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What We Want to See in 2023

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Opinion

Editorial

 

As we turn the page on 2022 and look ahead to a year filled with question marks, those of us at BusinessWest offer up some thoughts on what we’d like to see in the year ahead.

Some wishes would fall in the category of ‘obvious’ — a slowing of inflation, fewer and less dramatic interest-rate hikes (how about none at all?), improvement on the workforce front, and some real movement on job growth — while others might be less obvious. Here’s a short list:

 

Less Whitewater

The past three years have been a long, grueling grind for area businesses, large and small. They have had to cope with COVID, a workforce crisis, supply-chain issues, dramatic price increases, recession fears, waning consumer confidence, a microchip shortage, incessant employment-law challenges, cybersecurity issues, the various challenges of remote work, early retirement among Baby Boomers … the list doesn’t seem to end, and we certainly forgot a few.

The region’s business community could use a break, a breather, some real ‘party like its 2019’ normalcy, not the new normal. Let’s hope some is coming in 2023.

 

A More Impactful MGM Springfield

Let’s start by saying the casino complex on Main Street has had to deal with everything on the list above, just like everyone else. So it has certainly not had an easy ride since the parade that marked its grand opening in late August 2018. That said, few if any would say that MGM Springfield has had anything close to the kind of economic impact we were all hoping for, if not expecting, when it was blueprinted and then built.

Yes, it has had a stake in several meaningful initiatives, like the project to revitalize the old Court Square Hotel. But, overall, gaming revenues are not what were projected, and the same can be said for vibrancy in the casino area, the list of things to do at the complex, meetings and conventions, and impact. We’ve said it before, and it bears repeating … there are many days when, if you didn’t know there was a casino on Main Street, you wouldn’t know there was a casino on Main Street. This needs to change, and hopefully we’ll see some progress in 2023. Maybe sports betting will help.

 

Continued Growth of the Entrepreneurship Ecosystem

This has been one of the better economic-development stories of the past several years, and the region needs to continue and build upon its efforts to encourage entrepreneurship. As the immense competition for manufacturers and other kinds of businesses, and the jobs they create, only increases, perhaps the most realistic opportunities for growth in this region are of the organic kind. Progress in this fashion comes slowly and, in most cases, undramatically. But we have to continue to plant seeds.

 

Relief on the Workforce Front

We’re not sure if or how it can happen, but the area’s employers need some relief from the crushing workforce crisis. As the stories that begin on page 13 clearly show, workforce is the issue that is keeping business owners and managers up at night. Worse, it’s keeping many businesses from reaching their full potential and realize some of the opportunities that are coming their way.

The region and the state cannot simply wave a wand and bring thousands of people into the workforce. But what they can do is continue and accelerate the work to make this state more attractive, not just for businesses, but for the people who will work at them, by creating more affordable housing and taking other steps to bring people here instead of compelling them to look or move elsewhere to find a job, start a career, or write the next chapter.

Looking to 2022 with Optimism

By
Opinion

Editorial

 

When you talk with people in business about COVID-19, and especially those early days, in March 2020, when the state and the country were shutting down, many will share a similar story that goes something like this:

“When we packed up our computers and went home, we thought it would be for a few weeks or maybe a few months, and then we’d be back — it would be over, and we’d be back to normal.”

Such thinking was certainly understandable. None of us had been through a pandemic before, and this is what we thought: we’ll stay home for a few weeks, hunker down, and then this will pass.

It didn’t take long to realize that those thoughts were unrealistic and perhaps naive. We soon came to grips with the fact that we had a longer wait for ‘normal.’ Much longer.

Nearly two years later, we’re still waiting, and the unfortunate truth is that this is still a long way from being over. Unfortunate, because we all desperately want and need for it to be over, and it isn’t.

“When we packed up our computers and went home, we thought it would be for a few weeks or maybe a few months, and then we’d be back — it would be over, and we’d be back to normal.”

These days, quite a few conversations begin with “I can’t believe we’re still talking about this,” or “I can’t believe we’re talking about this again.”

What we’re talking about are COVID cases rising, long lines for testing, and hospitals being pushed to and then beyond their limits. And in the business world, what we’re talking about, again, are postponed events, canceled business meetings, people avoiding restaurants and movie theaters, colleges not sure if they’ll be able to open their doors when the semester break ends in a few weeks, and area school systems not sure if they’re going to be able to open their doors and stay open, leaving parents wondering what they will do if they don’t.

Yes, we’re still talking about these things, or talking about them again. The COVID fight continues, and the end is nowhere in sight. Meanwhile, a workforce crisis continues, inflation is no longer talked about as ‘transitory,’ production and supply-chain issues persist, and the many businesses that stayed afloat with the help of government lifelines like PPP and the employee-retention credit will not have that net underneath them in 2022.

So why is there is so much optimism about the year ahead, as revealed in our special Economic Outlook section, starting on page 15? Maybe people are thinking that things simply must get better in 2022. Or that COVID has to finally run its course and will now cease controlling our lives.

Perhaps, but there are other reasons. We especially feel a sense that the region did, indeed, catch a glimpse of a post-COVID world in 2021, and it was a very encouraging experience.

It was a brief window, to be sure, and it came roughly between Memorial Day and just before Labor Day. The state had lifted virtually all of its restrictions on businesses, and people started doing things they hadn’t done in a while — like put their masks aside, go to a restaurant, gather as a family, go on a summer vacation, stage a Chamber After 5, or gather for a retirement party.

As noted, it was a brief window, and by the time the Big E staged its return and BusinessWest feted its 40 Under Forty class at the Log Cabin (both in late September), there was plenty of apprehension about a variant called Delta.

Now, there’s far more apprehension about another variant called Omicron, and there are serious questions, and trepidation, about what the first few weeks, or even the first few quarters, of 2022 will be like.

But amidst all that, there is a prevailing sense of optimism that we can finally see a lot more of what we saw during that brief window in the year ahead. We sense that the ingredients may finally in place for actually getting to that proverbial ‘other side’ of the pandemic.

We’re not there yet, and there are some rough weeks and perhaps months ahead, but the signs are there.

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