One of the things I love about my job is that no day is ever the same. The joy of helping to lead an organization with a broad but important mission, that is both planner and practitioner, and that spans five counties, means that the challenges are diverse and the solutions varied. But we tend to think of economic development success as coming from one of two activities: a new business choosing our region as its new home, or an existing company growing. The reality is much more nuanced.
Last week, I got to sit across a coffeehouse table from Larry Tangel of Enercon, an East Peoria-based engineering and manufacturing firm that specializes in power systems. As we sat there, the news broke that Enercon was being acquired by Generac, a Wisconsin company that is a big player in the data center industry. (Of course, Larry knew this was happening but I felt honored to be one of the first people outside of his tight circle to find out.)
The news got me thinking about economic success. This was not exactly a traditional business attraction outcome. Generac is purchasing Enercon but not “moving here” in the same way Epic Medical plans to build a new medical device factory in Pekin. And Enercon itself is not exactly “growing” in the same way we think about a company like Excalibur Seasoning building a research and development center or Caterpillar renovating their AH building to accommodate a growing engineering workforce. This is an investment of a different kind: A large, publicly traded company saw the value of a homegrown business and said to itself, “We need to have that as a part of our family.” We are hopeful that the acquisition leads to additional investment as Generac sees in Greater Peoria the same thing it saw in Enercon – an excellent workforce, great management, a vision for the future of industry, and the capability to seize opportunity.
The Enercon-Generac agreement is a big deal for Greater Peoria, but I am reminded of a different way our region is succeeding. In early February, I visited Dave Demirjian at the Midwest Bioprocessing Center in Peoria at his new corporate headquarters. Dave and his team are scientists who find biology-based solutions to problems in human health and nutrition. Since their founding in 2019, they have been tenants of the Peoria Next Innovation Center, where their company has grown from a startup to one with international clients. Having outgrown the Center, they moved into a new 10,000-square-foot building that not only meets their immediate needs but also allows them to grow into an even bigger company. In a completely different industry and at a completely different scale than Enercon, the Midwest Bioprocessing Center is making its own mark on our local economy.
The truth is that we need to think about economic development in a variety of ways. It is entrepreneurs taking the first steps toward starting a business, whether that is a coffee shop or a software company. It is our decades-old companies finding new customers and needing to grow their footprint. Sometimes it is just the steady growth of the business that shows they excel at what they do and need more space or people to do it. It is new companies choosing to locate operations in our community. Some of those successes are more visible than others, but all are important. And while Greater Peoria EDC will not be involved in every expansion or location decision, we hope we are helping create an environment where such decisions can be made.