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Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the Creative EDC Team.
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Never-Ending Summer Reading List
Well, it should be no trouble finding a theme for any part of 2020 – even if the summer slipped up on us and is now on the downhill slope toward fall. It makes sense that the ‘work from home’ framework would support even more time for reading and blogging and yet this one seems …
Turning Plain Dirt into a Real Asset: ElectriCities Smart Sites Certification Program
Site certification works. In order to attract new development, communities have to prepare for it; site certification tools turn ‘dirt’ into real assets. Certification shows that project work can begin and removes a lot of risk and uncertainty. Having a certified, ‘shovel ready’ site includes environmental assessments, infrastructure details, site planning, and documents that other …
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Incentive Agreement Compliance During COVID: Q&A with Azad Khan, Consultant, Parker Poe Consulting
Due to the economic cliff most businesses fell off of in March, some will not meet the performance milestones set out in incentive agreements negotiated years before. Are communities being flexible on incentive compliance, and if so, how? We asked Azad Khan with Parker Poe Consulting this burning question and others related to incentive compliance. …
Make Remote Meetings Better
The shifting landscape of meetings today has brought front-and-center the need to make meetings better – more productive with better results. There are 55 million meetings a day in the U.S. at a cost of about $1.4 trillion. Some 47% of people say that too many meetings are a drain on the workplace. Dr. Steven …
2020 Creative Give Back Winner Is
Are you wondering how to redevelop a former mill in your town? Then follow the Creative Give Back in 2020. This year’s winner is the Red Rose City Development Corporation in Lancaster, SC. They applied for Creative EDC’s help to redevelop a site that they hope will “eliminate another blighted area around the city and …
Family Forward Workplaces
Q&A with Emily Swartzlander Emily Swartzlander, President of EBS Strategies, will present on Family Forward Workplaces at the upcoming Women’s Economic Development Network Conference. As chief strategist for the North Carolina Early Childhood Foundation’s Family Forward NC, Emily works with employers across the state to inspire them to incorporate family-friendly workplace policies that are good …
Bob Comer will be deeply missed by the Creative EDC family.
We were fortunate to have our lives touched by Bob in many ways. He was a long-time mentor and friend to Crystal Morphis and instrumental in the founding of the firm. His positive attitude, generosity, and kind spirit brought out the best in everyone around him. From Navy Captain to Government Manager to Economic Developer …
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Trends Disrupting Economic Development
There are many trends changing the way economic developers practice. They are changing the way we market a community, develop product, create policy, and measure results. We’ve been talking about trends with our clients, EDOs, and local governments. We summarize some of the trends here, what they are leading us to think about, and how …
The Hottest Trend in Economic Development Fundraising
By Rick Kiernan Convergent Nonprofit Solutions www.linkedin.com/in/rickkiernan/ I’ve been raising money for chambers and economic development organizations for nearly a quarter of a century. For the first 15 years of my fundraising career, those capital campaigns primarily funded new business attraction strategies. Recruit a company to town, and new jobs and capital investment follow. Everyone …
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2019 Salary Survey
Salaries and bonuses are up and more people got raises, according to the recently released 2019 North Carolina Economic Development Salary Survey. Ensuring your organization has a competitive pay and benefits structure is critical to recruiting and retaining talented people. With the new survey results and comparisons to national data, you can be confident you …
2019 Creative Give Back Winner Is…..
The winner of the 2019 Creative Give Back is the City of Waynesboro, VA. Their proposal is to creatively link the city’s cultural and economic offerings with the natural splendor of Shenandoah National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway. The four-mile connecting corridor faces numerous redevelopment challenges such as vacant properties, blight, and lack of coherent development …
Making Blacksburg Sticky for Young Professionals
We love studying millennials. Their economic and leisure preferences are interesting and how they are shaping the workforce is fascinating. So, when the Blacksburg’s Creative Give Back application to re-energize the Young Professionals Program was selected as the 2018 winner, we were totally stoked! It offered us an opportunity to take a deep dive into …
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Comparing Product in NC, SC, & VA – Who Stands Out?
Since product is the #2 challenge in economic development (#1 being workforce), we want to know what the product landscape is in our core market area of NC, SC, and VA. Who has more buildings, certified sites, and rail sites? Your community can be the best at other things, but if you don’t have product, …
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Get Rid of the Annual Performance Review: Use Radical Candor or 4:40 Continuous Feedback Strategies
New ways of work need new standards for communication and feedback. Instead of the (dreaded) annual review, progressive workplaces embrace more frequent – if not continuous – feedback in order to drive employee satisfaction, management leadership, and ultimately company goals. Old-style annual performance reviews can bring a feeling of dread for both participants. It may …