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Community & Economic Development

Community and economic development topics affecting our communities.

February 8, 2012

Arcola Business SWOT Analysis Part 2

I returned to Arcola two days after the SWOT analysis to facilitate the group in a goal and strategy setting session. Using the SWOT analysis results as a springboard, the group focused in on extending their tax increment financing district as their number one goal. Much of the goal setting session was focused on discussing strategies related to extending the TIF, as it is a significant hurdle for the community. One particular taxing body is opposed to extending the TIF. As a result, the chances for extending the TIF are in jeopardy. The three goals the group set, and the strategies to accomplish those goals were the following:

Goal 1 – Obtain Tax Increment Financing District Extension

Strategies:

  • Ad campaign publicizing the issue
  • Public education about TIF and why it is necessary for Arcola
  • Petition drive
  • Letters to the local newspaper
  • Political pressure on officials who are opposed to extending the TIF

Goal 2 – Increase Tourism to Arcola

Strategies:

  • Revisit advertising campaign
  • Hire an advertising agency to target an audience and market Arcola
  • Simplify billboard advertisement messages
  • Market specific events and activities
  • Create marketing materials with a "call to action" as opposed to just passively listing are amenities

Goal 3 – Increase Community Involvement with a Particular Focus on Integrating the Hispanic Community

Strategies:

  • Create kid focused/family oriented events
  • Create community service opportunities for high school youth
  • Establish more soccer fields

Overall the group did an excellent job at identifying ways to improve business in Arcola. The group recognized that the SWOT analysis and goal setting session was not an ending point, but rather a beginning. The group resolved to continue regular meetings to discuss how to implement the strategies they came up with in hopes of achieving their goals. I hope to periodically revisit the group to see the progress they have made.

Photos of the SWOT analysis can be viewed here:

Arcola SWOT Pictures

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February 8, 2012

Arcola Business SWOT Analysis Part 1

Last week I had the opportunity to engage a group of about 15 Arcola business owners and municipal officials in a SWOT analysis and goal setting session focused on improving the viability of Arcola businesses. SWOT is an acronym for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. A SWOT analysis is a participatory planning process that provides a framework for participants to share and organize their thoughts around a particular topic.

The first afternoon in Arcola began with a data presentation. I presented data about Arcola's population change, unemployment trends, income profile, retail sales figures, and household expenditures. The purpose of the data presentation was to provide a context for the SWOT participants before they began to share their ideas. The slides I created for the data presentation can be found here:

Arcola SWOT Basic Demographics

After the data presentation the group was asked to list all of Arcola's strengths; the factors and resources that currently have a positive impact on Arcola businesses. Next, the group listed all the weaknesses; negative factors and influences currently hindering Arcola business. Participants then provided a list of perceived opportunities; positive factors and resources not currently affecting businesses, but could be explored in the future. Finally, the group listed threats to business; negative factors and issues which do not currently impact Arcola business, but could feasibly become a problem in the future. All of the SWOT elements that the participants came up with were recorded on giant post-it notes.

After lists of all the elements were created, the participants were then asked to prioritize the items they thought were most important. Each participant was given 20 stickers. They had 5 stickers to vote on elements in each of the 4 SWOT categories. The participants then placed the stickers by the items they considered most important. They were allowed to place up to 5 stickers on any one item. For example if they thought a single item listed under the "strengths" category was of far greater importance than all other items listed in strengths, then they could place all 5 of their strength stickers on that item. Conversely, if the participant thought that there were 5 weaknesses of equal importance, then they could place 1 of their weakness stickers on each of the 5 items listed. The results of the SWOT analysis were as follows:

The top 5 Strengths Identified:

  • Arcola Foundation (10 votes)
  • Location (9 votes)
  • Economic Development Incentives (8 votes)
  • Historic Downtown (6 votes)
  • Broom Corn Festival (5 votes)

The top 5 Weaknesses Identified:

  • Approaching Expiration of Tax Increment Financing District (21 votes)
  • Aging Business Owners (9 votes)
  • Age of Downtown Buildings (8 votes)
  • Lack of Community Involvement (7 votes)
  • Inability to Work Effectively with Neighboring Communities – Tourism (7 votes)

The top 5 Opportunities Identified:

  • Walldog Murals (10 votes)
  • Best Western – Green Mill – Hotel and Convention Space (10 votes)
  • Car Show (9 votes)
  • Expand Involvement of Hispanic Community (6 votes)
  • Rockome Gardens (5 votes)
  • Working with Other Communities – Arthur, Sullivan, Tuscola (5 votes)

The top 5 Threats Identified:

  • Tax Increment Finance District Expiring (28 votes)
  • Lack of Replacement Businesses as Owners Retire (11 votes)
  • State of Illinois (6 votes)
  • Competition (6 votes)
  • Inability to Preserve Community to Bring Our Kids Back (4 votes)

The rest of the SWOT analysis results can be found here:

Arcola SWOT Results

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December 6, 2011

Southeast Central Illinois Regional Broadband Summit

Last week I attended the Southeast Central Illinois Regional Broadband Summit at the Sarah Bush Lincoln Hospital Education Center, in Mattoon.  The summit, hosted by Broadband Illnois/PCI and the East Central Illinois Development Council, brought together telecommunication vendors, local economic developers, and representatives from public safety, electrical co-ops, education, and health care industries.  The representatives from each of these industries shared the importance of broadband in their respective fields.

The summit began with a presentation by Drew Clark who is the Executive Director of Broadband Illinois/Partnership for a Connected Illinois (PCI).  PCI describe themselves as "a non-profit organization based in Springfield with a three-fold mission: (a) to collect and publish broadband data, (b) to ensure broadband access throughout the State, and (c) to maximize broadband's impact and use.  There are 10 PCI regions which encompass all Illinois counties."

Part of PCI's role is to support the formation and activities of regional eTeams in each of the 10 identified PCI regions. The Southeast Central Illinois Regional eTeam is particularly exemplary in their efforts.  Led by Barb Webster, PCI Regional eTeam Coordinator, the eTeam has successfully brought together local stakeholders and paved the way for the increased broadband adoption and availability in their region's rural communities.  Ms. Webster made a presentation about the efforts to date of the eTeam in the Southeast Central Region which includes Coles, Clark, Clay, Crawford, Cumberland, Edgar, Effingham, Fayette, Jasper, Lawrence, Marion, Moultrie, and Richland counties.  Two of my Extension colleagues, Ken Larimore and Tiffany Macke, who are both Extension Community Development Educators, also serve on the eTeam.

After listening to the excellent presentations I had the chance to talk to PCI leadership at the end of the summit.  I was interested in how an eTeam could be formed in the Northeast Central Region (Champaign, Douglas, Ford, Iroquois, Piatt, and Vermilion Counties).  There advice was to not jump immediately to the formation of an eTeam, rather start with convening stakeholders and having preliminary conversations.  Further, we discussed other roles that Extension might play in partnering with PCI to bring broadband to our rural residents, business, and institutions.  It was agreed that Extension, with our educational expertise and unique statewide infrastructure, would could be a logical partner for PCI in delivering their broadband awareness and adoption message.  In sum, Extension could further broadband efforts in the state by convening local key stakeholders, and educating the public and business community about the importance of broadband. Extension's Community and Economic Development team intends to continue to explore how this might be accomplished.

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November 23, 2011

Data for Decision Makers Program Well Attended

Rain did not deter the 40 plus attendees who came to the Champaign County Farm Bureau auditorium for yesterdays Non-Profit Community Convening sponsored by the Lumpkin Family Foundation and goodWorksconnect.  The group was much larger than expected.  I had the opportunity to present the Data for Decision Makers program to the group.

Data, when used properly, can advance and improve the effectiveness of an organization. The ability to tell a "data story" is important in securing funding and understanding the context in which non-profits or local governments operate. There are numerous sources of free and publicly available data. During the Data for Decision Makers program participants received a guide to these data sources, and learned how to access information from key websites. The highlight of the program which garnered the greatest response from the audience was when I showed a quick and convenient way to import data from tables on websites into Microsoft Excel, when those websites do not have their own "download data" feature.

If you are a member of a local government or non-profit and would like to know more about the data resources that are available to you, then contact me to learn more about the Data for Decision Makers program.

Additionally, if you are involved in the non-profit realm, I highly recommend joining goodWorksconnect. They are a wonderful resource. This following description is taken from their website:

goodWORKSconnect.orgis an online community space and virtual resource center created to help nonprofit leaders, staff, and board members from throughout Illinois, with special focus on the east central Illinois region, connect with new and old colleagues, share information, and learn from each other. We hope this site will help you:
  • Expand your network of relationships and help you find others working on similar issues
  • Learn about opportunities happening in the region and beyond
  • Ask questions and get answers
  • Discuss your good ideas
  • Create a group for your organization or cause
  • Share success stories and lessons learned
  • Share templates and forms to avoid "re-inventing the wheel"
  • Discover new websites, articles, books, videos, resources, etc.
  • Our vision is to become an online community, where the people doing good work (YOU!) contribute content and help us determine the future.
  • All tools and content are free to use.

Their website address is: http://goodworksconnect.org/home

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November 11, 2011

Economic Strategies for Successful Regions

I recently participated in a webinar hosted by the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development (NCRCRD). The title of the program was: The Winner's Choice: Sustainable Economic Strategies for Successful 21st Century Regions. The first speaker was Mark Partridge who is the Swank Chair of Rural-Urban Policy at Ohio State University. Professor Partridge is Co-Editor of the Journal of Regional Science and is the Co-editor of new the Springer Briefs in Regional Science as well as serves on seven other academic editorial boards. He has published over 100 scholarly papers and coauthored the book The Geography of American Poverty: Is there a Role for Place-Based Policy? Professor Partridge has received research funding from many sources including the Appalachian Regional Commission, Brookings Institution, European Commission, Infrastructure Canada, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. His research includes investigating rural-urban interdependence and regional growth and policy.  The second speaker was Rose Olfert who is a Professor of Public Policy at the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Saskatchewan. Professor Olfert serves on several editorial boards and has published widely in Community and Rural economic development. Her research on Place-Based Policy, funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, has involved collaborative work in Latin American countries as well as Europe. Regional economic cooperation and appropriate policy responses for subnational economic development have been common themes of her research.

Dr. Partridge began by explaining that rural and urban policy is often developed and implemented separately despite the fact that rural and urban areas work together to form functional economic regions. Economic policy should not be divided into urban and rural, but rather there should be a regional development policy focus. Strong regional policy is necessary to make our communities competitive in a global economy where access to goods and services from around the world are available with a simple mouse click.

The discussion then focused on how regions in the United States have evolved.  Traditionally, when cities were formed they depended heavily on rural areas for support.  While cities continue to depend on rural areas, the dependence is now two-way.  Rural areas depend on urban centers of economic activity, particularly for jobs, amenities, and public services.  Commuting links between urban and rural areas have strengthened over time.

The presentation then began to highlight some of the shortcomings with current economic development policy.  Dr. Partridge contends that policy is often suboptimal, counter-productive, and backward-looking.  As an example many politicians, media, and the public still view Ohio as a manufacturing based economy despite the fact that over the past couple of generations the share of employment in manufacturing has decreased from 1 in 3 to 1 in 10.  This mismatch between the perceived makeup of the economy and its actual makeup is a phenomena that is found nearly everywhere and leads to misguided economic development policy.  Other policy pitfalls that were highlighted were the reliance on fad-based policies (replicating silicon valley, green jobs, attracting the "creative class"), or "picking winners" in which there is a focus on particular industries as winners despite the fact that being able to forecast future performance requires an unattainable level of knowledge.  A few additional examples of unsuccessful, ineffective policy were presented.

With a profile of non-effective (and widely used) development policy established, Dr. Partridge shared keys to effective regional development strategy.  None of the strategies he outlined were particularly new or sophisticated, but they are often neglected or unimplemented.  The four main strategies he covered were:
  • The Efficient Provision of Government Services
  • High Levels of Human Capital and Knowledge
  • Support for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
  • Minimizing Externalities and Market Failures
If you have interest in this topic, I suggest listening to the webinar and Dr. Partridge's explanation of what each of these strategies mean for communities and regions.  A recording of the entire webinar, along with many other excellent NCRCRD hosted webinars can be accessed here:

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November 2, 2011

Hazard Mitigation Planning in Illinois

When dealing with natural disasters there is a lot of emphasis placed on response, recovery, and swiftly getting a community back on its feet, and rightfully so. It is easy for people to grasp the concept of recovery and to empathize with people whose lives have been affected by natural disasters. We see images in the media of the devastation that is left in the wake of a flood, tornado or earthquake. It makes for serious conversation not only about those who have been impacted and the subsequent recovery efforts, but about our own preparedness for such an event.

Indeed, preparedness, response, and recovery are concepts that are common and widely understood. However, what about mitigation? Mitigation is a term that is far less frequently used in our collective vocabulary. Mitigation is the concept of lessening or completely preventing the impact of disaster events through deliberate interventions before a disaster occurs.

Hazard mitigation planning seeks to lessen the impact of natural hazards on our communities, specifically on people, infrastructure, and businesses through implemented mitigation actions as clearly defined in a mitigation planning document. A couple examples of mitigation actions include:

  • Elevating structures out of the floodplain to protect against flooding.
  • Adopting seismic building codes to protect against earthquakes.
  • Burying utility lines underground to protect against severe weather.

    • Mitigation plans are typically multi-jurisdictional with several communities participating in countywide plans. 63 of Illinois' 102 counties have FEMA approved hazard mitigation plans, with an additional 17 counties currently engaged in the mitigation planning process. Within U of I Extension Unit 13 only Champaign and Iroquois counties have approved mitigation plans. Vermilion County is in the process of creating a mitigation plan, while Ford County is not involved in a mitigation planning process.

    Communities have a significant incentive to create and adopt hazard mitigation plans beyond just lessening potential disaster impacts. In simple terms, in the event of a disaster a community with an adopted plan is eligible to receive additional money from FEMA through the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) to implement mitigation projects. Without a plan, the community would onlyreceiveFEMA recovery money, and would notreceivemoney to mitigate against future disasters.

    A great majority of the mitigation activities in Illinois are designed to lessen the impact of flooding. Flooding causes widespread damage and communities are taking steps to address repetitive flood losses. However, there are innovative strategies currently in place and continually being developed which address a variety of hazards.

    I recently had a chance to present on hazard mitigation planning best practices in Illinois to a class of graduate students at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois. Hopefully, as these students begin their careers they will continue to advance the field of mitigation planning to enhance theresiliencyof our communities.

    For further information about hazard mitigation planning visit:

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