“Whatever you do, do it well. Do it so well that when people see you do it, they will want to come back and see you do it again, and they will want to bring others and show them how well you do what you do.”
-Walt Disney
Our new Columbus Crew SC stadium will be ready mid-year, the final steel beam placed just days ago. The stadium will house our 2020 MLS champions, play host to hundreds of concerts and games of all kinds in the decades to come, and it will have changed our downtown skyline. With great care, the architects, engineers and craftsmen creating it studied stadiums around the world so that the very best ideas could be implemented in this new facility that will improve the customer experience, with every seat providing great views of the pitch.
As we work to get all aspects of our economy up and running again, we too have the opportunity to construct and reconstruct elements that could make it work better for citizens, companies, and the communities they reside within. All of these are customers of economic development organizations. Residents need jobs and business opportunities to be created, businesses need a qualified workforce and effective infrastructure, and communities need commerce to flow in order to generate consistent revenue.
The concept of “not a bad seat in the house” has me thinking about how we must remove obstacles for each of our “customers” – job seekers, entrepreneurs, large businesses, the development community, and our public partners.
We have a lot of work to do to as we move forward, but I am inspired by the concept. Let’s have a great week.
-Kenny McDonald