MUNCIE — To many people at Thursday night's "Better Together" forum, Ball State University is both a major attraction of Muncie, and a reason to work to make Muncie more attractive to students, workers and businesses.
The final of three recent public forums led by Ball State President Geoffrey S. Mearns looked at economic development, and what the city and university could do together to promote it.
Muncie-Delaware County is the economic hub of East Central Indiana "primarily because we have a world-class institution like Ball State right in our midst," said panelist Chris Caldwell, senior vice president of commercial and business banking for MutualBank and chairman of the Muncie-Delaware County Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors.
Right from her opening statement, panel member Traci Lutton, vice president of economic development for the Muncie-Delaware County Economic Development Alliance, emphasized that current approach encompasses more focus on quality of life/quality of place initiatives — including the big asset of having Ball State — as a way to attract businesses.
That interest in enhancing and promoting the city's quality of life was echoed by many speakers throughout the evening's discussion in the Cornerstone Center for the Arts auditorium.
Fellow panelist David Terrell noted that part of his role as director of Ball State’s Rural Policy Research Institute and interim co-director of the Indiana Communities Institute was providing information from university research to communities, including helping them "to understand the paradigm shift of what economic development is. It's not just job attraction; it is the whole picture of community development."
Speakers from the audience and on the panel referred to such quality of life resources locally as greenways, the growth of downtown Muncie and its nightlife, the community's record of volunteerism and charitable foundations. One audience member cited Louisville, Ky.'s promotion of its history as a model, and cited Muncie's own wealth of historic homes, museums and other attributes that could be similarly promoted.