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Louisville Mayor Addresses Venture Club on Plan For Growing Local Businesses

By Pat Pending

On May 7, Jerry Abramson spoke to Louisville’s Venture Club about nurturing home-grown businesses.  Abramson said that, while we often hear about government entities trying to attract businesses to move here from other places, and it is nice when those businesses choose to move to Louisville, it is very important to make Louisville a community that is conducive to the growth of all businesses, both the home-grown type and those that move here from other places.  Citing Humana as an example of a home grown business that has not only created many jobs itself but that has also had a ripple effect of inspiring or enabling the creation of thirty or more other businesses, Abramson said he wants to take the opportunity of the newly merged government to start from scratch and make Louisville government entrepreneurial, efficient and effective, and he is establishing some key strategies for business development to be implemented in the next 3-1/2 years.

Kent Oyler, a successful entrepreneur, has volunteered to work with this administration for $1/year to help grow businesses.  So far, they have pulled together fifty people from the community in several sessions about what the local government can do to help businesses or to get out of the way, and Abramson summarized his plan as being the 7 C’s, including:

1.       Create more venture capital in the community.  Kentucky State Treasurer Jonathan Miller is interested in investing 2-3% of the state pension fund portfolio to investing in local ventures.  Louisville also will be hosting the Midwest Venture Capital Conference in Louisville in October, with 40 venture capital firms represented.

2.       Create a capital pool for business expansion, perhaps creating a metro development fund to help banks pool capital for that purpose.

3.       Coordinate Community Resources – There are 75 different groups to help businesses with tax breaks, loans, and so forth.  Abramson would like to have a supercenter to help businesses find out what is available and to make sure the groups offering services are communicating with each other in order to be most effective.

4.       Connect companies with the greatest job potential.  Abramson wants to develop a “mayor’s list” of businesses that have the ability to dramatically increase their employment base, help them interact with each other and get them access to advocates within government.

5.       Company attraction from other places.  Louisville has excellent medical facilities, a central location with excellent transportation, reasonable housing prices, and a lifestyle that is much nicer than many other cities.  One of the difficulties in attracting businesses is that Louisville does not have a large pool of well-educated workers.  However, there is now a website http://www.GreaterLouisvilleWorks.com , where 30,000 well-educated people have signed up (many of them young professionals who grew up in Louisville and left to find jobs), indicating that they would like to move to Louisville if a job is available. 

6.       Community building.  Again, Abramson stressed the need for developing a better educated base in the community, educating people of all ages, and developing lifelong learning.  This also involves maintaining and enhancing parks, arts and entertainment, and creating an environment in which creative people feel appreciated.  Abramson said he is not interested in “playing around the edges” but in taking serious steps to build a strong community.

7.       ?  Sorry – I guess I missed one of the C’s!  In any case, the goal appears to be to make the government more “user friendly” and to make the community a better place to live and to grow a business.  Maybe this one will be Cut Taxes?

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