Courting the Creative Class in Mississippi

By ROBBIE WARD and EMILY LE COZ Daily Journal

What is the Creative Class?

A new class of people who now represent 30 percent of the work force and whose economic function is to create new ideas, new technology and new creative content. Financial rewards go not to those who conform and rise up through the office hierarchy but to those who are unique and self-motivated. They are autonomous, highly mobile and highly educated.

Source: "The Rise of the Creative Class" by Richard Florida

If Robert McMillen thinks Starkville is a cool place, community leaders might be on the right track.

McMillen, 36, an associate research professor at Mississippi State University's Social Science Research Center, lives the cool lifestyle.

While his coworkers at The Thad Cochran Research, Technology & Economic Development Park drive to work, McMillen zips along city streets on his bicycle.

He's a young professional now, studying social issues affecting Mississippi's culture, but he still has a piece of the wild-eyed adventurer in him.

Before attending graduate school in Athens, Ga., he lived in Austin, Texas, and New Orleans, just for kicks.

"They were nice places and friends let me stay with them for free," McMillen said last week, sitting on a patio table at the research park in Starkville.

McMillen is the kind of person economic developers love to attract to their communities: intelligent, well-read, cultured, active and always looking for something cool to do.

Area economic developers believe the key to whether Starkville thrives will depend on many Robert McMillens coming to the small city that hosts the state's largest land grant university.

And other Mississippi cities - without or without the university connection - are beginning to believe the same thing.

"If we focus on the technology, the creative class will come," said David Rumbarger, president and CEO of the Tupelo-based Community Development Foundation. "It will be up to the churches, the schools and the community to keep them here and provide a stimulating place to live."

Creative Class

Economic developers lately have focused on attracting cool people - meaning healthy, active, educated people with money to spend - because they add diversity, energy, creativity and passion to a community.

Many developers believe the best way to attract this kind of person is to create an atmosphere toward which these people gravitate.

In his book "The Rise of the Creative Class," Richard Florida, a professor of regional economic development at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, says that trends show people working in creative jobs - such as architectures and artists - give priority to communities that nourish their lifestyle when selecting a place to live.

This "creative class" places more importance on an area's welcoming atmosphere than on its prospects of finding work.

In other words: They move somewhere they like first, then they find a job.

"If you want to attract creative people and the firms that employ them, you have to think about the quality of life that's on offer," said William F. Shughart II, a University of Mississippi economist. "And would a middle or upper manager want to live in your city, bring his family, send his kids to school there?"

Rumbarger thinks Tupelo is such a place. Over the years the city has attracted a wealth of companies to the area because of its community spirit, growing infrastructure and diverse activities.

"But I don't know if the creative class will ever come in droves," he said. "We're a small town and we offer a different thing. We're not Seattle or San Francisco and we never will be."

Harnessing NE MS's creativity

McMillen, though, said Starkville has come a long way since he took his job at MSU in 1998. Seven years ago, downtown did its best impersonation of a ghost town, and the area offered little diversity in dining.

The downtown sidewalks were in such disrepair that joggers tripped on uneven concrete, scraping their legs.

"When I first moved here the only drawback was living in Starkville," McMillen said. "That's not the case so much anymore."

Today, the city mimics Oxford's thriving downtown atmosphere, complete with rebuilt sidewalks that include planters for greenery and flowers. The area also has a healthy community theater and other culture events at the university.

In Tupelo, the Fairpark District's emergence has helped revitalize downtown, infusing the once dull area with an abundance of restaurants, pubs and trendy boutiques that draw crowds of young people day and night.

Such improvements should help ease one of 25-year-old Josh Mabus' biggest prior complaints - "that there is not a bohemian type coffee shop that you would associate with the Seattle area of creativity."

Mabus is one of Northeast Mississippi's home-grown members of the creative class. At 24, the tall blond graphic designer has already helped launch a graphic design firm, a Christian sports magazine and a marketing company.

He's one reason Rumbarger doesn't think the region needs necessarily to attract creative people from the outside "as we have to cultivate them right here."

"The creative class all come from somewhere," he said. "Why can't they come from right here in Northeast Mississippi?"

Keeping creativity at home

Nurturing creativity is one thing; keeping it at home is another. Tupelo faces that situation each spring as graduating high school students leave for college - many never to return.

Starkville and Oxford grapple with the same thing as graduating college students flee to find jobs elsewhere.

Tupelo's answer to that problem has two sides: On the economic side, it offers the soon-to-be-opened IDEA Center business incubator, technology training at Itawamba Community College and affordable high-speed Internet access through MEGAPOP.

On the entertainment side, it boasts a community theater, symphony orchestra, art museum and festivals.

Oxford also has those amenities, plus it has the university, said Christy Knapp, vice president for economic development for the Oxford-Lafayette County Economic Development Foundation.

"We work close with the university and the department of research because they work with different types of studies that eventually could be commercialized," she said. "Plus the university attracts interesting people from all walks of life."

In Starkville, David Thornell, president and CEO of the Greater Starkville Development Partnership, believes the research park will be a force in persuading MSU graduates to stay longer in the area.

Already producing spinoff companies and jobs from MSU-based research, the park could get a little hipper by adding a recreational area with biking and walking trails.

Part of the park includes about 10 acres designated as a brownfield - a former landfill that can't be used to build facilities but can be used for recreation if it's improved to federal and state guidelines.

Although the brownfield still waits for final approval, Thornell sees its future benefit to the community.

"It fits well with what we see as a more diverse atmosphere here," he said.

Other plans for the research park include possible developments of condominiums, restaurants and a bank mixed in the high-tech jobs - similar to Tupelo's Fairpark District.

The hip helping the hip

Mabus, McMillen, and others like them appreciate their cities' efforts. But Mabus said creative people also need to get involved.

"It falls on our shoulders as members of the creative class to get together and form a cultural alliance or a group to sit down together and play off each others' creativity," he said. "We need to be identify each other - we're not wearing badges when we're in Wal -Mart."

Starkville's hip have already started helping themselves when a group formed about a year ago called Starkville in Motion. Its mission is to promote more sidewalks, bike paths and hiking areas in the community.

A few weeks ago the city's street department rearranged lines in University Drive, creating the city's first bike path that connects downtown to MSU's campus.

Other bike lanes for the city are in the early planning stages. Starkville in Motion members also are working on "safe routes to schools," which would encourage students biking or walking instead of riding in a car.

McMillen sees this and believes the city might be riding its bike in the right direction. Area leaders hope other "cool" people see the changes that have been ridiculed for years as nothing but a big cow pasture.

Next year McMillen will fly to France to check out the Tour de France, as he has done annually since 2001.

However, whether he decides to stay in Starkville for good depends largely on how well the community's leadership makes the place attractive for him.

"It depends on if Starkville continues the trend it's been on since I moved here," McMillen said.