Editor’s Note: Great Bend Economic Development Executive Director Justin Kuilan reported to the Great Bend City Council on Jan. 5. His remarks on the success of GBED are printed here, edited for length.

Last month I spoke about how GBED is structured and the various functions we perform on behalf of the city. This month I’d like to share a bit of data to help quantify the impact the organization has had over the past couple of years. I started off by asking Chat GPT to define what economic development is, and here’s the response: Economic development is the process of improving the economic wellbeing and quality of life of the community by creating jobs, bringing new money into the community, increasing income, expanding business activity, and enhancing conditions that support longterm, sustainable growth.

GBED hosts a completely free job site for both employers and job seekers in Central Kansas, www.CentralKansasJobs.com. To date: 

• 583+ Jobs Posted

• 282+ Resumes on File

• 123+ Companies Registered 

• 403+ Jobs Filled

Based on the data, I would say GBED is supporting job creation in our area. 

Expanding business activity in just the last two years:

• Freaking Delicious Cheesecake 

• K9 Training Academy

• Tankquility

• First Response Cleaning and Restoration

• Rhue Rituals 

• Proper Boards

These are six businesses that have started or expanded in the past two years and these are just the former (finalists and winners) of Ignite competition. This doesn’t include countless others that have gone through various entrepreneurship support programming that still have potential.

Now let’s talk about outside capital investment in just the last two years.

• In 2024 & 2025, we received $758,000 in funding from the City and County combined, when the county was still supporting GBED. That $758,000 turned into more than $9.5 million. That’s a 12.5 multiplier. As a business owner myself, if I received $12.50 for every $1 spent, I would continue to invest heavily in that area.

• This breaks down into multiple investments and grants that have gone on to support the development of childcare centers, downtown projects, the Innovation Center, the hotel project, and more. Again, based on the data, I would say GBED is supporting economic development for our region. 

Let’s talk about quality of life for residents of Great Bend. Since 2024, we have hosted all the Fridays on Forest events, The Big Bend Bash, other events downtown, and multiple programs spanning entrepreneurship, education, workforce development, and more. Again, I would say GBED is helping increase the quality of life for residents through events, programs, education, childcare, and other community support. 

Economic Development is a combination of Art and Science. The science is the data, incentives, and infrastructure, while the art is planting the seeds and having to accept that meaningful growth takes time. That said, there is plenty more work to be done. We need to focus on continuing to bring in grant money to the region. We need to find solutions to the housing challenges. We need to continue to entice current businesses to reinvest back into the area, while also finding the right incentives to bring in new businesses. We need to continue the momentum that our downtown currently has and find the right businesses to reinvigorate the entire downtown. We need to do a lot of things but none of them happen overnight. ...

And then lastly, there will be a call to action for businesses, organizations, community leaders and anyone else looking to invest in a better future. We’ll be creating an open invitation for donors with our partners at the Golden Belt Community Foundation to help complete this project on time. If you are one of the people or businesses that wants to continue to support or begin supporting economic development, we are continuing to look for sponsors across all of our verticals. These include entrepreneurship programs, such as the Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge, Ice House, Co-starters, the Ignite competition, the quality of life events such as Fridays on Forest, Big Bend Bash, other downtown events, obviously the Innovation Center, and then other investments in housing, workforce development, marketing, etc. So I’m working to streamline this process for these donations and, in return, finding the right personalized approach for these investments through various advertisement sponsorship and participation opportunities.

Contact Justin Kuilan by email at director@gbedinc.com.