If a time of "economic recession" is truly upon us, that also means that there exists a potential for recreating existing economic markets for developing wealth and/or potentially creating new ones.

Investors want a place to put their money and with real estate investment leaving center stage at the moment, the question is, what are the new markets that Columbus has the potential to develop and in turn, lead the way in, for investors to put their money into?

Looking back we can see that our economy went from a dot.com boom and bust to a housing boom and bust. Now we have to ask ourselves what the next industry will be that hordes of investors will flock to. If we can capture just one of these new investment markets as part of a diversified "attract & retain" effort, since there is a long-term risk in tapping into these trends, we'll be able to reap the benefits from both a financial and population growth perspective.

Columbus needs to make great strides in the next year to identify and then "railroad" our efforts to jump on the next economic "train" before it pulls out of the station. I'm suggesting that one of the "tracks" to that objective lies not only in innovation and entrepreneurialism, but in rail transit (if you didn't pick up all the hints by this point.)

From my perspective, we've already reserved our ticket for this gravy train through the efforts of the Ohio Rail Development Commission and the activist engagement of All Aboard Ohio, but we need to get to the box office to pay for our ticket and pick it up.

We need all of Central Ohio to get "All Aboard" our various rail initiatives as a starting point...