SWNA will be having a Christmas Breakfast at
West Side United Methodist Church
1313 W. Lydia St.
8:00a.m. - 12:00p.m.
December, 12 2009

Due to the Seasons our December meeting will be cancelled.

Merry Christmas and God Bless!

This is Tim Norton's 100th, Check out the rest in of Tim's post in our Members Forums Section.

A Word in Edgewise . . .

 This week will be Installment number three on the trip to Chattanooga for Visioneering.  I will attempt to cover the most salient points on how the Chattanooga community and their partners landed a Volkswagen plant and 2000 plus jobs to the area.  Hopefully in the past few weeks, I have adequately re-numerated most of the highlights of the trip in enough detail to give you a flavor of what we experienced in Chattanooga.   Next week I will try to analyze what we saw and give you some thoughts on what our lessons learned were and how some of them could be applied to Wichita and our region.

As we were introduced to many of the projects in downtown and along the river in Chattanooga that had developed in the last several years, we also kept hearing of the ‘big win’ in job creation and economic development … the ‘Volkswagen Story’.   The County Mayor, Claude Ramsey and the Chamber of Commerce President Tom Edd Wilson were obviously proud to tell the story of the journey that lead to landing a Volkswagen manufacturing center and attached $40 million plus training center.   It was a remarkable story of disappointment, tenacity, partnerships, visionary leadership, risk taking and ultimate victory.

Several years before being selected as the site for the new VW plant, Chattanooga was a finalist in the quest for a Toyota plant.   The plant ultimately went to another community, but the Chattanooga community leaders involved recognized the value of that process as a learning experience on how to compete for these kinds of large projects.  Conversation after conversation about what they did right and where they were weak in their presentation and economic package were had.  This ‘just missed’ scenario galvanized the community and helped strengthen necessary partnerships and initiated deeper resolve with elected officials and other community leaders.   A real ‘can do’ attitude emerged that figured into the success on the Volkswagen siting process.

This ‘do what needs to be done’ attitude was manifested during the site visit by key Volkswagen officials.   The ground available was shown to officials but was far from shovel ready.   It was located strategically but was heavily wooded and hard to get a visual of the topography and how the infrastructure would lay out.   Chattanooga leaders moved quickly and made a decision to remove that impediment from the story line.   Within two weeks they cleared the property completely and invited VW officials back to see what they couldn’t before.   The site impressed VW … but more than that, the collaborative push to eliminate the roadblock diminishing the decision making process on that site, really struck a chord.      The State stepped up to build the 40 million dollar training center at the site.   Details were worked out.  And the rest is history.

 I am sure the process was not near as simple as I described, but the outcome is still the same.   The VW plant was under construction and will bring economic value and 2000 plus jobs to the Chattanooga community.   Something to learn from all of that, I believe.   I will enumerate what I believe some of the lessons learned from the trip were next week.   That is all for this week.   Thanks for letting me get a word in edgewise.      tn

 

Chisholm Station Post Office
2510 S. ELIZABETH AVE
WICHITA, KS 67217-9998
(316) 264-0114






Our Local Chisholm Station Post Office located at 2510 S Elizabeth Ave. behind the Westway Shopping Center has been put on a list of possible closings due to federal budget reasons. We believe the Post Office has been a great asset to our community and provides a local service of customer service that we would dearly miss if the doors would close permanently.  The SWNA is urging residents of our community to contact the USPS and our elected officials in making sure this office remains open to serve our community. Below is a letter to print and mail or email to our elected officials along with the phone number to the USPS. Both forms of communication need to be done to make our goal in keeping our local Post Office.
Thank you for your support   SWNA

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