- The BEDC believes in you. We're glad you're here. We truly are. You're the reason we've come so far. Together we will lead the way for our community's brighter day. All right. Hello. Hello and welcome. There we go. All right. Hello and welcome to the BEDC's 2025 State of the Bloomington Regional Economy.
- I'm Tice Carmichael from Weddle Brothers Construction and I'm the chair of the BDC board. We're delighted to see you today. A warm welcome goes to our guests from across the community. For those of you who are not familiar with our organization, the Bloomington Economic Development Corporation is a nonprofit that serves all of Monroe County. The BDC drives innovative economic practices that advance our community's competitive edge. We focus on attracting and growing quality jobs in this community.
- Economic development takes a village, and many of our partners are here today. So before we dive into the program, we'd like to recognize a number of our guests. Please join with me in welcoming our elected officials from Senator Young's office, Regional Director Diane Powell. Diane, thank you. Monroe County Commissioner Jody Madeira. Jody. City of Bloomington Mayor Carrie Thompson. Carrie Thompson, thank you.
- From the Monroe County Council, Trent Deckard, Jennifer Crosley, and David Henry. Okay, thank you. From the Bloomington Common Council, Isa Kasari, Andy Ruff, and Sydney Zulek. And from the Ellisville County Council, William Ellis. And finally, thank you to the members of the media who are attending today's event.
- Great to see everyone. Next, we'd like to thank our sponsors. The BDC relies on a combination of funding sources, membership dues, private investment, public support, and contributions from local governments. The BDC special programs and projects thrive with the additional generosity of our annual sponsors. Every contribution, regardless of its size, plays a crucial role in catalyzing positive change. Our current 2025 annual sponsors include, and our partners circled, the City of Bloomington, German American Bank,
- the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce, Indiana University, the Town of Ellitsville, and Wattle Brothers Construction. In our executive circle, CFC Properties, Cook Medical, First Financial Bank, IU Credit Union, Ivy Tech Community College, Old National Bank, People's State Bank, and Smithville Communications. And in our leadership circle, the Bloomington Board of Realtors, IU Health, and The Mill.
- Also listed on screen are additional supporters of our work, so thank you. The BDC's governance is overseen by a corps of officers elected from our board. These colleagues and leaders from across the community, and they include myself, your chair, Valerie Pena with IU University Relations is our first chair, Paul Quick, Smithville Communications is our second vice chair, John Gurnan with Forvis is our treasurer,
- Ron Walker, CFC Properties, is our secretary, and Sarah Rogers with IU Credit Union is our past chair. We also want to recognize our executive committee members from local governments who are listed on the screen. Thank you to all of our members and leaders for your service. We're proud to have a group that is represented by all sectors of our community. The BDC State of the Bloomington Regional Economy is an annual event in which we provide an update on the local economy.
- You'll see our featured presentation, but first I'd like to turn it over to Jennifer Pearl, BDC president. Hello. Good after, good morning. It is still morning. On behalf of the BDC, we are delighted to see all of you today.
- For those of you that haven't met our team, they are on the screen. We have Clark Greiner, our Business Development Director, Stacey Morata, Communications and Membership Director, and Christy Wasson, Operations Manager. Thank you to our team, to our IU interns Ansel Green and Daniel Kessler in the back, our partners at the Convention Center, Marquis, and Vivid Events for the hard work on today's event. I did want to give two extra shout-outs. Christy, who did all of our event logistics today with the Center,
- with the Convention Center, and also Stacey. If you hadn't noticed, our music was actually tailored to today's event, which she generated through AI. So I think it was a first for Marquis. We are incredibly grateful for our table sponsors today. Thank you to Bloomington Health Foundation, Herald Fish, Inc., Hoosier Energy, Hoosier Hills Credit Union, J.S. Held, Paganelli Law Group, Phoenix, and Simtra
- Biopharma Solutions. Thank you all for your generosity. And now on to our featured program. The State of the Bloomington Regional Economy is designed to give our area leaders a 360 view on the economy to help inform decisions for your organizations and for the broader community. We're navigating a very complex economic landscape right now. As you'll hear today, private sector leadership, our key industry clusters, and local talent are more important
- than ever. Thank you to the BDC partners that are helping to grow our key industries from life sciences to tech, defense, and advanced manufacturing. Thank you to partners like the IBRC, which has provided critical data and business attraction prospects in industries like microelectronics. And we have our new site promotion initiative, which is working on ensuring that growing businesses can have greater speed to market through sites and locations in our community.
- You'll be hearing more about ways to support this as we move forward. The work is bearing fruit. Local life sciences companies like Simtra and Novo Nordisk are growing. The BDC worked with Envoy American, a leading Canadian manufacturer of high-performance steel solutions in telecom. Eric Greiner over there is from Envoy, and they recently selected Monroe County for its U.S. headquarters. Yeah, thank you, thank you.
- And also shout out to Phoenix for helping make that possible because they are working together and to all the other partners in the community that have worked with them. We're committed to bringing together the best. Innovative companies in tech, advanced manufacturing, trades, and partner organizations to help diversify our economic base, raise wages, and attract and retain quality talent.
- So how do businesses and our community need to sharpen our strategies in the current environment? And what can we expect from the economy? Today's panel is going to dive into these questions. Our panelists will each provide their view on the economy, followed by a fireside chat, then audience Q&A. At that, we're pleased to introduce our moderator. Ting Guti is president and CEO of TechPoint,
- where she leads statewide initiatives to grow Indiana's tech sector through talent, innovation, and entrepreneurship and community building. A veteran of venture capital and community development, she previously served as chief investment officer of Elevate Ventures, structuring over 300 deals across multiple sectors. Ting is a recognized leader in ecosystem strategy,
- and investment operations holding CFA, CAIA, and CIPM credentials. She holds degrees from Indiana University, Purdue University, and Peking University, and has been honored with the IBJ 250 Women of Influence and many other awards. Please welcome Ting to the stage.
- like the gesture on the slide, really reflect, also love the fact it's generated by AI, but combined with human creativity. What a wonderful theme into today's conversation. Thank you, Jen and the rest of the team for including me in this particular opportunity, this annual convening of all the key stakeholders in the city of Bloomington and from the region. As Jen mentioned, I'm president and CEO of TechPoint. Our mission is to drive Indiana's
- tech and tech-powered economy through talent, innovation, entrepreneurship, and community building. We're very thrilled to have been partnered with IU Ventures and Mill on various initiatives across those thresholds. The way we see it is Indiana is known for grow things, make things, move things, heal things, and through tech, transform things. So our vision here is really to make Indiana
- harness the technology, the power of technology to make Indiana's sector go through accelerated growth and stay globally competitive. And Bloomington is a very key market for that particular vision and strategy. So I'm so thrilled to have three experts in their field today, each going to come up, do their presentation and data sharing insights. We'll have a chance to do a little bit Q&A with them, primarily through me, but we want to save time in the end for any questions that may be coming from the audience.
- So the three presenters we have today are Eric Starks, who is a chairman of the board at FTR Transportation Intelligence. And Eric comes from a long-term, very long time, has a long-term career in the transportation space and is a leading researcher in threat model share analysis and forecasting.
- He's also has been a very frequent speaker on this topic. Today, he will share with us a lot of updates on tariffs, which I'm sure is on top of mind for a lot of you here in the room, as well as the national trends in data in critical fields and phrase and what tariffs has done for our economy.
- Second, we'll have Matt Eckley, who is a principal at Baker-Teeling Municipal Advisors. Many of you, I think, have done work with him, or his team is familiar with him. And he is really specialized in capital project financing, primarily on economic development projects with municipalities. He has assisted communities with negotiations and executions of economic development incentives and evaluation different opportunities.
- And today's topic is really around the state budget and state legislative session that we've just gone through, very robust topics across workforce, economic development, and so on and so forth. And Eric will give us a very robust overview. Last but not least, I have to give you a little bit of a tee up here. It's Dr. Phil Powell. It's associate professor at the Kelly School of Business. And actually, he was my
- When I went through the Kelly MBA program, I have to say he's one of my favorite professors at the Kelly School. And that's the same truth for many of my classmates now still contributing to Indiana's economy. And Dr. Phil is known for his economic research. He's been a business economics faculty member for over 28 years. Very proud Hoosier.
- And he currently serves, as Jen mentioned, as the executive director of IVRC, which actually just worked with TechPoint and various CICP initiatives on our industry dashboard project. So very thrilled with the outcome of the project. And Dr. Powell will give us a lot of updates on economic, what's happening in the general economy, and I'm sure he'll be ready to answer any questions that we may have. With that, I want to welcome Eric to join us on stage.
- Good to see everybody. Thank you for having me. I don't know how you all have been feeling though, but lately there's just been a lot of stuff happening. And I get people who come up to me all the time and they're like, Eric, I don't understand what's going on. I'm stressed, the world doesn't make sense, and help me understand what's happening. So I have to sit them down and then I explain to them again
- Indiana is a football school, and Alabama is a basketball school. It blows their mind. They still haven't figured that out. So there you go. How many of you are feeling pretty good right now, huh? Sure, why not? We've got food in our belly. What the heck? OK, let's talk tariffs for a little bit, because I know every single one of you really loves tariffs.
- Let's level set for just a second. Why the heck do we care about tariffs? Well, tariffs is kind of a broader aspect of the global economy. And so ultimately, what we're trying to do is understand what's happening within the tariff environment. Is it good, bad, or indifferent? And we're trying to measure this. And so let's kind of walk through what's been happening. So at the end of the year, we ended the year at 2.3% effective tariff rate was what
- was the tariffs that the US was placing on goods that was coming in. Well, what happened when the administration came in, and they made some announcements, and it jumped up to 24.4%. They went out and they said, we're going to do reciprocal tariffs. The word is wrong, but either way. That's what they call it, reciprocal tariffs. They said, OK, great. The market freaked out. And they said, oh my god. And they said, oh, wait a minute. We're going to wait 90 days.
- 90 days is a great amount of time for us to do absolutely nothing. And the market went crazy. And they said, this is awesome. And when we calculated it, the number went up. It went up above 30%. So the market thought, this is awesome. And then they realized, oh, this isn't so good. And they said, hmm, OK. So we went up to there. And then the administration said, oh, wait a minute, we're going to take
- phones, and electronics, and some of these things off the table. And they said, whew, great. We got it down to 28%. We're good. Everybody said, fine. OK. So 28%, do you want to spend 28% more on anything? No. So 28%, in essence, yes, it feels like a victory because they came down from the 31%, but that's still pretty high.
- So then we keep moving forward. Follow me along a little bit. Well, then they did the China deal. And the China deal said, oh, great. We're now going to come back. It's going to be 14%. And then what happened? Well, then they said, oh, we're going to add 50% tariffs on EU imports. And then two days later said, ah, psych, too late, nope.
- Well, then the court comes in and the court blocks it. The court says, wait a minute. Hold on. You can't do the tariffs. So it came down to about a little over 4%. And a couple of days later, the courts then interject again. And they say, no, no, no, no, no. We're going to let them stay. So it went back up to 14%. You're sticking with me here, right? Clear as mud. So then what do they do? Well, now.
- We have upcoming tariffs. And they, in theory, have a deal with China. I don't know what that deal is, but they say there's a deal. But as of now, we don't know. So what happened? Well, they added the steel and aluminum into it. So that went up to 15.5%. And then as we get into July, what we know now, this is all we know as of now, you go into July.
- It goes up to 27%. If everything goes the way that they say it's going to go. How many of you think it's going to go the way they say it's going to go? Wonderful. I got one person. Thank you, Stacey. Very well. Nobody thinks it's going to go this way. But this is what we know at the moment. And so if we continue down this path, from what we know right now, what does August look like?
- to almost 42% by August. Is that reality? No. That is not reality. But this is the roller coaster ride that we're on. If I enjoyed roller coasters, as I get older, I still enjoy one roller coaster, and then I have to sit out for a while. But if I enjoyed it, this would be a great roller coaster ride, up and down and all over the place.
- How do you, as a business, manage in this environment? Can you manage when we're in a three-month period and this is happening? The answer is it's difficult. So what do you do? You basically say, I'm going to wait and see what happens. And so we kind of stall out a little bit.
- I'm going to talk to you briefly on a couple things from a forecasting standpoint. Where were we back in March? Where are we today on our forecast through the end of the year, over the next three quarters? What's that average? Well, business investment in equipment we thought was going to grow through the end of the year. Now we think it's going to shrink about 2.5%. This is because businesses are saying, I don't know what's going on. Until I know what's going on,
- I'm going to wait. And so whether or not you support what the administration is doing or not support what the administration is doing, it really doesn't matter. It's almost irrelevant. What's important is predictability, to be able to say, how do I plan in this environment? Give me something from some certainty to say, I know what it's going to look like, and I can plan. So to give you an idea of what's happening,
- I'm going to illustrate to you what's going on with heavy truck orders. So these are trucks that move freight. And these are the big, huge trucks. These are what we call Class 8 trucks. And those are the ones that move down the highway. We have seen a collapse in these orders. In April, orders were at the lowest level since COVID. And COVID is an anomaly. And then it goes back to the Great Recession.
- They came back a little bit in May, but they're still down almost 50%. And this is a group that has largely supported the administration, and you would think they would want to go buy. And they basically said, whoa, I'm out. So this is a sea change, and we haven't seen that work its way through to the broader markets yet. Also, when we think about incoming freight for
- Stuff that happens right now, the freight that's coming in today, when do we expect that we typically sell that stuff? Anybody have an idea? What are we preparing for right now? Christmas! The holiday season. Yes, so all the stuff that we're seeing from a pressure standpoint, price-wise, won't be seen for another three, four, five, six, seven months.
- So a lot of these things haven't completely been felt. And when we think about inflation, well, we were thinking that we were going to see somewhere on the left-hand side was going to be somewhere about closer to 3%. We now have an expectation we're going to be close to over 4% inflationary pressure. And so this creates other issues. And on a broader perspective, when we measure it as GDP, we saw the first quarter come down, but that was
- really because we saw a huge jump in imports. And when we saw the imports jump, what does that do to GDP? Anybody remember Econ class? Imports go up. What does GDP do? They go down. It goes down. It's a negative to GDP. So we saw a huge jump. Now that'll come down. That becomes a net positive to GDP. So this doesn't tell us the full story.
- But the basic essence is we see a slowdown as we move to the bounds of this year. So this starts to create an environment that is more of a stagflation type of an environment. You have a slow-growing economy, and you have higher inflation. Those create problems. And so some of these are things that you need to be thinking about as you start to understand your business, because all of you are trying to make decisions. And we're all in the same boat. We're all like,
- I don't know what tomorrow looks like. We just know it will look different than today. And so that's part of the issue. So with that, I am going to transition and I am going to bring up the most wonderful, awesome, Matthew Ackerley. Please, give him a big round of applause.
- When I was told that there was going to be AI music that speaks to municipal advisors, I immediately said I need the MP3 when I leave here. I'm going to take that back to the firm and impress everyone that I now have walk-up music. So thank you to the BEDC crew for that. You know, when Jen asked me to participate in this event, she didn't really have to
- Coerce me, you know, I spent four great years down here in Bloomington. Always loved the opportunity to come back here. And then I'm also the son of an economic developer. My dad was Jen's counterpart in Grant County, Indiana for over 35 years. And I have just a deep appreciation for these types of organizations and their ability to bring together the private sector and the public sector just to learn
- to collaborate and find solutions for their community. So Jen, thank you for organizing this event and for the invitation. I graduated from IU 20 years ago, and I'm here today to talk about this legislative session and the sea change that we're seeing here in Indiana. And as I was thinking about this, I thought about this is somewhat of a full circle moment. When I started my professional career,
- We got into 2008, and Mitch Daniels introduced the concept of circuit breakers, the property tax caps. And everyone freaked out. And my mentors in the firm and other professionals were like, oh, we've been here before. When Doc Bowen introduced property tax reform back in the 70s, everyone was worried, but we got through it. And so in 2008, we figured out what circuit breakers meant, how they were going to operate. They got added to the Constitution in 2012. And we managed through it.
- And so now I find myself being the old guy in the room with our young team members and saying, you know what, we had circuit breakers 15 years ago, we'll get through it. So this has been a full circle and also one of many things these days that makes me feel old. So today I'm gonna talk a little bit about, there's two bills in particular that impact my constituency, which is local governments here in Indiana.
- My friends from Ellitsville, I was talking with them earlier. I'm fortunate enough to work with Ellitsville and just trying to figure out the state of play now after property tax reform and really we could look at it as local government funding reform. And I've always taken solace in my career in being able to say one plus one equals two.
- Well right now you know after 600 pages of legislation and more conversations with attorneys and ratings agencies and municipalities and I care to remember still haven't quite figured out what one plus one equals but we're getting there and I think to kind of build off of what Eric said earlier.
- Right now, we're in that data collection stage. Local governments, they're getting ready to head into budget season. They want to know what's happening now. I think one of the important takeaways for this, and for those of you in the private sector who intersect with local government a lot, they need to collect the information, evaluate, and make decisions, and understand that this isn't something that it's all changing with the flip of a switch next year.
- These changes are being phased in over several years, and they have to operate with that end in mind because they could be making strategic financial decisions now that materially impact their ability to operate as a going concern in some circumstances five years in the future. So you've got to keep that long lens on decision making, which is frustrating because everyone needs the results today. I talked about the property tax caps earlier, and those are important to understand what they are.
- because the actions at the General Assembly and the new legislation is going to affect property tax caps, which are really revenue losses to local government as these changes phase in. And so just to do a little property tax 101, just bear with me here for a moment. In Monroe County in 2025, you're losing, all of the taxing units are losing about a million dollars, a little under 1.1 million dollars in their levies to the property tax caps,
- The grand scheme of things isn't that bad considering there's $202 million of property tax levies in Monroe County. So in Indiana, the levies are controlled, and that's what is being collected by the local government units. They are limited in how much they can raise year over year. What floats is the assessed value, which you've heard a lot about, and what also floats is the tax rate, and the relationship is tax rate operates inverse to the assessed value. So the assessed values go down,
- your tax rate is going to go up. The higher the tax rate, the more taxpayers reach those tax caps, those circuit breakers, the higher the revenue losses for local governments. As a homeowner, as a business owner, your property tax liability has a ceiling on it, at least in terms of the rate relationship to your assessed value. So these legislative changes, one of the big things that they did is they completely changed the deduction regime on the assessed value side of the calculation for homeowners.
- And what's brand new is for what we call 2% bucket, which is rental residential, a lot of that here in Bloomington, ag land, and long-term care. And so what's going to happen is they're going to see reductions in their assessed value, which in theory is going to save them money. But that's going to put upward pressure on the tax rates for my friends in Ellitsville, for the city of Bloomington, Monroe County, MCCS, and so on and so forth. And so what you're going to see are increased impacts on those tax caps.
- And so the local government units are all calling folks like myself and saying, well, what do we do? One, you need to first level set, get the data, understand what this means. Because this legislation also has changed the local income tax structure materially. It's changing charter school funding, taking property tax dollars away from public schools. It's changing the budget process, the rules for issuing debt. There's a whole lot coming at them. So what you've got to think about is,
- Focus on what's in front of you, quantify what you can, and build adaptable models. Understand, make your plans, evaluate your plans through the lens of, we know everything's going to change next year, two years from now, three years from now. Set yourself up now to adapt to those changing circumstances, and then understand who your partners are.
- You know, that's in the private sector, that's local government units looking for increased collaborative opportunities and just figure out how can we leverage the strengths of each of our constituencies to the greater good of the community. I know Bloomington and Monroe County as a whole has an excellent reputation in that regard. Well, the local governments in your community are gonna have to lean on you a little bit harder for those creative solutions given the new state of play. So looking for that and then also just looking amongst themselves
- for those opportunities to increase efficiency, because they're always being asked to do more, and the resource base is never growing fast enough. So they're going to have to look for more of those opportunities. And then you also need to understand that this current state isn't going to hold into the future.
- Governor Braun already said publicly that the property tax reforms this year didn't go far enough So what might come during the short session next year? Legislative leaders have also been very open saying, you know, we realize that this legislation isn't perfect We're gonna have to fix some things and I've been having a lot of conversations with other professionals trying to put together a list of things that can be fixed so understand that
- You don't want to hem yourself in to a circumstance now that you can't adapt further down the line. So I know 10 minutes is really hard to distill something. 600 pages of legislation. State agencies are still coming out with reams of guidance, and that'll be continuing to come out. I could really be up here all day. I spend about 90% of every day talking about the legislative session these days.
- But one of the things that again just to take away from what I'm seeing is the state of play impacting Bloomington, Ellitsville, Monroe County and beyond is the need to plan with the understanding that things are going to change and understanding what is your tool set
- what are your resources that you can leverage, who are our partners, and how do we most effectively engage those partners to mitigate the financial disruptions that we are certain that we are going to see, even if we don't know what those financial disruptions to the dollar are going to be right now. We know the trend line, and so let's operate with that, define what we can, and then develop that method to address those problems.
- So with that, I'm going to turn it over to the next distinguished speaker, Dr. Phil Powell from IU.
- Do you hear those economic alarm bells sounding in Bloomington? If you don't, I'm gonna give you three statistics that are gonna wake up your ears. However, don't run out of the building, because I promise a robust fire department is on its way to put that fire out. I'm gonna tell you that, I'm gonna identify that fire department for you, and then we're gonna talk about how that fire goes out. So, let's get into it.
- Let's talk about Bloomington. Let's bring this home. Let's be sober, but let's be hopeful. I think those are the two adjectives for this season as we face all of these geopolitical and economic uncertainties, uncertainties that are even at the state level. But let me give you the sober insights here. These are new statistics that you probably haven't heard about Bloomington, but that we've picked up on at the Indiana Business Research Center.
- Bloomington has always struggled with wages. Hardworking folks here in Monroe County don't make what other workers make around the state. In order for wages to go up, productivity has to go up in the region. Companies aren't gonna pay their workers more until they're more productive. Otherwise, they can't pay them more and make money. Let me give you some statistics on productivity growth. For the first time, really, in modern economic history,
- Productivity in Indiana is growing faster than the nation. In fact, Indiana is a shining star in the Midwest right now. Between 2017 and 2022, productivity in the United States grew 7%, but in Indiana it grew 8%. So Indiana is a shining star. We have momentum that we haven't had before as a state.
- While the state was 8%, the nation was 7%, we had phenomenal, we have phenomenal stories of success around the state. Kokomo, 31%. Muncie, 15%. Just down the road in Columbus, 12%. You know what Bloomington was? 1.7%. We were last in the state
- save for Michigan City at 1.5. So we're way behind, folks, the productivity success story in the rest of the state that's gonna drive those wages higher. Number two, demographically, the number, I'll let this statistic speak for itself. The number of young adults in Monroe County between the ages of 25 and 44 have shrunk 7.7% since 2019.
- That's the working age people, the vibrant workforce that kind of fuel Bloomington's future. 8% of them have left since COVID. Part of the reason is the next statistic. Now this one you know, but we got to put it front and center. The average housing price in Bloomington is around $200 per square foot. That's a 33% higher than the rest of the state at 150.
- dollars a square foot. Now if Bloomington was booming, I wouldn't be so worried. But Bloomington is not booming. People are leaving, but our housing prices are still a third higher. Those three statistics make Bloomington a negative outlier in the state of Indiana. A state that is gaining momentum, but a state that is behind the national average. Now I'm not here to preach doom and gloom.
- But I wanna set the foundation because if you're not serious, if we're not serious as a community about really rallying and supporting your leadership, we're not gonna turn this place around. Bloomington can't be the same as it was 50 years ago. We can have the same feel and the same sense of community, but as an economy, we have to be dynamic. And those statistics don't support it.
- If you haven't woken, if you're not hearing those alarm bells, open your ears, all right? Now, I said that a robust, strong fire department's on its way. While those are negative outliers, in the history of Bloomington, in terms of leadership, we have a situation that is a positive outlier. Never before have we seen the following alignment that I'm gonna outline that can truly take Bloomington into the next era.
- First of all, I've been in Indiana University 28 years. This is the first time that we have a president that puts front and center service to the state, where faculty should actually think about being public servants. Yeah? And she's put her money where her mouth is. She's invested a quarter billion dollars in the two sectors that helped drive the Bloomington economy, life sciences and microelectronics.
- So this isn't just wordsmithing, this isn't just typical academic chatter, oh yeah, service to the state, a quarter billion dollars put behind it. At the time when we're having to cut other things, our present witness make it a priority. So we have a university aligned to seeing economic prosperity in the community where it's located. I haven't seen that in 28 years, front and center. Next, in your region,
- You are blessed for the first time with mayors that are truly pro-growth. And they're putting their money and their actions and their political capital where their mouth is. There's a practicality that has come to municipal leadership in Monroe County that we haven't seen before. So you got a university that's focused on how do we practically move the region forward. We've got municipal leadership to move that forward along with other leadership at the municipal level. And here's the thing.
- If you look at the history of regions, of how they transformed themselves economically, it does not happen without strong, vibrant mayoral leadership. And so a shout out to our mayors. Lastly, we have a business community that has rallied to generate breakthrough changes. You heard some of them at the beginning of today, but I'll emphasize a couple more. This convention center is gonna be bigger, thank God.
- And we are seeing the trades district come of age under John Fernandez' leadership. Also, we've seen the arrival of Novo Nordisk and Cimtra to Bloomington. This is going to elevate Bloomington in global supply chains. And lastly, the tariff situation creates a lot of business uncertainty. But actually, because of our manufacturing history in Bloomington, we can have disproportionate benefits from some of these foreign companies looking
- to have a bigger footprint in the United States. So, a lot of things to worry about. There's a fire brewing out there, folks, but we have a strong, vibrant leadership that can help put that fire out and move forward on taking Bloomington into the promised land. Now, there's lots of way to do that, but I'm gonna leave you with two things that I think that we should focus on, right? I'm gonna give you two specific goals that drive Bloomington forward, and then we'll move on.
- When you look at regions and how they turn themselves around, it's those regions that pick a few points in their region, they pick a few geographic points and they pour resources and they pour attention and they pour love into them to create what we call creative collision. The most powerful way to drive innovation in a region is to actually bring people together in an environment where they're in the same industry and they're literally colliding into each other and trading ideas.
- That's what innovation districts are. That's what centers of, where life science companies come together. So my challenge to Monroe County is one way to rise above all sort of the political back and forth is let's pick a few points geographically and just get obsessed about economic success in those areas. And you know what happens? If you look at the economic history of regions like Bloomington, when you geographically concentrate that,
- It creates momentum, and the economy grows from the inside out. And it creates momentum that builds the political will to satisfy all these other needs that are needed. Because it, what? It establishes a new narrative, not a narrative of where we've been, but a narrative of where we can go that's backed up by economic growth and new companies coming into the city. And the last challenge that I'll leave Bloomington with is in order to support this sort of geographic-focused strategy,
- And what am I talking about? I'm talking about the convention center. I'm talking about especially the trace district, right? The trace district is where university research is really gonna blossom for the first time in terms of commercialization. There's other parts here, but one thing that we can do as a region to really drive this forward is very practical. Let's recruit a half dozen high profile companies
- that are related to life sciences, that are related to semiconductors, that are related to some of the other things that make Bloomington great, from the outside to have a presence here. And I guarantee you that if we can recruit six new companies that are headliners and innovators in those industries or sub-industries, that's gonna help drive this region forward. A practical goal, but very powerful in terms of its impact. Now I know what we have said generates a lot of questions.
- And so I'm gonna hand it back over to my former student, Ting, and we're gonna come up and have a little fireside chat. We're gonna replace the ivory tower with the front porch. Trans tariffs, tech in schools, smart minds breaking all the rules. Death driven, we're where it's at. Let's start the conversation with a fireside chat.
- Did that light a fire for all of you? Yes, we're here to help put out some of the fire. Maybe keep it going, right? Keep the momentum going. That's excellent. Well, thank you so much. I love how you pointed out about, Dr. Powell, the productivity growth, the importance of productivity growth to income growth to a higher standard of living that we're all looking for as economic drivers. We cannot talk about productivity growth without talking about the importance of technology. And sitting here today just to
- elevate everybody's viewpoint a little bit, the age of AI that we find ourselves in, right? Just to get level set a little bit globally. Now according to reports, 90% of the generative AI are large language model users outside of the US. The adoption of generative AI globally has been faster than we've seen in the human race, much faster than the internet age that many of you here in the room
- were old enough to experience the last few decades. And the AI's impact economy, it's not a futuristic question anymore. It already is, and we're seeing that fast and furious, particularly on the workforce side. I'll share some data here on the workforce. It's both exciting, alarming, and challenging for us to ponder upon. Big tech companies, most of the tech companies are in Silicon Valley.
- including startups, are now hiring 50% less new graduates compared to 2019. That's only five years ago. US as a whole has less coders, these are the programmers that are doing the coding, compared to the 1980s, before the internet was created. The New York Feds in February published the most unemployed college majors, the stats,
- Surprisingly, among the top 10 most unemployed majors are technology-related, including, guess what, computer science. I know that has all the relevance, particularly for those even folks in the room here at the IU and the Luddie School, and a lot of us here are thinking about how to retain talent, particularly entry-level talent, here in our community. So I'm just keeping it broad. What's your reaction?
- What's happening globally? What's happening nationally? What's happening in the local economy? So Ting, I'm going to put a curveball on this real quick. There is a high unemployment rate of computer science majors that finally frees up that talent for other industries. So I've been telling companies outside of technology, go hire those computer science majors. This is your opportunity. You want to bring that skill set in.
- They may not know anything about your industry. You can teach them that. But then they can teach you even more about how to accelerate your embracement of that new technology. Excellent. And let me put it back to Eric, too, because he and I were chatting before this. And the term artificial intelligence is a very broad term. We tend to think about the chat GPT and general coding, but put it in industrial terms, which is relevant for a lot of folks in the room.
- China now employs, deploys more industrial robots than the rest of the world combined. How do we compete? How does this region compete? It's so difficult because the concept of near-shoring, right? Bringing manufacturing back into the US, there's just a lot of headwinds. So if you add into not only do we not have the workforce to do that,
- Pay is going to be difficult. And then when you think about how much productivity enhancement do you have to have to bring it from another country into the US? And so initially it was to Mexico and then to the US is really, really difficult. And so AI and productivity enhancements has to be an integral part of that. But really where I see a lot of the enhancements for productivity is more on the service side than
- than necessarily in the traditional manufacturing side. We have seen a lot of enhancements over the years. So to get enough over the hump to get there and be competitive with China, for example, it's almost impossible in a lot of ways for a lot of industries. So that's why the administration has pushed heavily for the tariff environment to try and make that more competitive from that standpoint, but then that just increased cost for us.
- I don't think there's an easy solution here. What we know is that all the industries, all the businesses have to start employing some type of AI into their process, but I think a lot of them don't know how to do it. And it's an expense that they have not accounted for, and they're trying to figure out, how much money do I put towards this? How much energy do I put towards this? Because if it blows up and I spend a lot of money, then I'm just out all of that money.
- it'll take time for that to happen. As they start to get more familiar with it, then they can start to integrate it within their own business environment, but they're very skittish about it. I mean, they're excited, but it's throw money at it, and they haven't done it a whole lot. Yep, there's some hurdles to adoption from both mentality and resource perspective. Matt? Yeah, and you mentioned the service industry, and that's where I reside.
- And I look at AI a couple different ways. One, I don't think that I'm in a meeting with our firm's leadership, our executive team nationally, where AI doesn't come up. It's something that our firm is looking at and saying, if we're going to really create value for our clients into the future, we need to master this. And then I also look at that as, OK,
- That's great for our internal processes. How does that improve the quality of our analysis? How does that increase the efficiency of our outputs? But then I think through the lens of what I do in my day-to-day, well, how can we deploy these tools to the benefit of our client set? Not just adding value through what we do internally, but figuring out how can our local government, and we have a lot of state government clients around the country as well, how can they deploy these tools
- to the benefit of their constituents. And our digital team that knows more about AI than I will ever pretend to know has been working a lot on that. And how can we translate a lot of these, what are often talked about as private sector uses of AI, how can we translate those to our public sector client base to increase their efficiencies, get their jobs done better in this shrinking resource environment? Because they're gonna have to be putting more money into manpower for the robust fire department,
- public safety, quality of life enhancements, things like that. There's a lot of back office elements at the municipal level that might benefit from it. And so we've got a team that's really looking at that and how it can be deployed to leverage that tool to the greater good of really the communities we're living in. Yeah, so I could not agree more. The tools, AI tools or technology tools are more accessible, faster, more affordable than ever before. So tools are there, and to your point,
- Dr. Powell, the talents are there as well, particularly around entry-level as the entry-level job market is being redefined. Those are a lot of resources that will very much encourage all of us to think about how we make some of the AI and technology adoption a priority toward productivity growth. Second question around economic development strategies. I love how you threw it out there in terms of, wow, we got a kind of a
- The way you frame it up really teed up how I'm thinking about this, because at the state level, even the regional level, we always challenge around how to drive scale. The state of Indiana has roughly 1.3 million learners from K-12 to higher ed. Many of those reside here in this wonderful region. And our workforce has over 3 million people. I mean, all of them have to be properly skilled, not only for today's job, but for jobs of tomorrow as well.
- Dr. Powell, you mentioned the very prioritized strategy, geographic areas to create that creative collusion. But beyond that, how do you all think about driving skill, even for this region? Because we can't be doing everything for everyone. Artificial intelligence counter-intuitively generates more opportunity for the trades. Because it makes that advanced knowledge more accessible. You may not know this, but Indiana has overtaken Colorado
- as the most innovative state in terms of adopting Swiss-style apprenticeships. So for the businesses out there, I challenge you to reimagine how you can deploy a 16- to 8-year-old in your organization. Just go to Switzerland and see how they do it. It's not socialism. Their apprenticeship systems have no government subsidy, and it's all free market.
- But the trades are institutionalized in Switzerland, and it adds 10% to their productivity, which doesn't come from college grads. It comes from the trades. And so if you look around the state, there's lots of areas, Indianapolis being one of them, the region, that has moved forward on this. This is where I think Bloomington firms could move forward on this middle way of the trades. And if you can institutionalize this, you can quickly
- you can quickly train a 16-year-old and use their new perspective on how to use AI in your value chain. That's a way we can scale. We're already seeing that in other regions of the state. I was just going to piggyback off of something you talked about earlier, less on the workforce side, but more on pick those areas where we're really good
- and let's just hyper-focus on that. And I've got an example of a community that did that that had a lot of success. And it's a community that's not far from here. You just hop on I-69 and you get down to Newburgh in Warwick County on the east side of Evansville. And when I started working in Warwick County back in 2008, 2009, they said, okay, we've got these two hospitals down here. We're gonna make this the center of the universe for medical
- offices and practitioners for Southwest Indiana. And we have a tool, and it's tax increment finance, TIFF. We're gonna make very intentional investments in that, and thinking about scale, to manage the growth in a way that we can keep up with, and to drive the development that we see as the highest and best use of the land in this part of our county. And so you look at Newburgh, and really this is Ohio Township if you wanna get wonky about it,
- You look at that today compared to where it was around Deaconess Hospital, St. Mary's, there's a new St. Vincent Ortho Hospital down there. That was a result of the local officials, primarily at the county, making intentional investments and then strategic decisions on direct incentives to businesses to create the environment so that, yeah, they had to incentivize the ortho hospital, but they didn't have to incentivize the half dozen medical office buildings that surround it.
- because they made those strategic decisions to foment an opportunity where the market just took over. And they're trying to leverage that into its next stage of life. And so I think any community has that opportunity. It just takes that focus and willingness to keep your eye on the ball, so to speak, and not chase the shiny objects necessarily. Know what you're good at.
- and play to those strengths. And it does pay off because there's examples nationally, but you can drive an hour and a half down the road and find a great one here in Indiana. Eric? I agree with you fundamentally about the trains stuff. So I think there's a few challenges on a handful of things. One, my teenagers,
- I can't even get them to go help me do something that they can look up and YouTube it, right? So for a 16-year-old to go say, oh, I'm going to learn how to be in the trades, you really have to get them to be excited about that. That's really difficult to do. But in general, I do see that the training mechanisms there. So the couple of things that I kind of think about from the regional community is, how do you focus your attention?
- And if the focus on, and I think you were talking about bringing in six big names, right? And you have to be very strategic about that, because if it's, for example, manufacturing-based type of stuff, what we don't know is in four years, for example, is there a level playing field enough for them to maintain being here? And that's where technology environment becomes really exciting. But when you think about technology stuff,
- that tends to be able to be moved easily from place to place. So those are the things that I struggle for somebody like Bloomington. But I can tell you from personal experience, I have a 26-year-old who basically says, look, I can't be here in Bloomington. I can't afford to live here. And the community is just not set up well for a 26-year-old single person.
- So these are fundamentally some of the things that Bloomington has got to deal with is some of those basic essence of things. So when we think about AI and things like that, those are wonderful. And those can create an environment that makes it exciting. But some of the fundamentals are really difficult to keep and attract that talent here. Especially if you graduate people from IU, keeping them here is so difficult. And I think I'm saying stuff that everybody already knows.
- But it's one of those things that AI doesn't fix that. But it can totally enhance what we're doing, though. Absolutely. And it's part of the mindset shift, right? You talk about thinking your apprentices as part of your workforce. I would encourage everybody to think about technology as your part of the workforce. Because that's going to be the hardest mindset shift. We're no longer just thinking about people process as people, technology, and process. The way work is fundamentally changed.
- So with that, I want to open it up to questions in this room. We got a lot of different ideas already articulated on stage and somewhere. Maybe? Yeah. Do we have a mic in the back? Yeah, there was one in the back here. Thank you.
- Thank you all for being here and what you have to say is incredibly informative and Provocative in some ways and that's that's always a good thing Dr. Powell you mentioned the cost of housing in Bloomington You know, Indiana as I understand it prides itself on affordable cost of living and We obviously have work to do here. Could could you and maybe Matt mentioned a
- top two or three ideas for a county, a city, or a Lido to advocate and move towards in order to hopefully reduce the cost of housing, but if they could just lock it down for a few years, you know, the state might catch up with us and would still be competitive. What do you suggest are the key factors that we could do, steps we could take to make housing more affordable?
- My knowledge in this is a bit more general. I'm going to refer to my colleague here in just a sec. But I'll put two things on the table. One of them is sort of just the blocking and tackling in terms of leadership vision. In any community, we have different jurisdictions. And there's got to be a will to rise above the NIMBY syndrome and the all boats rise when you have really good leadership and really good vision for whatever geographic area you're doing. Housing development.
- has to be sophisticated, it can't be focused on one part of the hierarchy, right? Your strategy for affordable housing is just as important as your strategy for the $500,000 homes, right? You gotta have sophistication, and you gotta have sophistication also in how people talk to each other, right? Just good old fashioned, good old leadership. That gets us far, it's gotta be there. The other thing is is that we have very innovative,
- like you mentioned TIFF, we've got very innovative financing structures that are a little bit more complicated but that communities can take advantage of in terms of, in their planning. And with that I'll pass it to Matt. Yeah, and unfortunately the legislative changes did no favors for TIFF as a tool for housing, but it's still there as something that you can use. So you think about kind of the direct participation element, and a lot of that is helping with the infrastructure costs,
- to bring down the costs of development for those who are trying to build the housing and fortunately for local governments in Indiana that's where you actually have the most power to do things with your money and it just comes to intentional planning and then execution and a lot of times it takes
- a friendly developer, someone who's really willing to turn this housing project, not just into a housing project, but a true public-private partnership. Now that's not always going to mean there's a public-use amenity associated with it, because really the housing stock is the public-use amenity that you need. So it's really that intentional engagement, finding those common grounds, and then going back to what you said earlier, the hyper-focus on companies, well, hyper-focus on that,
- As a goal for your community is housing and then identifying those who can be the willing partners and then taking strategic advantage of there are some state programs out there that make it easier to use. There are some local levers that you can pull and then thinking you know are there even national programs because it does have to be an all of the above approach.
- And I talk frequently with our housing practice leads who do light tech deals, low income housing tax credits. Sorry, I got wonky there. They do them all over the country. And there's this constant fear in communities of low income or subsidized housing. But then when you look at the income requirements for a lot of those developments, that's nurses, teachers, the robust fire department, firefighters.
- All of those folks. And so you really have to understand who is in need of that housing stock and then those tools that are available and then identifying those partners to then work with and execute. And if you can get other public use benefits out of it, like here in Bloomington you've done a good job with some of this. I work with the city of South Bend and the city of Fort Wayne. Almost every new multifamily housing development in those communities has to have a parking garage.
- And so could that be a public participation element that then increases the parking stock, which is never enough in any community in Indiana, available to the public? So finding those areas where you can drive your goal, get their cost of capital down, and still get that overall public benefit in terms of the units and then in terms of something that everyone else can use too. I think just looking for all those opportunities because then that makes it easier to sell to the larger environment in your community.
- How many of you checked Zillow for the price of your home in the last three months? Anybody? And how many of you actually sold your house? Right? Why did you check Zillow? Right? Because you're like, it made you feel good. You're like, I got a lot of money. Right? I'm rich. And so this is part of the issue. So we as a community want housing prices to go up in that respect because we want the value to go up.
- So how you balance that between pay and cost of living and all of that stuff, it's very complex. It's very difficult. And the community continues to strive to make that balanced. And it's hard. But clearly, we all are selfishly hoping that the home prices go up, because we want that. But as a community, we have to figure out how to make that balance work. Excellent point. Thank you.
- for at least one more question. Go ahead, sir in the back. Can you take the mic? Thank you so everybody can hear you. Mike Norris with Warrant, primarily a software systems engineering services company supporting federal and state space. We have engaged with successfully the University of
- of Indiana to pursue some investment opportunities. So we would love to bring money and talent into the space, but as a small business our resources are limited. The opportunities are not. You talk about AIML, the opportunities for research and development in that space are plentiful. The talent a small business can bring to bear
- to capture and shape one of those is limited. I've worked with Jen. BDC has been wonderful in trying to bridge that gap and put a persistent interface between industry and university. I've worked with Kirk, and we've successfully done it in the past. There's a couple of small businesses headquartered right here in Bloomington. One of them specializes in AI that
- spun off of an interface that we successfully built with IU to go after and capture for NASA some work.
- Our problem is we haven't been able to keep a persistent interface. It is very hit or miss. So we've just wrote two papers, two white papers, that we're trying to mature into an AI opportunity. And those opportunities bring investment dollars here. They bring jobs here. They bring opportunities and advanced technologies.
- But getting that persistent interface between the university and small businesses, it's just hit and miss. We've never been successful in keeping it in place. Can you help us with that? Right. So the question, I'm going to put it to Dr. Powell, because this is a favorite topic of his. The question is, how do we drive more industry and academia collaboration around research, particularly for small businesses who are more resource-constrained? Thank you for your question.
- your public witness there. You know, with service to the state, we've seen the university truly try to work to revolutionize the way it works with business. And this is under the leadership of our Vice President for Research, Russ Mumper, who was able to quintuple the number of partnerships, commercial partnerships he had, including small business, at the University of Alabama. So you've got two tables of folks that are working on that on a daily basis. And we would hope, we're working hard,
- They're working hard, our administration's working hard so that when you come back next year, you've got a much better story to tell. So please continue to engage us. Indiana University, I've been here 28 years, Indiana University has lagged other Big Ten institutions in that way it works with business. We've been a very difficult institution to do business with. In many ways we still are. But we have a leadership that is devoted to changing that and reducing your transaction costs as a business that wants to be a partner.
- Because the easiest way, the force multiplier of our service to the state is gonna be the way that we Indiana University move at the speed of business and not at the speed of academia. Yeah, and I will absolutely echo that and double down on, we're actually already seeing evidence, right? I know Julie, he's from IU Commercialization Office, is sitting here, and she's driving a lot of entrepreneurship-related activities.
- trying to be that front door, the door that's always open, easier to interface with. And another perfect example under Russ Mumper's leadership at recent launch of IU Lab in Indianapolis. Now there's Bloomington Indianapolis expansion. The intent is very much drive statewide activities and around life sciences. Again, key asset here for Bloomington market as well. But with the use of technology, it's very much a through line across the board.
- Point being that leadership is aware and specific activity is already happening and we're very hopeful. I think that's what you said, it's sober and hopeful. That's the sentiment we want everybody to walk away with today. So thank you so much. Let's give a round of applause to our expert panel. And I welcome, and before we wrap, we'll welcome Tyce back to the stage and get us wrapped up. From data to direction.
- Thank you, Ting. One last thanks to Ting for moderating our great panel. Thank you. You know, one thing that stood out to me throughout all of that, right, a lot of great ideas, not sure how everyone else is feeling, but was passion. So thank all of you for bringing your passion, not only for what you do,
- But for here, passion of place, passion of community, and that's something I know a lot of you out there share for this community, hopefully all of you do. But sometimes it can feel like every little detail matters or it's us against each other. It's not. It's us against the other options, right? So we all have a hand in these solutions.
- Let's keep that in mind moving forward. Thank you, all of you. Before we adjourn, just a few reminders. You can always visit the BDC's website to see what's going on, see available properties, other great resources there, and learn more about our community. And although the BDC will not be meeting in July, it's a great time to schedule out meetings with our team.
- to discuss how we can continue to support you and your business. Maybe it's around ideas that you've heard placed out here today. Our next board meeting is on August 20th at 8 a.m. right here at the Monroe Convention Center. Please save the date for the BDC's 40th anniversary and our September all-member meeting. That'll be Wednesday, September 17th at 4 p.m. More info to come on that.
- Thank you once again to our 2025 annual sponsors. And last but not least, let's not forget our table sponsors for today. We're thankful for all of your membership support to the BDC team and our community. And again, thank you to our panel. Let's go have a great day.