpus, wearing a black jacket and clutching his résumé, was one of several thousand people lining up to apply for jobs at a new Caterpillar Inc. plant that makes train locomotives here. Those jobs start at as low as $12 an hour plus benefits, and there is no union representing the workers.

“I’m able to adapt to that,” says Mr. Bumpus, who hopes he can get the job to build up his scant retirement savings.

Things have changed in Muncie, a city of 70,000 where closures of auto-industry plants and other factories have left about one in five homes vacant. Jobless workers here and in many parts of the Rust Belt have lowered their expectations and become more flexible. At the same time, state politicians are fighting harder than ever to attract employers with lower taxes, streamlined regulation and other incentives. Companies like Caterpillar are eagerly exploiting both trends.

The politicians and workers are realizing that the battle for scarce jobs isn’t just with Asia and the Sunbelt states. It also is with neighboring states and Canadian provinces in the North American industrial heartland.

“Our challenge as a state is to stand apart from our Midwestern colleagues,” says Dan Hasler, Indiana’s commerce secretary, adding: “Our goal in Indiana is really pretty simple: It is to help companies improve profitability.”

That happens to correspond with Caterpillar’s agenda. The Peoria, Ill.-based maker of heavy equipment is adding jobs at the new plant in Muncie even as it closes an older locomotive factory in London, Ontario. At that Ontario plant, unionized workers earned about twice as much as the company pays in Muncie.

When Caterpillar announced the closure of that Ontario plant in early February, the Canadian workers were enraged. “I’ve been here 25 years and they wanted to offer us a bowl of rice to work, like we were workers in Asia,” says Rafeek Khan, a 55-year-old machinist at the plant. Other workers planted burial-style crosses, bearing their names, in the soil outside the chain-link fence Caterpillar had erected to keep them out. Caterpillar said wages at the plant were too high, making the plant uncompetitive.

The contrasting experiences of workers in Muncie and London show how the 2008-2009 recession and the painfully slow recovery of the job market since then have left North American workers with less bargaining power. The median weekly earnings of U.S. wage and salary workers, adjusted for inflation, were down 1.8% in last year’s fourth quarter from a year earlier and have been about flat over the past decade, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employers rarely cut wages, even during recessions, preventing any sudden plunge in median pay. But many new hires are willing to work for lower pay when jobs are scarce, and that is keeping a lid on wage costs.

Companies are concentrating many of their manufacturing investments in states where unions are weak and wages relatively low. Boeing Co., for instance, last year opened a nonunion airplane plant in South Carolina, supplementing its unionized factories in the Seattle area. Starting pay for assembly workers at the South Carolina plant is $14.35 per hour, compared with $15 in Seattle. But the union employees in Washington state tend to be much more experienced and average about $28 per hour. A Boeing spokesman cited regional differences in labor markets.

Where companies are expanding or modernizing unionized plants, they are winning concessions. Harley-Davidson Inc. in recent years told unions in York, Pa., Kansas City, Mo., and near Milwaukee that it would move production elsewhere unless they accepted more-flexible working arrangements, including greater use of temporary workers. The unions complied.

Tony Wilson, president of the International Association of Machinists union local in Kansas City, said workers felt little choice other than to accept Harley’s conditions. A Harley spokeswoman said the conditions were part of a transformation needed to make the motorcycle maker more competitive.

Over the past two decades, Caterpillar has been at the vanguard of corporate efforts to rein in unions. The company deployed white-collar staffers and temporary workers to operate plants during a 17-month UAW strike at eight plants in 1994 and 1995. The union eventually capitulated, making concessions in such areas as health-care benefits.

The equipment maker has gradually reduced its reliance on organized labor by opening plants in the South, where union support is scarce. At the end of 2011, about 27% of Caterpillar’s U.S. workers were represented by unions, down from 32% in 2003. As it opens new plants, Caterpillar makes no secret of its strategy. An online job advertisement posted by the company last year sought human-resources managers in Muncie experienced in “providing union-free culture and union avoidance.”

Companies like Caterpillar also are shopping for lower taxes and regulatory costs. That is where the politicians come in. All of the Rust Belt states are pursuing pro-business agendas and wooing manufacturers and other employers. But Indiana has been particularly aggressive.

Republican Gov. Mitchell Daniels, who was first elected governor in 2004, has cut costs by shrinking the state work force. That allowed the legislature last year to pass a bill that will cut Indiana’s corporate income-tax rate in stages to 6.5% in 2015 from 8.5%.

By contrast, Illinois, struggling to control pension and other costs, raised personal and corporate taxes last year—drawing a public rebuke from Caterpillar. In early February, Caterpillar sent an email to officials in Peoria County, Ill., where the company has its headquarters, telling them it had decided not to build a new construction-equipment plant there, partly because of what the company called “concerns about the business climate and overall fiscal health” of Illinois.

Caterpillar since has announced that the $200 million plant will be built near Athens, Ga. That was partly because Caterpillar wanted proximity to an Atlantic port. Even so, Illinois Republicans say Caterpillar’s decision not to consider their state for the plant shows the need for stronger efforts to reduce taxes and other costs of doing business there. “We are competing with states around us, and they are very aggressive,” State Rep. Don Moffitt, a Republican, told reporters. Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat, counters that he has made the state more attractive to employers, such as by enacting changes in the unemployment-insurance system. Those reforms are designed to save companies $400 million over the next seven years.


In early February, Indiana enacted right-to-work legislation that bars contracts requiring all workers to pay union fees and makes it harder for unions to organize work places. Indiana became the 23rd state with such a law, and the first in the industrial Midwest. “This announces, especially in the Rust Belt, that we are open for business here,” Republican House Speaker Brian Bosma said.

Indiana already is less unionized than its neighbors. The percentage of Indiana workers represented by unions last year was about 13%, compared with 15% in Ohio, 17% in Illinois and 18% in Michigan. The national average was about 13%. In Muncie, the UAW was a major political force in the 1960s and 1970s, representing more than 7,000 manufacturing workers in the city. For years, the union even owned and operated a public park in Muncie. Today, the UAW is barely visible there. It doesn’t represent any manufacturing workers in Muncie, though it still has a tiny branch representing deputy sheriffs.

The results of Indiana’s efforts to attract manufacturing jobs are encouraging so far. The number of Indianans employed in manufacturing at the end of 2011 was up 7.6% from two years before to 472,500, compared with a 3% rise nationally, after plunging during the recession. Over the past decade, Indiana’s performance has been better than other Rust Belt states. Its manufacturing employment is down 20%, compared with drops of 26% in Illinois, 29% in Ohio and 35% in Michigan, according to data from Moody’s Analytics.

Like many other small Midwestern cities, Muncie has suffered from an exodus of manufacturing jobs. Bitterness lingers from a 1989 strike in Muncie over cuts in health benefits at BorgWarner Inc., a maker of car transmissions. BorgWarner used managers to continue production at the plant while 2,100 workers tried to block the entrances and in some cases threw nails on the road. After seven weeks, the two sides settled the strike and agreed on a plan to reduce health-care costs. BorgWarner closed the plant in 2009 after an unsuccessful attempt to get more worker concessions.
In the past few years, Muncie has lured some new manufacturers, including Brevini U.S.A. Inc., a maker of parts for windmills. When Caterpillar announced in October 2010 that it would build locomotives in a vacant Muncie factory once owned by Westinghouse Electric Corp., the town was jubilant. Local officials put together a $28 million package of tax breaks, training grants and other incentives.

Production of locomotives began last year on a small scale, and the company is gearing up for higher output. The closure of the 62-year-old Ontario plant, Caterpillar’s main North American location for assembling locomotives, promises to bring more work to Muncie and another new plant in Brazil.

Caterpillar is seeking to hire more workers for the Muncie plant, mostly at wages of $12 to $14.50 an hour, compared with the equivalent of more than $30 an hour for most workers at the plant being closed in Ontario.

The lower wages in Muncie are fine with John Velasquez, 47, who joined CAT as a material handler in July and is now training as a welder. “I’m glad to have a job,” says Mr. Velasquez, who lost his job in housing construction during the recession.

Dustin Pittsford, 24, was among the thousands who lined up at Caterpillar’s recent job fair for potential employees. Mr. Pittsford says he currently is raising two children by working at a tire store for $8.25 per hour. The Caterpillar wages would be “a step up for me,” he says.

Muncie’s mayor, Dennis Tyler, has mixed feelings. He was a union member throughout his career as a firefighter here. And his father was a UAW member when he worked at the BorgWarner plant. “Driving down wages doesn’t do anybody any good,” the mayor says.

Even so, his top priority is jobs. Whether those jobs are unionized or not, he says, they are welcome.

London, Ontario, whose population is 366,000, also has suffered from losses of automotive-related jobs and is eager to keep as much manufacturing employment as possible. Worry began to mount last spring when Caterpillar proposed to cut wages at the London plant by about 50%. The union refused that offer, and at the end of 2011 Caterpillar said it would lock out the workers until they agreed to a new contract. The workers set up a camp outside the factory gates, burning scrap wood in old oil drums, and picketed around the clock.

During the lockout, London Mayor Joe Fontana says, he called senior Caterpillar executives frequently to ask what the government could do to help keep the jobs in London. “I’d ask, ‘Do you want new equipment, new research grants?’” he says. Caterpillar’s answer, the mayor says, was that the first step was to sort out the wage dispute.

Early on Feb. 3, Mr. Fontana took a call from a Caterpillar manager and learned that the plant was closing. “I said, ‘I can’t believe you have closed the plant when we were still talking about ways to get you back,’” the mayor says. A Caterpillar spokesman declined to comment.

Now Canadian officials at provincial and federal levels are thinking about how to make the region more competitive. They note that Canadian corporate taxes are lower than those in the U.S. One big problem, though, is that a stronger Canadian dollar has made the nation’s exports less competitive.

Finding new ways to attract employers “is something that we are very diligently engaged with,” says Brad Duguid, Ontario’s minister of economic development and innovation. “One of our challenges will be competing with low-paid jurisdictions around the world.” By some measures, that now includes Indiana.

Rex Nelson, a former presidential appointee who works for The Communications Group, Inc., is a nationally recognized writer and community development consultant. He recently posted a blog entry detailing the importance of revitalizing downtown Hot Springs as a key component to the community’s overall success. Mr. Nelson praises this new direction for the city and surrounding region, quoting extensively from the economic development plan that TIP Strategies, Inc. recently completed for the Greater Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce/Garland County Economic Development Corporation.

I barely had finished writing a blog post last week on a walk I took in downtown Hot Springs when the announcement was made: The Superior Bathhouse will be transformed into a brewery. The Superior, which opened in 1916, is the smallest of the eight bathhouses on Bathhouse Row and is the closest bathhouse to the Arlington Hotel. The Superior has been empty since 1983. A brewer named Rose Schweikhart Cranson hopes to turn the Hot Springs mineral water into craft beers, spirits and nonalcoholic drinks such as root beer.

“That’s one of the big reasons I wanted to use the bathhouse, because I would have access to the water,” she said last week. Built by L.C. Young and Robert Proctor, the Superior has 11,000 square feet and cost $68,000 to construct. The National Park Service recently renovated the building, including a new ramp to make the entrance handicapped accessible. Schweikhart Cranson said she and her husband have been testing the waters since they moved to Hot Springs from Springfield, Ill., last year.

“We’ll choose beer styles that will work with the water with minimal tinkering,” she said. “It’s favorable for making beer.”

Josie Fernandez, the Hot Springs National Park superintendent, said she hopes to have negotiations completed by the end of the year. At the same time, it was announced that a nonprofit organization known as the Muses Creative Artistry Project wants to move forward with using the back and the upstairs of the Hale Bathhouse. The Muses began operating a cafe and bookstore in the Hale lobby last year. Built in 1892, the Hale has 12,000 square feet on two main floors. In 1917, one of the hot springs was captured in a tiled enclosure in the hotel’s basement. That feature is still in place. The building was renovated in 1939 in the Mission Revival style, and the red brick was covered in stucco. Named for early bathhouse owner John Hale, it was at least the fourth bathhouse to use the Hale name. The Hale, which closed on Halloween Day 1978, is the oldest visible structure on Bathhouse Row. The National Park Service has spent more than $1.5 million in recent years to preserve the building, including updating the heating and air conditioning system.

The Muses — which describes itself as being “dedicated to preserving classical art and music through performance, education, wellness and music therapy” — was founded five years ago by Deleen Davidson. The organization wants to include in the Hale two performing arts spaces; studios for the study of music, art and dance; meeting spaces; an artist-in-residence apartment; and a wellness room for guests to experience the baths. If plans for the Superior and the Hale move forward, the Maurice will be the only one of the eight bathhouses that’s empty. That represents tremendous progress in downtown Hot Springs. I agree with the world-class Little Rock architect Reese Rowland, who has described Bathhouse Row as one of the great stretches of urban street in America. But, as noted in last week’s post, there’s so much more that needs to be done to return downtown Hot Springs to its rightful place as one of the region’s top attractions — the Saratoga of the South, if you will.

Thanks to longtime friend Kay Brockwell, the director of business retention and recruitment for the Garland County Economic Development Corp., for forwarding the city’s strategic plan for economic development, which was completed last September. That effort was led by TIP Strategies out of Austin, Texas. When I was with the Delta Regional Authority, I worked closely with Jon Roberts of TIP in developing a strategic plan for the Delta. I can assure you that Roberts does first-class work. I was delighted to see that he made downtown redevelopment the major part of his strategy for the Hot Springs area. He notes the many advantages Hot Springs possessess — a national park, the lakes, Oaklawn Park, the convention center and Summit Arena.

“These advantages, however, have bred a certain complacency,” Roberts writes. “The risk is increasingly one in which ‘good is good enough.’ This viewpoint threatens to compromise the city and the region. It would perhaps be defensible if the region really were doing well.

“In fact, there are dire warning signals. Population growth has become stagnant. The tax base is fragile. Bold initiatives, from education to redevelopment, have received only tepid support. Further, many of the greatest assets of the community are increasingly in danger of decline. These extend from the business base to hotels and even retail trade.

“It is clear that a concerted effort is called for, not only because there are opportunities but because inaction carries serious consequences. It would be an overstatement to say that this is a time of crisis. But it is not overreaching to suggest that Hot Springs cannot afford to squander many more opportunities.”

The strategic plan describes the redevelopment and revitalization of downtown Hot Springs as the “greatest opportunity for enhancing economic vitality in Garland County.”

Roberts writes: “Across the country, cities both small and large have rediscovered the importance of their downtowns, and examples of revitalized city centers are abundant. America’s renewed interest in downtowns was rooted in the historic preservation movement of the 1970s.

“Economic developers eventually learned to value vibrancy in the urban core for a more practical reason: a healthy downtown makes a city more competitive in the pursuit of new businesses. This is because prospects often see the state of a downtown as a reflection of whether a community values investment and excellence. Moreover, companies realize that in the competition for talent, a community that offers a higher quality of life and stronger sense of place finds it easier to recruit and retain the workers it needs to remain successful.”

Roberts has reached the crux of the issue: Revitalizing downtown Hot Springs is about more than attracting tourists. It’s also about attracting young, highly educated, creative people to live in the city.

Now, the bad news.

Roberts continues: “Unfortunately, few recent efforts toward downtown revitalization and redevelopment in Hot Springs are apparent.”

He’s right. Rather than focusing on the welcome leases at the bathhouses and the presence of art galleries downtown, too many visitors have their memories of Hot Springs sullied by dated, musty hotel rooms and huge buildings such as the Majestic and Medical Arts that stand empty.

“Through most of its history, downtown was a major destination for tourism and economic activity within Hot Springs,” the strategic plan states. “Its proximity to Hot Springs National Park and the presence of Bathhouse Row drew visitors to the region for more than a century.

“But downtown Hot Springs has lost much of its luster. Historic structures are in need of investment, ground-floor retail space is underutilized and the upper stories of most buildings remain vacant. The lack of new investment should be a great concern to Hot Springs’ leaders and citizens. One serious risk is that these buildings could fall into disrepair and no longer be salvageable. If this were to occur, Hot Springs would undoubtedly see its competitive position as a tourism destination erode. It is extremely important that the community no longer allow the status quo to continue. Supporting revitalization of downtown Hot Springs — as both a tourism destination and a catalyst for economic activity — will require a committed, sustained and bold approach.”

Does the leadership of Hot Springs have the stomach for such a committed, sustained and bold approach?

That’s a question I can’t answer. With the economy on the mend, can the city now attract outside investors to sink capital into projects downtown? The risks are there, but given Hot Springs’ long history as a magnet for visitors, I think the upside is tremendous for those willing to invest in hotels, condominiums, apartments and upscale retail establishments. Heritage tourism is hot, and Hot Springs is positioned to attract well-heeled visitors if the model is Saratoga rather than Branson. One thing Roberts calls for is improving the now tacky Central Avenue corridor from Oaklawn to downtown.

“While much of Hot Springs’ history and image is inextricably linked to Bathhouse Row, other destinations appear to have surpassed the urban core as tourism draws,” he writes. “For example, Oaklawn now brings approximately 1.6 million tourists to Hot Springs annually, and Lake Hamilton and Lake Ouachita are also major attractions.

“Few benefits of tourism spending, however, can be seen in downtown Hot Springs. At the same time, few amenities (such as retail, restaurants and hotels) that serve visitors are apparent within the area surrounding Oaklawn. This strategy proposes linking the area’s various attractions to create a mutually supportive network and complete visitor experience. … This corridor should be viewed as the primary linkage between Hot Springs’ two premier urban attractions: Bathhouse Row and Oaklawn. It should serve as the focal point for robust economic activity, creating a dynamic environment for small businesses and visitors alike.”

At least part of the business leadership now realizes that downtown is the key to moving Hot Springs forward. I consider this a statewide economic development priority, not just a Hot Springs priority.

I’ll be back there Saturday, thinking about what once was and dreaming about what someday might be.

Via: Austin Business Journal

Jon Roberts, a principal at Austin-based TIP Strategies Inc., thinks trading incentives to bring more Apple Inc. jobs to the city is a bet on the future between Austin and the company.

The governor’s office announced Friday that Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) will expand its Austin footprint with a $304 million campus that will create 3,600 new jobs.

The bet is that the Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant will continue its expansion in Austin, creating a much richer job mix than it is currently offering.

“In essence, you are buying the brand,” Roberts told the Austin American-Statesman.

The Statesman has more on the story.