I am working on a project where the ultimate goal is a Regional Economic Development Council that will unify the city and surrounding metro areas. Therefore I am looking for examples of organizations with a similar purpose who have strong and active involvement of the private sector, government, and economic development people. The problem we have is a private sector who has no interest in ED or planning, so I need ideas from places with a private sector involved in those areas.
Florida would be an interesting case study. In a state where the chief industry is homebuilding, housing developers have begun to realize that their bottom line depends on job creation (what a novel conceptOriginally posted by Tresmo
). The City of Port St. Lucie recently adopted a $2000 impact fee on new homes for ED purposes, and believe it or not this was fully supported by the building industry.
The Kansas City Area Development Council is like that. They are a private, regional economic development corporation doing business development and in general promoting the Kansas City area for economic development on an 18 county basis, which stretches from eastern Livingston Co., MO to Shawnee Co., KS. For the websites Google it. This thing won't let me post the website.
New Brunswick, Canada and its Community Economic Development Commissions ( at least that is what I am pretty sure they are called) may be of interest to you.
They typically are staffed by gov't type employees yet report to a board of business and citizen volunteers and are ultimately responsible to teh Minister of Economic Development and Tourism.
Too lazy to beat myself up for being to lazy to beat myself up for being too lazy to... well you get the point....
Montana has RC&D's that might be similar to what you are looking for. Check out this webpage.
http://www.beartooth.org/
Thank you all for the suggestions, it's giving me a great start on finding the information I need!
There are quite a few of these organizations in the SF Bay Area (where regional planning/ED is crucial). I actually work for one! Without naming names, this area has a good number of sub-regions and micro economies (SF/Marin have Tourism, SF has Financial, Silicon Valley has Tech, Eastern areas have ag., etc)... all of which have their own ED council/business council... and these groups often come together for certain projects that will have a regional impact. In terms of the organization I work for, our events are well attended by the business community as well as elected officials/city staff. The key is providing a service to the business community... giving them incentives to support this type of investment. If you're interested in specifics please send me a private message.
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