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Web Extra: Creating People Climates A Tailor-Made Man
Growing up in Middleburg, Pennsylvania, Joe Kleinbauer ’63 worked as a shoe-shine boy in a small country clothing store. While he was studying marketing at Susquehanna, he worked behind the counter of that same shop. After years of coaxing, Kleinbauer convinced his boss to open a store in Selinsgrove. And let him run it.
Within three years time, Kleinbauer bought out the merchandise of Snyder’s Men Shop and purchased the former home and office of an attorney who had passed away. It’s there, on the corner of Market and Chestnut streets, where Kleinbauer has made his mark in the business world and on downtown Selinsgrove.
“What few businesses the town had were at or near the corner of Pine and Market streets. When I bought the property at Market and Chestnut streets, the man who ran the five and dime said no one would walk that far. And he thought it was awful not to have plate glass windows,” Kleinbauer recalls with a chuckle.
But in a rural town of less than 6,000 people and no plate glass windows in their storefront, Kleinbauer and his wife, Judy, created a shopping experience like no other by offering quality merchandise and services that hold their own against stores like Saks and Nordstrom.
“Our guests have the perception that it’s more than a place to buy clothes. And really, a piece of clothing is only a byproduct of what we do. It’s about the value of not only the product, but the service. I never try to sell customers something. I try to help them,” Kleinbauer says.
In this concept lie the greatest strengths of J. Kleinbauer, the man and the business – honesty, integrity and graciousness – characteristics that were reinforced raising a child with special needs. “If, 25 years ago, someone would have told me, ‘Judy and Joe Kleinbauer are going to have a child with autism,’ I would have said, ‘You’re crazy.’ But if it were not for Mary our business would not be the same, and not as good.… Just the kind of person it makes you, humble and grateful for what you have. Problems don’t discriminate, and you learn that it’s not a Barbie and Ken life,” Kleinbauer says. — Victoria Kidd
Sitting in the book-lined sunroom of Potteiger House that overlooks immaculately maintained gardens, visitors to the elegent bed and breakfast are serenaded by the bells of Weber Chapel ringing through the streets of Selinsgrove each hour. Guestrooms are named after and feature the work of renowned artists. With a mix of African masks, photographs of the indigenous peoples of South America and heirloom Blue Willow china strategically placed throughout the house, the B&B is at once eclectic and romantic. So are the lives of its owners, attorney Karen Hackman ’78 and her husband, architect and photographer Léo Mendonca.
Hackman is a born and bred country girl raised in Snyder County, Pennsylvania. Mendonca is a city boy who grew up in Sao Paulo, an urban center of Brazil. The account of how they met, and eventually fell in love, is a story often shared at the inn they keep.
When Hackman was 16, she traveled to Brazil as an exchange student. Not long after arriving, she met a young boy about her age named Léo, and the two quickly became best friends. After returning home, Hackman at first stayed in touch with her Brazilian friend. But, as time went on and high school turned into college, the two lost touch. Following graduation from Susquehanna, Hackman left the area to study law, returning in 1983 to become the first female attorney in Snyder County. In 1990, after establishing a commercial and municipal law practice in Selinsgrove, Hackman journeyed back to Brazil, only to find that her long-lost friend, like herself, had never married. And after what Hackman describes as “a whirlwind courtship 18 years in the making,” the couple married and set up residence in the Selinsgrove area. By 1992, they had purchased the Potteiger family home on West Chestnut Street and transformed it into a bed and breakfast.
“Léo is hospitality and quality control, and I’m the chef and bookkeeper,” says Hackman, who credits her architect husband with the design of Potteiger House. In addition to their shared business, the couple continues to pursue their individual careers in law and photography. But it is together at the Potteiger House where they seem most happy.
“It’s our passion. We have people from literally all over the world stay with us, and many turn into lasting friendships,” Hackman says.
— Victoria Kidd 
Creating People Climatesby Victoria KiddNews & Editorial Manager The economic change America is going through is bigger than the Industrial Revolution, and most economic experts and business analysts and, until recently, most community planners were not even aware that this change was occurring. So says Richard Florida, Hirst professor in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University and author of the 2002 bestseller The Rise of the Creative Class, which received Washington Monthly’s Political Book Award and was named by Harvard Business Review one of the top breakthrough ideas of 2004. During his 2003-2004 world speaking tour, based on the ideas presented in his book, Florida described in raw numbers the transformation of the American workforce. Forty million Americans, constituting one-third of the workforce, are employed in the creative sector – science, engineering, technology, entrepreneurship, education and the arts, to name a few. The number of people working in the creative sector is greater than those working in manufacturing today. “If you add up all the wages and salaries paid and divide the economy into its three basic sectors – manufacturing, service and creative – the creative sector accounts for more than 50 percent of all wages and salaries paid in the United States, or $1.7 trillion,” Florida said. The rise of this “creative class” is changing the way people think about economic development. Historically, Florida said, people thought about economic development as coming from jobs, and, in order to get jobs, a region had to attract companies. And to attract companies, a region had to offer them tax relief and other financial incentives, he said. While these principles still factor into the economic development equation, something fundamentally more important has to precede them, according to Florida. “Companies are important, but alone they won’t make your economy,” he said. In order to attract companies, you need to first attract people. “That’s why in our towns and in our communities and cities, we, as stewards, have to make sure we not only have a business climate; the business climate is a no-brainer. Everybody knows what to do there. You have to have low taxes. You have to have streamline services. You have to be efficient and effective. But what we really need to do together is build people climates,” Florida said. That, according to Florida, takes more than opening latté bars and art galleries or building parks and ultimate Frisbee fields. “It’s about building a real people climate, where people feel valued and welcome; where they can use their creative energy,” he said. “People are the raw material of the Creative Age. People are the factor of production, and we are mobile. We can choose where we want to go,” Florida said. “Place has to be the fundamental economic organization of our time and town leaders are the CEOs of that,” he said. So what are people looking for in a place to live? First and foremost, Florida said, “People want to live in a place that has energy, where they can be active and engaged. “The real challenge for all of us is not to have a zero-sum struggle over that 30 percent, that 40 million people, who are already in the creative class. It’s to create the kind of towns and communities which can tap into the creative energy of the other 70 percent,” Florida said. “It isn’t about attracting yuppies. It isn’t about attracting software engineers and high-tech biotechnologists. Every single human being is creative, and, you know what, creativity doesn’t know the social categories we’ve imposed on ourselves,” he said. Creativity is oblivious to such things as age, sex, race, social status and sexual preference. As Florida says, “You don’t know where the next creative genius will come from.” This idea is the lynchpin of Florida’s “three Ts” philosophy. He says people want to live in towns that possess technology and talented citizens, but to get that they need to practice the third T – tolerance. “What made America great?,” Florida asks. “The fact that we have a big country? There’s lots of big countries. The fact that we have more technology? We’re no more technologically ingenious than anyone else. The fact that we have raw materials? Lots of countries have raw materials. What made America the world’s number one economic leader was tolerance, openness, our ability to attract the best and the brightest people from around the world. That’s the key, and that’s the key to a region,” Florida says. For more information on Richard Florida’s research, go to www.creativeclass.org. |
