In March, I stood on stage at MotorCity Casino’s Sound Board in Detroit to accept a 2025 Make It in Michigan Impact Award from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) at their Annual Leadership Summit.
It was a proud moment—not just for our organization, but for the members, investors, and partners across Southwest Michigan who have aligned behind a regional economic development strategy that is starting to show real results.
A New Kind of Recognition
The MEDC created the Make It in Michigan Awards this year to spotlight organizations advancing the state’s economic development strategy across three pillars: People, Places, and Projects. Six organizations were selected statewide through a competitive review weighing innovation, regional impact, multi-partner collaboration, and alignment with Michigan’s long-term growth priorities.
The Regional Chamber was one of just two organizations honored under the “People” pillar—recognized for confronting what has quietly become Michigan’s defining economic challenge: population stagnation.
People
Several years ago, the Regional Chamber made a deliberate choice to treat population growth as the central organizing principle of our economic development work. It was an unorthodox position at the time. Most economic development organizations treated population as a downstream effect of business attraction—land the employer, and the people would follow. We argued the opposite: in today’s economy, people come first, and investment follows them.
The clearest expression of that conviction is Discover Southwest Michigan, our regional talent attraction initiative. Discover treats population growth the way the state treats business attraction: as a pipeline that requires marketing, incentives, and coordinated partners to close the deal. Through targeted outreach, relocation support, and direct connections to employers, it gives people outside our region a clear pathway into Berrien, Cass, and Van Buren counties.
Michigan’s Population Growth Office selected Discover as a pilot for the Make MI Home Grant Program, and the response exceeded every expectation.
“The Southwest Michigan Regional Chamber has worked diligently through the Make MI Home grant to ramp up their population growth initiative, Discover Southwest Michigan,” said MEDC CEO Quentin L. Messer, Jr. “The response to this program was so successful that it was oversubscribed, fielding 1,175 applicants since its launch in May. We applaud their creativity and resilience, and we look forward to celebrating the continued success of the People, Places, and Projects in Southwest Michigan and beyond for years to come.”
The success of this program confirms what we have long believed: people are open to making Southwest Michigan their home. The pathway just has to be clear, coordinated, and compelling.
Places
But a pathway is only as valuable as the destination it leads to. The second half of our strategy—and the second of the state’s pillars—is building a place that people want to call home.
That work begins at the community level. Rather than chase the single big project, we reoriented our approach around locally led, place-based economic development—the kind that invests in main streets, supports small and mid-sized businesses, and confronts the real barriers to livability in any region: the cost and availability of housing, the childcare gap that sidelines working parents, and the quality-of-life investments that decide whether a community feels worth staying in.
The vehicle for that work is our Chamber Growth Alliance (CGA) model. Each CGA unites a cluster of municipalities under the Regional Chamber, led by dedicated local staff and governed by a board of elected officials, business owners, and civic leaders. The result is economic development rooted in place and driven by the people who live and work there—tailored to each community’s priorities, but aligned around a shared regional strategy. What began with the Bridgman CGA has grown to include Central Berrien, launched in 2025, and Southwest Berrien, launching in 2026.
Make no mistake—this was not an easy case to make. It asked our members, our funders, and our own board to back an approach the field had not yet embraced, and to stay the course even when results would take years to surface. I am grateful they did. Their confidence is what made this recognition possible.
Projects
Thankfully, those who took the initial leap with us did not have to wait long to see it pay off.
In 2025 alone, the Greater Bridgman CGA catalyzed more than $3 million in private investment and secured over $2 million in grants and capital. It completed seven business attraction, retention, and expansion projects—anchored by new arrivals like Beachside Salt and Soul and Ace Hardware, alongside expansions from local operators including Petals by Classic, Lake Side Fit, and Corewell Health. The Central Berrien CGA is building similar momentum in its first year, and Southwest Berrien is positioned to do the same.
This is the natural result of investing in People and Places first, and letting Projects take shape where the conditions have been built for them. MEDC recognized the same logic—and built the state’s economic development strategy to match. That alignment between our work and the state’s is why we were one of just six organizations selected.
Looking Ahead
Let me be clear, this recognition may validate our strategy, but it does not resolve our challenges. Our population is not yet growing. Our housing gap is not closed. Our childcare crisis is not solved. What it does mean is that we have built a credible plan, the state has taken notice, and the early results are pointing the right way.
The real test is whether we can sustain it—across sectors, across jurisdictions, over the long horizon that population growth demands. That answer will not be decided on a stage in Detroit. It will be decided by the work that follows.
Shared Accomplishment
In the meantime, I’d be remiss to not acknowledge that this work does not happen alone.
To every partner, member, and team member who has carried us this far—thank you. To our Board of Directors, who had the foresight to embrace a new direction. To the municipalities that invested in our CGAs while the model was still unproven. To the funders who supported a strategy with a long horizon for impact. And to our partners at MEDC and the Population Growth Office, who provided Discover the runway it needed to succeed.
This progress belongs to all of you—and so will what comes next.
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