Bowling Green Economic Forum

Bowling Green this, Bowling Green that. The people of Kentucky hear plenty about Bowling Green, population 49,296.

“People in other parts of the state sometimes get exasperated because of all the good news that comes out of Bowling Green,” says Bill Davis, head of the economics department at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green. “The economy has been on a roll for several years.”

Davis spoke during a roundtable discussion on March 14 at the Bowling Green economic forum. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and its Louisville Branch co-sponsored the forum, along with Western Kentucky University. From four to six forums are held throughout the Federal Reserve's Eighth District each year as a way for the Fed to meet with local bankers and business and community leaders.

The Bowling Green forum included talks by St. Louis Fed President Bill Poole and Fed Economist Rubén Hernández-Murillo. Earlier in the day, the Louisville Branch board of directors held its regular meeting in Bowling Green for the first time.

Just about all of the 59 participants at the forum said the Bowling Green economy looks strong and should continue to hum along. In a survey of local business people, 71 percent of respondents said business conditions today are stronger than they were one year ago. Seventy-one percent of respondents also said they expect to hire more workers in the next year.

Local business people credit an energetic chamber of commerce for bringing business to the city. Eagle Industries left California for Bowling Green in the 1980s. Now, Eagle has lower business costs, less regulation and is closer to its chief raw material—oak.

“The furniture business is taking a big hit (as jobs go to China),” said William Garrison, Eagle’s chief financial officer. “We can only go so low on our prices, but we try to make up for that by offering better service, time of delivery, options, varieties of finishes.”

The auto industry is going through some tough times, but not in Bowling Green. The local General Motors assembly plant not only produces the legendary Corvette, it has recently added the popular Cadillac XLR line.

Entrepreneurs in Bowling Green can get help from the local office of the Kentucky Small Business Development Centers (SBDC), which are located throughout the state and provide management consulting, education, training and other activities. In 2005, SBDC assisted more people from the 10-county Bowling Green area than it did the much larger Louisville, Lexington and northern Kentucky areas.

“It shouldn’t be that way,” says Rick Horn, director of the Kentucky SBDC for the Bowling Green area. “There is a great deal of entrepreneurial activity here, and I really can’t explain the reason.”

Equally as compelling: About 90 percent of entrepreneurs still are in business three years after they start their companies.

On the downside locally, some people say cheap labor is harder to find these days, and a banker from outside the city says the outlying area is not doing as well as Bowling Green proper. Western Kentucky University is an asset, local officials say, but it can be struggle to keep new graduates from leaving town.

Overall, says Rob Reber, interim dean of Western Kentucky’s business school, “We expect to remain a major player in the state economy.”

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