This past week, Councilmember Tuttle, Vice-Mayor Johnson and I joined a group of sixty business leaders on a visit to Oklahoma City, OK to exchange information with their community leaders about best practices and successful private/public partnerships. It’s always great to hear from peers on how they engage with their respective communities and move forward together to achieve significant community policies and programs.
These trips help us learn about innovative ideas and best principles that may be adapted and implemented in our own community. The structure of the 2021 trip incorporated two tracks, Economic Development or Quality of Place, in order take a deeper dive into those topics.
Oklahoma City has seen a lot of population growth over the last few years. Interesting note, if Wichita had kept up with their rate of growth over the same period, we’d have 100,000 more people in the metro. One point that was stressed multiple times by their leaders is that strong economic & population growth builds resources to help all, including social services and programs. By building a great region, they are able to fill the voids to take better care of their neighbors.
Most people are familiar with OKC’s Bricktown and its ballpark & canals as well as the Thunder NBA team. While it’s easy to get caught up in the individual projects, it’s important to recognize those as signals that things are moving forward and building community support/pride in place. It seems like the entire community is focused on working together as a team and putting the areas interest above individual goals. These are takeaways that we can use here in Wichita.
