How do we bring young people to Midland and how downtown works into the equation…
It’s the age old question in Midland. How do we get young people to come here? In one corner, there are those who insist jobs are the answer. In the other, we hear quality of life, specifically the entertainment typically found in cities much larger.
There are no right or wrong answers in what will lure those college grads, even the sons and daughters who once called Midland home.
And while on the surface this doesn’t seem like a downtown issue, it is. In fact, there might not be an area of town that will play a bigger role in bringing young people to Midland and maybe not a more important time to talk about it.
Even as we speak we see new establishments opening up, joining the list of old favorites like Wall Street, Luigi’s and The Bar. There’s also downtown residential in the works. The Lofts on Main has given us a glimpse of the future (we cross our fingers hoping for its success). And as for what’s next, we have written on this blog the ultimate driver of adults (young and old) would reside in a 2-story complex with restaurants, dessert stands and other business on the first floor and an adults-first movie theater on the second. It will add to what is currently in place and what’s to come in bringing nightlife back to downtown.
But in thinking of downtown as a recruiting tool to bring back today’s college grads, shouldn’t we be focused on the jobs? Should downtown’s future be in economic development and not an entertainment district? TIPS Strategies tells us downtown is a site the MDC and those in economic development should target and help bring tomorrow’s jobs to Midland. Do so by developing Class A office space, maybe even creating a vertical office park or having companies like Basic Energy transform the old into their new home. That space would house the types of jobs college students are seeking.
So which way do we go? That ultimately depends on what you think will bring young people to Midland. I am living proof the job is the place to start. The Midland Reporter-Telegram hired me straight out of Texas A&M. While I have known Midland all my life, without a job Midland wouldn’t have been on my radar. The same is true for my wife, a nurse.
Again, is there a right answer? No. But I do lean a certain way.
Later this year, Vision 2020 committees will report on various aspects of where we will go as a community. When those dreams turn to reality over the next decade, there might not be an area more affected than downtown.
I have been on an official committee which worked to help answer this very question about Midland for over a year. I wouldn’t call the committee unique, committees like the one I was on have popped up every so often to answer this question of bringing young people to (or back to) Midland for decades.
In studying the issue, (and examining my own return to Midland right out of A&M) I’ve learned that there are many things that drive a young person’s decision to locate in Midland. However, you point out what every committee knows is by far the number one driver “the job is the place to start.”
However, let us back this issue up a little bit, because you have already started your brainstorming on this issue with an assumption. You may not have caught it, but it lurks below the surface of the issue, and is often neglected by many decision makers and visionaries: Exactly who are these “young people” we trying to attract? or more to the point, just who are we trying to attract with Tax Dollars? College Grads? Laborers? Craftsmen? Artists? Professionals? In many ways you can’t even begin to talk about what to do, until you figure out who you’re after, and that is complicated when it is a governmental (or quasi-governmental) entity trying to decide which group to incent, or more pointedly, which group to discriminate against. So many time the answer comes back “all of them” and thus the plans are too broad to be executed and measured.
Then there is this to consider, the Civilian Labor Force gains in Midland have been spectacular the last two years. Combine this with MISD enrollment and the waiting lists for daycare, and I think it is safe to say that Midland has enjoyed a pretty large influx of young workers in the past couple of years. Seems the oil field jobs helped achieve the braod goal of bring young workers to Midland already, or are these young workers not the target?
Might I suggest you think about the Who and the Why….and then look at the issue again.
You bring up a good point which might go past the type of young person we want to bring in. Sure “all of the above” is the standard answer, but when you get down to it, they want to bring in the college graduate and/or the person who can immediately contribute to the workforce without having to flip burgers/wash dishes. We assume those will be there.
Some might say we need to target our economic development efforts to get more bang for the buck, to really make it matter. Forget the wide net and say we are specifically for this industry or that industry, hopefully playing to the strengths of this community.
In doing so we might also be able to target a certain group of young people because we know what type of businesses we want to bring in and we know what type of person/graduate we want to bring in.
You can also support the Young Professionals of Midland who work hard to make a difference in the community and be a recruiting tool for area businesses. We have developed partnerships with many Midland businesses to help welcome and acclimate their new employees to Midland. Most recently we have partnered with Texas Tech Physicians Group to welcome their new physicians.
We have business luncheons, social events, a charity golf tournament and even an event to bring ALL of the area young professional groups together in Midland and Odessa. We are a good sounding board for many of these questions. Once a year our board sits down with the City Council to discuss many community issues such as this one. And a few of our board members actually designed the Vision 2020 website and many of us are contributors.
The Young Professionals always need sponsors to continue to grow our organization and reach out to more businesses to help in their recruiting efforts. We want to help out in any way we can!! We’ll have a new site up soon, but for more information you can check out: http://www.ypmidland.org.