New North at 3

A retrospective look at the New North regional movement as it matures into its next phase

Story by Sean Fitzgerald

Since the rustic period of the late 19th Century when cities in northeast Wisconsin grew up around the paper, millwork and agriculture industries, communities like Green Bay, Oshkosh and Sheboygan existed within a silo unto themselves, each fueling its own self-contained economic engine. Leaders of business and community didn’t need to think much about – or even have empathy for – the activities occurring 15 or 25 miles outside of their borders.

More than a century later, as a result of population growth, urban sprawl, more expansive commuting patterns and global competitiveness, such singular-city tunnel vision became increasingly difficult – and increasingly dangerous – to rely upon in guiding the future development of any one community.

By the late 1990s in northeast Wisconsin, chief law enforcement and fire protection officials from contiguous municipalities began to investigate shared services. More and more cities amicably negotiated border agreements with surrounding towns to curb and control their appetite for annexation. County waste management leaders experimented with recycled material processing. Regionalism was spawning in this once sleepy corner of the Great Lakes.

At the dawn of the 21st Century, post secondary education institutions across northeast Wisconsin sat around the same table for the first time, while the largest chambers of commerce across the region combined their legislative agenda and discovered a more audible voice in Madison and in Washington. Workforce and economic development leaders joined together to find sustainable solutions for the region as a whole, recognizing that a Kimberly-Clark tissue converting plant closing down in Neenah had effects more far-ranging than Neenah alone.

Recognizing several of these collaborative initiatives shared the same geographical footprint within their respective roles, an effort to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of northeast Wisconsin was undertaken by the Fox Valley and Bay Area workforce development boards in 2004. The fruit of that effort – the 80-page report on the Northeast Wisconsin Economic Opportunity Study, helped sire what a year later would become New North Inc., a central cog fostering collaboration among private and public sector leaders throughout northeast Wisconsin.

Three years after the December 2005 unveiling of the New North name, identity and business plan for carrying out its mission, the dynamic of regionalism for an 18-county area in northeast Wisconsin is still a growing and developing child – one just coming out of the toddler stage and into its formative years.

Shift in paradigm
THE CONCEPT OF REGIONALISM – defined in part as neighboring communities sharing resources to enhance the opportunity for economic growth as one cohesive team – remains a relatively ripe frame of mind for many northeast Wisconsin leaders of business, community and education.

And like with most regional efforts nationally, there still remain other sultans of their respective markets who find the concept of regionalism threatening to their provincial methods of carrying out their own organization’s mission. To date, they’ve been a quiet minority, which haven’t created any insurmountable hurdles for various regional efforts to overcome.

Much of the support for regional efforts has come from professionals transplanted into northeast Wisconsin from other reaches of the country where they witnessed – and perhaps were actively involved – with similar efforts to make a defined region more efficient and reduce waste, said Jerry Murphy, executive director for New North Inc. Murphy was hired on three years ago this January as the first ever staff for the organization, having previously helped to build regional economic efforts in the Buffalo-Niagara Falls metropolitan area and in northern Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Inflating this giant ball to a point where it could be pushed forward and rolled out to a national and global marketplace was a monumental task. The starting point has been the internal effort to brand and identify northeast Wisconsin, to its own residents, as the New North. An initiative that took center stage throughout 2006 and 2007, that effort will always continue as a measure of identity reinforcement.

“The concept of New North – as a region – needed to take place first,” Murphy said.

Beyond shaping identity for the New North region, much of the first three years has also involved narrowing specific value propositions in the region, as well as identifying measurements to chart the agency’s own progress as it moves forward.
As examples, the New North has centered a focus on advanced manufacturing and advanced agriculture/dairy. It’s helped establish a consortium of wind energy suppliers across the region – some who even compete against one another – that do everything from erecting towers to manufacturing blade hubs and nosecones for modern windmills. In defining this niche value proposition for the region, the New North has been able to raise its profile and brand New North with an audience of the top 25 largest wind turbine manufacturers, Murphy cited as an example, to suggest northeast Wisconsin as the most optimal place to do business.

The model launched with the wind energy supplier consortium is illustrative of the role the New North agency can take in the region. New North Inc. was not created to shoulder the nitty-gritty tasks of economic development such as writing and applying for workforce and capital acquisition grants from state and federal agencies. Rather, its role is to connect people and resources in northeast Wisconsin, Murphy said, and to celebrate the accomplishments made when those people and resources come together.

Murphy points specifically to efforts in educational attainment, which in many respects has made some of the most substantial leaps in regional collaboration. The four technical college districts serving the New North – Northeast Wisconsin, Fox Valley, Moraine Park and Lakeshore – have conducted a variety of joint marketing initiatives during the past three years, and recently the four institutions wrote a joint application to the state to receive grant funding for worker training initiatives.

A separate initiative earlier in 2008 between the University of Wisconsin-Stout in Menominee and Northeast Wisconsin Technical College and UW-Green Bay made a four-year manufacturing engineering degree program possible in Green Bay. Like the engineering partnership program between UW-Platteville and the UW-Fox Valley campus in Menasha, this educational attainment effort will help boost the workforce skills for manufacturers across the region.

Through each of these collaborative efforts, New North Inc. didn’t do the heavy lifting. It may not have even started each to move forward. But it did help to bring resources together, and when necessary, offer independent validation and endorsement to decision makers in Madison, Washington and elsewhere that such a collaborative initiative is vital to the economy of the region.

Funding
THIS PAST YEAR, New North Inc. operated on a nearly $650,000 budget, but that’s still far short of the $1 million annual figure that Murphy believes would allow it to accomplish the kind of national and global outreach necessary to achieve its goals.

In 2005, Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle threw his full support behind regional initiatives across the state, and even provided financial encouragement in the form of some state funding to help such groups get off the ground.

New North was the beneficiary of a $380,000 grant from the state Department of Commerce to help the organization  with its start-up costs during its first three years. Since that time, it’s received an additional $150,000 for fiscal 2008, and the state has pledged another $150,000 for 2009, according to state Department of Commerce spokesperson Tony Hozeny.

Altogether, that exceeds the $500,000 awarded to the Milwaukee 7, a similar regional initiative in southeastern Wisconsin, or the $270,000 presented to Thrive, an eight-county regional effort including Madison and south-central Wisconsin.

The majority of New North Inc.’s funding, however, still comes from a portfolio of investors – private companies, labor organizations, chambers of commerce, educational institutions and other economic development agencies across the region. In all, about 120 distinct investors contribute funding and in-kind products and services to keep the organization moving forward.

Why invest in the New North, at least in regard to the work the agency itself is doing?

United Association Local 400, a trade union representing plumbers and steamfitters in northeast Wisconsin, was one of the original investors to make a 3-year, $30,000 commitment back in 2006. Its partner organization, Mechanical Contractors Association of Northeast Wisconsin, also made the same 3-year, $30,000 commitment.

At the outset, the only thing the groups found in common with the New North was geography.

“We reached out to them because the New North is almost an identical footprint to the jurisdiction that Local 400 covers,” said Mark Buss, business manager for Local 400.

Buss said the labor organization saw the development of the New North movement as an opportunity to help create more local jobs in manufacturing and in the trades. Buss said both Local 400 and the Mechanical Contractors Association realized that New North efforts were a process. They didn’t realistically expect to see job opportunities blossom immediately.

“It’s hard to quantify the value at this point. Overall, they’ve done a good job of promoting this region outside of the area,” Buss said. “There’s a general feeling that if the region prospers, we all prosper.”

His only criticism has been what Buss and his colleagues view as a lack of opportunities to have a seat at the table in guiding New North Inc. initiatives.

“I don’t feel that labor has been engaged as much as business has been engaged at this point,” he said.

Like many of New North Inc.’s original investors, Local 400 is nearing the end of its 3-year funding commitment. All of these investors are approaching a critical point of whether to re-invest, and at what dollar level. Buss said the leadership at Local 400 has not made any decisions, yet, regarding its future support for New North.

Entering the next phase
THE NEW NORTH IS JUST STARTING to move beyond the initial stages of defining its role, identifying a plan of work, vesting stakeholders and developing measurements for its progress. Now it’s entering a new phase where there’s even more of a responsibility to demonstrate value to northeast Wisconsin.

“North of what you expect – that was our promise,” Murphy said, citing the tagline used in marketing northeast Wisconsin to other regions of the country.

It truly has been a promise that Murphy, his staff and board of directors intend to keep.

During the last year, New North Inc. has begun to gauge those measurements of achievement so that over time, northeast Wisconsin has a more objective barometer of the progress it’s making. While in 2005 there was no experience of regionalism in northeast Wisconsin for which one could compare, the data and proof is mounting.

“Now there’s enough empirical evidence for what (stakeholders and investors) can expect,” Murphy said.

Crucial to New North’s continuing efforts is the assistance of its volunteers from across northeast Wisconsin to make referrals within their own networks. Murphy cited a recent example in which a manufacturer in northern Wisconsin connected him with a large European wind energy interest. The result: he and the New North wind energy consortium have scheduled a personal meeting to pitch the region’s strengths and capabilities in this emerging industry.

While sewing together all the pieces that make the region’s economy and culture thrive in the New North, there’s been little effort to date to recognize its successes. The New North did launch its People, Possibilities and Progress Diversity Award in late 2007 to put the spotlight on best practices in corporate diversity programs and culture. Other examples are few and far between, though, and Murphy agrees more of the region’s successes need to be shared.

“Because we’re moving so fast, we’re busier making hay than we are celebrating the hay that we make,” Murphy said.
Such successes are important to note. When those achievements lead to prosperity in the region, all of the New North should prosper. After all, that’s at the heart of what regionalism is all about.