State of the Ville.
- Toriano Riddick jr.
- Aug 7
- 5 min read
State of the Ville.
Today is Friday!! Time to unwind the day pour up a drink or your choice (mine is a Old fashion big Bourbon guy) I hope yall week was filled w blessings and the wisdom you may need in this time. This is my letter to the Ville so let’s start off with what Ive been thinking a lot about which is the current state of Fayetteville and honestly just the economy as a whole because we are watching a real transition happen right in front of us. We have Goodyear preparing to shut down is probably one of the biggest examples because that plant has been part of this community for decades and roughly 1,750 jobs are tied to that facility. At the same time we are hearing about job cuts in other places, watching homes go up for sale, watching businesses change, while on the other side of that we are talking about new development, manufacturing coming back, new industries, workforce investment and what the next version of Fayetteville could look like.
And I think that’s the bittersweet part of economic growth that we don’t talk about enough.https://training.riddickandcollc.com/
I want to see manufacturing booming again, small businesses winning, our neighborhoods improving and people being able to make a real living right here without feeling like they have to leave Fayetteville to find opportunity. But we also have to remember that transition comes with real people attached to it. Somebody worked at that plant for 20 years. Somebody bought their home because of that job. Somebody raised their children around that schedule. These aren’t just numbers we read in an economic report, these are our neighbors.
That’s why the more meetings I sit in and the more people I meet across workforce development, manufacturing, education, government and just our local community, the more I keep coming back to measurability.
A few people that carry the value of this work have really been beating that into me lately too 😂. If we say we’re growing, how are we measuring growth? If we say we’re preparing the workforce, How many people did we actually prepare? Where did they go? What did they make before? What are they making now? If we say manufacturing is coming back, are we actually building the workforce and infrastructure manufacturers need to stay here?
That matters because we don’t want us to get caught up celebrating announcements and forget to measure whether the announcement actually changed anything.
And I’m saying that for RiddickanCo : MOVARA too. RiddickanCo: Movara Presents- Documenting the Mission.
That transparency is important because if I’m going to ask my community to believe in something I’m building, then I need to be able to show you what we’re actually doing.
But I really think we should start looking at our local economy the same way.
Where are we right now?
What does it actually take to get there?
What are we missing?
And how are we measuring whether any of this is actually working?
Because bringing manufacturing back sounds amazing, but what does being ready for manufacturing actually mean? Do we have enough skilled people? Do we have QA/QC personnel? Auditors? Maintenance? Engineers? Welders? Supervisors? Cybersecurity? Supply chain? Small businesses capable of becoming suppliers? Do people even know these careers exist before the company gets here?
And I think sometimes we forget that economic development and workforce development are really community development. You can’t separate them.
That’s why I’ve been spending so much time lately talking to everybody. Government, Education boards, manufacturers, colleges, neighborhood leaders, churches, veterans, small businesses, our elders, anybody who will sit down and actually talk about what they are seeing.
Because everybody has a piece of the puzzle.
Now my 90s twins Lock in w me real quick 😂😂.
A lot of us are sitting on 10–15 years of actual professional experience now and if y’all grew up anything like I did, we been having responsibilities since we were kids anyway 😂.
But seriously, think about what we got to witness.
We remember the world before everything was online, but we also grew up right beside the internet. We watched dial-up turn into Wi-Fi. We watched phones go from something sitting in the house to basically having the entire world in our pocket. We watched social media start. We watched technology completely change how people communicate, date, work, learn, shop and build businesses.
We watched the classics with our parents and grandparents and now we’re sitting here explaining stuff to our kids that didn’t even exist when we were their age 😂.
That makes our generation a really interesting bridge.
We’re close enough to the generations before us to understand where a lot of this came from, but we’re also young enough to understand where technology and the next generation are taking it.
And I think we have a responsibility with that.
We have to pass this stuff down properly.
How to understand what is happening in your own economy instead of just letting the economy happen to you.
That’s really what I mean when I talk about MOVARA and community.
I want the young person coming behind us to have more information than we had. I want somebody transitioning careers to understand what industries are growing before they spend money on training. I want the veteran getting out to understand how much their experience is actually worth. I want our small businesses to understand where industry is headed so they can position themselves to participate in it instead of watching the opportunity pass them by.
And I want us to talk about this stuff openly.
Because we are entering what I really believe is an age of voice.
Look at America 250. Look at AI. Look at manufacturing. Look at what is happening with trade and foreign policy. Look at how quickly information moves now. Regular people have access to more information, more technology and more ability to organize and build than probably any generation before us.
So what are we going to do with it?
That’s what excites me.
Fayetteville is changing. North Carolina is changing. America is changing.
Some of it is going to be uncomfortable. Some things we grew up with probably won’t be here anymore. Some industries will shrink while completely new ones grow. That’s what transition looks like.
But we don’t have to sit around and wait to see what happens to us.
We can participate in deciding what happens next.
That starts locally.
Know what is happening in your neighborhood. Support your small businesses. Talk to your city leaders. Mentor somebody. Teach what you know. Learn something new yourself. If you own a business, think about where you fit into the next economy. If you work in education, help us understand what students need. If you’re in industry, tell us what skills you’re actually missing. If you’re an elder, please keep telling us what you’ve seen and what we need to remember. And if you’re young, speak up too because you’re going to inherit whatever we build.
That’s really where my head is right now.
I’m excited about where we’re going, but I also want us to be intentional about how we get there.
Let’s inform each other.
Let’s measure what we’re doing.
Let’s be transparent about what’s working and what isn’t.
Let’s figure out where we need more attention and then actually put the work there.
Because if we’re really talking about bringing industry back, building economic mobility and creating the next version of Fayetteville, then we better make sure we’re building something our children can actually inherit.
We are the workforce.
We are the businesses.
We are the parents.
We are the neighborhoods.
We are the economy.
And whatever this next chapter becomes, I want us to be able to say we didn’t just watch it happen.
-CEO RiddickanCo Toriano Riddick Jr
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