Current Economic Development Trends

Reporting from the Illinois Development Council's Annual Conference "Improving Your Game"

by Dave Keiser - CCEDC Executive Director

I was speculative of this conference when registering but was immediately relieved when I saw that there were 120 economic development professionals in attendence and the list of speakers and topics. One of most important sessions was the one about Site Selection Trends in 2006 by professional site selectors Mark Sweeney of McCallum & Sweeney and Frank Spanno from the Austin Company. These are the people who corporations hire to find new sites for their expansion projects and what they had to say to us was very important.

If you are not on the internet, you're not in the game, but even if you are on the internet, it doesn't mean that you are being considered. It takes a dynamic, updated website, with lots of prior planning for the future to get considered. And that's if you are in the right place for that corporation's market.

Market & Supply Chains

The very first step or phase I that a site selector takes is to run GIS mapping to find the optimal geographical location for a particular business. Fortunately for Carroll County, our proximity to the Chicagoland area and the fact that the demographic center of the United States has finally shifted west to central Illinois positions us in the middle of the market and most likely will make it to phase II of the site selection process. That's where websites and planning come into play.

During phase II site selectors start the process of reviewing economic development websites and LOIS for a good fit location. Therefore, having a website with every existing site/building available in your jurisdiction is crucial, but it is even more crucial that these sites have everything these large corporations desire because they are ready to break ground immediately, sometimes within 90 days, so planning for land purchasing and infrastructure improvements have to be lined up beforehand. If these hurdles are taken care of beforehand and implemented on a dynamic website, your chances are good. Four out of every 100 communities looked at during phase II get a phone call. When that phone call comes, the community and economic developer have to be ready to act, in most cases, you only have a couple of days to line up all the details and players for a project to survive to fruition. So plan and invest for the future. Invest in infrastructure, education, business incubation, and most importantly the internet and you will be ahead of the game.

Knowledge Workers - educated professionals, i.e. engineers, scientists, doctors... We don't have to have Mayo Clinic in our county to attract biotech firms, but we can encourage one professional to live here and do research. Research brings publicity and other professionals and then maybe that biotech firm. So how do you attract this type of person? IT infrastructure, a business incubator, or an active entrepreneurial network...