Saturday, July 20, 2013

The Three Distinct Business Communities of Carbondale

It is often helpful to start thinking about things in a very black and white  way.  In the most simple case, Carbondale is divided into 3 distinct business areas: SIUC; Medical; and everyone else.  It is interesting how few people know of anything outside of their own business area.

Like most people in the "everyone else" category, I'm interested in SIU.  We all follow SIU, because most of us are in the service businesses, that support SIU, their employees and students.  We know who is naughty and nice in SIU management.  We hear all the rumors.  When I talk to professors, they are always amazed by how much more I have heard about University Politics then they have.  When you are making money on people, and not making money by sitting in your office staring at a black board, you need to know.

I know nothing about the medical community in Carbondale.  I'm not sure that anyone, outside of the medical community does.  I figure, they are like the mafia, in Good Fellows, we are the chumps, and many/most are using the general public as boat payment plans.  It is hard to party with the chumps, when you are feeding off of them.

The "everyone else" group is your standard collection of small business men, insurance agents, restauranteurs, and a few fools like me.  I think that we believe that if there is to be economic growth in Carbondale, if the number of students doesn't suddenly turn around, it had better come from us.  We also know how incredibly difficult it is to deal with the City of Carbondale, and their economic development arm, the CDBC.  In particular, if you aren't a local.

I remember when I used to have comments.  I guess you shouldn't stop blogging for 5 years, if you want that to continue. :)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

For anyone that has ever done business outside of southern Illinois, it's funny to hear how difficult it is to do business here. The "business unfriendly" buzzword has been created by an unhappy group of locals whose, from my observations, business model has always been to buy cheap, never reinvest, and mine all profit and resources from your investment. Choosing where to invest is more complex than excluding a site because the city is "unfriendly". Most of the cities on lists of "most desirable places to live" have very challenging development standards. They also have the best schools, low crime rates, and high rates of homeownership. Do you think there might be a correlation? Having done business in other areas of the US I have always found that investors locate to the area that makes the most sense for their investment. When you make that decision it's not based on how hard the municipality may be to work with. The reality is, they all are! Carbondale is actually one of the easiest.

PeterG said...

This comment is just silly, but I'll write up a whole entry in reply. I like the idea, no one is succeeding here, so it is easy to succeed? Good grief.