THE RIGHT PLACE'S WRONG CHOICE

Both the Grand Rapids Press and the Grand Rapids Business Journal recently ran articles lauding Birgit Klohs, the executive director of the Right Place Program.  The Right Place is a non-profit economic development organization founded twenty years ago to retain the metro area's existing industrial base and to recruit new manufacturers into the area.  Ten years ago the Grand Rapids City Commission fired the City's economic development department, fired its director and his deputy, and replaced them with the Right Place.

Klohs has made news in the past few weeks by getting the Right Place Program on the bio-tech bandwagon.  She has dismissed manufacturing, the retention and recruitment of which was the Right Place's raison d'etre, and declared that bio-tech is River City's job creator of tomorrow.  Now Sailing in a new direction Klohs has made it clear that the Van Andel Institute must be the flagship for this bright shiny future.

Perhaps Klohs might have come to despair of manufacturing in River City after the City has lost so much of it since the Right Place Program started up in 1985.  Beginning with the collapse of Autodie, once the world's largest diemaker, to this year's announcement by Steelcase that it is closing its huge facility on the southeast side of town, the Right Place's record isn't sterling.  Then again there might be another factor at play.  Although the Right Place Program has always been identified as Klohs's baby, we shouldn't forget the critical role the late Amway billionaire Jay Van Andel played as a founder and chairman of the organization.

Since Van Andel's namesake research institute was founded five years ago, it has been searching for a mission.  Bio-tech mania is now the ticket. If Van Andel was responsible for getting Klohs her sinecure as the head honcho of the Right Place Program, maybe Klohs is repaying the favor by getting the organization behind the Van Andel Institute's latest quest for a purpose -- even if this means joining the bio-tech booster chorus that manufacturing is dead in River City.

If that's the case, who cares?  However, if Klohs is going to turn the Right Place Program into a flack for the Van Andel family agenda, it's time to cut the organization off from the taxpayer dollars flowing into it.  This is doubly so in the case of the City's contract with the Right Place for economic development services.  We're in a budget crisis and the Right Place has failed to secure the manufacturing tax base that the City needs to thrive.  Let Klohs repay old favors on her own dime.

Comments

[Mark Rumsey]

What your article fails to mention:the City does have an Economic Development Department; the city's and the region's manufacturaing base is crumbling due to effects of globalization; and the bio-tech industry is one of the most promissing on the horizon. It sounds like you are really fishing to create controversy where it doesn't exist.

[The Executive Director]

Thanks for your comments, Mark.

Yes, the City retains an economic development office to act as liaison for the Right Place Program. It is the remnant staffed by Dan Oegema after Logie and Kimball decapitated the old Economic Development Department when they sent its chief Ned Zimmerman and his deputy Charlie Krupp packing about ten years ago. I liked Charlie (RIP), but good riddance to Zimmerman.

However, the RPP team hasn't been an improvement. Klohs manages the agenda for the players in town. She has not done a thing to push the City staff and the City Commission to develop an agenda that fosters a climate in G.R. to build upon our strengths -- namely manufacturing. Instead she's trying to sell us on pipe dreams like bio-tech, and it's no small thing that bio-tech happens to be the agenda of one her patrons, the Van Andel family.

Manufacturing accounts for a huge portion of the country's wealth, about 35% of the GDP. It's not going to disappear, but it will certainly move to friendly climes if the City doesn't get it's act together -- and that doesn't mean special breaks or hand-outs for manufacturing. It mostly means getting out of the way of manufacturers. For example, not chopping up industrial zones to accommodate the latest planning fad.

As for bio-tech, there is no reason to not welcome private investment in it. But the idea that taxpayers should fork over tax dollars to subsidize infrastructure is nuts. Even if doing so ever made sense, we aren't going to beat out the other major bio-tech centers that have ALREADY developed elsewhere in the country, and huge new developments like Paul Allen's in Seattle.

Regards, Bill