2 minute read
08 Local and Regional Competitiveness Initiative (LRCI) Supports VEDP’s Partners
VEDP’s Local and Regional Competitiveness Initiative (LRCI) began in January 2020 with the goal of supporting its local and regional partners and increasing capacity around the Commonwealth to promote economic development. Since then, nearly 75% of local EDOs and 88% of regional EDOs have participated in the initiative, which involved taking a self-assessment of their economic development activities that was integrated into a detailed report of how their organization stacks up against their peers and national best practices for economic development.
75%
Local EDOs participated in the initiative in FY21
88%
Regional EDOs participated in the initiative in FY21
Partners have shared that they leveraged the report over the past year to make improvements in their strategic plans and educate their boards and other community members on the economic development activities taking place. Additionally, VEDP staff have provided presentations to local and regional boards and committees to explain the findings and offer ideas for using the data to improve capacity and performance.
The self-assessment revealed several trends across the state’s local and regional economic development landscape. We saw that Virginia’s local economic developers are heavily focused on sites, buildings, business retention and expansion, and entrepreneurship, while regional economic developers are strong in business attraction and marketing efforts. Additionally, economic developers across the Commonwealth are evolving to focus on a broader set of economic development activities, including placemaking, talent attraction, and resilience planning.
The findings also showed a significant disparity among localities, especially for rural areas. Funding and staffing across the state is low compared to national best practices. Additionally, one out of five local EDOs operates without a full-time economic development staff member and one-quarter do not have an economic development strategic plan. This lack of dedicated personnel can have a cascading impact on partners’ ability to further economic development goals and represents a high priority to focus on capacity building across the state.
Knowing these gaps is helping VEDP determine new ways in which it can support our economic development partners. Towards the end of this fiscal year, VEDP began to explore a “Phase 2” of the LRCI effort with the goal of launching a targeted support pilot program in 2022. Offering this support is a critical component of VEDP’s aspirational goals to ensure that every region wins and focus on the “P” in VEDP.
Downtown Lynchburg
In March 2020, Moore, a provider of marketing solutions, announced the investment of over $31 million to establish Richmond Print Group in the former Colortree Group facility in Henrico County. The company prioritized hiring the employees impacted by the abrupt closure of Colortree in June 2019.
While it was hard to see the fall of a longtime standing company in Colortree, it has been great fun being part of the startup that is Richmond Print Group. Being under the same roof in the same office is sometimes surreal.
CARRIE DAWKINS
