When you’re into the mid-point of a five year strategic plan that has established a goal of $20-million in new community investment each year and you score more than $38-million dollars in new investment that creates 250 jobs you can be rightfully proud of your annual performance metrics. That’s why Cornerstone Alliance President Rob Cleveland was walking on air when I sat down with him on Friday to take a look at how 2019 rounded out for Berrien County’s lead economic development agency.
Recognizing that while “when it rains it pours, and when it’s dry a drought can hit,” he’s wasting no time resting on his laurels and those of his team, and actually had to carve out a 20-minute block for me in between a major luncheon meeting with a new executive in the community and a team meeting with a major corporation after we were done.
The affable, but driven, Cleveland says, “We’re working through a strategic plan, and this is year three of our five-year plan.” He adds, “Every year we have certain metrics and some of those are well within our control and some are less than in control, but coming into this strategic plan we set a goal of $20-million of new investment every year. That was based on the fact that the previous five years we had averaged, as an organization in the community, about $12-million of new investment on projects that we had worked. So we thought $20-million was a stretch goal, and a significant increase, yet we’ve blown through that. We’re averaging significantly more investment than that. In fact, in 2019, the projects we worked on came in at over $38-million in new investment, and there was a significant amount of that investment that was tied to the entrepreneurship team at the Women’s Business Center, at around $1-million, which is a very nice number.”
Cleveland says that the $38-million in new investments by companies in the community, which have created almost 250 new jobs, is a significant gain for the community, but notes, “The thing that I was most proud of was the diversity both by industry and by location that we have enjoyed with these projects. We’re here to serve the entire county, and while we work in Benton Harbor, Benton Township, St. Joe, St. Joe Township, and all the communities around, we want to see – and keep in mind we don’t ever dictate where projects go – but, we want to see all of the communities in the county grow.”
The certified economic developer is delighted that the diversity of projects ranged across commercial and industrial sectors, citing things like the substantive new presence underway in Royalton Township by Vail Rubber, calling it “A great new project being erected in Royalton Township, with $8-million dollars in new investment.” He adds, “It’s fantastic in that it is a century old company that is solidified again for another great 30 or 40 years in the community.”
Cleveand says, “While we had great industrial projects, we also had great commercial projects in the form of places like Watermark Brewing in Stevensville, which has been very successful and continues to expand. That’s great.”
However, one of the most notable projects Cornerstone helped foster was the acquisition by United Federal Credit Union of Whirlpool’s Hilltop building in South St. Joe, which he describes as, “A building that required a great deal of creativity and adaptive re-use, and that’s what United is doing. They, as a nationwide company, didn’t have to relocate or grow and stay here in St. Joe, but they did and to be able to match them with a building that works for them and also allows Whirlpool to step away from was great.”
Success was also readily evident for the Cornerstone unit at The Women’s Business Center which saw one of its most prolific clients at Power in Motion Gymnastics craft a sizable expansion once again in Royalton Township, built by Pearson Construction of Benton Harbor, which, as Cleveland points out, “benefits everybody in the community…another great entrepreneurship project.”
Then too there was the project that was achieved in the 11th hour in the central business district of downtown Benton Harbor. The Harbor Center project. Cleveland says, “Getting that building to where it is today, and where it’s headed toward completion, has been a challenge, but as you’ve heard me say many times, I cannot reiterate enough how closely that building came to being torn down. We were a week away from pulling the trigger on that building and saying we just can’t make it work. So to find Cressy Real Estate and to be able to come in and get support from the State of Michigan, to get support from the Benton Harbor Brownfield Development team and the City Commission, it took everybody working together to get that building saved and underway toward rehabilitation for both housing and commercial development.”
Cleveland voices great pride in the diversity of industry and location for the myriad projects worked on, including LECO Corporation. He says, “What they’ve done on the south side of Hilltop is great and now adding the second story at corporate headquarters right there on Hilltop really expands their campus and modernizes their office space, making it a great site for their entire team. That’s another great project.”
Here are some of the key metrics that Cornerstone is highlighting for 2019:
- $38-million in new investments…
- Resulting in $112.8-million in annual economic impact
- $2.1-million in new equipment acquisitions
- $31.7-million in annual household spending
- $404,873 in electric power
- $811,286 in spending at full service restaurants
- $1.6-million in healthcare spending
- $3.5-million in banking
- 249 new jobs created
- $40-million in new payroll
- $11.5-million in tax impact to local communities
So what’s ahead for 2020? Cleveland says already they’ve had two foreign company visits, one from a company in India and one from Germany looking at sites in Berrien County. He says, “The company from India has already changed focus to the Detroit area, but we’re still working with the German company, so we’ve got a couple of foreign projects we’ve been working on, and we have plenty in the pipeline that we’ll continue working, while we’d like to do more in urban housing, specifically in Benton Harbor.” He’d like to see some of that urban housing somewhat along the lines of the Harbor Center Project which is at the crossroads of downtown Benton Harbor, immediately adjacent to the Cornerstone offices and across from Dwight P. Mitchell City Center Park. He says, “We’d like to do some potential new housing development, to support the community need for housing – as that’s one of the key areas mentioned.” He adds, “We are also working on some active industrial projects that are already in the pipeline, and would love to do more, and the other thing that we’re going to look at again is commercial development.”
In the commercial realm, Cleveland makes it clear, “As you know, commercial and retail are not primary jobs. They oftentimes aren’t enough to support a family, so it’s not traditionally a focus of economic development. However, it is an important piece of overall community quality of life and quality of place.” He says, “We hear a lot about the old Target store and what could go in there, and we’re working to come up with options, re-evaluate it and try to help Lormax-Stern or whomever to find a user for that prime commercial real estate, and find potential companies that could come here to fill some of the commercial gaps that we have and increase the variety of shopping opportunities for the region, so we will continue to explore those options a bit.”
The work of Cornerstone Alliance has a major influence on the community at large, so they don’t just leap at things without some semblance of order. Rob says his team contracted for three market studies over the past year, noting, “We hired an independent firm out of Chicago that performs those for developers all around the country, for three specific locations in the area. The purpose of that was to effectively create some ‘bait’ to use in fishing for prospects.” By way of explanation he says, “You have to throw out some bait right now to recruit builders and developers, because they can go anywhere and make money and build things. So, we had a study assembled to show what’s in demand, and have done that.”
To help the casual observer understand, Cleveland says, “I think it’s really important to point out that Cornerstone Alliance is not the solution for housing in the community. We want to be a supplement and a support mechanism for whoever is doing that, and we’ll take a greater role in it, but the Strategic Leadership Council and all of the community leaders already know that we need more housing, and we need market-rate housing, especially in Benton Harbor, so that will be a focus for more market-rate housing, and there may be some workforce housing, which is also definitely needed, but housing is an important aspect.” He also notes, “We need more modern apartment living and it’s interesting because everybody blames the Millennials for all of the problems in the world, and if they don’t blame the Millennials, they blame the Baby Boomers, but reality is they all want the same thing now in housing. They all want smaller yards, smaller living space, a walkable community, and nice amenities, so there has to be a way to maximize the opportunities of the harbor and the trails that Harbor Shores has put in, and create another modern living space that speaks to people of all ages and all races and all incomes.”
When it comes to development of the local harbor, Cleveland says, “We’re starting to see some of those pieces fall into place. The Harbor Conservancy that John Egelhaaf and the Southwestern Michigan Planning Commission have led is really making strides and the next aspect is getting some of the local municipalities to work together and we’re taking strides there as well.”
Cornerstone has been advocating for stronger, more ready access to the open water in our harbors and waterfronts and notes, “We will be implementing construction of the water access points with the DNR Grant that we got this year to provide better transportation abilities in the harbor.” He adds, “Ultimately, I believe, that the core of that is real estate. The actual pieces of real estate are moving into play. We’re starting to see some of that break loose on Riverview Drive in Benton Harbor where a developer has acquired the former All Phase Electric building and upriver as well at Berrien Hills, and we hope that develops.”
The bottom line for the waterfront? “I think you’re starting to see some of these pieces fall into place that will ultimately lead to the kind of vision that the Harbor Conservancy and the Harbor Study set forth five years ago.” That bodes well for the progress of the community at large. Stay tuned.
