Lead to Succeed - Randy Thelen of The Right Place

In this episode of Lead to Succeed, host Steve Arwood welcomes Randy Thelen, President and CEO of The Right Place and Chair of the Economic Development Leaders for Michigan (EDLM). The conversation dives into EDLM’s Top Ten policy priorities and the importance of consistent, regionally driven economic development across the state. Randy shares lessons learned from West Michigan, the critical role of rural communities, and why Michigan’s future depends on innovation, infrastructure, and alignment.

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Transcript

Arwood   9:38
Well, welcome to another edition of Lead to Succeed, our podcast brought to you by Invest Up, UP's premier economic development agency, where we talk to people about issues, ideas, thoughts, and just what's happening, the effects, the economy and the prosperity in the Upper Peninsula.
I'm pleased today to have Randy Thelen with us. Mr. Thelen is the President and CEO of the Right Place program in Grand Rapids, MI. Now he's not a Yooper, but for the purposes of today's conversation, he's going to get a day pass and depending on how it goes, he might get a full per pass, but that's up to Marty when we get to that point. Welcome, Randy, and I'm glad you're here today. You got a couple of important thoughts to share that affect the UP, but.

Randy Thelen   10:20
Yeah. Thanks, Steve.

Arwood   10:30
1st, and not to be gratuitous, I do want to mention that the Right Place program is one of the best in class economic development agencies in the United States, in my opinion. And it was probably the number one benchmark that we all used 8-9 years ago and we're putting.
Invest UP together. So a lot to be learned from Randy and from the people that came before Randy, but a great organization and a well-respected organization. And Randy did also serve as the Chairman of the Economic Development Leaders for Michigan and maybe you want to talk about that, what that is, and then we can get into why we have a gentleman from Grand Rapids on the UP podcast. Go ahead.

Randy Thelen   11:17
Yeah. Well, Steve, thank you. Thanks for having us. And my best to Marty Fittante and the team at Invest UP. I really appreciate the invitation to be here. And you know, regarding economic development leaders for Michigan, about 5-6 years ago, a collection of regional economic developers came together and said we really need to bring. Sort of the regions across Michigan together around economic development from a strategic standpoint, if you think about Michigan, it's a phenomenal state in so many ways. It's awfully unique too. Certainly to your point that the differences between the Lower Peninsula and the Upper Peninsula are joked about often, but there's a reality to it too. The needs of Escanaba are quite different from the needs of Detroit and Grand Rapids or Alpena or Flint or Mount Pleasant for that matter. And so and thinking about how our state, our great state functions, it was a recognition that we function first as regions and it's the strength of the regions that make us a stronger state. And so the economic development, frankly, the leaders of Michigan came together like I said a half a dozen years ago really to be more thoughtful, more strategic in the way we band together to promote the best interest of Michigan, but do so on a regional basis. So it's been a great effort so far and we've come out with a. Sort of a top ten list of how we might continue to advance the state going forward.

Arwood   12:37
Well, let's talk about the members of EDLM for a second. Obviously, Invest is one, I believe one of I don't know, I can't remember the count, but invest being the five county regional organization in the UP. Could you just name off who the remainders are.

Randy Thelen   12:55
Yeah, so certainly Marty had Invest UP. We also have Tyler Rossmessler from the Flint area. We've got Maureen Donahue Kraus from the Detroit Regional Partnership, Kevin Johnson from the City of Detroit, their Detroit Economic Growth Corporation. My counterpart here in West Michigan, Jennifer Owens at Lakeshore. Advantage Yonas Peterson down in Kalamazoo with Southwest Michigan First and a collection of others. Bob Trezise at LEAP, Paul Krutko at Ann Arbor Spark. And I'm probably missing a couple. I apologize to my colleagues, but just a really great collection of talent with over 300 years of economic development experience. The collection of careers there and frankly experience all across the country come back and bring that expertise to Michigan.

Arwood   13:40
Well, knowing all those folks, it's a wonder you could agree on a top ten list.

Randy Thelen   13:45
Well, and unique to our effort Steve, it's unanimous. Our bylaws call for everything to be voted unanimously for it to advance. So probably started with six and we compromised with 10, so.

Arwood   13:50
So this is very important to the Upper Peninsula because you know we had invested and Marty and team have been extremely successful in the past few years and kind of.
Beginning to mainstream the Upper Peninsula into the regular economic development conversation in terms of, you know, the work the MEDC does in business development and all this. I mean, I think there were sometimes where. You know, that might have been a little more difficult to do, but I think the track record is stellar over at least the past half a dozen years that they've, you know, really been able to advance the UP economic development agenda, which really is a statewide economic development agenda. And you've got several issues here. Well, the 10, I'll let you talk about them, but you've got the broken up into business attraction and retention, which is just what it says. Community development, which of course is the development place and talented people and then kind of a new one, but one that we've had a lot of success with so far. In the upper penis is Innovation and entrepreneurship. So starting with the business and attraction and talking a little bit about that. But before you do, I'll just assume that those that are watching know that this list that I'm reading from can be obtained on Invest's web page alone. With the press releases and the comments related to that. So you know, let our listeners read it. Will, maybe you go ahead and talk about the importance of these components.

Randy Thelen   15:40
Yeah. So I would say I've worked in economic development now for about 30 years, 20 some of those years were here in Michigan, about 10 were out in Omaha and Denver. And so I've been able to sort of grow up in economic development in Michigan, go out of the market, learn a bit and come back about five years ago and the one. A big sort of aha moment that I learned only by going somewhere else and coming back is how consistency matters, how a sustained, consistent effort really matters. And really it's true of just about any government regulatory policy kind of thing. The more.
Stability there is, then the more certain business can make decisions and that's the environment that they enjoy most. And you know, I think what I've seen in Michigan in my career is this pendulum swinging back and forth and it just seems more violently back and forth and the sense is we're heading into a moment where there's probably going to be another pendulum swing. And part of our message at EDLM is like, hold on for a moment, maybe some of the things that are happening, maybe we need to make some adjustments to. But the core of this goal of growing this state is paramount and if we aspire for more and better states and more and better Michigan, we have to grow to get there. And we can look across Michigan at communities that haven't grown and we know the challenges. And frankly, some of my friends in the UP will speak to this openly, the school enrollments that have struggled or the retention of talent out of the university.
And some of these dynamics that I know that are somewhat, you know, unique to the UP, those are real hard, difficult challenges. And unless we can turn around that growth trajectory and get Michigan growing again, it's going to be more and more difficult to fix the damn roads or what or fix education, whatever it may be. So a growth agenda is really where it starts. And we believe fully that these four buckets of our top ten list around business retention and attraction, around talent development, around community development and innovation, that's that's a winning model. And part of our push then is to have that winning model be more consistent time and time again. And that's where I think about other states come out ahead and you know if I give you an example, Steve, so site development is new for the state of Michigan and we're doing some really good work in that space and hats off to the folks in Lansing at the MEDC who are deploying that. But we're trying to do in 20 weeks or 20 months what the southern states did in 20 years. So when Ford chose the Blue Oval project to go outside of Memphis. They chose a site that had been developing its infrastructure for 20 years. When they chose a site in Marshall, they found a site that was trying to do it almost overnight and it's just more challenging to do it that way. I think we now have to stay consistent around site development for the.
Years to come to make sure we're prepared when opportunity knocks again.

Arwood   18:32
Yeah, I reflect on this because obviously I set the seat for some time and you know it's all different now and it's eight years later and we all largely have a whole different set of programs. A lot of the programs that were in existence when I was there are now gone, obviously, and some of the programs that were in existence when I was there, I helped make go away because the climate at the time was we don't want to do this, we want to go that way.

Randy Thelen   18:47
That's right.

Arwood   19:06
And I've also noticed too and and you talk about consistency and the one thing I reflect on is that you know we had kind of like the IT was pure Michigan forever, right. And everybody knew pure Michigan, pure Michigan, pure Michigan, pure Michigan. I sense that's getting diluted now too. I see all the different license plates.

Randy Thelen   19:06
Yeah.
That's right.

Arwood   19:25
The, you know, the green plate, the blue plate, the throwback plate, that's all well and good, but you just don't see the, you know, that was a brand that took a long time to build and it seems like while it's still there, it's it's just not pressed like it was in economic development.
And in my sense, it's kind of the same way. I mean, your business, you want to do business in a state you want, you're never going to get 100% certainty that things aren't going to change, but you want the confidence that the investment you're making is going to be productive. From a whirlwind of external activities within the state that you know are all jockeying for position. And frankly, you know, for a lot of outsiders, it probably looks pretty scary right now as to what's going on in Michigan. What's your take on that?

Randy Thelen   20:17
I think change certainly, but change within a certain range, right, that it's OK now we're changing things on the margin, we're not flipping them on their head. And I think, you know, one of the best economic development tools of my career is the brownfield redevelopment tool. And that goes back to Jen Engler, Governor Engler. On particular days where you know you look around the landscape, our urban centers, even our small communities were struggling with that site at the edge of town that nobody would touch because of all the real or perceived environmental conditions. I would argue that the program has been the most impactful. It's been modified over time, certainly Steve, some you know for the better, maybe some. More complicated, but ultimately the development community, the business community had confidence and had confidence in that program and it had a profoundly positive impact on communities all across Michigan. That's kind of where my head is at is how do we maintain at least, you know, the North Star direction. We want to grow as a state. We need to attract and retain. We need to develop our communities, we need to help support our talent base and we need to help create a more innovative culture. And then we can dial it in a little bit from there. But just a line around those four clear, you know, Chevrolet, Chevrolet, apple pie, you know, USA kind of economic development goals, that's that's where I think we need to get to.

Arwood   21:35
It was fine, yeah. And in this climate and and you know, coming into a gubernatorial election year and different administrations bring different ideas and you know that's all well and good. How are you?

Randy Thelen   21:36
And that's reflected in that top ten list.

Arwood   21:53
Let's talk for a second. How, how do you envision getting this agenda accomplished and when or how? What's your, you know, what's your point of attack really with moving this agenda forward? Because it's big, it's big, it's ambitious and you know it should be.
But how are you?

Randy Thelen   22:14
Yeah, it is. It's certainly  bold in the sense that we're suggesting there's some things worth protecting. There's some things worth advancing. There's some things that we think are going to have a positive outcome for the state of Michigan. But we're not, you know, in that list of 10 ideas, there's not much that is sort of brand new out-of-the-box ideas. Most of it is how do we massage and adjust some of the things that have been proven to be working and make them just a bit bigger, just a bit better and and pull back from some other things that are out there that maybe have proven out either the time is the moment has passed or the utility of it is has changed but, certainly finding ways to invest in our communities, making all of our communities just to touch nicer, a little bit more quality of life enhancements that make places more attractive for retention and attraction of talent. I think those are things that everybody gets behind the jobs, boosting the job base in our state that can grow incomes and help make life easier for Michiganders. I think that makes sense. And you know, we've seen a few headquarters of Michigan companies sell over the last six months. And so you know, those tend not to get replaced by some spaceship landing from outer space, but rather from an entrepreneur that has a moonshot that takes off and we need to make sure we're always.

Arwood   23:25
That's true.

Randy Thelen   23:31
Sort of planting those seeds for those next entrepreneurs to grow.

Arwood   23:34
You know, your organization is interesting in that you not only represent or have as your region, Kent County and Grand Rapids proper, but you also have several counties that are defined as rural and probably some rural distressed. It gets you kind of a neat perspective on the, you know, kind of the you've got a micro economy in West Michigan just like we kind of have a different economy in the UP where we have some areas and then we have other places that.

Randy Thelen   24:03
Yeah.

Arwood   24:10
You know, it is a little harder to address some of their issues, but the issues seem, you know, pretty much the same. So when you're looking at your issues in your rural county, what's the big issue in your rural counties that you see over on the West side?

Randy Thelen   24:26
Yeah, you know, it's interesting, Steve. You know, I could argue that Kent County, which is, you know, home to Grand Rapids, is arguably the most prosperous in Michigan, certainly among the biggest from a, you know, largest prosperous in the state and.

Arwood   24:31
More population in Kent County than there is in the entire UP, I think.

Randy Thelen   24:41
Yeah, that's true. But I, you know, I should say though, Steve, I didn't grow up in UP. I did grow up in a town of 1000 people. So I have a sense of what a rural lifestyle is like. But I am in the same region as you described here at the right place, we also serve Lake County, which has long been one of the poorest counties in the state of Michigan. So it's a really unique dynamic there. But what I've seen in Lake County or Montcalm County, Ionia, Oceana, Mason, when communities align, when they have a vision of what they want to be and where they want to go and there's alignment around that. There's tremendous success to be had and Lake County, I think right now is truly becoming a not so hidden gem. The communities have come together. They're really rallied around their downtown in Baldwin, but the community of Idlewild is coming together around their historic roots and there's some energy there now and I think it starts with alignment starts with a vision and it starts with a local leader that just rolls up her sleeves and starts a farmer's market. And then somebody starts up a little restaurant, somebody opens up an ice cream stand and somebody opens up a festival. They do a blessing in the bikes event every year that draws thousands upon thousands of people and. pretty soon it's no longer tapping your brakes as you drive up north. Now it is the destination and now it's a place maybe people choose to live and it starts to flywheel. So just as communities can kind of spiral down when things start to go the wrong way, you know, Steve, you and I are never going to get young again, but communities can get young again and I think you know.
Lake County, Newaygo County in particular are getting young again and I think it's good leadership, alignment, vision and then the tools that support those moves.

Arwood   26:19
Well, obviously what matters in Sheridan, MI is different than what matters in, you know, one of your more urban communities. But I totally get it. I mean, being from that part of the state and from Rockcomb County, you know, I've watched as they've been.
Improved and I've seen things that are, you know, hey, there's, you know, there's a there there. And so how do you, you know, so how do you, when you look at those counties, how do you use The Right Place program to engage those communities? To begin thinking about this, how do you promote this economic development spirit in some of these counties?

Randy Thelen   27:11
Yeah, I think it's when I first got here, Steve, about five years ago, we had a partnership model that was in place for some time and generally worked well. We've added a few counties that have asked to join the effort since I got here and you know, I think one of them. One of the challenges, frankly, is there was a little bit of this, I don't want to say envy, but just sort of antagonistic mindset of some of our smaller rural counties compared to the big bad Kent County, Grand Rapids. We kind of had to get past that and get over that and and recognize. You know, the alternative is if Grand Rapids wasn't performing well economically, that that multiplier effect works negatively and would have a negative spillover effect further and further into the region. And so to have a strong core is critical and it helps.
We would argue, and it's proven to be the case, that businesses are going to locate and or expand in Greenville, in part because the airport in Grand Rapids continues to set records for service or the freeways are being upgraded around here to make it easier to get in and out of Grand Rapids and in and out of the communities that surround us. You know the investments in quality of life amenities, their kids in Newaygo or Fremont are going to concert at the Van Andel Arena or will soon go to the concert at the amphitheater. So the more we can build quality of life assets in the center city of Grand Rapids, the stronger it is to retain business, retain talent across the region. So.
We didn't break down sort of that us and them or us or them sort of mindset and it's more of a we mindset today.

Arwood   28:43
Excellent advice for any, you know, any anchoring area that has a large surrounding rural area. I often look at Marquette and the impact it has around the area and and I think we've made a lot of progress with some of these areas and understanding how these, you know, these areas of the UP are not places to be antagonistic. They're, you know, they're engines of all sorts of economics that spill over so. You know, you mentioned something interesting and we've had, I know we're a little off the topic on the top ten, but it's something that's been.

Randy Thelen   29:21
Just one interesting thing, Steve, this whole time. Just one interesting topic.

Arwood   29:27
I remember when the Grand Rapids airport, Gerald Ford Airport wasn't much and then I remember a group of individuals basically said. We got to have a better airport. This is key to our livelihood. It's key to our growth. It's key to our businesses. It's key to us being a destination, and it's key for our populace to be able to move around the world freely. It wasn't that long ago. And the airport is a phenomenal asset. I mean, you wouldn't think, you know, 30 years ago, I wouldn't think to drive over to Grand Rapids Airport to go somewhere. But it's 50 minutes. It's 50 minutes from my house. Where I live here in Grand Lodge, and it's my primary part, I can go where I want to go.

Randy Thelen   30:23
It's sort of symbiotic, right? As the population grew here and the business grew here, the airport grew with it and and but you know, 25 maybe almost 30 years ago now there was no parking deck at the airport. It was a park and ride or even in parts of it was gravel. So imagine what that must have been like and today. As I said earlier, record 4 million passengers. The tipping point for Grand Rapids was about 15 years ago. Well, 15 years ago, the business leadership recognized the average ticket price for an airline ticket out of Grand Rapids was $156 more expensive than the national average.
So you know, if you had at the time 2 million flights times 150, what is that 3300 million or something? It's a lot of money. And they then came together, the business community came together, they went and recruited AirTran, which is a low-cost air carrier to come to Grand Rapids. It was an unbelievable effort. And that started to bring the, you know, that competitive pressure started to bring the Delta and the American and the United flight prices down. But then we got lucky. So that was really good. That was really intentional. But sometimes luck comes into it too. AirTran no longer exists. Southwest bought it, Southwest Airlines bought it, and they took the same offer we had given AirTran and Captain Service here and that is now today our airline tickets are $6 above the national average instead of $156.00. So that's a tremendous savings to every citizen of the region. And the region to your point now stretches from the lake to Traverse City down to the state line all the way over to Flint in terms of who's driving into our airport, so a huge economic catalyst for us, no doubt.

Arwood   32:03
Yeah. And you know we've done a lot of work in concert with the county and an airport Marquette and how that you know becomes a better best in class regional airport. And then Grand Rapids is kind of one of the stories that we always like to tell about, you know, different size, of course, different populace, but the thought and the practice of how you create a better, you know, regional air service is pretty much the same.

Randy Thelen   32:23
Yeah, yeah.
And I think the lesson too, whether it's the Grand Rapids Airport or my Lake County story, is you have to first start to make it better for your citizens. And if it becomes so nice that it draws more from across the broader region, including yourself from Grand Ledge, well, then so be it. But I think the focus starts with How do you serve your community best, whether that's an airport, whether that's the farmers market in Baldwin or its new jobs out by the freeway? I think it starts there and builds out from there.

Arwood   32:52
So when you think about economic development over the next couple of years in the state of Michigan and you know, whether you're, you know, successful in this top ten agenda or not, I mean, I think you will be successful. What are your, you know, kind of what's top of mind for you in terms of as you look at the economy of the state and where you just, you sense we got to be all over it so to be, yeah.

Randy Thelen   33:33
Yeah, great question, Steve. I think there's a couple even like the last six months or so from a business investment standpoint that have been pretty choppy community development as well. These, you know, apartment buildings, housing starts have been choppy as you know.
Inflation, construction, inflation continues to be quite high. Interest rates continue to be quite high. And then the tariff uncertainty is, you know, back to my pendulum idea that that uncertainty may be even more so than wherever the tariff rate ends up. But the uncertainty has caused a lot of pausing of business investment decisions, so. But even with those sort of clouds that hang out there, there's always opportunity. We're seeing tremendous investments in the tech space. And so when we think about the Grand Rapids economy, the core for us is advanced manufacturing. The health science sector has really come of age and now we're leaning heavily into the tech arena. We're hosting tech week. Week here in a couple of weeks, we expect upwards of 20,000 people over the course of that week to participate. Last year we had 16,000 and so we've really kind of been able to lean into that. I think for the most part that's true across the state. Every region has to find their niche. I know the UP is looking, exploring or pushing outdoor recreation opportunities. I think that's a tremendous, incredible idea for the UP. It fits hand in glove with the culture and just the natural beauty up there. So I think that that is a winning strategy. But ultimately we've got to get young again as a state. Just like I mentioned, communities can get young again. We've got to lean into innovation.
We have tremendous infrastructure and people typically think of roads, water, and sewer. When you say infrastructure, I think of our universities, our research centers, our, you know, Detroit is having a moment. We need to capitalize on that and really help plant a whole bunch of early stage, high tech, high growth. Seeds in this across the state of Michigan and watch them become the next great employers in Michigan. So you know, in Grand Rapids we have a company, Accra. Sure, a lot of talk they're about to go public for a big, big number. And you know, 1015 years ago nobody would have known who they were and 20-30 years ago, nobody would have really known what Rocket Mortgage would become and you know, UWM and others. So we've got to find the next, the next, right, the next wave of high growth, high potential companies.

Arwood   35:50
Yeah. Well, Randy, thank you for all you do. As I said, your work at EDLM is very important to the UP as a leader of the statewide coalition. Again, for those watching that want to see the complete list, the complete top ten list. It's not Dave Letterman's top ten list, but it's a top ten list. You can find it at Invest UP Michigan website. So Randy again, thanks for your time. Thanks for all you do. Tell all the good people to write high.

Randy Thelen   36:17
Yeah. I will.

Arwood   36:31
And I'm sure we'll talk soon.

Randy Thelen   36:34
Thank you. Thanks, Steve.

Arwood   36:36
You bet.