"My Money’s on The Bishop"

What do you get when you mix Facebook with Oprah Winfrey and a guy named Timothy Bishop stirs them together? You get economic vibrancy in a “Going Out of Business” area of America - our disappearing downtowns.

We first wrote about Timothy Bishop and Ellensburg Washington’s economic battle back late 2006 in an article called “Just Try to Stop This Downtown Train.” Here’s how it began:

Jon Shallert called last week to tell me about the movement to save downtown Ellensburg, Washington. Like a lot of downtowns in rural America, its very existence is threatened by a host of economic factors. Ellensburg is about a two-hour drive from Seattle. That same day New York Senator Charles E. Schumer and New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg wrote a Wall Street Journal article about saving downtown New York. It’s somewhere out east. Which effort do you suppose will get more attention?

We wrote then that Ellensburg rolled up its collective sleeves and got right down to the work of revitalizing its economy. New York, in contrast (and not that surprisingly) hired a consulting firm to study the situation and issue a report.

So, What’s Happened Lately?

Something called the “Downtown Revitalization Training Institute“ just gave out its 2008 “Excellence in Downtown Revitalization” awards for all of Washington state. There were 8 awards. Tiny Ellensburg went home with 2 of them.

New York’s financial district did help to bring you the credit crisis, inflation and stagnating employment, but garnered no awards that we’re aware of.

The Downtown Revitalization awards?

Outstanding Achievement in Promotion
Ellensburg Downtown Association for their “MySpace” page.
Best Economic Restructuring Story
Ellensburg Downtown Association for their “Brown Bag Business Basics” workshop series.

You see, Timothy Bishop and the good folks around town have been cooking up ideas again. You could learn from them. Where else do you see anyone mixing a book club and an Internet strategy together?

The Ellensburg MySpace page helped them raise their brand identity with the nearby Central Washington University. And, they used the book club, Brown Bag Business Basics, to reach out and touch some of the most innovative authors in America - folks like Mark Sanborn, Chris Anderson and Bill Collier.

Yup, they called or emailed them and often got their attention. Eight of the 12 agreed to do an interview on their local radio station, KQBE.

For instance, Timothy told us,

Mark Sanborn (author of The Fred Factor) was a great interview and inspired great attendance at the review for his book. That caught the attention of CWU faculty who invited him to speak at the University last fall.

Or, how would you like to interview another bestselling author, Chris Anderson? Bishop’s book club did just that:

My personal favorite was Chris Anderson, author of best seller, The Long Tail. I was most amazed by how accessible Mr. Anderson was and his willingness to lend his support to our efforts in Ellensburg, Washington — a little town of just 18,000 people. For a community of our size to have the editor for Wired magazine on our economic restructuring team, even if just for a day, is pretty exciting.

Now, that’s what we call networking, Mr. Bishop!

Did all of this activity translate? Duh. It translated to increases in tax revenues, better attended community events and increased connections to the nearby CWU among many other things. But, you’ll have to call up Timothy and get him to tell you about all those.

After we wrote that first article about Ellensburg for our blog, Pug Ostling added this comment:

“My guess is that offensive coordinator Timothy Bishop and a revved up cadre of downtown activists will have an innovative strategic plan that aims high. The plan will no doubt include lofty, yet achievable goals that can race past basic downtown “survival” on their way to unprecedented success. This is a tough but doable challenge.”

Pug concluded his comments with this prediction, “For what it’s worth, my money’s on The Bishop.”

Bishop to Pawn 4, New York. Check.

Game not yet over, but looks bad for the Big Apple.