Just like good company business planning, communities, developers or companies seeking to develop an economic development strategic plan need to embrace the effort through a learn, listen and do approach.
Economic development strategic planning begins with a data dive to utilize industry-recognized economic and workforce research sources to capture a region or site’s economic snapshot. Data sources that will provide an economic snapshot of a community or site include a review of the baseline assessment of existing data and reports, research on macroeconomic, demographic, education, labor market and industry cluster analysis for region, community or site. This research will also include a review of how a community is approaching economic development through an analysis of the region’s business retention and attraction program. Research will also focus on the skilled workforce that is available in a region, what sites and buildings are “job ready,” and how the community has addressed quality of place issues such as crime, housing and other community efforts. The research phase of an economic development plan will ultimately lead to the creation of a Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats analysis that will guide planning efforts.
Following the “Learn” or research phase of the economic development action plan, the Montrose team will implement the “Listen” phase of the project through community engagement. The goal of the “Listen” phase is to engage, local elected officials, business, real estate, economic development, educational and workforce leaders, and other key constituencies in the process and obtain their input and buy-in for the execution of action plan strategies. Within the Listen phase, the plan needs to build upon the items addressed in the Learn phase through outreach and engagement of key stakeholders and incorporate this information into the “Do” phase where the Action Plan is developed through a series of one-on-one interviews and focus group sessions with these organizations and community and business leaders.
Following the “Learn” and “Listen” phases of an economic development plan, action steps in the “Do” phase of the report will be developed that are tied to phases and timeframes to create a focused roadmap that can realistically be incorporated into and monitored via day-to-day development efforts, bringing impactful results to reality. Typical action steps include strategies centering around: business retention and expansion strategies, a review and recommendations for the use of new economic development incentives to retain and attract industry, creation of site development strategies to prepare new sites for targeted economic investment, development of small and disadvantaged business or early stage startup strategies all geared to promote entrepreneurism in a region, and workforce development strategies that are the basis for the retention and attraction of high wage jobs.
The economic development planning process is critical to economic success if it is based upon learning who a community is, listening to what the vision for that community is or what it wants to become and outlining the action steps the community should take to achieve this vision.
Contact Dave Robinson at [email protected] if you need assistance with an economic development strategic plan.
