Today’s Democrat & Chronicle reports that this year’s economic forecast by Sandy Parker, chief executive of the Rochester Business Alliance, is “sobering.”

“Where the state as a whole is faltering, upstate — to be frank — is sinking,” Parker said. “Job growth is anemic, incomes are nearly stagnant, and people, particularly young people, are leaving for more promising locales.”

What bothers me most about this is that, as a lifelong resident of Upstate New York, I’ve been hearing essentially the same words for at least 30 years — since people first realized that the manufacturing sector that once supported the Great Lakes economies had begun to falter.

Nor has the dialectic changed much over time. On the one hand, there is the handwringing and the cynicism. We don’t get enough sun. We’re overburdened by taxes and a moribund state government. “There goes Kodak. There goes Sibley’s. There goes Midtown Plaza. There goes the fast ferry.”

Then you have the responses, which IMO tend to be narrow and to have a certain hot-house quality about them. The proposed performing arts center idea is an example. I am sure the people who support it are very well-meaning. But it’s not enough to support an idea because it’s a cultural amenity that I, a native, would patronize. The key question is: would it excite people from Philadelphia, or Seattle, or (gulp) LA? Even more to the point: would it excite them enough that they would fly in for a weekend? Spend a little money? Check out local real estate prices?

And how many of them can we expect?

I’m not saying a performing arts center wouldn’t accomplish this, btw. What I’m saying is that we need to be careful which questions we’re asking — and of whom we’re asking them. Moving money from the pockets of someone in Pittsford to the pockets of someone in Chili is all very nice, but it doesn’t do a thing for the overall economic health of the Greater Rochester Area.

Another example is this recurring assertion that we need to attract young people. We do attract young people. They are here right now, walking to classes at the University of Rochester, at RIT, at the Eastman School of Music. The question is not how we attract them, but how we keep them. “Create jobs,” people will say, and then our leaders will rush off to brainstorm on how to incentivize :-D businesses into settling here. That’s well and good — and heaven bless every start-up in this town — but I’m not convinced that a handful of fledgling companies is enough to re-define the climate — the milieu — of a community.

What we really need is to figure out how to make Rochester a “happening place.” Until we do that, people outside of Rochester are going not to take the trouble to come here for a visit, let alone to stay. Not in significant numbers, anyway.

So how do you make a community a “happening place?”

On December 1st, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece titled “The Fair That Made Miami Hot All Year Round” (subscription required). Here are the opening two paragraphs:

The story of Frank Gehry’s design of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, is by now familiar. Cities world-wide have begun to aim for the “Bilbao effect”: the construction of a spectacular museum building that attracts international visitors and boosts the economy. The story of the “Art Basel effect” is less widely known. It is the tale of the leading art fair for contemporary art, which has been presented in Basel, Switzerland, every June for the past 36 years, also coming to Miami Beach for the past three Decembers and becoming America’s premiere art fair; the fourth edition of Art Basel Miami Beach opens today.

Although it is a once-yearly, four-day event, Art Basel has profoundly altered the shape and scope of Miami’s cultural landscape, affecting real estate and tourism rates and enhancing government support for the arts.

Art Basel is “happening.” It brings 30,000 art lovers into Miami and (last year) 640 journalists. Moreover, locating it in Miami was enough to shift peoples’ perception of that city.

Art Basel’s effects on Wynwood are not limited to a burgeoning gallery district. Four high-rise residential buildings are currently under construction there, as is Midtown Miami, a 56-acre shopping area and residential complex in a former railroad yard adjoining the neighborhood. If Wynwood, which is still decidedly seedy, is soon to be gentrified, the evolutionary process was undoubtedly “supercharged” by Art Basel Miami Beach.

Now for the real kicker. The fair’s current budget is $14.4 million — and that’s triple what it was the first year.

Miami got this all going with an initial budget outlay of less than $5 million.

The current estimated price tag for our Renaissance Square project — of which the arts center is one piece — is $230 million.

Obviously, I’m not going to propose that we try to woo Art Basel away from Miami. But I’d dearly love our leaders to look to successes like Art Basel for ideas. We need need to find our own wild card — the thing that will make well-heeled, educated people spend a week here, and then maybe start to think how nice it might be to own an Ontario Lake-front summer home.

Because that’s the demographic shift that raises our tax base. And widens the pool of start-up capital for local businesses. And injects cash into our service economy.

One idea that comes to mind is an indie film festival — but one that is modeled after Miami’s Art Basel template. More from the WSJ piece:

In accord with the Swiss model, the fair is not a self-contained entity. A public art program, performances, video and sound lounges, discussion forums and “crossover” events involving fashion, books, music, film, architecture and design are all variously sponsored and promoted by Art Basel Miami Beach. Then there are “partners” in the greater Miami area, ranging from art venues to nightclubs, that feature events officially sanctioned by the fair.

In other words, don’t show a few films at the Eastman House and expect to attract scads of jet-setters packing wads of cash. Make it a real Event, with community-wide tie-ins that involve Rochester and our neighbors.

Whatever you do, though, make sure that you craft it — whatever “it” is — not so that it polls well in Rochester, but so that it pulls well from the rest of the world.

And get away from a focus on infrastructure alone. Yes, we need infrastructure — I’m referring to the arts center and projects of its ilk again, here — but infrastructure isn’t enough, as the fast ferry debacle has demonstrated. We all know, after all, that you can attract 250,000 to a field outside a little town in the middle of nowhere, if people get the idea that the field is going to be a happening place. No infrastructure required.

Let’s figure out how to make Rochester a happening place.