Economic prosperity and vibrancy are paramount to the success of communities and their local government organizations in today’s competitive global economy.  Just as residents look for quality of life amenities; these same community qualities are important to potential investors and business decisions makers looking to expand or start a business operation.  This is just one of many elements including in the comprehensive process that goes into whether or not a business grows and expands.  Having complete information for site selectors and corporate real estate decision makers can be critical whether or not significant capital investment and opportunity for new jobs in the community will occur. 

These issues, amongst many others, were contemplated by a small group of top appointed city leaders through a White Board exercise conducted earlier this spring in 2014 in Redlands, California.  This was made possible through a partnership through ICMA and Esri, our GIS partner.  Through a day-long exercise, City Managers and Assistant City Managers discussed themes on varying topics impacting the physical environment, community engagement and economic development.  As a local government practitioner and regional economic development leader, I appreciated this braining storming session and took particular interest in the underutilized potential in local economic and community development activities.    

Esri particularly has the analytic abilities to help stakeholders engage in solutions and leverage resources for economic development agencies.  These databases and maps make up the intellectual tools for management, decision support and outreach.  When applying GIS to the economic development field, it has varying applications anywhere from the start-up businesses or entrepreneurs all the way up large corporations and everything in between.

Within the realm of commercial property site information for a retail store or business to consumer sector, GIS can assist in determining the physical space to locate the business and whether the site is available.  These same databases can provide insight about the people living in the community and nearby, income, education level, driving distances and typical consumer choices.  A sustainable business location will also be based on information about competitors or partners.  Lastly, the technology can provide guidance on business advantages, transportation, amenities and more.

Some older generation communities struggle with blight and underutilized commercial land or buildings; the potential solution is known as brownfield redevelopment.  These types of projects go through many phases and multiple stakeholders for assessing possible uses, weighed against other land use efforts and zoning. Finally, they are remediated, redeveloped and put back into productive use. GIS can be a strong partner to integrate historic, economic and environment data and can be accessed as the project moves along each step from assessment to cleanup to redevelopment and, finally, into full use.  A successful brownfield project is dependent on multi-stakeholder engagement to redevelop a site that meets the needs of the community.  These databases found in a GIS system include information, such as, tracking and inventorying brownfields, promoting the sites to potential businesses, site review and environmental review.  The ability to address each of these factors necessitates a tool to manage many of those elements across distance and over a period of many years to ensure a successful redevelopment. 

Much of the most impactful project or investment made is through industrial/manufacturing expansion or relocation. These are not only multi-million dollar, but sometime as high as multi-billion dollar investments to be made in communities.  The decisions are predicated on whether sufficient infrastructure can support and has capacity to service a particular site.  Other considerations include labor, roads and rail accessibility, as well as zoning requirements and restrictions.  Truthfully, many communities spend a good amount of time telling a story and selling their location and sites, but not many have site-specific information for these seekers.  Having the proper information to target industrial segments can provide a natural advantage for the community.

Local government staff must also work to create systems that maximize their own service delivery and users can access to information and services.  This includes mobile systems and easy-to-use system that real estate decision makers and site selectors can find accessible and intuitively use.

This discussion of the application of economic development or business analytics is helped us in the City of Grand Blanc to look at a future robust GIS system to meet further needs.   Local economic development is dependent on what happens in a larger region as we look to our partners in a multi-county and multi-municipal effort.   As part of the regional entity, known as the I-69 International Trade Corridor, we have begun the task of inventorying industrial and redevelopment ready sites in an inventory and categorize the varying databases useful for the needs of corporate and business decision makers.  This identification of the potential uses has unlimited possibilities creating investment and new jobs in communities now and in the future.

Paul J. Brake, CEcD

City Manager

City of Grand Blanc

-and-

Chairman, I-69 International Trade Corridor

Next Michigan Development Corporation