WAYNE COUNTY: Khalil Rahal, assistant Wayne County executive in charge of economic development, joined Wayne County Executive Warren Evans' administration in 2015 after several years as a prosecutor working in the special victims unit. A graduate of Grand Valley State University and the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, Rahal has been instrumental in a variety of development efforts as one of Evans' trusted advisers, including the recent deal to lure Amazon.com Inc. to the former Pinnacle Race Course site in Huron Township and the disposition of the former McLouth Steel Products Corp. property in Trenton.
How does someone go from prosecuting sex offenders to moving into economic development?
It really had to deal with the county executive (Warren Evans) believing in his instincts and finding talent and trying to put square pegs in square holes. He's very strategic like that. The art of economic development is very similar to learning how to connect the dots. The county executive was in law enforcement for many, many years, not just as a cop, not just as a sheriff or police chief, but also as a prosecutor, so some of the skills translated. Warren has always looked at economic development and saying he wants to see more people participate in the economy. The more people participate in the economy, the larger the economy is. And that means making sure that even the most vulnerable amongst us participate, and he's always believed that the No. 1 way to reduce crime is to get a job.
Not as many ghosts in economic development as there are in prosecuting sex crimes, I imagine.
Work's very personal. As a prosecutor in that unit, there's a lot to carry with you, even until this day, no doubt. I'm very, very passionate about my work and I still think about the deals that we lose, you know. The losses always feel harder than the victories do.
Let's talk a little bit about the economic development strategy at play now versus six or seven years ago when Warren Evans took office.
Before the county executive came in, you saw the philosophy of trying to travel the world and attract only foreign direct investment at high volume, and that's not a terrible long-term strategy but that's very, very expensive. And oftentimes, it's a shiny coin and what that can do is sometimes neglect some of the best return on investment for economic development, which is your bread and butter right here at home. He definitely came in and switched the philosophy, and we ran a much stronger community development program. We ran a much stronger retention and expansion program and we still did attraction. But, where the resources were put were sort of reversed.
Today it's even more different, because we're facing the pandemic and what (effect) it's had on the global economy. I think we're very much in a phase of trying to sustain our economy. For the next few months, we're going to be looking to recover in our economy. For months after that, then hopefully (we'll) rebuild and diversify, so I think that's sort of a strategy going forward. Right now, what you've seen is the county executive put in a lot of resources for small businesses. In any pandemic, the most vulnerable take the largest hit, and that's no different in business as well. Small businesses have taken a lion's share of the hit here, so you've seen us put a lot of resources in this space to help sustain that. Now we're going to have to figure out ways to recover and rebuild.
What does, what does the strategy look like going forward in terms of sustaining and promoting business in the wake of all this?
One thing that's important to understand is that all major corporations and midlevel businesses can't sustain themselves without having small businesses around. Because the pandemic will hit the most vulnerable amongst us, we need to have an emphasis on small businesses at the moment. Half of all the jobs in America are small business jobs. If small businesses are taking the lion's share of the hit right now, we have to figure out a way to help sustain them because once we lose a small business, once it shuts down, it is more than twice as hard to get it to reopen. So we've got to figure out a way to sustain that.
We're doing that in four different ways. No. 1, we are doing everything we can to keep the numbers down in terms of infection rate. That's important because when the numbers go up, our economy will go down. There's less consumer confidence, there's the need for executive orders and reduced capacity, and small businesses didn't have huge margins before the pandemic.
The second most important thing is technical support. We see the world changing, and we see it changing dramatically for small businesses and so small business, other businesses will have to change with it. So, we have been focusing on our website. You can go there and you'll find 50 different pieces of technical advice and 70 different webinars.
The third way is community support. We are finding that small businesses need a dramatic amount of support from local communities, not just in grants and resources in that space, but oftentimes changing of local ordinances, permitting and those kinds of things. Last year we helped 21 municipalities in Wayne County change their local ordinances to allow for increased capacity for shutting down some streets on county roads, sidewalks, alleyways, parking lots, those kinds of things that allow businesses to increase capacity and maybe even create a Main Street atmosphere in some of those places.
This is the least important thing, but very, very important, is grants. There is no substitute for getting back to work. Grants are needed. They're wonderful, but they're a one-time influx of cash. They can help save a business, but they won't sustain those businesses. We need things like keeping the numbers down, technical support, community support to help sustain their businesses, so we're implementing a four-stage strategy to help small business.
I vaguely recall hearing that you played football in college.
Grand Valley State. Go Lakers. ... We've been very, very proud of the success and legacy. When I was there, I played for Brian Kelly and we won a couple national championships, and they won a couple national championships after I left. We've got to get back to the top of that hill though. We haven't been there for a couple of years.
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Khalil Rahal on how Wayne County is working to recover and rebuild - Crain's Detroit Business
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