CITY HALL—Donna Angel is a whiz with spreadsheets.

She keeps one that tracks all available commercial real estate in Berea, according to square footage, location, and historical use. There's another that tracks all inquiries about commercial and industrial space. Sometimes she has what folks are looking for, other times, she puts them on a waiting list along with their contact information. Angel also tracks available labor.

"I work with the local community, people who call and say, 'I need a space, I need a business license, what else do I need, how do I get this or that?'. It's important that I help them, and that includes helping them find the right location," Angel told The Edge in an interview at her office. "Having that data ready also helps when people inquire from out-of-state."

As director of Berea's business and economic development, especially in the Beshear era, Angel said her chief functions are to help bring businesses to Berea and to help create and maintain a workforce to support those businesses.

Kentucky rebrand

Since announcing his New Kentucky Home initiative in 2024, Gov. Andy Beshear's economic focus for the state has been on tourism and manufacturing. He has made several international trips, including to Davos, Switzerland in 2025, to invite the world's industries to relocate to the Commonwealth. Since then, Beshear's office claims to have secured more investment in the state than any governor in Kentucky history, including more than $50 billion in private investment.

Old Kentucky, meanwhile, has been straining to keep up. That includes Berea, which has seen an increase in international companies inquiring about locating here, according to Angel.

"Governor Beshear is pushing our state, he's promoting it, so we have to be on top of it, we have to be faster and smarter. It's a lot of pressure because we have to pick up the pace on everything and respond to people," Angel said. "The state has changed since he's come into office. Not that I mind, but I work late a lot now. I need to get information back to people who needed it, like, yesterday."

While Angel said she understands that Beshear's focus on modernizing Kentucky equates with better quality-of-life, it also means that heavier industries are taking precedence over other aspects of Berea's economy.

"I think we're going way too fast right now," she said. "We're skipping a lot of things that might affect us down the road." Topping her list of these concerns, Angel said, is not having enough time to court smaller corporate businesses while she spends time instead fielding calls from larger international companies and ones from out of state demanding to know about workforce capacity. This leaves her with less time to more carefully curate the kinds of businesses that actually match Berea's culture, according to Angel.

"If we had time to really deal with small businesses and get them more assistance, if we could lobby for more help—because there are hardly any tax incentives for the small business entrepreneurs—that would be more like Berea's identity. We have birthed everything we stand for here, and entrepreneurship is one of those pieces."

Angel said if she had more time, she would focus on lobbying legislators to understand how smaller businesses contribute to the local and state economy, and so need support just like larger companies do. "I am excited when I see you want to open a business, and be a part of and grow in our city, but I don't want to see you take your life savings or your retirement, or your credit cards, and try to open a business and then it closes in eight months to a year," she said.

For now however, Angel's focus must be on manufacturing jobs. "Larger industry is the direction the state is going in. And, that is where the higher dollars come from," she said. "We cannot, as a city, turn away from industry because that is one of the biggest resources for operating revenue. We have to have top dollar to keep our city running."

Workforce development

For her part in developing the local workforce, Angel serves as finance chair for the workforce innovation board at the Bluegrass Area Development District for which she is also a member of the executive committee. Primarily, she said her duties with the workforce innovation board are to oversee the application of funding for any displaced workers in the region.

There are 3,500 workers in the Berea Industrial Park, according to Angel. Exactly half—1,700—are Bereans. The rest commute from all over the state, she said. Despite Toyota's largest manufacturing facility being located in Georgetown, Angel said that is where the majority of commenters to Berea drive from. "Lexington is second," she said.

Berea is a destination for laborers across the state because "our factories are pretty good on their pay compared to other areas like Danville, Mercer County and those areas," Angel said. "And we are such a place for advanced manufacturing robotically, and today everybody wants that skill. It's a new career."

Until recently, Bereans weren't as qualified for those advanced manufacturing jobs, according to Angel. "Our skill base has been an issue. We haven't pushed that in the past," she said. Now, however, there is a manufacturing degree at EKU that Angel said has "kickstarted" the local workforce obtaining the skills necessary for the higher paying jobs. Hyster Yale is among the companies that work with both EKU and the Ignite South Academy to train and hire workers, Angel said.

"Finding and keeping labor for the businesses around here is a primary goal for the Bluegrass ADD workforce innovation board," Angel said.

Box and junior box stores in Berea

A former bank executive and department store manager, Angel says that industrial demands notwithstanding, she does what she can to influence Berea's culture by blending corporate chain restaurants and businesses with local ones. "I have tried to go slowly over the past seven years in this job to really understand what the community needs," she said. Still, there are gaps. I think we're very weak, honestly, in our retail side."

Angel said she knows many in the community want businesses like Trader Joe's to locate here, but that the data she collects suggests Berea is not the right size and demographic for such a retailer. "We're weak in hotels, though. So I am working on that. It will take a couple of years," she said. She also said she seeks to bring a sit-down family-style restaurant to Berea.

But Angel's "dream" commercial deal, she said, is "A new development center where we have one large box store with some junior box stores," she said. Box stores are retailers like Home Depot. Junior box stores are those like TJ Maxx or HomeGoods. "We don't have clothing stores, we don't have shoe stores, we have to do things online because of that," Angel said.

The new bypass is where such development is likely to occur, especially now that the values of previous generations are changing. "We have private landowners finally seeing the picture, and the time has come where maybe health issues mean the older generation can't farm anymore, So, everybody is at good level now to where we could grow just a little bit more with retail shopping in the area of the bypass," she said, adding that with the new Walmart being built near Exit 77, this is even more likely.

Whatever happens with Beshear's industrial push, whatever the development that occurs, Angel, a Berea native, is firm that the city will never lose its unique character. "We are not Richmond, nor will we ever be Richmond, nor do we want to be Richmond," she said.