P3 NEWS
Learning from a Neighbor: P3 Visits ACEnet in Athens County
Pickaway County doesn't grow by standing still. Part of what P3 does is pay attention to what's working elsewhere and ask whether it might work here.
That's what brought a P3 delegation to Athens County on June 8.
The group included Executive Director Brian Hill, Assistant Director Tiffany Anderson, Agriculture Committee Chair and At-Large Board Member Keith Summers, and Board Member and Pickaway WORKS Director Chuck Reisinger — joined by Pickaway County Commissioner Gary Scherer and Matthew McCollister, Senior Director of Economic Development at The Montrose Group.
They spent the day with Adam Kody, ACEnet's Director of Operations, who walked them through both campuses and gave them an honest, ground-level look at how the model works.
ACEnet — the Appalachian Center for Economic Networks — has been at this for more than 30 years. Their Food Ventures Center, which opened in 1996, is recognized as the oldest continuously operating shared-use commercial kitchen in the country — and the organization behind it actually dates back further, to 1985, when it started as a cooperative business support network called the Worker Owned Network. Two campuses, in Athens and Nelsonville, offer shared commercial kitchen space, produce and meat processing facilities, a wood manufacturing center, and hands-on technical assistance for entrepreneurs at every stage.
The model is flexible by design. Some businesses scale into something significant. Others come through the kitchen seasonally, turn a crop into a value-added product, and that's exactly what they need. Kody described the underlying philosophy as "the privilege of failure" — when an entrepreneur has access to shared infrastructure and real guidance instead of a mountain of personal debt, they can take the leap, learn what they learn, and land on their feet whether or not the business makes it.
That idea travels well.
P3 has been working through what a reinvestment fund for Pickaway County agriculture might look like — resources drawn from development activity and redirected back into farming, food enterprise, and youth entrepreneurship. The visit to ACEnet wasn't a commitment or an announcement. It was the kind of due diligence that good economic development requires: go see what a working model looks like after 30 years, ask hard questions, and bring that thinking home.
