Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - EDC's new chief targets the basics

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Sunday, April 30, 2000

EDC's new chief targets the basics
His efforts will start with existing industry

If a Web site can be a window into one's soul, then the Corpus Christi Regional Economic Development Corp.'s new hired gun prefers substance to style.
   You won't find a lot of flashy stuff on the Web site of the Moberly-Randolph Economic Development Corp. (www.moberly-edc.com), where incoming Corpus Christi EDC chief Ronald Kitchens has been working the past five years. You'll find February 2000 statistics on the Moberly workforce, including the number of unemployed and underemployed, pay ranges, skills, experience, education and commuting distance.
   On the Corpus Christi EDC's site (www.corpuschristiedc.org), launched earlier this month with no fanfare, you'll find similar information, but from 1998.
   Aesthetically speaking, economic statistics aren't pretty. The Moberly stats are done in the artistic style known as Basic Spreadsheet. But the stats are clean and easy to follow. You can sense a marketing undercurrent, but the sales job feels almost subliminal.
   Energy, enthusiasm
   The homepage declares Moberly the "Technology and Leasing Capital," but that's about the extent of the hyperbole.
   That's the way Kitchens wanted it - uncluttered, with an emphasis on content.
   "Content is king," said one of the Caller-Times' own caller.com Web designers after looking at the site. He found it short on glitz but easy to navigate, and he was impressed with both the amount and the currency of the information. The longer he looked at it, the more absorbed he became.
   That's how local officials reacted to Kitchens.
   "The longer you're around Mr. Kitchens, the more you listen to him and the more you feel his energy level and enthusiasm," Mayor Loyd Neal said, "and the more you get excited and start to thinking that we can get things done.
   "The impression is that he's bright, extremely well organized and thinks before he begins to talk. But more importantly, he has a high energy level. I think he's going to get involved and try to make some things happen."
   Jobs changing lives
   Kitchens is indeed enthusiastic about his line of work. "I love economic development. In business, you see your successes and failures on the bottom line. In economic development, you see it in jobs that change the lives of people dramatically."
   But he'll be the first to say that there's no mystery or brain surgery involved. His first order of business will be to call upon existing industries.
   "We take things at a pretty basic level. The first thing we do is ask for appointments. Nothing flashy."
   He appears to be a mixture of common sense and a genuine fondness for people. He finds out about places by striking up conversations with the locals he encounters. During one visit to Corpus Christi, he took a cab ride and asked the driver what he thought about the city. The cabbie, Kitchens says, was so enthusiastic about living in Corpus Christi that he immediately offered to stop the meter and give him a tour to show him what a great city this is.
   "I didn't take him up on that. I figured that if he offered, it must be true."
   First steps
   It looks like Kitchens will have a bit of a honeymoon period. The mayor, who was the EDC's first chairman in 1986 when it went from a city government operation to a public-private partnership, describes his expectations of the organization as "guarded" and said he expects to see measurable results from Kitchens in 16 to 18 months.
   The EDC has undergone a reorganization with the breakup last year of its umbrella organization, the Greater Corpus Christi Business Alliance.
   In the space of six months, the EDC recruited and ran off a new chief executive. And critics ranging from City Manager David Garcia to Abel Alonzo, an advocate for people with disabilities, said the EDC spent 1999 touting the successes of previous years in luring call centers. In the alliance's final days, Neal was critical of the EDC's performance, pleading with alliance officials to show some forward progress that he could defend in meetings with the public.
   Catching up
   Some former alliance members have said that the EDC is way behind the other two ex-alliance organizations, the Chamber of Commerce and the Convention and Visitors Bureau, in reorganizing. Kitchens' hiring is the biggest step seen so far.
   His first day on the job, June 1, will be an EDC planning retreat. One of the first orders of business, said board member Joe Adame, who led the search committee that turned up Kitchens, is to define economic development for this community.
   He, like Kitchens, thinks the effort should start with existing industry and grow from there.
   Sounds pretty basic. Nothing flashy. Fitting for someone from the Show Me State.


Tom Whitehurst

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