Day one of the 2014 Regional Leaders Retreat featured discussions on regional land use and regional transportation.

“I thought day one was a huge success,” Bill Clark, Executive Director of the Flint Hills Regional Council explained.”I think that we, as an area, learned the importance of trust and working together.”

Approximatley 200 people from Junction City, Manhattan and Wamego area attended the first day of the retreat.

During the regional land use session  each community seemed to have the same question. How do we attract industies to our area.

“It takes time,” Clark said. “You can’t just develop land overnight, when you put infrastructure into it, the utilities backbone, transportation network system, it takes time and takes money to do that.”

When the industrial land is developed the question moves to, how do we get the workforce to those areas? Ideas on regional transportation were developed during the regional transportation session.

Those ideas ranged from developing a light rail system from Abilene to Wamego, to expanding the public transit system. “We saw in the past six years there was a 1300 percent increase in public transit use in this area,” Clark said.

Day two of the retreat will focus on the regional workforce and target industries, as well as, strategic regional branding. 1420 KJCK AM, The Talk of JC, will continue it’s coverage of the retreat Saturday morning starting at 7:13 a.m. and will finish up with a retreat wrap-up special starting at 11:00 a.m..