Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati economic leaders are calling for a greater emphasis on growth-related heading into 2025.
Speaking at the final Covington Business Council luncheon of the year, Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber of Commerce President Brendan Cull and Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce CEO Brent Cooper implored business leaders in the Greater Cincinnati region to make growth-oriented investments, such as in infrastructure, housing and amenities, to secure the future of the region.
“I am unabashedly pro-growth. Our strategic plan is focused on growth,” Cull said. “We have three principles to it. It is making sure that we have a growing population, a growing economy and growing cultural vibrancy so that we create a community where everyone feels like they belong, and we should all be doing that.”
Cull said that 75 years ago, the Cincinnati metropolitan area was once the 12th most populous in the United States, but has since fallen to 30th. From his perspective, other metropolitan areas have surpassed Cincinnati by undertaking initiatives like investing in new infrastructure.
“Most of those cities that have jumped above us were small cities, and they do not have to reinvest in their old infrastructure,” Cull said. “They were just constantly building new infrastructure.”
On the Northern Kentucky side, Cooper said that the region must be proactive when it comes to large-scale projects that will positively impact economic growth. He noted that Northern Kentucky is facing a teaching, nursing and housing shortage, which will only get tougher to curtail as the regional population ages.
Additionally, Cooper called out ‘anti-growth voices’ in Northern Kentucky, who he said could stymie “growth that we really need to have.”
“I have experienced traffic and some of the disruptions that come from high growth, and I’ve also experienced no growth, and I can tell you that no growth is worse,” Cooper said.
One issue Cull sees regarding hindering economic growth is that the community can tend to hone in on one specific project at a time instead of undertaking multiple projects at once. This tendency, he argues, can limit development and, therefore, economic growth.
“Part of having a pro-growth mentality is to realize as a community that we have the capacity, the companies, the civic leadership, to be able to do three and four and seven big things at a time, and we limit ourselves,” said Cull.
Another area Cull and Cooper said Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky must continue to lobby their respective state governments to invest more resources into local infrastructure and development projects. Both men argued that each state’s governments often focus on investing more resources into cities like Louisville or Cleveland, despite Greater Cincinnati having a larger economy overall.
“If you think that Frankfort and Columbus if you think that they’re paying as much attention to this metro area as they are Columbus or Louisville, and you’re not reading the papers,” Cull said. “We’ve got to make sure that they see us and see the kind of growth that’s happening here, and not let everything happen in the backyard of where the state capital has to be.”
