The incredible Concord Ridge Equestrian Center will be featured in our 2011 issue of Impact, which is published next month. Impact is a special section that includes stories about businesses and business people in the area doing innovative, interesting and inspiring things.
For those of you unfamiliar with Concord, it is a new, 40-acre facility on M-139, right outside St. Joseph, that includes stables, pens and arenas and offers lessons and boarding.  It’s being touted as the largest equestrian center in the Midwest.
I don’t know much, if anything, about horses or the equestrian world, but I can tell you this place is an outstanding example of what can happen when someone sees a niche that needs filling, and goes above and beyond to fill it.
Owner Ron Schults — who also owns the Concord housing development across the highway and the housing lots to be sold adjacent to the equestrian center — has been active in Berrien County by establishing the bereavement center Lory’s Place and improving soccer programs.
When Schults enrolled his young daughter in horse riding lessons, he noticed a sentiment in the horse community that more — and different — facilities were needed to accommodate the level of training and competition the county demanded. Berrien County is said to have one of the highest ratios of horses per person in the United States, and Schults knew he could capitalize on that.
But Concord doesn’t just cater to higher-income horse owners and riders. Horse ownership is not required to take lessons there; in fact, many youth are there now preparing for next week’s Berrien County Youth Fair.
One misconception I’ve heard is that Concord will be in competition with the soon-to-be-built Expo Area located at the BCYF grounds. But Schults explained that they will actually compliment each other because the Expo Arena will host local, state and even international shows, and the Concord provides long-term boarding, lessons and training.
One thought-provoking statement Schults made to me was that Concord is a prime example of what the “Pure Michigan” advertising campaign is trying to promote — the natural resources and tourism opportunities the state has to offer, like fishing, wineries and boating — instead of clinging to its industrial past.