Hofer Development
Building places people can belong to—and help shape
I am a placemaker, entrepreneur, and builder.
My work has included starting a restaurant, building a festival that welcomed thousands of people, helping launch arts and community organizations, developing public programs, supporting entrepreneurs, and working inside local government. The settings have changed, but the work underneath them has remained remarkably consistent: bringing people together around a place, finding the possibility within it, and building something real.
I believe strong communities are built through many points of local ownership.
That means locally owned businesses. It means public spaces that people genuinely use and care for. It means arts organizations, gathering places, events, and institutions that give people a stake in the life of their community. It also means making room for smaller ideas that may never become large businesses but still make a place more distinctive, useful, and alive.
This kind of distributed ownership matters economically. It spreads risk. It creates more ways for people to participate. It keeps decisions closer to the people who experience their consequences. And when local residents buy the products and services of other local residents, more of the value we create together remains rooted here.
I am especially interested in Economic Gardening: the idea that durable growth can come from identifying and supporting established local companies that are ready for their next stage. But those companies do not emerge from nowhere. A community needs a healthy base of very small, small, and growing businesses from which that next generation can develop.
Not every attempt will succeed. That is part of entrepreneurship. The goal is not to eliminate risk. It is to create a community in which more people can make a credible attempt—and in which promising businesses can find the relationships, information, and support they need to grow.
Technology can widen that field. I am highly comfortable with emerging technology, including artificial intelligence, and I believe it can lower some of the barriers that keep people from testing and developing an idea. In a low-hire, low-fire economy—particularly difficult for young people and others trying to enter the workforce—entrepreneurship becomes another meaningful path into economic life. AI can help more people research, communicate, organize, and build. It is a tool, not the purpose.
None of this means growth at any cost.
The question I return to is simple: Growth for what reason, and for whose benefit?
That question connects my work to E. F. Schumacher’s argument for human-scale economics. I am interested in businesses and institutions that remain understandable, locally accountable, and humanly governed. I do not believe every community should race to find the next enormous employer or pursue every available development. Sometimes the better work is slower: recognizing what is already taking root, strengthening it, and creating the conditions for more of it to grow.
This is the work I want to continue in Goshen and across Indiana: helping communities, businesses, and networks turn local ideas into durable places, enterprises, and institutions.
