City spotlight: Scottsburg.

• Author: Baird, Bob
• Position: Scottsburg, Indiana

Great Scott! What's all the excitement about in Scott County? What's happening to this largely rural county half an hour north of Louisville that gained a noticeably diverse industrial base the past few years and is making progress as a tourist and specialty shopping area?

Growth, enthusiasm, growing community pride, teamwork, shifting economics, commuting patterns, even lifestyles. "We've just got started," pipes Scottsburg Mayor William H. Graham, a former civil engineer seemingly as comfortable running a front-end loader for a beautification project as devising infrastructure packages for incoming industry.

"We're not a suburban metro county yet, but we're making some shifts," says Michael L. Smith, an ex-band teacher who orchestrates business and industrial activities as executive director of the Scott County Economic Development Corporation.

Graham and Smith have reason to be enthusiastic: In the past five years, 10 factories located to Scott County, an existing plant launched a second operation, and several existing industries expanded and reinvested heavily in operations, employees, and the community at large. Although many county residents still commute to larger communities for work, the percentage has dropped, Smith says. Since 1988 more than 1,200 new jobs have been created in the county, reversing two decades of decline when unemployment and the number of welfare recipients were among the highest in the state. "We don't want to depend on Louisville, Columbus and Seymour for jobs," Mayor Graham states.

Examples of economic interaction include Holm Industries (with 625 employees, Scott County's largest employer) supplying refrigerator gaskets to General Electric plants in Louisville and Bloomington, and Scott Manufacturing supplying gasoline tanks to Louisville's Ford plant. In addition, Scott County now draws labor from other areas, Smith says. For example, MultiColor Inc. and Bowater Communication Papers hire out-of-county employees for their printing operations.

The mood is upbeat everywhere, from the corporate offices of Morgan Foods Inc. in Austin -- for decades the fulcrum of the area economy in Scottsburg's sister city five miles north -- to fancy little gift, decorator, and gourmet shops that have sprung up on Scottsburg's downtown square. Proprietors say they want to capitalize on tourists and specialty shoppers, particularly traffic to nearby historic Madison, as well as increased local spending and recent efforts to...