Our state’s capital city has often been criticized for its relatively unattractive entry corridors. In other words, when people enter the Columbia area by plane, train, or automobile, are they impressed? Or not? Our next guest’s organization has made improving that perception one of their top goals and recently celebrated work done near the airport entry. Mike Switzer interviews Mike Crapps, board president at Midlands Business Leadership Group.
TRANSCRIPT:
Switzer: Hello and welcome to another edition of the South Carolina Business Review. This is Mike Switzer. Our state's capital city has often been criticized for its relatively unattractive entry corridors. In other words, when people enter the Columbia area by plane, train, or automobile, are they impressed or not? Our next guest organization has made improving that perception one of their top goals and recently celebrated work done near the airport entry. Mike Crapps is board chair at Midlands business leadership Group, and we have him on the phone from his office in Columbia. Mike, welcome to the program.
Crapps: Thank you, Mike.
Switzer: All right, let's start with, an overview of the organization.
Crapps: So Midlands business leadership Group is really organization of business leaders, think leaders of various businesses around the region. And our purpose is to identify, critical issues, initiate, programs to address opportunities and challenges that maybe we're facing in the region, and then to accelerate the development of our midlands region to just attract retained top talent, offer vibrant job offerings, and just improve overall livability and attractiveness of the region.
Switzer: And so a collaborative type of organization then trying to connect, other economic development groups, the chamber of commerce, city council, the mayor's office, et cetera.
Crapps: Yeah, various governments. You know, across our regions, we have multiple municipalities, multiple counties. It may cross over jurisdictional governmental lines, or it may cross over various organizational lines that aren't governments, but different, organizations throughout our region and where we can bring the right people to the right table at the right time and then move forward with a purpose of solving whatever it is for our region.
Switzer: And I mentioned in my introduction that the capital city has often been criticized for its relatively unattractive entry corridor, specifically the entrance into the city from the airport. That's been one of your top priorities. Tell us what has happened with that.
Crapps: it really started several years ago. Brought together various of our governments together in an effort just to create more intergovernmental cooperation without any one particular agenda in mind, but just. Or one initiative in mind, but just get everybody in the room representing these various governments across our region. And as we did that, this initiative of the gateways into our region became a priority for those governments. NDLG then led a kind of a brainstorming session with the government. So it was identified that there were eight different gateways around our region. And out of those eight, the number one priority was this gateway from the airport into Columbia. 1.3 million passengers pass through that airport annually. And to improve that gateway, that first impression, we get that one opportunity to give first impression to a visitor to the region, to somebody that's visiting, to Maybe consider moving here, creating business here, go to school here. So MBLG then began to move forward with raising the funds from different businesses and created a task force to begin work on that. End result is from the airport to I26 improved just the landscape view that stretch town of Springdale county of Lexington certainly is involved with water service there from the city of Casey on the south side. The city of West Columbia on the north side has the water service. The improvements are all in the South Carolina Department of Transportation. Right away, there were individual property owners along there to talk to and work with. And then Dominion Energy also had an interest because of the power lines along both sides of the road. So obviously maintenance is a big part of that. So also had to create a collaboration and an ongoing agreement around maintenance.
Switzer: All right, what's next for your group? Another entry corridor?
Crapps: Yeah. So second priority is the improvements at the I77 Forest Drive interchange. We welcome a lot of guests, a lot of visitors to the area into Fort Jackson, both those that come for training, but also their families at graduation on a recurring basis. And so a lot of visitors see that part of our community. You've already kicked off the design phase of that one. And let me just say one more thing, that while these gateways are important and I think real improvements, I think the real point of celebration here is just to make note of the collaboration between all the governments that came together, all these different bodies that I mentioned, and just think about how much can be done and accomplished for our region when we all work together. This is just one example, but it gives us a great model for regional collaboration cooperation as we go forward and think about other initiatives to work on together.
Switzer: Well, Mike, thank you so much for spending time with us today and the update.
Crapps: You're welcome. Thank you, Mike.
Switzer: Mike Crapps is board Chair at Midlands Business Leadership Group. We will have a link to the organization posted at our webpage so you can learn more. South Carolina Public Radio, where you can hear this show again. And remember, you can hear us again wherever you find Podcasts with the South Carolina Business Review. This is Mike Switzer.
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