Columbus.

• Author: Gard, Jon
• Position: City Spotlight

The city is home to two Fortune 500 companies and a strong sense of community.

Bridges in Indiana are typically flat slabs of concrete designed to get drivers--efficiently and without fanfare--from one side of a river to the other.

But displayed in the glass-lined foyer at Columbus City Hall and proposed for construction is a scale model of a decidedly atypical bridge with 120-foot towers topped by flowing green plants. It was designed by Argentine architect Emilio Ambasz to create a feeling of grand entry and to give visitors an inspiring view of a city ranked among the top 10 in the nation for quality architecture.

As are other bridges, this span is meant to get motorists across a river, but it also reflects the high standard the community sets for everything from parks and sidewalks to economic development.

At the heart of what makes Columbus tick is an enterprising public-private partnership led by Henry B. Schacht, chairman and CEO at Columbus-headquartered Cummins Engine Co. Inc.

"A city needs a sense of place and purpose--a sense of what it wants itself to be," Schacht says. "Columbus always has had a strong sense of community and a cadre of public and private citizens willing to get involved that has really driven it forward and allowed us to achieve what others have not."

Focus 2000, an active partnership between the public and private sectors, was formed in 1984 in the wake of economic recession, when government and business leaders took a hard look at the community and saw trouble. Its five largest manufacturers had cut their payrolls from 17,000 jobs to just 12,000 in five years, kicking unemployment well into double digits.

"Columbus always has been affected by the ups and downs of the durable-goods manufacturing cycle, but what you saw during the 1980s was that each downturn was deeper and each upturn was shallower. You had an almost insidious decline in employment," recalls Brooke Tuttle, president of the Columbus Economic Development Commission.

Although it hasn't recovered fully from the hit it took in the early 1980s, the community is on much better footing, bolstered by a new wave of freshly recruited employers and expansions at existing plants.

"It used to be that when Cummins would lay off some people or put them on furlough, this community would come to a dead stop," says Columbus Mayor Robert Stewart, who was elected in 1983 and is running unopposed this year for a third term. "Now, you don't see that kind of shock...