Mayor’s trip might open some doors

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August 13, 2007

<b>Consultant: Japanese businesses will look favorably on visit by city’s chief executive</b>

by Kelly Hawes Pharos-Tribune Mon Aug 13, 2007, 10:40 AM EDT

Larry Ingram says he’s looking forward to his approaching trip to Japan with Logansport Mayor Mike Fincher.

“If I go by myself, I get to meet with a mid-level employee,” he said. “When I say I’m bringing the mayor, we get to meet with the president and chairman.”

It’s not so much that Fincher has any personal magic. It’s the title that opens doors.

“The mayor is really seen as the CEO of the community, as someone who can make things happen,” Ingram said at a meeting of the Logansport Rotary Club last week. “The fact he’s making the trip is seen as a very powerful message.”

Skip Kuker, executive director of the Logansport-Cass County Economic Development Foundation, said he had the same experience when accompanying Fincher to gatherings with Japanese officials in Indianapolis and elsewhere.

“It is astounding the reaction he gets,” Kuker said. “People will stop him and hand me their cameras so that I can take their pictures with him.”

Fincher’s trip from Sept. 1 through 12 will be sponsored by the LEDF.

“We can’t afford for both of us to go, so we’re sending him,” Kuker said.

The visit will be Fincher’s second to Japan. He and Ingram plan to attend a Japan-U.S. conference while they’re in the country, but they also plan to make a number of other visits.

They’ll meet with the co-owner of Logansport Matsumoto, and they’ll visit the Tokyo office of Tyson. They’ll also meet with the governor of Indiana’s sister state in Japan and with Japanese construction firms and banks.

Ingram, who now runs his own consulting company, has long been involved in luring Japanese investment to the Midwest. In the 1980s, he was director of Indiana’s East Asian office in Tokyo.

Ingram spent two years in Japan while in the Air Force, and he returned there after college for what he thought would be a 1-year stay teaching English. He ended up staying for 15 years.

Soon after Ingram became Indiana’s Tokyo representative in 1983, Sony chose Terre Haute as the location of a plant to manufacture CDs, or compact discs.

“At the time, we didn’t know what a CD was,” Ingram recalled, “but we thought, ‘It’s Sony; it’ll have to be good.’”

Indiana in those days was playing catchup with its neighbors in attracting Japanese investment. With the opening of a new Honda plant in Greensburg next year, Indiana will now be the only state with three Japanese auto manufacturers.

In explaining what could happen in Logansport, Ingram cites the example of Columbus, Ind., now home to 18 Japanese companies. That didn’t happen without a lot of effort, he says, noting that one Columbus mayor made 17 trips to Japan during his 12 years in office.

Kuker said a Japanese construction firm had already been to Logansport to scout possible locations.

“We had one company that we didn’t get, but we were in the running,” he said. “We’re getting some looks, and that’s not a bad start.”

Kelly Hawes can be reached at (574) 732-5150, or kelly.hawes@pharostribune.com

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<b>Consultant: Japanese businesses will look favorably on visit by city’s chief executive</b>

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