Econinoc Development - Part III

A Time for Choosing, Part III
(published 16 July 2008)

Asset-Based Economic Development is a strategy that builds on existing resources—natural, cultural and structural—to create valued products and services that can be sustained for local benefit.

Over the past 100 years, St. Cloud has grown by evolutionary default. Businesses have moved into the area for their own reasons, setting up shop in areas allowed by the city’s master zoning plan. St. Cloud has grown and prospered when Central Florida has grown and prospered. We gained population when our housing became less expensive than the housing in neighboring areas—a look at the current Economic Stimulus plan for the Housing Industry shows that the key marketing plank is ‘more house for your dollar.’ While that is a wonderful thing for the Housing Industry, it independent of other action doesn’t create more local jobs in industries that aren’t tied to the boom and bust construction cycles.

If we need a better way, a better path for our future, where can we turn? Once we have a ‘grow business’ goal in mind, what steps can we follow to help guide our development and progress? To learn from the mistakes and successes of other cities, we should follow these four steps: First, we need to identify our unique strengths and assets. We need to be able to answer this question: Where do we stand above our competitors: other local towns and cities, other counties and ultimately other states and countries? Second, we need to establish some basic requirements: any heavy industry or manufacturing would have to be green or practically non-invasive to our local environment; we would want an average employee salary, including benefits, to be higher than the median average for our side of the county; we would want to look at industries and sectors that have the potential for long futures—no buggy-whip manufacturers need apply. Third, we need to identify which industries have general or specific needs that our plus-rated assets could fulfill? With thousands of potential suitors in Florida alone, the list of potential business immigrants into Eastern Osceola County is nearly-endless, so we need to narrow our focus down to the industries that would benefit most from being here and that we would benefit most from having here. Fourth, we need to execute on multiple, coordinated plans designed to entice and assist existing and start-up businesses in those designated industries to move into our area.

Individuals, associations, institutions and resources. These are what make up our unique strengths and resources. To drill down into the Individual assets and resources, we need to address the following questions: What’s unique about our population? What population types do we have in the area (tourists, students, residents, retirees, etc.)? What are the education base and the education specialties of our population? What are the civic, community, religious and governmental volunteer bodies that our population donates time for? What do we do well as individuals?

Civic Associations, from the Chamber of Commerce, the Downtown Business Group and Main Street all the way to less formal institutions, are the means through which local residents in can meet to solve problems, or to share common interests and activities. Civic groups are a reflection of the drive and interests of the residents of our area. We need to inventory these bodies, their strengths and how they make us stand out above and beyond our neighbors near and far. We need to identify our area’s Civic Associations’ strengths. We have a vocal and active Chamber of Commerce. We are known for excellent care for our elderly. We have upstanding and generous veterans groups. These and the many other public-minded bodies in St. Cloud are all vital in recruiting and drawing business and industry into our area.

Our area is blessed with many talented and experienced public and private institutions. Private businesses; public institutions such as schools, libraries, parks, police and fire stations; nonprofit institutions such as hospitals and social service agencies--these organizations make up the most visible and formal part of our community's fabric. Accounting for them and enlisting them in the process of community development is essential to the success of the process. They contain business skills and knowledge, financial resources, legal acumen and experience that can direct, enable and fund economic ventures. We need the help of our well-versed City Economic Developer to review and analyze the large and small elements of our economy—who are our major and minor employers, what is the industry-by-industry breakdown for direct employment? What are the business trends over the past 10 years in St. Cloud? What are the knowledge assets of our local businesses? What skills, experience and specialty knowledge do we have that other neighboring areas might be lacking? With mechanized automation continually reducing the need for unskilled labor, what ‘knowledge workers’ strengths do we have—creativity, collaborating, networking and sharing, analyzing, problem solving and inventing—that can help make our area a source of new businesses and new, better-paying jobs? What financial assets and knowledge, what legal assets and knowledge, what political assets and experience do we have? A summary list of the characteristics and assets, physical, financial, political and knowledge, for the industrial sectors in our area would be a huge help in identifying resources which could be used in recruitment of business sectors into Greater St. Cloud.

Further, as an extension of our public institutions, the rules and regulations that have been put in place by our local governing authorities create the framework within which our natural and learned assets can be made available for economic development and job creation—in heavily taxed and regulated areas, job creation and business formation occurs at a much slower pace than in areas of lower-taxation or more reasonable regulation. What are the rules and regulations for business, for various industries and business sectors in and around St. Cloud? What are the local, county and state rules that we can use to help mitigate the initial start-up costs or ‘move-in’ costs to businesses, without hurting individual taxpayers? A wise man once said ‘if you know the (government) rules, you can get almost anything accomplished.’ We need a summary review of the differences between our development and business regulations and our neighbors’ rules, to better lay out our strengths and our opportunities.

Last but most important of all is the asset list of our resources—from the physical environment in which we live, the land on which we sit out homes and the water which flows through our lakes and rivers, to the infrastructure environment of the power lines and transportation systems in our county. What are the physical assets of eastern Osceola County and St. Cloud? What are the educational resources that our area has? What level of schooling can be found in our area and what industries or business sectors do our secondary education providers train students for? What are the medical resources that our area provides? In the state of Florida, Eastern Osceola County is historically not a leader in medical care, but that trend may be changing. We need to summarize the assets and resources that our area has in these natural and provided fields.

Next, after the asset identification, we need to establish some basic business requirements: industry types, desired average salary level, resource requirements, charitable donations and social program assistance, traffic generation, growth potential and more. But to what end? To provide a framework for this process, I propose that our city needs to approve a formal Vision Statement for St. Cloud’s future. Our Vision Statement should be our Hope and Guide, and it should encapsulate what we want our city to become in the future. We can use that Vision Statement to help define the highest priorities that we will need met by incoming businesses and industry sectors.

After laying out our business requirements, we need to identify which industries that meet those requirements have general or specific needs that our above-rated assets could fulfill. And then we need to bring them here. In other words, who needs the assets we can provide and how can we get them here? By this point, we should be consulting with a national business recruiting firm. They can provide the knowledge, experience and personal connections into businesses and industries that could benefit our area. With their personal and professional connections, a national-level business recruiting firm is able to reach business leaders and company executive-level management that we, as a small city in Florida, would find hard to reach. In addition to the professional and personal connections that they offer, another reason to use an outside firm in this process is that it’s in their best interest to facilitate a business migration into St. Cloud that helps our community grow and develop—the better we grow as a community, the better they’re paid by businesses who want to move here.

St. Cloud is a great small-town city. We don’t have to be shackled to the economies of the past and we don’t have to be held hostage to the whims of the housing market. But we need to lay out what our future will hold and then use our God-given assets to make that vision into reality. Next week, I’ll summarize the Asset-Based Economic Development plan for St. Cloud, provide some additional examples from other successful implementations throughout the US and propose a Vision Statement for this great city. For any comments or concerns, I can be reached at svandusen@fortismg.com.