Chester County Leadership – Gary Smith

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Image via the Chester County Economic Development Council.
Gary W. Smith.

The Chester County Economic Development Council, with 50 employees and a $7.5 million dollar annual budget and led by Gary Smith (above), the Council’s President and CEO, works with local government and planning commissions to recruit and retain companies and jobs in Chester County.

In September 2015, VISTA Today asked Smith about growing up on a farm in West Bradford Township between West Chester and Coatesville, attending West Chester University before taking a job shoveling meat on a West Chester factory floor when a job in Harrisburg didn’t materialize, getting hired by the economical Development Council in 1976 and the emergence of Chester County into a regional economic juggernaut in the 1980’s and 90’s.

Where did you grow up Gary?

I was born and raised on a 112-acre, 35 cow family dairy farm in West Bradford Township. I was the oldest of two children and the only boy, so I was in the barn at an early age feeding cows, throwing down hay and eventually milking cows. We shipped our milk to a dairy in West Chester, who gave us a premium price for our milk. My father had a lot of pride in doing things and doing things the right way. Other than Sunday afternoon, there wasn’t a lot of time sitting around the house doing nothing.

Did church play a role in your family’s life?

I was raised as a Methodist and became a converted Christian in my senior year in college. From that point forward my life has been transformational. I believe we’re all here to serve, and we’re all here for a purpose. As a result, I’ve always felt driven to public service. My dad was a township supervisor and all through high school and my time in Boy Scouts I was interested in public service.

Where did you go to school?

I went to the Marshalton School for first-grade. The Marshalton school was an old brick building behind where the Fire company sits now. My first-grade classroom was split down the middle; first-grade students on one side of the room and second graders on the other. Eventually, the Downingtown School District built a new Elementary school in Beaver Creek, and I transferred to there. I went to Downingtown High school.

Did you play any sports in high school?

No, I don’t have an athletic bone in my body. Besides on the farm, there wasn’t a lot of extra time. In my spare time, I was usually helping Dad maintain the farm, fixing fencing, tending to cattle, bailing hay and other odd jobs.

Did you father pay you for your work on the farm?

My dad paid me a quarter a week and worked it up to $25 a week by the time I graduated from college in 1974.

Where did you go to college?

When I graduated from high school in 1970, I went to West Chester because it was close, and I had a girlfriend, who later became my wife, who was two years behind me in school. I wanted to stay close to her. I commuted to school in West Chester and worked on the farm in what spare time I had. West Chester didn’t have an agriculture program, so I majored in Geography and Planning.

Was West Chester a good fit for you?

Yes, my time at West Chester was a transformative time in my life. I had floated through high school. At West Chester, I learned how to study and focus on my academic objectives.

What memories stay with you from your time at West Chester?

I had to write a thesis on spatial analysis in my senior year. It was before computers so I had to seek out people to interview. Every Sunday afternoon my girlfriend and I would get in my 1967 red Camaro convertible and travel around the County looking for people to interview.

One Sunday I ran into an agriculture official way down in Nottingham who worked for then-Governor Shapp. I knocked on his door and even though he and his family were eating Sunday dinner, he invited me in and answered my questions. He encouraged me to look him up when I graduated and promised to help me find a job.

What did you do when you graduated from college?

There was a freeze on hiring in Harrisburg so even though I had taken the civil service tests and had been identified for a job in Harrisburg, the job never posted. I’ve always been a huckster, so I started selling sweet corn, tomatoes, peppers and all sorts of vegetables I grew on two acres of my father’s farm.

I wasn’t the type to sit in a roadside stand all day waiting for people to stop to buy my produce. Instead, my father allowed me to use his pick-up truck, and I went door to door selling my produce. I would go to different towns on different days selling my home grown produce. I sold the sweet corn that my girlfriend and parents had picked that morning for $1 for a dozen ears of corn. I became known as the “Corn man” and made many good friends!

That’s a great story, Gary. What did you learn from that experience?

Selling produce off the back of my truck taught me a lot. My travels took me into communities like Coatesville, West Chester and Wilmington where I had never been. I found people in those communities to be as warm and welcoming as those in my hometown. Not only did the experience give me a chance to stash away a little bit of money, but it also gave me an appreciation of how people at every level of society lived.

What was your first real job out of college?

Even though I loved growing and selling produce, I wanted to find a different job. I saw an ad for factory work at Gagliardi Brothers in West Chester. They hired me and put me on the factory floor shoveling meat.

I was working there about a month when I got called into one of the Gagliardi brother’s office. The brother, who they called “Junior,” asked why I was working so hard and then told me to cut it out, that he was paying other people to do those jobs! He asked me why I, as a college graduate, was working in a factory. I told him my story, and he asked me to help him on his farm off of Lucky Hill Road off of 842 south of West Chester.

I worked in his factory in the morning and on Junior’s farm in the afternoon. That went on for a while until I found the job at the Economic Development Council.

How did you find this job at the Economic Development Council?

I saw an ad for an assistant director at the EDC in the paper. I kept calling Bob Hollingwood, the then Executive Director, asking for an interview. Finally, I got an interview and did well enough to ask for references. They called “Junior” Gagliardi who gave me a great reference. That’s how I got the job here. The position paid $8,500 a year.

When did the Chester County make the transition from being a rural, mostly agricultural community into a world-class industrial and suburban county?

Back then, being a Quaker community, there was a reticence for the government to tell people what they could and couldn’t do with their land. As a result, there was no zoning and very few if any townships had managers.

All that started to change in the late 70’s. When the State built Route 202 from King of Prussia to West Chester, replacing Swedesford Road as the main route to and from West Chester, the new highway acted as a gateway into Chester County.

When I came on in 1976, Great Valley Corporate Center had just been acquired by Bill Rouse. The first building he put up was a 120,000 sq ft spec building. The building, sitting in the middle of what had been open farmland was the most unusual thing I had ever seen.

At about the same time, we initiated a $2 billion industrial development bond program which launched Chester County. Back in the late 1970’s, interest rates and tax brackets were a lot higher than they are now.

John Ware, the Oxford businessman who was serving in Congress at the time saw a program that had worked to build affordable housing in Mississippi and wondered why the same thing couldn’t be done here in Chester County.

We petitioned the County government to start an Industrial Development Authority to issue tax-exempt debt. The first project we did was a 400,000 sq ft building in the Main Line Industrial Park in East Whiteland. All the sudden, this program just caught fire. Developers built shopping centers, business parks, even fast food restaurants. Chester County boomed.

Was there a turning point when Chester County made the turn ?

If there was a turning point, it would be in the early 1970’s the Norcross Greeting Card company moved their corporate headquarters from New York City to a 543,000 sq ft building in West Chester. Before that, cornfields lined 202 between West Chester and King Of Prussia. That all changed when Norcross came to town.

Looking forward, what challenges do you see for economic development in Chester County?

As more established municipalities in the eastern part of the county are entering a period of redevelopment, less developed areas are taking some best practices from those more mature areas on how to grow and develop their communities.

The western part of the county including the Oxford and Octorara school districts have some real challenges. Residents in western Chester County are paying proportionately higher property taxes to fund their school districts than the rest of the county. Owning a home or commercial property in those areas is like paying two mortgages. Developers are reticent to build in those areas because of the high tax burden.

Our VISTA 2025 initiative is an exciting transformational project for us. It’s a great example of how public and private entities can work together, respect the values of both and solve our problems together. Our job at the CCEDC is to be the ambassador of the program to the public and private sector and help the teams of people implementing the plans 180 different recommendations. We’re looking forward to further developing the quality of place and economic health Chester County is known for.

The CCEDC is atypical of an economic development organization. A lot of people think we’re out there recruiting new companies to come to Chester County. That’s just not our focus. Instead, our focus will continue to be on growing and nurturing companies that are already here.

The companies that are here now are the companies that put their roots here, stayed here, hired people here, contributed to charities here and made investments in the community here.

When Joe Siegle wanted to start QVC and sell products on TV, or when John Bogle left the mutual fund company he was working for and started Vanguard, we helped them get started. Going forward our focus will remain on growing and nurturing the companies already here.

What is the best piece of advice you ever received, Gary?

Discovering the purpose of my life was to glorify God while creating a life that is meaningful for others was an important lesson I learned in college. I believe in working hard and being responsible. Nothing in life comes easy.

There have been a lot of people I’ve looked up to over the years. I’ve had over 20 board chairs in my 40 years at CCEDC. Bill Bogle is the Chair now all the way back to my first chair, Ivan Morris. I have looked up to and gotten along with all of them.

They’re my bosses. They’ve all given me advice. But a small piece of advice from one of those chairs has stayed with me. He said, be effective but don’t put yourself out there in front of others.

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