APPLETON REGIONAL PARTNERSHIP-BUILDING COLLABORATION AROUND OUR LOCAL ECONOMIC FUTURE

Larry Burkhardt, Executive Vice President of the Appleton Regional Partnership, discussed how economic development is a community wealth building process that is done by supporting primary sector businesses (a company that derives a majority of its revenue by selling a product or service outside the community).  This process brings new dollars to the local economy.  The intent of the Appleton Regional Partnership is to improve the quality of life for our local residents by supporting the activities of business development.  They plan to stimulate the local economy so that people can make their house payment, buy a new car, send kids to college and do some of the things that are important to their quality of life.  The Fox Valley has not had an economic development program.  There are 5,000 organizations like this throughout the country enticing companies to come to their own communities.  Our community is not immune to economic decline.  Communities without economic development struggle.  Within the last several months, Kewanee Power Plant announced they will be closing and 600 jobs lost and Oshkosh Truck announced 350 layoffs in the first part of this year.  The Appleton Regional Partnership is an affiliate of the Fox Cities Chamber of Commerce.  They are a public/private partnership whose board consists of 16 public sector entities and 43 private sector companies.  This effort began when the Board of Directors of the Chamber realized that there was no one looking out for the economic development needs of this region.  In 2011, the Chamber commissioned a consultant to do a full evaluation of our community and evaluate 74 different attributes.  Overall, there were a dozen attributes rated better than average, a dozen less than average and the remaining in the middle.  The goal of this report is to support the announcement of 1200 new primary jobs in our global economy over the next 5 years.  Annually, this would generate over $75 million in new payroll, $141million in new positive economic activity and generate $4.7 million in property taxes to support local government.  The Appleton Regional Partnership needs to establish relationships with existing primary employers and provide them with the resources for them to become more competitive and in the process add new jobs.  So far this year, 27 formalized visits have been made that have turned up specific issues that are currently being addressed.  In addition, they will be looking at attracting new companies into the area specifically 4 main targets:  food processing, transportation/equipment manufacturing, innovative manufacturing and quality business services.  A regional (Outagamie County, Calumet County and the upper half of Winnebago County) approach was decided because in order to do economic development on a national or international level, you have to build the biggest and most integrated picture.  If a company wants to expand their market, they go to a site selector who performs a detailed analysis on considerations such as labor, education, transportation and business climate. The primary tool in economic development for attraction is website presence.  The Appleton Regional Partnership is working on developing a website and a plan to go out and meet with site selection consultants.  Some of the challenges the Appleton Regional Partnership faces is competition and branding/awareness of our area.  Our area is known for having a good work force ethic, quality community and high school graduation rate of 90%.