Q&A with Elkhart County Economic Development Corp. CEO Chris Stager
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Originally from Pennsylvania, Chris Stager experienced first-hand what could happen when industry failed to move with the times. Throughout his life and in his career, Stager has learned never to be satisfied with past glory.
From studying art in undergrad, managing retail electronic stores to working as a traveling salesman, Stager now leads the Elkhart County Economic Development Corp., a not-for-profit serving as the concierge to Elkhart County industry, focused on retention and expansion of local businesses, attraction of new businesses and local entrepreneurial development.
Stager spoke with Inside INdiana Business on moving to the region, getting involved with economic development, diversification efforts, talent attraction and how regionalism has done northern Indiana a world of good.
This article has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Can you tell me a bit about yourself?
So I was born and raised in western Pennsylvania. I grew up about 45 miles east of Pittsburgh. When I was a boy, Pittsburgh was known as a gritty steel town. The steel industry in Pittsburgh rested on its laurels for many years. I watched that economy decline. At that point in my life, I was coming out of college in the early 80s and there was a pretty bad recession in the United States, so looking for work was challenging. Throughout college, I sold electronics but I was an art major. I was working in western PA, managing some retail electronic stores and I read an ad about this coming technology, the cellular telephone, so I was a very early adopter. I’ve had a phone since 1986 and I became involved in that industry. I spent the bulk of my professional career in that industry. My last role, I was a vice president for AT&T. I’d had various roles including managing inside and outside sales teams, so I had a pretty good understanding of how to build relationships and do consultative selling. When I moved here, I thought I was going to be on a two-year contract. I had a baby boy in ‘95 and when I moved here in ‘98, I had a daughter. At that point, my life as a road man ended.
How did you end up in this region?
Around ‘95/’96 the company I was working for got acquired by what’s today called Verizon. At that point, I’d been involved in seven or eight acquisitions, so I knew I had to move fast if I wanted to stay in the game. So I found a headhunter and he offered me two jobs. One was in northern Florida and the other was in South Bend-Elkhart, Indiana. Although I was attracted to Florida, I had taken retail classes at Notre Dame, offered by the North American Retail Dealers Association. So I moved here to work with Centennial Wireless. I was responsible for the retail operations in northern Indiana, and I had a few hundred employees that reported to me.
When did you switch from telecommunications to economic development?
I had worked with some local economic development people in St. Joseph and Elkhart counties. The lady that ran the Elkhart County EDC was pretty forward-thinking. She was looking at fiber connectivity and technology coming into manufacturing and she wanted somebody to work with businesses on that. So I became vice president of business retention and expansion. I started working with companies to develop a variety of different tools that we could deliver to industry that weren’t very visible. So I started to build that toolbox and around 2014, I began a relationship with Purdue University. They run the state’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership, funded by the federal government and the National Institute of Standards. I’ve been in a few hundred factories with them in Elkhart County, looking at opportunities to improve bottom line profitability. Looking back, most of our work centered around the culture in our manufacturing entities, working towards a situation where people became the company’s best asset. Since 2017, we’ve had about 2,900 students take classes, representing about 409 companies.
Stager talks about his first role with the EDC and the county’s involvement with the Manufacturing Extension Partnership at Purdue.
What kind of work does the EDC do?
We’ve had a few hundred projects now that we’ve worked on, collectively with Purdue and other partners, for performance improvement inside manufacturing facilities in Elkhart County. We also work on the tax side, trying to provide incentives to businesses to help them grow. Since 2013, we’ve worked on a little over a billion dollars worth of manufacturing-related projects in Elkhart County. We work with the Indiana Economic Development Corp. as well as local governments to provide tax incentives. As an example, I was involved with the Amazon building along the [Indiana] Toll Road.
How have the statewide READI grants improved collaboration in the region?
Getting a Regional Cities grant catapulted us onto the map in the state of Indiana. Not that we weren’t on the map but in Indiana, the border communities get less attention. But we had a good story to tell in our region, for a number of reasons: Notre Dame and the growing and pretty dynamic industry here, all of that resulted in subsequent READI grants. There was also a Lilly grant focused on Industry 4.0 training. So our region is small but mighty. Notre Dame has also been very instrumental in helping organize and drive things to the region because strategically, they’re focusing on becoming more of a regional research type industry, on the model of MIT or Stanford University. The initial enFocus cohorts were based out of Notre Dame.
People don’t understand this region because some of them have never been anywhere else to understand what a dynamic region we have. The economy is dynamic. There’s a lot of resources and people are joining hands when they traditionally hadn’t. For some time, there was an invisible line between Elkhart County and St. Joseph County and there’s been a lot of effort put in to bring the region together to work on our collective goals. Primarily because funding has been driven around that. The first Regional Cities Initiative was the gas that fired a lot of what’s going on now.
There’s a heavy reliance on the seasonal RV industry, is the EDC working on diversifying the county’s economy?
We’re intentional with some of the companies we approach because we are trying to build some diversity into the economy here. During the 2009 recession, we had a lot of consolidation in the RV industry. So these companies have gotten bigger and more sophisticated. Historically, when the RV industry is good, everybody’s good, and when it’s not good, everybody suffers. Another thing about the RV industry is that there aren’t a lot of career pathways. That’s okay when you’re young but as you progress through your career, you’d like to think that you’re valued and appreciated and that your income would grow. We work in all the communities in our county, we partner with them to provide services that improve businesses ability to generate money.
Talk to me about some of the programs, initiatives or other industries that are powering the region?
Earlier, I mentioned we got a grant from Lilly. We have a large manufacturing base and we weren’t using automation effectively. As part of that process, we’ve worked to enhance the conditions by which companies feel more comfortable in placing automation and measuring the outcomes of that. At one point in 2017, the Brookings Institute found that we had the highest robots per capita in the United States, yet our wages didn’t necessarily go along with that. So we work a lot in the upskilling space, getting people to be twice as productive by using some level of automation.
We’re also preparing for Industry 4.0, the jobs of the future. Things like supply chain management, automation, network management etc. In Bristol, there’s a company called Monogram Foods; they make corn dogs. We worked with them to increase their productivity. We want to make sure that we have jobs in advanced recycling, sustainability, logistics and distribution. We’re looking to go into more distribution. Logistically, if you look at us on the map, we’re mid-point between Chicago, Indianapolis and Detroit. So we make sense as a logistics place for a number of reasons. So when we go out and try to attract companies, that’s a major selling point. We’re good at manufacturing a lot of things that go into a lot of other products. We have wood companies here; if you go to Menards or Lowes and you buy wood or molding, some of that comes from Elkhart County.
Is the EDC also involved in infrastructure projects around the county?
Yeah, our organization originally was involved when Elkhart County started to build a dark fiber network. Because of my telecom background, I was a natural fit for the fiber side. As we progressed with that, county officials met with ChoiceLight in South Bend and we’re now integrated as one single dark fiber company that covers both counties. That’s one example of an arrangement that’s benefited the region. We have great relationships with our power partners. Roads are typically in the local government’s purview. We’re not a governmental agency. We receive a small amount of funding from them. We’re a not-for-profit but we work in all of those areas. We have a lot going on relative to industry growth. We’re trying to work with local organizations like the Michiana Area Council of Governments, who are working with our local communities on road planning, water planning, etc.
As companies are coming in to vet, we often are a primary source of information. If a company is looking to build a manufacturing facility here, they have to have adequate power, so we work with the power company to help them understand how to get what they need. We make sure that they’re spending their dollars as efficiently as possible. Both NIPSCO and Indiana Michigan Power have programs that are available at no cost to industry that will repair air leaks. There’s also lighting programs that provide tax breaks.
Power and utilities are regulated by the state of Indiana and the federal government but what we can do is partner with them to make sure that our manufacturers here are taking advantage of the efficiencies they have, given the national trend that says AI and blockchain technologies are about to put a serious strain on the energy grid in the United States. So as we look at projects we’re mindful of that and try to figure out the best way to help them be profitable and stay here in Elkhart, Indiana. So 70% to 80% of our work is working with existing businesses to make sure they understand those resources, helping them navigate through the process to take advantage of those things.
How is the EDC contributing to address the issue of talent attraction?
There’s been various initiatives over time. For example, we’re involved with enFocus. I’m on the board of enFocus, trying to find, keep and maintain talent here. Depending on who you talk to, the statistic that the South Bend-Elkhart Regional Partnership discusses pretty often is that within a 100-mile radius, there’s 30,000 plus college graduates every year. We’ve worked with Ivy Tech a few years back and there’s a center there now called the Larry and Judy Garatoni Center for Advanced Manufacturing. We helped Ivy Tech get funding for that. So that’s talent enhancement. During COVID, around 36,000 workers commuted into Elkhart County daily. We’re a bit of an economic hub, so we’re doing everything we can to ensure that talent is here, that there are opportunities for growth and that we also have the amenities and activities to retain them. We try to stay in our lane, but we are actively involved with a lot of different initiatives at various different levels.
We’re still focused on making sure that our wages are competitive against the national average. We’re at 86% – 87%, and we want to keep those on par. Quite frankly, we can’t keep them on par with basic-skilled production jobs. We have to keep enhancing our capabilities, adding automation into processes where it makes sense, improving culture so companies retain talent. We also need to continue diversifying, so we’re not solely reliant on the RV industry. Our organization is a connector and we focus on all things bottom line, profitability and talent. We want to keep our industry relevant, keep diversifying and retain our youth. Because of the READI grants, we work in the quality of place space. That’s not our main focus but part of the talent equation is making sure we have the amenities to attract people.
We’re also involved with HustleSBE, the regional minority startup program. We’re running that here at our facility starting next month. We have a tendency to not work with a lot of small businesses. Most of our clients are medium and larger companies but they weren’t always medium and larger clients; they started out small. So we’re working to actively connect them to some of the resources that are out there.
Are there any cities or towns in the county that are currently under the radar but could become a major player in the coming years?
I’ve got to say, all of our communities have some very unique attributes. For example, Plymouth won a Stellar Communities award from the state of Indiana within the last five years. Goshen won one within the last five or so years. So both of those communities are pretty well known on the state map for the things that they’re doing. In Elkhart, the River District and Benham Neighborhood would be another classic example. Kudos to the mayor and the citizens for adopting some new things. I worked with the city on the Concord Mall project, taking an old, outdated mall and converting it into a small dimension manufacturing space.
Bristol has also seen wonderful growth. Middlebury is working to improve their road system. The 20 bypass now runs almost to the downtown of Middlebury. All those communities have a lot of public works projects going on. So I’ve got a lot of good things to say about all of them.
Some are a little more quiet than others but I think all of them have some very unique attributes. There’s a lot of good events and we have growing industrial bases in many of them, as well as the supply chain that feeds them.
How do people get involved with the EDC and are the services that you render free?
They just need to call our main number, 574-293-5627. We focus primarily in manufacturing and logistics. We’re here to serve the community and we feel very fortunate to be a part of this community because they’re not all alike. There’s a lot of growth here and the idea is to make sure everybody feels welcome and that there’s a fair opportunity for businesses to grow, operate and compete here.
Prior to 2015, we were on the map, but we weren’t on the map. When we got that original Regional Cities grant, the guys that put that together did a wonderful job and it became pretty apparent that, in some ways, we were the model for a lot of other regions throughout the state. The Northern Indiana Regional Development Authority folks are very forward thinking. What I think is really cool is the fact that there is a lot more interaction between businesses and sharing of opportunities, regionalism really helped us with that. The impact will be felt for generations to come. The South Shore Railway, the Pumpkin Vine Trail, the River District, those are all things that wouldn’t have happened without the benefit of the state allowing us to participate and then forward-thinking people who want to make a better place for the next generation.