Ron Coan (aka “The ED Curmudgeon”) was the Editor of C2ER’s Journal of Applied Economic Development, and a Senior Research Fellow for the Center of Regional Economic Competitiveness (CREC). Ron is the author of History of American State and Economic Development: As Two Ships Pass in the Night (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017). Ron possesses a Ph.D. from Miami University of Ohio in Political Science, Soviet and Communist Systems and Public Administration; he also holds a MA in Political Science from Kent State University (1970). I was a graduate assistant and taught classes at both. In 1777 was hired at today’s Truman College until 1979 when I was hired at Canisius College in Buffalo New York. In both instances I was Program Chair for Urban Studies or Public Administration. To complete the picture, Ron also taught part-time at Attica Prison for several years. I was not an inmate.
I am an honorably discharged Army veteran (1971-3)–whose presence was personally requested by the Secretary of Defense, i.e. I was drafted. My position and residence at Kent State at the time of the horrible shootings did little to enhance my draft exemption, which was changed only several days after the incident. Thus at age twenty-three, I took up residence at a charming post, then called Fort Polk, in a neighborhood then called “Tigerland”. Infantry trained, I became the “Radar O’Reilly” of the company in a combat support brigade. My wife of now over fifty years and I were married during that time period–on a three day pass. I spent two wonderful years at Fort Polk. Upon discharge, I returned to finish my Ph.D. at Miami Ohio and, as a graduate assistant, taught introductory courses in political science and a night course on the Soviet Union.
I voluntarily shifted careers in 1887 at the invitation of the newly elected Erie County Executive Dennis Gorski to serve as his Economic Development Coordinator (Erie County New York, at the time the nation’s 30th largest county in the nation). Shortly after, I also become the First Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Housing and Community Development, Environment, and Planning. I served in those positions for three years (1990). In that year I was selected by the board of the independent development agency for Buffalo and Erie County (ECIDA) to serve as its Executive Director, and President of three related development entities. On the basis of this position I also served on the boards of other several economic development entities (including the Western New York Technology Development Council). I served at ECIDA for over eleven years, its longest tenured executive in its forty-five year history to that point.
In the course of this service with ECIDA, I obtained several professional certifications in finance (Robert Morris), lending, construction management, and project management. I also garnered competence in environmental and pollution control, business attraction and retention, public lending, eminent domain, and portfolio administration. The agencies retained around 30 to 40 great employees, and in aggregate fairly large budgets. It’s net assets exceeded $100 million. ECIDA operated three short line railroads, and I got to drive my own train (illegally it turns out), and for several years operated a Municipal Electric Utility for Erie County, until the program was discontinued by FERC. We also established a not for profit venture capital fund, that is still conducts such activities. Two of our graduates during my time with the fund, eventually became publicly traded. I am very proud of our export and international initiatives, including a pioneering export insurance program with EXIM, and our several trade (and reverse trade) missions to Asia.
Simultaneous with this position, I was selected by the New York State Economic Development Council as a member of its board of directors (1991). Rising to become its Chair, I worked in partnership with its President. I remained on the NYSEDC board until 2004. At one point I taught its certification course. The series of activities with NYSEDC was involved included legislative advocacy, strategic planning, and coordination of the many local governments and industrial and economic development agencies that were members the Council, and also served as linkage with the principal New York State public agencies and with its elected officials.
In 1992 I joined the Washington DC based national Council for Urban Economic Development as a member of its Board of Directors–and a member of a considerable number of its working teams that advised cities and their economic development entities regarding programs, planning, succession, and strategy. I served on the board through its merger with the American Economic Development Council and continued on the board of the International Economic Development Council after the merge. I served for five years on IEDC’s Certification Committee. I subsequently acquired accreditation as a IEDC professional economic developer and retained that accreditation until my retirement. I left the board at that point in 2005 with my retirement from Dutchess County EDC.
In 2001 I got fired, or left voluntarily, ECIDA. I simply suggest that “I ran out of politics”, and it was time to move on. So I moved on.
I moved on to become President of the Dutchess County (New York) Economic Development Corporation in 2001 and served until March 2005. DCEDC was a private not for profit, funded principally by county appropriation. Dutchess County, the borderland of the New York City hinterland, provided a startling new set of challenges and economic base than Erie County and Buffalo, and that inspired a goodly amount of innovation and adjustment. That my tenure began immediately previous to 9/11, yet another new set of strategy/program adjustments. Let’s just say my innovations were not perceived as such by the County Executive, particularly, and four years later, in 2005, I “voluntarily” left to restart my academic career.
I was retained by Marist College to teach Public Policy and Public Administration in its Graduate Program in New York City and Albany. I did so for two and half years. Simultaneously I was retained as a history and politics adjunct by the Dutchess County Community College. In 2007, my wife and I moved to Maryland for her new job (Prince George’s County School System) and I was hired by the Roslyn-based, Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER) [C2ER is one corporation within a larger conglomerate, CREC, Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness].
My position with C2ER engaged me in research, some consulting contracts, a national survey based on my national database of EDOs, and research on what later became As Two Ships. In 2012 I assumed responsibility as the Editor for its Journal of Applied Research in Economic Development at which time I assumed the “aka” of ED Curmudgeon and monthly wrote a blog and extended research article that interpreted academic works of note into economic developer terms and jargon. From 2015 thru 2020 I was a C2ER Senior Fellow at C2ER. My employment at C2ER started in January 2009, I retired in late 2016, and left Washington for Albany area New York, but continued my Senior Fellow status through 2020.
I have served as an adjunct at Johns Hopkins (Carey School of Business) teaching a graduate course on economic development, a two-year consultant to the American Planning Association offering recertification workshops on economic development. From 2009 until 2015 I taught 2 or 3 history courses per semester at the Anne Arundel Community College.
Between these core positions, as an economic development professional, Ron was also:
- Assistant City Manager in Kirksville Missouri (1978-9)
- Part-time Activist for Buffalo Neighborhoods (1978-1986) with my day job being tenured faculty as Director of Canisius College’s Urban Study Program and faculty in its Department of Political Science.
- member of a team which elected the first ever Democratic County Executive in Erie County, New York (1986-7)
- County Executive’s JTPA/WIA Coordinator; County Executive’s Appointee to the Buffalo and Erie County Convention Center (1989-2001)
- Vice Chair and Acting Chair of the 1993 World University Games, (1989-2001)
- President/CEO of the Dutchess County Tourism Agency (2001-2005), Board of Directors Dutchess County IDA, Board of Directors Dutchess County WIA
Ron has participated in numerous special CUED/IEDC community task forces, the latest in 2008, an IEDC New Orleans Hurricane Program Review for the Economic Development Administration (EDA). Over the same period I consulted regarding MBE for the Mobile Chamber of Commerce. Ron has also presented several certification workshops for the American Planning Association and has been involved in several consulting opportunities over the years not only with IEDC, but with several other NGOs (see below).
Professionally, Ron has extensive experience in Industrial Revenue Bonds (issuance in excess of $5 billion), PILOT agreements, RLF loans (over 1100 loans), and a micro loan fund. He established a venture capital investment corporation, whose track record today includes two publicly-traded corporations. He has also been an active project manager, whose largest project was the 1990’s ownership, financing, and construction management of the present-day Buffalo Sabers Stadium (probably about $3 billion today’s dollars). He also oversaw the financing and transportation-related construction management of General Motors Engine Plant in Tonawanda New York (all four engine lines), its world largest engine plant at that time.
He also managed three short line railroads, a municipal electric utility, incubator, and developed several industrial parks. He has extensive brownfields experience. His export program with EXIM as his partner, insurance, supplemented an active trade mission and reverse trade mission projects. His signature project was the Erie County Manufacturing Center, a 100,000 sq. ft. training center–funded by federal and ECIDA funds.
Internationally, spent a year (1975) at Miami University’s Luxembourg’s Center, researching his PhD and assistant tour director for Dr. Dan Jacobs in his student tours of the USSR. Ron has been the recipient of a Ministry of International Trade (MITI) grant for economic development study/travel in Japan (1995). I was part of a four member World Bank/Inter American Development Bank team to Colombia which helped establish the first secondary securitization market for World Bank and Inter-American Bank economic development loans in that nation troubled by a civil war and domestic narcotic terrorism.
I served as Vice Chair, and Acting Chair to Chair Burt Flickinger of the 1993 World University Games, featuring 127 nations, with 7000+ athletes/coaches attending. In 1993, the World University Games was second in size to the Summer World Olympics and 3x the size of the Winter World Olympics. The experience commenced in 1988, and was completed in 1998. My World Games experience included shadow week-long management apprenticeships in Duisburg Germany, Sheffield UK, and Seattle, 1990 Goodwill Games. Ron was Acting Chairman in Buffalo’s 1995 Special Olympics Game.
I am still working on the definitive book on state-local economic development. Since his formal retirement in 2017, Ron is wholly engaged in writing extensions of his successful As Two Ships Pass in the Night. Presumably, it is that activity that brings you to this exercise in bitter-sweet narcissism I call a detailed bio.
Personally, Ron is usually obnoxious, iconoclastic, mouthy, but somehow has been married for more than fifty years. Two children, two cats (one of which recently passed), currently retired as he defines it, apparently somewhat restless.
Ron W. Coan 