St. Joseph gets ready to launch
You can call the Pony Express historic, romantic and epic. Just don’t call it innovative.
St. Joseph’s history is filled with tales of daring riders heading off into the sunset, mochilas stuffed full of correspondence. The undercurrent is a little less epic. The business model favored carrying mail on horseback while others were connecting telegraph wires.
The demise of the Pony Express, followed by Kansas City’s success in building the first rail bridge over the Missouri River, left an impression that St. Joseph was always one step behind.
That’s unfair. In reality, St. Joseph’s economy did just fine for a number of years without becoming a haven for technology or innovation. It was easier to chase factories and leave the new things to the coastal areas, first with Bell Labs in New Jersey and then with Silicon Valley in California. St. Joseph, like the rest of flyover country, missed the party.
Now, it becomes important to knock on that door — or maybe kick it in. Small businesses drive job growth and young people crave high-tech career opportunities.
St. Joseph needs something like the Launch Pad, a hub for innovators, entrepreneurs, and remote professionals located in the Felix Street parking complex. For several years, this underutilized parking structure generated expectations that Downtown St. Joseph would attract a grocery store.
Instead, we get something better. The Launch Pad, developed through the cooperation of the St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce, Mosaic Life Care, the Show-Me Network and the Missouri Technology Corporation, provides resources and collaborative opportunities for entrepreneurs.
We’ve seen it happen in other places. A concept becomes a start-up. A start-up turns into a successful business. The business, at least in a small way, proves transformative.
For too long, St. Joseph was viewed as a community more interested in an outdated bridge than transformation. Maybe that’s unfair, but perception becomes reality. It matters because people choose where they want to live as much as where they want to work.
Even those who did innovate, like William Goddard, did their best work elsewhere. Goddard, who was born in St. Joseph, was part of a team of engineers that invented a magnetic disk storage device for IBM Labs in the 1950s. Goddard, who died in 1997, is a member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Maybe the next inventor won’t just be from here. Maybe this person will build something new, disruptive and transformative — right from the Launch Pad in Downtown St. Joseph.
