What do you love most about your city?
Like many people have said over the years, I love that Dayton has all the economic and cultural advantages of a diverse big city, and yet still offers the connected community of a smaller town. For a music lover like me, a great weekend in Dayton might include seeing the Philharmonic perform at the world-class Schuster Center, catching a touring indie rock band at the Levitt Pavillion or the Oregon District, and spending Sunday with friends at RiverScape for some family-friendly fun at a homegrown festival. Anywhere I go in Dayton, the odds are good that I’ll see someone I know and enjoy some conversation catching up. On the rare occasion that I need a change of pace, it’s a short drive to see Dave Chappelle perform in Yellow Springs or a just little longer to catch someone like Radiohead in Cincinnati.
What issue in do you feel needs more attention in our communities?
As an economic development professional, I think we need to do a better job of engaging our small businesses. Far too often, I hear of neighbors and friends hiring a contractor or buying a cake from another city because they simply didn’t take the time to find a local provider. Since I grew up in Chicago before transplanting here, I love seeing Dayton’s nostalgia for famous businesses of the past like Rike’s or Dominic’s. However, I always wonder why some people don’t seem to lavish the same love on today’s entrepreneurs creating jobs right here in our community. Dayton has some absolutely amazing businesses right now that should be household names, too. We should all make the extra effort to support the local brands that our kids and grandkids will be talking about years from now.
What’s your Big Idea for the Dayton region?
This might be controversial, but we need to get back to talking about how we can function more effectively as an economic region on the world stage. We are living in a community that was carved up into small administrative geographies for cities and schools back at a time when the area was growing rapidly, and it was still very difficult to manage complex systems. Between the changing populations and new technology, I find it hard to believe our fractured system of local administration is still the best possible system today. Some of the boundaries that we use to distinguish one place from another and provide important services don’t always make sense anymore. There’s no need to compete for the same piece of proverbial pie. With a remarkable local history and incredible new investments in places like the Arcade or Wright-Patt, we still have a unique story to tell the nation. There is absolutely no reason why Dayton shouldn’t be mentioned alongside trendy mid-tier cities like Nashville or Austin, except that sometimes we can’t seem to break tradition long enough to show the world what we can do.