IEDC Conference
IEDC Conference

I attended the International Economic Development Council?s summer conference in Oklahoma City, OK last month. It is interesting to see what other communities from all over the country are doing to promote economic growth in various areas of economic development.
My focus is on industrial development but I am also interested in Main Street, incubators, tourism, Chamber of Commerce, residential, retail and rehabilitation of underutilized property. The conference offers a lot of ideas in all of these areas.

Several of the sessions dealt with getting projects done when you don?t have a lot of resources. One of the key strategies is to emphasize citizens who love your community, have the resources and want to make a difference. We can do a better job on this front.

Just because a project is a good idea doesn?t mean that it is feasible. One of the sessions covered how to evaluate the market, financial and physical feasibility of a project. Ultimately, someone has to invest in the project and it needs to produce a return. Proper use of public funds can make a project more feasible by being a catalyst, reducing risk and improving the financial return so that private investors will finance the project.
Omaha?s art district has been very successful in their downtown. They covered 5 keys to doing a project. Market support, vision consensus, land control, business model and a competent team. One of the funnier comments made was when the presenter stated, ?artists like Omaha because they starve to death more slowly than in Chicago or San Francisco?. We do a good job of managing projects here in Platteville.

The session on leveraging smaller projects to promote larger projects was applicable to Platteville. Convention centers are a key area of development. They have a difficult time standing on their own but will facilitate development of other facilities. The Governor Dodge Convention Center project is an example of this. Often public money is used to get the convention center started and it spurs other development. We are fortunate here that the Governor Dodge Convention Center stands on its own and is facilitating a new development project.

Overall, it was a good conference. I learned a lot, made some new contacts, renewed some old ones and garnered several new ideas to improve the PAIDC operation.

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