Wednesday, July 09, 2008

A Time For Choosing - Part II

A Time for Choosing, Part II
By: Shawn Van Dusen

(published 16.7.08 in St. Cloud in the News)


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.


St. Cloud and Eastern Osceola County boast a unique combination of assets on which we can build our future. Block by block, industry by industry, town by town and community by community, capacity mapmakers, economic developers and community marketers can together discover a vast and most-likely surprising array of talents, skills and resources unique to our area, few of which are being mobilized for Economic Development and ultimately Job Creation purposes. All men and women are created equal, but everyone, every community, every city, every business, every public organization and every government body has something special that they offer. Our individuals, associations, institutions and resources are the four elements that contain the core assets that we can use to identify new economic development opportunities.


Individuals are the backbone of our country and our society. We can live, work, play, attend school and eventually retire all in central Florida. We put out time, our energy, our blood and sweat into our homes and our communities. It’s through our hard work and effort—mowing the lawn, painting the house, planting flowers, teaching our children right from wrong, coaching little league—that St. Cloud’s personality shines through. And that hard work is an asset to our community, never to be overlooked or marginalized when we plan for our future.


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. Economic Development planners recognize that these groups are indispensable resources for development and job-creation assistance, and that many of them can in fact become full contributors to the development process. Civic groups are a reflection of the drive and interests of the residents of our area, as allowed by the natural and created resources—Prescott, Arizona doesn’t have an Airboaters’ Association, but ours is active in promoting the activity and providing manpower in cleaning up our local lakes.


Beyond the individuals and local associations are the more formal institutions which are located in the community. 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 in full, 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. 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.


Most important of all are our resources. Everything 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 knowledge environment of our residents, all the things we’ve learned and the skills our businesses have acquired, make up the true potential of what we can become, 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 knowledge strengths of the individuals and businesses of our area? 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?


Individuals, associations, institutions and natural resources--these four major categories that contain most of the asset-base of every community. They provide the base and frame for asset-based economic development. With the population that we have and the natural environment in which we live—one of the largest, under-developed counties in one of the largest, most populated states in one of the most developed nations in the world—we have the potential for real and meaningful economic growth in our neck of the woods. But how do we get there?


First, execute an asset-based marketing & development study to identify our unique strengths in the four areas outlined above. Frame the study 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, identify which industries have general or specific needs that our plus-rated assets could fulfill? With thousands upon thousands of potential industry sectors in America alone, the potential suitors for Eastern Osceola County are endless. 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. 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. Last, 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. But ‘The Devil’s in the Details’ and next week, we’ll walk through some of the specific steps required to take our assets and utilize them to improve our economic base in St. Cloud.


St. Cloud is a great small-town city. We have resources and spirit that remain untapped. We have a potential unlimited by the constraints imposed in many other areas of this country. Cumberland, Maryland used an Asset-based Economic Development plan over the past decade and increased occupancy rates in the downtown area to nearly 90% with employment levels unseen since World War II. We can learn from the lessons of other small-town cities to help grow and preserve our way of life for generations to come.

-Shawn (OK, webbies, this is VERY vague, but it's an overview of an article series in a regional newspaper. more to follow.)

No comments: