Evan Stone on Economic Development скачать в хорошем качестве

Evan Stone on Economic Development

Associate and Senior Client Relations Manager Evan Stone shares an outlook related to economic development trends, including site readiness and the need for power. www.dewberry.com My background around economic development has been pretty varied. I've worked as a state economic developer, a local economic developer, as a private industrial developer, and now as a consultant with Dewberry. As a state economic developer, I was really charged with leading industrial advanced manufacturing, large greenfield, to locate to North Carolina, and that experience has given me sort of a holistic view of the economic development process in that ecosystem. So, the economic development ecosystem, that space is relatively small, but it's got a number of varying parts. And so, in it you've got the end user who, invariably, is looking for a new greenfield site, a new industrial site. And then, you have the state economic development agencies and their ally partners. And, in between those two, you typically have a site location consultant that's helping that end user company make the decision on where they're going to go. And they interface regularly with state and local economic developers to make the best business decision for that end user. Where Dewberry fits into that is the site readiness and site preparedness and the consulting on that, both with the local economic development agency, but also helping the end user, the company, looking for a new site, make the best decision based on certain constraints that they may have or constraints to the site around site/civil matters, water/wastewater needs, environmental constraints, all of the different things that go into making those kinds of decisions. Several things set Dewberry apart in the economic development space. First, it's just the initiative to engage in it at sort of the grassroots level with the local economic development agencies and the state economic development agencies, and to really pour into that space and support job growth. But the one key thing that Dewberry has that sets it apart is the strength of a national company and its resources and everything that it can bring to bear. But, local offices and folks who are at the local level who understand their community, they're engaged in their community outside of work, whether it's church or little league or any number of other things. And so, they're right there in the space, but they can bring all of these resources that Dewberry has nationally to bear to support our economic development partners. Emerging trends and economic development, there are really two that I will highlight. The first one is somewhat of an arms race in site readiness and site preparedness around new industrial sites. States have started funding this preparation and site readiness more and more, earlier and earlier, and it's gotten to the point where if you don't have a site that is shovel ready, you are not in the game when it comes to new economic development investment. And then, the next trend really is the need for power, and our utility allies will tell you that used to, the first question a company would decide is if there was workforce in place. Now that's sort of been leapfrogged by the availability of power, because so much of what we're doing today—data centers and all the things around those sorts of investments—require so much power.