Request Desired: Next Steps After Redevelopment

I am a believer that out of the bad there always comes some good; we just need to seek it and find it. With that in mind, I am interested in your thoughts about our next steps in the redevelopment transition. I was asked that question by the press recently and my retort was that today many communities have, over the past 10 years, been developing and are in a much better position with their overall economic development programs. Every community needs to be more strategic. In many communities, redevelopment was the only program and the strategy.

Whatever rises up out of the ashes of redevelopment will need to be a new economic development tool or strategy and it cannot be called redevelopment. Now is the time for every community to take a step back and start working on an overall economic development strategy for the future! Like never before they will need to be creative and proactive on the issues of business retention and expansion. The winners will be places that use this moment in time to develop and/or reshape their strategies for how they are going to participate in their local and regional economy going forward!

Because of limited manpower and funding resources, plans will need to be more regional than local. One option would be more focus by cities on their ability to manage, grow, and retain existing business while of regional economic development corporations provide land and strategies for business attraction and expansion I can also see the expansion of the state infrastructure bank to play a much more creative role in the development of public/private projects.

Please let me know what opportunities you see after redevelopment so we can share them with your peers. Please e-mail your responses to wschell@caled.org.

Sincerely,
Wayne Schell