Economic Developer Elevator Pitch

If you were to ask me what I do, say at a cocktail party, social gathering, or business event, I would summarize my extremely challenging, stressful, and occasionally rewarding position by telling you that “I am the economic development guy for a mid-sized Chicago suburb.”

If you are already aware of all that entails, kudos to you! But I would bet that most folks do not really know what, exactly, that means. So if your eyes glaze over a bit and you nod and say “uh-huh” while contemplating your next meal or social media feed, I understand.

I, myself, was not quite sure of what that title entailed until I completed my first day of serving as a paid economic developer nearly twenty-one years ago. Furthermore, that particular position was only skimming the very top of what real, down-and-dirty boots-on-the-ground economic developers like me actually do since that was working for one of the most politicized, unprofessional, and bureaucratic organizations ever created — Cook County.

In my position, one minute I may be managing an engineering project, the next working on marketing plans or assisting an entrepreneur in finding a location downtown. My responsibilities cover a wide spectrum of duties from project management to policy development and implementation, to marketing, tourism, business retention, recruitment, and expansion. I rarely receive praise when things go well, but when they don’t, let’s just say that some people in town consider some of the city’s failures largely mine. Mine is not a profession that one can enter into with tunnel vision. Great economic developers, which I am one of, must always be cognizant of how the economy applies to all aspects of your community, and be a little bit of an expert on everything. My conversations in a day may include the city’s crime rate, water quality, educational levels, traffic counts, tax rates, the price of raw materials, and social media, just to name a few.

I doubt that people in other professions regularly engage with first-time entrepreneurs looking to expand their home-based business into a commercial location on a shoestring budget and globe-trotting executives of Fortune 500 companies with budgets in the tens or hundreds of millions for their projects. I am such a person and regularly engage with both on the same day including today.

Please do not think that my job is very exciting or sexy. Sure, it is great to attend a ribbon-cutting with the Mayor, Council members, the Chamber of Commerce, and new businesses. I attended one yesterday and there were smiles and photo ops galore.

But for every one of those, I have many hours of grunt work, meetings in-person and on Zoom, endless phone calls and emails, and of course staff reports and night meetings. Every project that I work on must wind its way through the public process of commissions, committees, and the City Council, sometimes taking up to a year to grind its way through.

Also, in my day-to-day existence, I, unfortunately, must say “no” more often than I say yes, but that is a quick elevator pitch story for another day.