by Karen Brune Mathis
Managing Editor
Jacksonville Civic Council Chair Peter Rummell envisions a corps of experienced business leaders banding together to provide young entrepreneurs an operational platform.
While Rummell’s primary presentation to the Rotary Club of Jacksonville Monday concerned Downtown, he tied into the topic his revelations about turning 65 and how he and others of his generation can help budding entrepreneurs.
“They need four things,” Rummell told the roomful of established executives about young people “with an idea on a shoestring.”
Those are money, organizational help, mentoring and contacts. Young, aspiring business operators don’t know that they don’t know and don’t know what they don’t know, he said.
At the same time, Rummell, on the leading edge of baby boomers turning 65, said the current aging generation is a wealthy one, compared to historical standards.
Baby boomers were born from 1946-64 and are reaching the ages of 47 to 65 this year.
Rummell said that population, “there are 76 million people behind me,” generally has money, organizational skills and the ability to teach and pass down a reservoir of information and knowledge.
In addition, “we are all the sum of our Rolodexes,” he said.
“That is the same list that our friends looking to start a business need,” said Rummell.
Bringing together the two populations is an opportunity in Jacksonville “to do something special,” he said, making the area a good place both to start a business and to retire from one.
Rummell said he retired from running a public company three years ago and “all of a sudden I was 65.”
“It happened and it has been a curious journey for me,” he said, calling his topic “Peter being 65.”
That’s what led him to consider launching what he tentatively calls the “senior corps, the opportunity corps, the experience corps” or something in that vein.
“I’m testing it. I want to try it out,” he said.
Rummell tied the idea to Downtown, explaining that young entrepreneurs are interested in doing business Downtown, but need the “incubator” space and other assistance to do it.
Rummell referenced the “co-working” trend Downtown. The concept involves making temporary office space available in increments as small as an hour or two and amenities as limited as a chair and desk space adequate for a laptop computer along with Wi-Fi access.
The concept has been tested Downtown, appealing to people such as graphic designers, information technology workers, freelance writers and marketers.
Co-working allows people who might have worked in their homes to instead work around other people with similar aspirations and interests.
Rummell included co-working incubators into his broader topic of Downtown revitalization. The civic council issued its Northbank Revitalization Task Force Report in February.
Rummell, task force chair Preston Haskell and task force member Ed Burr have been presenting task force findings to civic and industry trade groups and others, including City Council members.
“We won’t have a world-class city with a hollow Downtown,” Rummell told Rotary Club members.
He summarized the findings, which include a recommendation for a convention center, entertainment and retail complex at the site of the existing riverfront Duval County Courthouse and Annex that would spark the flow of revitalization.
He also emphasized the civic council’s call for an independent downtown authority that would govern Downtown development projects and operate with its own budget.
Meanwhile, as the civic council shares its recommendations about Downtown, it is turning its attention to another “critical and complicated” situation – the City budget.
Rummell said the council’s agenda called for a focus on issues of importance that did not have adequate attention. The council emerged in February 2010 to succeed the former Jacksonville Non-Group.
The first priority was Downtown.
Second is the City budget, which is projected to face a $60 million shortfall in the coming 2011-12 fiscal year.
Rummell said the budget was in “disarray” or “whatever word you want to use.”
Rummell also said the council doesn’t want the area to lose the Jacksonville Jaguars National Football League franchise.
He also said that while the council considers education a top priority for the area, other groups are focused on it.
Rummell said two other issues of interest to the council are race relations and the economic opportunities presented by the medical community.
“It could be a giant economic opportunity,” he said.
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