“Why don’t we start at the top and work our way down?” The voice of Greg Kelly echoes as he stands in the empty lobby of his brand-new office building. He’s ready to begin the tour.

At the end of 2010, I asked several dozen of our region’s business and thought leaders what advice they would like to give our new governor. Last month, in an open letter to Gov. Jerry Brown, I summarized their thoughts on how the new administration should change important areas of state governance. This month, the same group of local leaders offer ideas on how to recover from our current fiscal disaster.

An unemployed engineer and an e-waste recycler walk into a bar. The engineer takes the recycler’s electric bike for a spin. And, a year later, The Electric Bike Shop opens its doors in East Sacramento.

Like other businesses, The Golden 1 Credit Union has absorbed its share of economic blows since 2008. But the largest credit union in California has long prided its fiscally conservative approach to finance.

Doctors in the Capital Region aren’t just checking your temperature and blood pressure when you come in for a checkup these days; in growing numbers, they’re also checking your mood.

Lesli Pletcher’s parents were not extravagantly wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. However, true to form of a couple raised during the Great Depression, they were frugal and financially cautious so that, by the end of their lives, they had amassed a substantial estate capable of easily sustaining Pletcher’s father in his $9,000-a-month Alzheimer’s care facility.

Many outsiders watching the Capital Region legal scene may feel like they need a scorecard to keep track of attorneys. But, save for a few notable shifts and a historic closure, local lawyers are following suit of other businesses in a recession: hunkering down and staying put.

While the economy strangles commercial real estate throughout California, the greater Stockton area linking Interstate 5 and Interstate 580 is blossoming with industrial logistics centers that warehouse commercial goods for distribution throughout Northern California and the western region.

Commercial developers hit hard by the drop in property prices are looking at development impact fees to soften the blow to their bottom lines.

In the 35 years Ken Ruzich has managed local levees, no water event has been more memorable than the 1986 flood that nearly toppled levees along the Yolo bypass. If it wasn’t a 100-year flood, he says, it was close enough: “It was our benchmark.”

In a year of job loss and company closures, Scott Blevins’ freight business is expanding, hiring and hauling in the cash.

Economically, 2011 may go down as a year with a split personality. Sacramento is looking at a much different year than most of the country. Small businesses face a more divergent climate than large companies. Even among small businesses, many have more confidence in their own prospects than in the economy as a whole.