(Photo) Roy Hunter planned to play golf Friday, April 1.

After almost 12 years serving as executive director of the Marshall-Saline Development Corporation, Hunter retired.

The past 12 years have had good moments — Hunter said his greatest accomplishment was the ConAgra expansion — and more than a little under the gun, an embattled leader on a ship that many people thought just couldn’t sail the stream.

During Hunter’s tenure, the nation experienced the Dot Com bubble bursting, 9/11 and the great recession.

“Three years ago, we knew it was coming, but we didn’t know how bad,” Hunter said. “But we reached that cliff and it becomes difficult to determine if what you are doing is the right thing or if you throw it all out and start again.

“It was very frustrating. In an already difficult environment, it made it more intolerable. You can’t let up. You have to stay out there. You have to keep pushing. If you aren’t out there, you’re not visible and people don’t know about you. Ninety nine percent of the people don’t know anything about Marshall. You have to resell Marshall every time.”

Economic development professionals have a high burnout rate, Hunter said. At almost 12-years, Hunter is an old-timer in the business.

“I give credit to all the other people in all the other communities who are economic developers,” Hunter said. “If you haven’t done it, it is the worst absolute worst sales job a man or lady could ever want. If you want to go into marketing and someone said take a look at economic development and you seriously looked at it, you ought to have your head examined. If you look at your failure rate, it is horrendous.”

Hunter got his start selling ag.

“My thought was it would always take you five visits to that farmer’s place to convince him he should at least try your product. And that was tough. Your success rate in this is so poor. If you’re in a rural community you are going to get beat up 99.99 percent of the time. And the project you lose takes just as much time as the project you win.”

And that is why the turnover in economic development is so high, Hunter said. “It’s hard to keep yourself up, keep yourself focused. It is easy to get depressed.”

For his critics during the past 12 years, Hunter says, “If you haven’t done this job, you don’t have a clue. I don’t begrudge anybody for having unkind things to say because they don’t know. They don’t know the difficulties of the position or the complexities. It is a difficult position and you are graded on your successes.”

Achieving success in the turbulent times of the 21st Century’s first decade hasn’t been easy, but Hunter says Saline County and Marshall specifically are in a strong position to come out of the recession.

“We haven’t been hit as hard as other communities,” he said. “There have been communities and states that have been hurt a lot more than us and that desperation causes them to give more than they would otherwise. Although you have to be as competitive as you can, this community has never wanted to give so much that it took away from our citizens, our taxpayers or our existing businesses.”

Hunter didn’t say it directly, but he was obviously referencing the recent coup achieved by Moberly when the city snatched a project for which Marshall was a finalist by taking on an obligation for millions of dollars in bonds. At the time, Hunter questioned if the deal was even legal.

Going forward, Hunter sees strong potential for MSDC.

“They are in a reorganization process. They are engaging in planning and focusing their efforts — it should be successful. The key is that people continue to be a part of promoting the community for development. It can’t be one person sitting here or the directors, it has to be everybody doing their part. Everything matters when it comes to the choice of your community over another community.”

For the future, Hunter said he expects to remain involved with the community and maybe do some consulting.

“I have some entrepreneural ideas I’d like to follow up on,” he said. “Project Little Rock.”

The office and title have changed, but Hunter is still scouting opportunity.

Contact Patrick Nolan at pnolan@marshallnews.com

From www.marshallnews.com