This Week at the ACCE Annual Conference

By Kathy Young, Principal and COO

As the national economic development sponsor for ACCE, the Market Street team always looks forward to early August and the chance to reconnect with friends and clients from around the country. This year’s annual conference is in Savannah, Georgia, a city that is near and dear to me personally. My hometown, Brunswick, is an hour south from the community that some still call “the Hostess City of the South.” I have many family and friends there, and I wrote my Georgia Tech City Planning school entrance essay about General Oglethorpe’s plan for the city, which created the many beautiful squares that are enjoyed by residents and tourists alike.

With more than 1,000 Chamber professionals in Savannah for the week, there have been plenty of opportunities to enjoy the city and learn from its history. As always, ACCE works hard to integrate the host city with the conference agenda without distracting from the valuable workshops, think tanks, keynote presentations, and committee meetings that are scheduled throughout the week. Based on reports from the Market Street team (we have five staff members in attendance) and the social media coverage of the week, this year’s conference has once again provided quality networking opportunities, genuine learning and sharing, and inspiration. 

The vitality of the Chamber profession is evident everywhere you look during the conference, from the First Time Attendee gathering to the recognition of new Life Member honorees. The annual Certified Chamber Executive (CCE) breakfast was once again very well-attended and thought-provoking, as three very experienced Chamber professionals (Harvey Schmitt, Raymond Burns, and Kit Cramer) discussed the legacy of their work. Our CEO, Mac Holladay, moderated the panel following the recognition of the seven new CCEs.

This year the conference featured seven tracks – Leadership; Membership/Revenue/Events; Marketing/Communications; Economic/Community Development; Public Policy/Government Relations; Education/Workforce; and Diversity & Inclusion. Next week’s blog posting will feature more takeaways from various sessions – in the meantime, we want to thank Mac’s guest panelist’s for yesterday’s standing-room-only session on “Inclusive Growth: Policy, Programs, and Progress.” Bob Morgan, President and CEO of the Charlotte Chamber and Courtney Ross, Chief Economic Development Officer for the Nashville Area Chamber were gracious with their time and engaged the attendees. We’re looking forward to Market Street VP Matt Tarleton’s afternoon session on “Attracting and Keeping Millennial Talent,” which will also feature Kate Atwood from the Metro Atlanta Chamber; Shannon Full from the Fox Cities Chamber; and Shannon Hoeg, Chair of the South Shore Chamber’s Young Professionals group.

And finally, I have to give a huge shout out to the ACCE team for expanding the conference app features (with partners at The DoubleDutch Team). For the first time in nearly a decade, I was unable to attend the conference at the last minute. I had already downloaded the app and began using it before my plans were cancelled, so I’ve kept it close all week to follow from afar.

While a lot of session highlights are being shared on Twitter, the conference app has a much more personal feel. Chamber professionals have embraced the app this year, posting photos, key takeaways, and using it to connect with their colleagues from around the country. It also seemed to help fight off the boredom experienced by many during travel delays earlier this week (thank goodness Delta is getting back to normal!).

Even though the app is intended for actual conference attendees, not “observers” like me, I think my app usage and experience reinforces the value of online learning and social networking. In this case, it’s a consolation activity that is helping offset the fact that I can’t be there in person, but there are plenty of chamber professionals who simply can’t accommodate the days away for scheduling or resources reasons.

For anyone out there reading and wondering if they should download the app… it’s not too late to follow along with ACCE. Maybe next year there will be a new category of “virtual attendees” along with the 1,000+ actual attendees!

Check out convention.acce.org for more.

Best Practices and Issues: Back to School Edition

By Kathy Young, Principal and COO

Hard to believe, but students around the country will be heading back to school soon. In many communities, teachers and administrators are already deep into their planning work and preparing for the coming academic year. To celebrate this annual transition, we’re highlighting a few best practices and issues as we reflect on the critical connection between education and economic development.

In a blog post earlier this year, I shared information about a good resource for hands-on learning at the elementary school level, sponsored by Junior Achievement (JA), an organization that has been around for 97 years and has a global reach. Later in the spring I also participated in the “JA Day” at my daughter’s school, which was similar to the program described here. The morning session provided students with the opportunity to learn key business and economic concepts from business community volunteers (who are also often parents). JA provides all of the materials (featured in the photo below), but the volunteers are empowered to deliver the curriculum directly, with only classroom management support from the teacher. 

The experience is rewarding for volunteers and a treat for the students. Teachers have some time to spend on planning, and the school strengthens its relationship with the community. And for those of us with no teaching experience, working with a class of 20 elementary school students was an intense experience. Many schools have guest reader or Principal for a Day programs – which help connect students to business representatives and role models. Those programs give participants a glimpse into the challenges and opportunities that come with public education as well. But if you’d really like to understand the job of a teacher, you literally need to walk a mile in their shoes. Four hours in the classroom only scratches the surface of course, but if you would like to help your community leaders understand some of the educational issues in your schools, developing a partnership with JA might start some great conversations.

One of our client communities in Alabama (Decatur-Morgan County) has been having some fascinating dialogues about education and workforce training for more than a decade, thanks to the launch of the Summer Welding & Electrical Technology (SWeETy) Camp for 9th – 12th grade young ladies from local schools. Hosted by the Decatur-Morgan County Chamber of Commerce and education partners, the camp’s goal is to offer young women an opportunity to learn hands-on about technical skills that can lead to high-paying, satisfying careers in high growth industries. 

Not far away, in Carroll County, Georgia, one of the community’s business leaders, Southwire, developed the cooperative 12 for Life program with the school system in 2007. The program is intended to provide “students a place where they can mix classroom time with time on the floor at a real manufacturing plant, gaining an education, a paycheck, key work and life skills, and the all-important hope—for a diploma, for success in the workplace, and for a better life.” 12 for Life has received national media attention and continues to maintain a focused approach to the initial goals of 2007.

My colleague, Ranada Robinson has shared many other best practices and updates from education field, including takeaways from the 2015 Associated Builders and Contractors, Inc. (ABC) Workforce Week Conference, where she presented this past March, and a webinar that shared research regarding school takeovers by state governments. Stay tuned for more updates about education best practices, trends, and issues that could impact your community.

As August beings, we wish the best to our communities as they transition back into the school year, and look forward to featuring some of the businesses and community leaders that are making education a priority and strengthening the economic and workforce development partnerships that are vital to success.

Immigration and Economic Development

By Ranada Robinson, Research Manager

Yesterday, Market Street participated in the ACCE webinar entitled Immigration and Economic Development: A Regional Approach. It was moderated by Kate Brick with the Partnership for a New American Economy. This bi-partisan organization is dedicated to changing the discussion on immigration to include why making sure immigrants are successful should be a priority in economic development efforts. Contrary to many of the negative stereotypes circulating in the media about immigrants and erecting walls to keep them out, immigrants and foreign-born residents continue to make a significant impact on this nation. During the webinar, Ms. Brick shared these statistics:

• Immigrants make up roughly 13 percent of the nation’s population but started 28 percent of all new US businesses in 2011.
• Over 40 percent of Fortune 500 businesses were started by immigrants or their children.
• These companies employ over 10 million workers globally.
• Immigrants are over-represented in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math employment and are more likely to study in STEM fields than native born Americans.

The webinar featured two speakers: Jason Mathis, Executive Vice President of the Salt Lake Chamber, and Mary Bontrager, Executive Vice President of Regional Workforce Development and Education at the Greater Des Moines Partnership. Here are just a few of the ways these communities and a couple others that were highlighted during the webinar are welcoming and embracing immigrants and their entrepreneurial pursuits.

Salt Lake City, Utah – New Americans Task Force

In 2011, the Utah legislature passed a bill that allows illegal immigrants to apply for a guest worker permit if they pay a fine for being in the country illegally. However, the bill has been highly contested. The program start date has been pushed back over the years, and since the state has not obtained a federal waiver to ensure its constitutionality, lawmakers are now contemplating the law’s repeal. Proponents of the law maintain that it is vital to ensuring that Utah has a strong workforce, particularly in agricultural occupations.

Most recently, the Salt Lake County Government and the Salt Lake Chamber have joined together to launch a New Americans Task Force that includes over 60 private sector, government, and community leaders. Its goal is to develop policy recommendations to make the area more competitive for international talent and business, including supporting proposed reforms to streamline immigration policies. 

According to Immigrant Business, in 2014, immigrants contributed $8 billion to Salt Lake County’s economy. Additionally, from 2009 to 2014, foreign-born population growth in the county has outpaced overall population growth by nearly 15 percentage points. 

Des Moines, Iowa – Immigration Initiative

In 2011, leaders from throughout Central Iowa engaged Market Street to facilitate a dynamic strategic planning process that would become known as Capital Crossroads. The strategy resulted in ten focus areas called “capitals”—one of these is the Social Capital, which encapsulates leadership development, diversity and inclusion initiatives, and community capacity and civility. One of the most aggressive implementation efforts that Market Street has seen in its 19-year history, Capital Crossroads leaders immediately established work groups and have begun many of the initiatives that were recommended in the strategy. In 2015, the Greater Des Moines Partnership announced the launch of the Des Moines Immigration Initiative, which intends to develop policy recommendations to increase and support Des Moines’ immigrant workforce and advocate at the local, state, and federal levels. 

Cincinnati, Ohio – Mayor Cranley’s Task Force on Immigration

In 2014, Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley launched a Task Force on Immigration to develop recommendations to make the city more immigrant-friendly. The Task Force included business leaders, workforce representatives, faith leaders, and representatives of local service organizations and was divided into five subcommittees: education and talent retention, rights and safety, economic development, international attractiveness, and resources and development. In 2015, the Task Force released its report, which includes 14 short-term recommendations and 9 long-term recommendations. One of its major recommendations is the creation of a Center for New Cincinnatians that will require the involvement of many key partners, including the City, the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber, and the University of Cincinnati. The goal of the center is to easily link immigrants with services, both online and via a physical space.

According to the webinar, five percent of Cincinnati’s population is foreign-born, and 8 percent of business owners are foreign-born. In fact 21 percent of the city’s Main Street business owners are immigrants, evidence that immigrants are vitally important to the economy.

Louisville, Kentucky – Global Louisville

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer announced in 2015 a new public-private partnership aimed at attracting and retaining skilled immigrant workers and increasing Louisville’s global presence. Global Louisville is supported by the Metro Louisville government and Greater Louisville Inc., the regional chamber of commerce. The nonprofit will work on developing ways to retain students who are on temporary visas, increasing foreign student enrollment, and assisting immigrants looking for employment. This supports one of the goals in the 2014 Advantage Louisville Strategy, facilitated by Market Street: Cultivate Greater Louisville’s Diverse Talent.

According to Global Louisville, 5 percent of the population are foreign-born as are 5.1 percent of the employed workforce. However, immigrants are overrepresented in several areas: they make up 7.5 percent of all STEM workers, 12.9 percent of professional and business services employees, 15.3 percent of art, entertainment, and hospitality employees, 18.2 percent of workers in manufacturing, and 18.5 percent of education and health employees.

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It is clear that ignoring immigration or even fighting immigration would be detrimental to the American economy—particularly when the concept of America was based on providing an asylum and new way of life for immigrants. Statistics show that it is untrue that immigrants are a drain on our economy—when “new Americans” are given a chance to thrive, they truly do, through filling workforce gaps and starting businesses. 

Evident across the country in our client communities is the desire to leverage the increasing diversity, not dampen it. What makes America great is the strengths, skills, knowledge, and perspectives of all of the diverse talent present in this country. Our differences make us better—we’re able to accomplish more together celebrating these differences than as a monolithic unit. It is important that communities continue working hard to develop strategies to embrace and support the workforce, including immigrants.

A New Kind of Civic Engagement

By Stephanie Allen, Project Assistant 

Tuesday I was reading an article on the planetizen blog detailing the three most common community engagement mistakes. None of the mistakes were particularly surprising: 

1. Expecting too much time, 

2. Expecting too much empathy for specific objectives, 

3. Expecting too much specialized knowledge. 

Nevertheless, it is always good to be reminded that community participants—even those who want to participate and make a point to do so—have limited time, don’t always think the objectives being considered deal with the issues they care about, and are typically not familiar with the jargon of our urban planning/economic development world nor with our methods. 

In order to get the most out of civic engagement, we would do well to keep these three common mistakes in mind and to do our best to avoid making them.

Enter web-based civic engagement. Getting community buy-in is hugely important for successful initiatives, but public meetings are not always convenient for community members. Not only are public meetings not always convenient, but the format of a public meeting means that it must focus on specific objectives, at the risk of ignoring input about community issues not obviously related to the objective at hand. In addition, public meetings must be pitched at a level of explanation that will engage those with little to no economic development knowledge and, at the same time, not bore those with higher levels of specialized knowledge. 

Web-based civic engagement gives us tools to overcome some of the challenges of public meetings that can lead to the common community engagement mistakes.

First of all, online participation is much more convenient. Community members can participate whenever they can find time and from wherever they are. This provides an opportunity to get input from a wider cross-section of the community. In addition, web-based engagement offers the ability to share a lot more research, to make that research available to the public to peruse at their leisure, to translate that research into specific community impacts and do so in accessible language for those without specialized economic development knowledge, and to make a case for how particular objectives and initiatives link up with issues community members put on the front burner.

Like a public meeting, web-based engagement can be set up in such a way as to foster public conversation among community members and between community members and economic developers. Comments can be addressed. Questions can be answered. And, the ability to access this information anywhere and anytime can lead to more transparency, which can help with buy-in.

So, is the future of civic engagement online? Partly? Certainly engagement comes in many forms and for so many things physical presence and committed engagement are hugely important, but web-based engagement can help to supplement in-person engagement. 

Online surveys are one type of web-based engagement, with which we are all by now most likely familiar. I know we at Market Street absolutely rely on them to help us get a picture of the strengths and challenges community members see. 

But, surveys are just the tip of the iceberg. Here’s a list of 50 web-based tools for civic engagement compiled by communitymatters.org:

1. coUrbanize: List project information for development proposals and gather online feedback.

2. Cityzen: Gathers feedback by integrating polling and social media sites.

3. Community Remarks: Map-based tool for facilitating dialogue and collecting feedback.

4. Crowdbrite: Organizes comments for online brainstorming sessions and workshops.

5. EngagementHQ: Provides information and gathers feedback for decision-making.

6. MetroQuest: Incorporates scenario planning and visualizations for informing the public and collecting feedback.

7. SeeClickFix: For reporting and responding to neighborhood issues.

8. Neighborland: Forum that encourages community discussion and action at the neighborhood level.

9. PublicStuff: Communication system for reporting and resolving community concerns.

10. MindMixer: Ideation platform for community projects. 

11. NextDoor: Private social network and forum for neighborhoods.

12. Adopt-a-Hydrant: Allows citizens to help maintain public infrastructure. 

13. CivicInsight: Platform for sharing progress on development of blighted properties.

14. i-Neighbors: Free community website and discussion forum. 

15. Recovers: Engages the public in disaster preparedness and recovery.

16. EngagingPlans: Information sharing and feedback forum for productive participation.

17. Street Bump: Crowdsourcing application to improve public streets.

18. neighbor.ly: Crowdfunding platform to promote local investment in improvement projects.

19. TellUs Toolkit: Map-based tools for engagement and decision-making.

20. Budget Simulator: Tool for educating about budget priorities and collecting feedback.

21. CrowdHall: Interactive town halls meetings.

22. Citizinvestor: Crowdfunding and civic engagement platform for local government projects.

23. Open Town Hall: Online public comment forum for government.

24. Shareabouts: Flexible tool for gathering public input on a map.

25. Poll Everywhere: Collects audience responses in real time, live, or via the web.

26. Tidepools: Collaborative mobile mapping platform for gathering and sharing hyperlocal information.

27. Community PlanIt: Online game that makes planning playful, while collecting insight on community decisions. 

28. Open311: System for connecting citizens to government for reporting non-emergency issues.

29. DialogueApp: Promotes dialogue to solve policy challenges with citizen input.

30. Loomio: Online tool for collaborative decision-making.

31. PlaceSpeak: Location-based community consultation platform.

32. Citizen Budget: Involves residents in budgeting.

33. e-Deliberation: Collaborative platform for large group decision-making.

34. CrowdGauge: Open-source framework for building educational online games related to public priority setting.

35. Citizen Space: Manage, publicize, and archive all public feedback activity.

36. Zilino: Host deliberative online forums and facilitated participatory meetings.

37. WeJit: Collaborative online decision-making, brainstorming, debating, prioritizing, and more. 

38. Ethelo Decisions: Framework for engagement, conflict resolution, and collective determination.

39. Community Almanac: Contribute and collect stories about your community. 

40. GitHub: Connecting government employees with the public to collaborate on code, data, and policy.

41. VividMaps: Engages citizens to map and promote local community assets.

42. OSCity: Search, visualize, and combine data to gain insight on spatial planning. (EU only.)

43. Civic Commons: Promoting conversations and connections that have the power to become informed, productive, collective civic action.

44. Crowdmap: Collaborative mapping.

45. Codigital: Get input on important issues.

46. All Our Ideas: Collect and prioritize ideas through a democratic, transparent, and efficient process.

47. Neighborhow: Create useful how-to guides for the community.

48. OurCommonPlace: A community web-platform for connecting neighbors.

49. Front Porch Forum: A free community forum, helping neighbors connect.

50. PrioritySpend: Prioritization tool based on valuing ideas and possible actions.

The City vs. The Suburbs

Stephanie Allen, Project Assistant

Earlier this month, Planetizen ran an article entitled “What Millennials Want, and Why it Doesn’t Matter.” The title was intriguing. We’re so focused on what millennials want—there are multitudes of articles every month detailing new research on what millennials say they want, on what they buy, on where they move, where they travel, their psychology, etc. And, obviously, we think it does matter what millennials want or we wouldn’t be doing so much research or writing and reading so many articles. We think it matters because millennials are the up and comers. They’re the young talent everyone wants to attract. They’re the future of our cities and towns and country. And, there are a lot of them (70 or 80 million depending on who’s counting). Of course we should care what they want. Right? 

I had to read the article. 

Spoiler alert: it turns out that it does matter what millennials want, surprise. However, and this really was surprising, at least when it comes to housing and transportation preferences, millennials want the same thing their parents and grandparents want these days: not to have to drive so much. 

Millennials, like their parents and grandparents, on the whole prefer to live in single-family homes in mixed-use areas where they rarely need a car. 

For a while we were told that millennials loved living in the city. In the past year, however, we’re seen a flurry of articles about millennials’ preferences for suburban living (e.g. “Generation Y Prefers Suburban Home Over City Condo” from The Wall Street Journal last year, “Think Millennials Prefer The City? Think Again” on fivethirtyeight.com, and “What if City-Loving Millennials Are Just a Myth?” on the urbanedge blog, just to name a few). One theory is that as millennals get older, make more money, want to settle down and perhaps raise children, they are following the lead of previous generations and moving to the ‘burbs. According to some who hold this theory, the reason so many older millennials still live in cities isn’t because they love city living, but rather that they came of settling-down age in a down economy and couldn’t afford to move to the suburbs. Instead, they stayed in their downtown apartments or turned to more affordable, low-income, in-town neighborhoods and began gentrifying them. Since they couldn’t afford suburbia, they bought the next best thing. 

Whatever your theory, the research indicates that millennials want to live in single-family homes outside of city centers. But, new research suggests that they don’t want to live in the sleepy, bedroom communities that attracted previous generations. They want compact mixed-use and they don’t want to have to rely on a car. 

Perhaps during all those extra years in the city in their 20s (compared to previous generations) they got used to the amenities of the city and the ease of walking, biking, and using public transit. According to Ben Cummins, author of the aforementioned “What Millennials Want, and Why it Doesn’t Matter,” it’s not just millennials who want compact mixed-use though. Preference surveys suggest that people of all ages prefer mixed-use neighborhoods to purely residential ones.

The thrust of Cummins’ article is that the majority of people across age groups prefer single-family homes in mixed-use neighborhoods, but most of those people don’t get what they want. Our housing stock is mostly split into apartments and condos in densely populated, mixed-use, urban areas and single-family homes in residential, suburban areas. In the city vs. the suburbs debate, there’s no clear winner. Both have things we want and living in either requires we sacrifice other things we want.

Perhaps this goes some way towards explaining why gentrified in-town neighborhoods are so popular. They typically include single-family homes but are mixed-use. They are often served by public transit and are both walkable and bikeable.

If we could somehow rework suburban areas to be more mixed-use and less car-centric, we might be able to please a lot of people. For the last couple of years we’ve heard all sorts of talk about the death of the suburbs. Maybe it is time for the car-centric, residential suburb to die and be reborn as a more walkable, more condensed, mixed-use suburb. Clearly Americans are still in love with the suburban idea, but the suburbs must change to accommodate changing ideals.

That is, unless the driverless car disrupts this whole desire for walkability and ease of transit and makes the car-centric, residential suburb once again supremely desirable. For more on that, check out Christopher Mims’ “Driverless Cars Fuel Suburban Sprawl” from The Wall Street Journal this week.

Joplin, Five Years Later

By Ranada Robinson, Research Manager

During this week five years ago, Market Street was on its way to Joplin, Missouri, where on May 22, 2011, a catastrophic EF5-rated tornado wreaked havoc. This deadly tornado wiped out entire areas of the city, affecting residents and businesses alike. To assist with post-tornado business recovery, Market Street provided pro bono assistance to the Joplin Business Recovery and Expansion Initiative. During our time there, we learned from the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce that over 500 businesses were affected in some way; roughly two-thirds of Joplin’s businesses were operating, many in a temporary location; and that the status of over 100 businesses was unknown.

The tornado came on the heels of the Great Recession, which resulted in major challenges for the region. Declining populations in some communities, low average annual wages, high total and youth poverty rates, a relatively larger share of adults with no high school diploma, and the loss of a number of major employers were all issues that the Joplin Region was dealing with.

Five years later, Joplin has emerged as a case study for communities who experience natural disaster. The way the community and its leadership pulled together to overcome this awful circumstance is inspirational. The Joplin Area Chamber and its many partners are to be commended for their steadfast efforts to pull the city out of the debris and focus on its growth and success.

The following charts provide a data profile of the City of Joplin, which is located in Jasper and Newton counties. Because of the timing of the tornado, many of its impacts are not reflected in data until 2012. As the charts and tables will illustrate, Joplin has had slow but steady progress over the five years since the tornado. The city is gaining population and jobs, unemployment is declining, and the number of firms is increasing. However, as is not surprising, there is still a ways to go. Although poverty is decreasing in Newton County, it is increasing in Jasper County. Average annual wages significantly lag behind those of the state and nation, and per capita income has slightly declined. 

In the coming weeks, we will to share more insight into Joplin’s post-tornado efforts and highlight the economic development component of their resilience and dedication.

Population

Source: US Census Bureau

Population Index

Source: US Census Bureau

Employment

Source: US Census Bureau

Employment Index

Source: Economic Modeling Specialists Intl

Unemployment

Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics

Average Annual Wages

Source: Economic Modeling Specialists Intl

Establishments

Source: Economic Modeling Specialists Intl

Per Capita Income

Source: Economic Modeling Specialists Intl

Poverty

Source: Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates

Youth Poverty

Source: Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates

Relocating a highway can potentially refresh a downtown

By Evan Roberston, Senior Project Associate
Op-Ed, reprinted from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

At any given moment, communities across metro Atlanta spend substantial sums on transportation infrastructure. Projects vary in size and scope, and include building and repairing roads and bridges, adding entrance and exit ramps, or updating and adding traffic lights.

For the vast majority of people, these investments go by relatively unnoticed. After a year or two, we only remember the inconvenience it caused during our morning or evening commute. We judge their success by how safe we feel on the road and how much less we sit in traffic.

Outside of improving the flow of cars and trucks, we metro Atlantans usually don’t ask more from these investments. There is little expectation that they will result in the wholesale transformation of our community. But every now and again, an infrastructure project comes along that presents local residents with the opportunity to change course and position their community for future success.

In Douglas County and the city of Douglasville, community stakeholders are hoping to seize the relocation of Georgia Highway 92 as such an opportunity. When the project is complete, Highway 92 will brush along the eastern outskirts of downtown Douglasville rather than running directly through it. While highway relocations have typically had damaging effects on downtowns across Georgia – the impact on Douglasville can be different.

At present, many traveling along this stretch of the highway corridor are simply trying to get home, or go to work. They are driving through Douglasville’s downtown, and not driving to it. Once the relocation project is complete, downtown Douglasville, unburdened by commuter traffic, can reassert itself as the soul of Douglas County and establish itself as a regional destination.

The task at hand for our GeorgiaForward Young Gamechangers team, aptly named “Destination Downtown,” was to develop a way forward for, and position downtown Douglasville for, success. It was clear that this process would require the hearts and minds of Douglasville and Douglas County residents to be persuaded that transformation is possible.

We believe the public and private space in downtown Douglasville is anything but inflexible. Our recommendations include engaging in a tactical campaign to spark an open and honest conversation of what its downtown could become both short-term and well into the future.

Our team came up with an encompassing set of big ideas to cement downtown Douglasville as a destination for residents and visitors alike. Our ideas range in scope from creating an inviting gateway corridor that will connect Highway 92 with the core commercial district, to engaging in a community-wide branding campaign culminating in a “grand reopening” event. Finally, catalyst developments promoting a live-work-play lifestyle in downtown Douglasville can help solidify its revitalization.

Metro Atlanta’s transportation investments don’t need to solely impact our mobility. Whatever the investment may be, infrastructure projects allow us to view our built environment in new light and afford us the opportunity to make our communities and the broader region a better place to live. For one metro Atlanta area community, the relocation of a highway has given it the chance to rejuvenate its heart.