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Ribbon Cutting? Or, Real Economic Growth?
By Teasha Cable
Every city wants the headline. The big employer, the job count, the ribbon cutting photo...But is it real economic growth, or just another ribbon cutting?
Every city wants the headline. The big employer, the job count, the ribbon cutting photo. Jeremy Stratton, CEcD has been to plenty. Sixteen corporate relocations. Nine expansions. 2,500 jobs. $310 million in capital investment during his time in Danville, Virginia.
He knows what a good announcement looks like.
The playbook Jeremy keeps coming back to wasn't on any press release. It was 3,500 acres. Danville and Pittsylvania County quietly assembled that land over years with no immediate payoff, no ribbon, no photo op.
That land eventually attracted the manufacturers the region needed to replace decades of lost textile jobs. And later, an $800 million casino development that, nobody envisioned when the original bet was placed.
You're not only trying to have the splashy ribbon cuttings. You're planning for the future.
The 10% Rule: Why Slow Is Actually Fast
Early in his career, Jeremy took over a Chamber of Commerce that was, in his words, "down to the studs." He had to put his own money in to make payroll. He made the cuts. And the lesson he walked away with wasn't about urgency. It was about pace.
10% change per year is probably the max that any of us can handle. After 10 years, it's something different. But it's gradual change that people are most receptive to.
This sounds conservative. It isn't. Leaders who push too hard too fast spend most of their energy managing blowback rather than making progress. Leaders who move at 10% a year build the kind of trust that lets them keep moving.
Ten years later, the organization or community is unrecognizable, and nobody felt steamrolled getting there.
It's a compounding strategy disguised as patience. ###Identity Over Incentives Griffin, Georgia sits about 50 miles from Atlanta. That proximity creates pressure. The metro is growing fast, developers are circling, and plenty of smaller cities in the region are in a race to offer the cheapest terms to whoever shows up.
Stratton isn't playing that game.
"Not every company that comes in is a good fit here. Griffin wants to keep its distinctness." In practice, this means Griffin has used tax abatements once, for a mixed-use mill redevelopment. A new program called the Flux Grant is targeted at vacant buildings that have sat idle for decades, not at businesses shopping for a subsidy.
The underlying logic: when you're 50 miles from a major metro, your edge isn't being the cheapest option. It's being the most intentional one. Read that 2x.
Cities that compete purely on incentives tend to attract companies that are also shopping purely on incentives. That's not a foundation. That's a transaction. What the Chamber Taught Him (and What Government Did Too) Jeremy has operated in three different worlds: municipal government, chamber leadership, and private business as a trucking company owner. That cross-sector experience shapes everything about how he approaches economic development, including what he sees as one of the field's persistent blind spots.
"There's always been a kind of gap between the city and the chamber. When we work together good things can happen." From the chamber side, the lesson is constant: value has to be felt or members walk. Sponsorships dry up. Businesses opt out.
From the government side, the lesson is different: municipalities can make 20-year bets that no membership organization ever could. Neither model is better. Both are incomplete without the other.
The Advice He'd Give His Younger Self Near the end of our conversation, I asked Jeremy for the one thing he'd tell other economic development leaders trying to build something real in a competitive environment.
He didn't talk about deal flow or incentive design or site selection.
"Pick a community that has the same vision as you. If you have some red flags when you're interviewing, don't go. It's more important to be around good people." That's the wisdom of 30 years on the job. Not the number of announcements or the size of the capital investments. The quality of the people you're building with, and whether the community you're building for actually wants what you're trying to create.
I like it.
Listen to our conversation wherever you get your podcasts.