Lansing shares many features with other Capital cities and college towns in the U.S., with at least one glaring exception: places like Raleigh, NC, Austin, TX, and Madison, WI have become havens for the creative and professional classes, while Lansing is struggling to keep them.
Though the Capital region is home to plenty of boomerangs, immigrants and transplants from other areas,
we’ve also been losing talent to other cities and states.
One way to stem the flow of educated people moving out of Michigan is to examine the places of where these folks eventually land. So Capital Gains caught up with a couple of these folks to see what coaxed them out of the Capital region and what we could do to keep them here.
RaleighMichigan transplant and teacher Andrew Hill doesn't hear much about being “a Yankee” in
Raleigh.
“Raleigh is a transient place; it would be Yankees calling you a Yankee,” says Hill, 28, a former
Michigan State University (MSU) student who works as a business education middle school teacher. Hill grew up in Lake Orion, graduated from
Western Michigan University and has lived in Raleigh for five years.
“You will maybe meet 50 people before you meet someone that is actually from Raleigh," he says of his new home.
The large influx of professionals settling in the so-called Research Triangle area is confirmed by the increasing lack of Southern drawls—the “y’alls” are getting drowned out by other vocal inflections.
In that sense, the North Carolina capital is similar to other state headquarters like Austin and Madison, where people with different backgrounds increasingly congregate.
As is also true of both Austin and Madison, Raleigh sits in the shadow of a major university—in this case, North Carolina State—and is carved up into very distinct neighborhoods.
And according to Hill, all the roads from Raleigh's residential neighborhoods lead to the downtown, which creates a synergy.
“It's just really accessible,” Hill says. “Traffic is awesome down here. They have a million ways to get out of the city. It doesn't take you long to get anywhere.”
Other notable niche includes the fact that Raleigh relies heavily on festivals—paying tribute to everything from beer to oysters—that draw people downtown. A regular music event downtown features Southern luminaries like
Hootie and the Blowfish and
Cracker.
MadisonA lack of job opportunities is cited as the primary driver of many of Michigan's troubles, but other factors are helping fuel the outward migration, too. For instance, Austin and Raleigh have better weather, and all three vigorously support the arts.
Perhaps a larger reason is that, unlike Lansing, whose roots are deeply entrenched in the struggling domestic auto industry, other cities have not been as linked to the fortunes of a single economic sector.
In
Madison, it could have been the public sector. In addition to being the state capital, Madison is also the county seat for Dane County, making the city home to three branches of government.
But two decades ago, planners in Madison made a conscious decision to wean the area off dependence on the public employment sector. The effort, which started in the mid-1980s, has helped buttress the city during the most recent economic downturn, says Neil Lerner, director of the
University of Wisconsin-Madison Small Business Development Center.
The city focused on growing life sciences, agriculture innovation, engineering and information technology. The university itself serves as a research-and-development catalyst, while the overall community supports entrepreneurship through tax credits, capital investment and providing ample business incubator space.
“Wisconsin hasn't typically gotten into the bidding wars that some other states have gotten into to lure businesses. There's sort of a zero-sum game in doing that,” Lerner says. “One of our major strategies has been to grow our own— to start our own businesses and grow. We've started that in the mid-80s and it's coming to fruition and building momentum.”
AustinDue south, a Lansing-area native witnessed the Texas state capital undergo a similar transition.
Austin's economy once revolved around the semi-conductor industry—until a mixture of area venture capital and foresight latched onto the dot.com boom in the 1990s, says Dave Dutch, chief marketing officer for the software firm
Vignette.
Though the dot.com era died a grisly death, the investment and infrastructure for development was put in place.
“You had a set of developers and entrepreneurial people who said, 'Even though I bombed out of that, I have to try something else,'” say Dutch, 44, who has an MBA from
The Eli Broad College of Business at Michigan State University and is 1983
East Lansing High School graduate.
Austin city planners have also put a premium on downtown living.
“A decade ago, there was no place to live downtown, and now they have a dozen high rises,” says Dutch, who lives downtown with his wife and four children. “It's a very livable downtown for young singles and families. There really is a connection between the business vibrancy and the downtown vibrancy.”
Another MSU grad, Kristen Case, was enamored with the arts scene during her year-and-a-half stay while working as the Austin Film Festival's director of marketing.
“People move to Austin because of the arts scene there,” says Case, 23, who moved to New York in January and now works as a music assistant on “
The Late Show with David Letterman.”
“They hear about the film and the music—it's the live music capital of the world," says Case. "I'm a painter and a photographer as well, and I was able to have shows in Austin. Every restaurant or place you go to, there is local art on the wall or there is the local musician playing.”
Case compares it to the
East Lansing Film Festival, where she worked as program director for two years. But ELFF has work to do. Though the Lansing area has a good core group filmmakers and boosters, “I felt it was harder to reach out to new people that didn't already know about the film festival,” Case says. “That was my experience anyway."
"I know there is an art festival in Lansing, which is great. I know there is the film festival, which is great," she says. "But as far as looking for new music or new young artists, I didn't feel like there was a good source of information for that.”
By contrast, Austin's art scene is fueled by blogs, newsletters and organizations all trumpeting the latest big thing. There are more venues and, in contrast to Lansing and East Lansing, free parking after 5:00 p.m. and on the weekends.
Outside a vibrant arts scene, Austin prides itself in being green and clean, Case says. That encompasses everything from buying organic food to bicycling to work. An organic outlook also extends into business where people are encouraged to dine and shop locally.
“People who move to Austin usually end up living there and they are very passionate about their city,” Case says.
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Larry O'Connor is a mid-Michigan freelance writer who has previously chronicled the Lansing adult hockey scene and interviewed Capital Region International Airport director Robert Selig for Capital Gains.
Photos:
Dave Dutch in front of the Austin skyline (photo courtesy Dave Dutch)
Downtown Raleigh (stock photo)
Madison at night (stock photo)
Kristen Case in front of the Capitol in Austin (photo courtesy Kristen Case)