Economic development plans exist for one blunt reason: capital moves toward certainty. Site selection consultants shortlist communities in days, not months. Consequently, a community without a plan is a community without answers on infrastructure, labor, sites, and entitlements.
Why Communities and Companies Build Economic Development Plans
Economic development plans deliver four concrete benefits. First, they unlock funding, because federal and state programs increasingly condition awards on an adopted plan. Second, they compress project timelines by solving zoning, utility, and environmental questions before a prospect ever calls. Third, they align stakeholders. Councils, boards, utilities, and chambers get a shared scoreboard instead of competing agendas. Finally, they create defensible priorities, so limited public dollars go to projects with measurable return rather than the loudest advocate.
Companies build plans for parallel reasons: workforce pipeline security, supply chain proximity, and incentive negotiation leverage.
The Plan Types That Matter
A wide range of economic development plans can transform companies and communities.
| Plan Type | Plan Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) | The five-year regional roadmap required for U.S. EDA Economic Development District designation and most EDA public works funding | Ohio’s regional development commissions maintain CEDS documents that have anchored hundreds of millions in federal infrastructure awards. |
| Workforce Development Plans | Map occupational demand against training capacity | Intel’s central Ohio investment triggered a coordinated college and university pipeline response ahead of the plant. |
| Childcare Development Plans | Childcare scarcity is now a labor force participation problem, not a social services problem | Michigan’s Tri-Share model splits childcare costs among employers, employees, and the state. |
| Industrial Site Development Plans | Due diligence, utility capacity, and entitlement work performed before marketing | JobsOhio’s SiteOhio program readied the Fayette County acreage that landed the Honda–LG battery plant. |
| Downtown Redevelopment Plans | Phased public investment paired with private capital | Hamilton, Ohio converted a distressed core into a nationally cited turnaround. |
| Office Conversion Plans | A direct response to structural vacancy | Calgary pays per square foot to convert obsolete towers to residential; Cleveland uses historic tax credits to do the same. |
| Housing Plans | Housing needs assessments quantify the unit gap by price point and tenure | Columbus and Franklin County reframed housing supply as an economic competitiveness issue. |
| Mall Redevelopment Plans | Dead retail on great infrastructure | Columbus City Center became Columbus Commons; Randall Park Mall became an Amazon fulfillment center. |
The Right Plan Gets You on the Shortlist
The wrong plan is expensive shelf art. In contrast, the right plan targets your actual constraint — whether that is sites, labor, childcare, or housing. That is the document that gets your community on the shortlist.
The Montrose Group has completed over sixty economic development plans for public and private sector clients. Contact Dave Robinson at drobinson@montrosegroupllc.com if you need assistance with any economic development plan.