When Greg Vaughn joined the team at Cornerstone Alliance in Benton Harbor 25 years ago this month, he came with a tremendous amount of knowledge about the community at large. Not only was it his home town, he held multiple key positions in city government for an entire decade all the way up to the role of City Manager.
Today, the man who worked his way to the role of Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice President of Business Development for Berrien County’s lead economic development agency is poised to step away from the job and into retirement at the end of the year.
Vaughn says that when he leaves on New Year’s Eve he will take at least a month off “to do whatever my wife wants to do,” and chuckles. After that, he says, “I’ll just kind of find my way around, but will still be putting in some hours here at Cornerstone on a consulting basis to not only keep me busy in the transition, but also to allow me to work through some of the projects I’ve been involved in that are still ongoing.”
The affable community leader has the respect of a vast majority of the citizenry which is readily evident when you see him walk downtown or at community events and is approached regularly with warm hugs, hearty handshakes and big smiles every time.
He’ll be the first to admit, “A lot is happening in this community right now, and it will be hard to walk away from it, but sometime you have to cut the strings and move on with your life, and I think it’s getting close to that time for me.”
I sat down with Greg after learning of his decision to retire and asked him about the things that he’ll recall with pride. He says the key highlight of his Cornerstone career has been “Watching the community progress.” He notes, ” Oftentimes working in this type of environment, you sort of don’t see the forest for the trees. I’ll run into people who say ‘Oh man, this looks so much better than when I was here 10 years ago,’ or, ‘I didn’t know that was even happening,’ and that’s always a reminder to me that we have accomplished a lot in this community.” He goes on to suggest, “Local folks tend to take it for granted because they see it every day, but when visitors come into the community they recognize the additions and the improvements that have taken place.”
Some of the great things Vaughn points to you would certainly understand, like the myriad improvements in Benton Harbor, and naturally he’s proud of the hard work to bring to fruition the Harbor Shores development, which he calls nothing short of “fantastic.” Beyond that he points to “The many great companies that have come and stayed and grown in our community which have made such a tremendous impact on the overall community. So, those things are always great to see and be a part of.”
The other side of the coin can wear on the best of us, as Greg says, “I think I have some disappointments as well, and those generally are around how slow things tend to move. It takes a long time to make progress, and a long time for a lot of the projects that we’ve worked on to materialize, and of course along the way there have been some that started out looking really great but never managed to materialize. Of course that’s very disappointing.”
Vaughn landed the Cornerstone Alliance job 25 years ago after a chance meeting with Jeff Noel at a community event. Noel had just come aboard as President of Cornerstone Alliance and that chance conversation was just an opportunity to talk about what Noel wanted to accomplish during his time with the economic development team. It was not at all about Vaughn joining the team, however a short while later an opening came up at Cornerstone and Noel reached out to Greg and, as he says, “Lo and behold I ended up here at Cornerstone and have been here ever since.” During that time he worked for Noel and then Wendy Dant Chesser, followed by Vicki Pratt and now Rob Cleveland.
Vaughn’s career background is quite diverse. He worked for the City of Benton Harbor for “just shy of 10 years, and did everything from working for the fire department, the inspections department, ran the human resources department, was assistant to the city manager, and even served a stint as City Manager. I certainly wore a lot of hats for the city over the years.”
After his civic service, Vaughn developed a company of his own, a start up called Marketing Materials Distribution, and did that for about three years before selling it to a competitor. He says, “After I sold that business I met with Frank Pastrick at Frank Pastrick Chevrolet, and he suggested that I might be a good candidate for the General Motors Institute, which was a dealer development program, with the idea of owning and operating a dealership of my own at some future point. I did that and as part of my requirements for that program I had to work at a dealership, so Frank invited me to work with him, which I did for a few years. Unfortunately for Greg, the dealer development program fizzled when the economy went south and the auto industry contracted substantially. Greg say, “They were closing up dealerships all over the country, so I figured that was likely not the best time to get into that field. So I ended up staying with Frank for a few more years, and then went to a company called Bibco and did their human resources work and special projects for about three or four years.
After Bibco, whose operations were anchored just a block and a half away, Jeff Noel came knocking and the rest is history.
Greg Vaughn’s work at Cornerstone and elsewhere in the community has paved the way for many great successes and he’s been active on many fronts including with the Executive Committee of the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship, and countless groups working to improve the quality of life in Michigan’s Great Southwest. He serves on the boards of the Berrien County Economic Development Corporation, Berrien County Loan Administration Board, Berrien Community Foundation, Lakeshore 504 Board, Benton Harbor Promise, Benton Harbor Economic Development Corporation, Boys and Girls Clubs of Benton Harbor and the Benton Harbor Parks Conservancy. He is a past winner of the Small Business Advocate of the Year for the State of Michigan by the U.S. Small Business Administration in May of 1998.
He tells me, “It’s been a great ride, quite frankly. I came here expecting to be here for a couple of years and 25 years later I’m finally going to be moving on.” He will be missed, but you’ll still see him all around town, because he wouldn’t have it any other way. Now maybe he and I and his son Zach and our buddy Jerry Price can finally find our way onto a golf course once again.
