Bullard advises communities should copy Columbus’ economic development strategy to find success

As as a renowned economist and inaugural dean of Purdue University’s Mitch Daniels School of Business was in the midst of discussing the implications of the country’s national debt, a holler of ‘Bingo!’ rang out from the back of The Commons.

Over the course of an hour of discussion, someone had heard five words that corresponded with their “Economic Lingo Bingo” card on the back of their program for the annual meeting of the Greater Columbus Economic Development Corp. and it just couldn’t wait.

That was the general atmosphere of the event which drew a wide range of representatives from the county’s business community and public institutions as they heard about the region’s economic standing and a forecast for what may be coming on the horizon.

It featured remarks from Greater Columbus EDC President Jason Hester, who recounted economic development progress over the past year, and a “fireside chat” style conservation with Jim Bullard, inaugural dean of the Mitch Daniels Jr. School of Business at Purdue University. Prior to the Purdue leadership position, Bullard was the longest-serving Federal Reserve Bank president in the country while at the St. Louis Fed.

During Wednesday’s event, Bullard fielded questions from the audience on interest rates to inflation to local policy.

Tom Dowd, 2024 chair of Greater Columbus EDC and president of Dunlap & Company, began by discussing the GCEDC and the Columbus Area of Commerce’s new offices on Third and Franklin streets, which Dunlap helped renovate. There will be an open house at the offices set for Oct. 30.

The offices were needed after a 2022 fire destroyed the Irwin Block Building and damaged neighboring offices on Fifth Street. A $400,000 grant from the Columbus Redevelopment Commission assisted with the project, Dowd said.

“The project itself is a great example of the Columbus way that we enjoy here in Bartholomew County,” he said.

Last year’s annual meeting was less than a year ago in December, but Hester said, “We do have some really exciting things to share regarding business expansions, business attraction and improvement efforts.”

Last year, the organization welcomed $276 million in announced projects, including two expansions by George Utz for $50 million, a new employer in Century Biopharma Services (a $16.2 million project), and King’s Hawaiian with a new $175 million factory, announced just before the year came to a close.

“When the King’s holding company Irresistible Foods Group (IFG) acquired the 90-acre parcel, we knew they were doing so with room to grow,” Hester said.

IFG later announced a second $54 million food product manufacturing operation of another IFG brand, Grillo’s Pickles, that will employ another 150 people in addition to the 150 employed by King’s Hawaiian.

Ninth Avenue Foods’ $103 million facility launched production of their dairy and alternative dairy bottling operations a year-and-a-half ago and has “quietly made another $30 million or more in additional capital expenditures, growing their employment from zero to over 110 people today,” according to Hester.

The EDC president went on to note Toyota Material Handling’s (TMH) new $96 million production facility as an expansion to their current campus, as well as the $75 million grant the U.S. Department of Energy provided to expand production of battery packs, powertrain systems and electric vehicle components for Accelera by Cummins. Hester also mentioned a $2 million expansion by Edinburgh’s M.A. Metal Stamping & Assembly and another combined $2 million expansion by local Japanese companies Capco LLC and Kamic Corp.

“For this calendar year, if you’re tracking, we’re following $328 million in newly announced capital investments by these employers, calling for the net creation of 533 new jobs with an average estimated wage of $27 an hour or $56,000 annually,” per Hester, who teased that “we’ve got at least one more announcement coming next month, so stay tuned for that.”

More funds coming into the county and region at-large will be through the state’s Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative (READI). This year, the South Central Indiana Talent Region, made up of Bartholomew, Jackson and Jennings county, was awarded $30 million for the second round of the initiative, dubbed “READI 2.0.”

“This will find new investments in housing, quality of place, education and entrepreneurial efforts, with the goal of further positioning our region as a place where powerful technologies and prosperous communities bring about a resilient future for all of us,” Hester said.

Over the past decade the population of Bartholomew County has increased about 5.4%, a point higher than the state average but trending below that national average of 5.97% during the time period from 2013 to 2023.

“I’ll simply note that our strong economy and great quality of life that we enjoy here is attracting a growing population, and with that comes a need for more housing,” Hester said. “This was voiced loudly by the participants in last year’s executive survey that we conducted in the fall, and also very clearly articulated in the city’s housing study that was released just last week.”

Hester also brought up employment rates, which data shows have increased. The county’s preliminary unemployment rate for August was 3.7%, up from 2.8% during the same month last year.

“July’s rate on the dashboard was 4.3% versus 3.0% the previous July, so even with the uptick, we do note that we’re still consistently lower than both the state and U.S. average, but it’s something that we’re monitoring,” Hester said.

Per capita income “also points to the health of our local economy,” Hester said, at just under $62,000 in 2022, when data was last available. That figure has Bartholomew County ranked seventh out of the state’s 92 counties, according to Hester.

“The bad news is that we’re still below the U.S. average, and Indiana is starting to close the gap on us. Also, notably, our median household income ranked 27th in the state, so it’s still the top third, but not quite as rosy as per capita income, which means that there’s still more work to do,” he said.

The afternoon then transitioned to a keynote featuring Bullard, with help from Hester and IU Columbus’ Ryan Brewer, who is division head and associate professor of finance at the university. Audience-members could send in questions anonymously by scanning a QR code, with messages going to Hester’s phone. And audience members could rank the questions and move certain questions ahead to the front of the line.

Bullard discussed plans for the Daniel’s school, saying “I think we will be able to challenge the top business schools in the nation going forward because Purdue is known as one of the top technology universities in America.”

The integration of business with technology will be crucial for the future, Bullard said.

“You’ve seen nationally and maybe locally too, a lot of disruption of business models that seem to work good for awhile, got sideswiped by a whole bunch of technology that came in and disrupted their business plan,” according to Bullard. “I think these students that are going through the Daniel’s school today, we want to do the best we can to equip them both on the technology side and the business side.”

One member of the audience asked Bullard what he thinks interest rates will look like in the foreseeable future — Bullard predicted “somewhere in the low 3% range.”

“I think the global financial markets think that the data in the U.S. economy will be weaker, and because of that, they think that we’ll cut more. That kind of is inconsistent with what I’m saying. What I’m saying is, the economy looks fine. It’s growing at the trend pace of growth, there’s no real indication that anything’s wrong.”

While members of the audience were scratching away words like “capitalism,” “globalization” and “interest rates” on their Bingo card, Bullard took a question on the country’s $35 trillion national debt and when, if ever, something would need to be done about it.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have a good answer to this about what’s going to happen going forward, but I do think fiscal discipline has just broken down across the political spectrum,” he said.

Hester asked Bullard a question about workforce trends such as artificial intelligence and automation and how that may impact education, along with state and local economies.

“A lot of people in Silicon Valley are telling you, that the curve is going to go like this, and AI is going to take over the world in a manner of days. That’s too fast, it’s doesn’t diffuse that fast. It takes longer to think about how we can use this technology to actually improve people’s productivity,” he said.

The Daniels school will require that students have “some background in AI” starting next year, Bullard said.

“Another story you would probably often hear, ‘Oh, there’s not going to be any jobs for anyone else, because computers are going to do everything,” Bullard said. “… As an economist, I would tell you this story. In 1900, over 50% of the jobs in America were on farms. What happened to farms? They mechanized and they used technology to get more and more productive over the following centuries. Now only 1% of the jobs today are on farms — that doesn’t mean we have 49% unemployment. Those people went and did other things.”

Other topics Bullard hit on:

• Housing: “We should all prepare ourselves that this is a medium-run to long-run issue.”
• Does the federal government have much control over prices: “No, they don’t and they shouldn’t.”

• What policies local elected officials should consider: “What the nation should do is copy Columbus, Indiana because this is intentional, organized thinking about how the city fits into the economic structure of the state.”