Frankfort, Indiana

While the current economic climate in Frank- fort is strong, when it comes to attracting new private investment to the city, McBarnes be- lieves that economic development cannot de- pend upon the old paradigm of attempting to attract businesses by offering them incentives to relocate or expand, but rather by creating a “quality of place” that will attract the workforce of the future, thus making Frankfort attractive to the businesses that are going to need those workers. “We know that 60 percent of the young people graduating college know where they’re going to live before they know where they’re going to work,” McBarnes explains. “And economic development in the 21st century means you attract the people and then you will attract the jobs. It’s a total mindset change, especially in a smaller, conservative community. So, we’re trying to invest in our community in a way that attracts the workers here because that’s how we get the investments; that’s how we get the jobs. The question becomes ‘how do we do this?’ because in rural Indiana, in rural America, sometimes that gets tough. Larger population centers around us grow; they take our Mil- lennials away from us, we experience a brain drain, and then, we don’t have the workforce to retain and attract top tier investors, such as Frito-Lay, or the next new industry that might look at Frankfort.” “So, what we’re focusing on is ‘quality of place,’” Mc Barnes continues. “We want to be a won- derful community for families to live, to raise their children, and we’re doing that by focus- ing on our green infrastructure. We just broke FRANKFORT, INDIANA