KOKOMO — Patricia Hammons walked out of a meeting in Kokomo last week fired up.

“I was thoroughly impressed,” she said. “It was awesome. I was amazed by the synergy they had.”

Hammons was talking about the Great Connect, an event organized by the Greater Kokomo Economic Development Alliance to celebrate that city’s recent economic turnaround.

The program’s emcee, Paul Wyman, noted that in December 2008 Forbes magazine had named Kokomo one of America’s fastest dying cities. This month, USA Today used the city as an example of a community on the road to recovery.

Wyman and others pointed to the millions of dollars that had been invested in the community and the many jobs that had been created as a result.

“If I had been an alliance member sitting in that audience, I would have been thrilled about the use of my money,” Hammons said.

Hammons and her husband, Mark, own McDonald’s restaurant franchises in Logansport, Delphi and Monticello. She is also the incoming president of the Logansport-Cass County Economic

Development Foundation board of directors.

She said she was still excited about what she had seen and heard in Kokomo when she sat down for an LEDF executive committee meeting the next day.

“I issued a call to action,” she said. “I told the other people on the committee, ‘We need to do this.’”

Hammons had attended the gathering in Kokomo with Kevin Bostick, chancellor of the Logansport campus of Ivy Tech Community College and a fellow member of the LEDF board of directors.

Bostick was somewhat more reserved in his reaction.

“I thought it was neat,” he said of the program. “They put on a great presentation.”

Asked whether he thought such a concept would work in Logansport, he was noncommital.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think it has potential. I really do.”

The chairman of the alliance board is Bostick’s boss, Steve Daily, chancellor of the Kokomo region of Ivy Tech. Bostick said he had spoken to Daily about the concept.

“Steve said it’s not for every community,” Bostick said, “but he’s obviously very supportive of what’s happening in Kokomo. I think he feels we get more for our money with that approach.”

Daily was among the speakers at last week’s event. He recalled when he was mayor of Kokomo in the early 1980s and the city was in the midst of a recession. There was no economic development alliance then. He had no one to call for help in attracting new business.

“It was a pretty lonely place to be,” he recalled.

Daily also recalled that he had been skeptical that an economic development alliance could ever work in Kokomo.

“As has happened so many times in my life, I was absolutely wrong,” he said.

Mayor Mike Fincher was also in the audience at last week’s event. He said he would like to see Logansport and Cass County explore a similar alliance.

“It’s obvious that it can work,” he said.

He stressed, though, that such a transformation wouldn’t happen without a lot of work.

“I don’t think it can happen tomorrow,” he said.

Another member of the Kokomo audience was Pam Leeman of Regions Insurance. Leeman has been involved in Logansport’s downtown revitalization effort as a member of the board of Logan’s Landing. She’s also the mother of Matt Boor, one of the alliance organizers and a member of its board of directors.

“I was there because my son asked me to be there,” she said.

Leeman said she was impressed by what she had seen but was not certain Logansport was ready for such an effort. Still, she said, she would be open to talking about the idea.

“I’m always open to any kind of change,” she said.

She agreed with Fincher, though, that it wouldn’t come without a lot of advance work.

“You can’t decide to form an alliance and do it tomorrow,” she said. “I know in Kokomo they went through a lot of grief and a lot of heartache before they got where they are today.”

Also in the crowd was Nolan “Skip” Kuker, the president of LEDF.

“That was an interesting event,” he said. “There was a lot of energy there. There are a lot of neat things they’re doing now.”

As to whether Logansport and Cass County should explore a similar alliance, Kuker voiced neutrality.

“I think anything’s worth talking about,” he said, “but I work for a board of directors. I do what they tell me to do.”

If Hammons has her way, the board will be moving toward formation of an alliance.

“When I left that meeting, I was pumped up,” she said. “I felt good about the future. I’m sure Kokomo still has a lot of work ahead of it, but there was a lot of power in that room.”

Wyman, the program’s emcee, pointed out that for the first time ever, Kokomo had both of its hospitals involved in the same economic development effort. It had top executives from its largest employers. It had the chancellors of both Indiana University Kokomo and Ivy Tech. It had the support of both city and county government.

“We have an incredible group that comes together once a month,” he said.

Bostick said one of the biggest obstacles to overcome in forming such an organization would be in convincing the various organizations that their interests would not be swallowed up by the larger organization.

“You’ve got to have buy-in from a lot of committed people,” he said. “People are going to be territorial. The whole key will be communication, and about being up front and open.”

Leeman said that at least in theory she supported the concept of a unified approach.

“It’s when you’re not unified and everyone’s going in different directions that you start to fail,” she said.

Hammons said her interest was in harnessing the energy she saw in Kokomo.

“I don’t want to make it about politics,” she said. “It’s about how we can change the way we do things to become more effective. I think we’ve been doing the same thing the same way for a long time. It’s time we changed that.”

• Kelly Hawes is managing editor of the Pharos-Tribune. He can be reached at 574-732-5155 or kelly.hawes@pharostribune.com.