Economic Development Strategic Plan: Timeline

An economic strategy for Sandy: What is it and why is it important?

So… what is an economic development strategic plan?  Simply put, it is a tool to articulate and realize our community's economic vision and take control of our economic future.  At the heart of an Economic Development Strategic Plan is a roadmap to achieving this economic vision, typically in a 5- to 10-year time horizon.

Sandy's Economic Development Strategic Plan:

• Establishes a baseline against which to assess Sandy’s economy by providing a snapshot of the socioeconomic characteristics of the city over time, and compared to the county, region, or peer cities.
• Identifies and convene partners and stakeholders in Sandy’s economic future and negotiates roles, capacities, and coordination.
• Articulates a diverse, sustainable, equitable and place-based vision for Sandy’s economic future and establish a roadmap for how to achieve it.
• Signals intention on the part of the city and its partners regarding economic policy to provide assurance to potential investors and developers.
• Facilitates implementation by identifying priority actions to develop near-term momentum and excitement for mid- and longer-term interventions.
   

How does it relate to the Comprehensive Plan and the Economic Opportunities Analysis (EOA)?

A comprehensive plan is a long-term plan for how a city grows and develops, involving issues like land use, transportation and infrastructure, housing, and the economy.  An economic development strategic plan is more tactical, focused on near-term actions that cities can take to be more competitive, create more and better jobs, support business owners, or make their economy more sustainable and resilient.  Because these two plans are related, the actions in an EDSP should be in alignment with the policies advanced by the comprehensive plan.

An economic opportunities analysis is a required planning document for some cities under Oregon law. It includes a detailed employment lands inventory to ensure that cities have the land area available, with appropriate zoning and development regulations, to accommodate anticipated growth without an unplanned expansion of the urban growth boundary (UGB).  EOAs typically include a preliminary identification of potential target industries, so when done in conjunction, an EDSP will take the industries suggested by the EOA, select the opportunities best aligned with the city’s economic vision and market context, and identified HOW the city can pursue them.

Sandy has the unique opportunity of completing all three of these plans at the same time, allowing for coordination across city departments and partner organizations and setting the stage for sustainable, community-supported economic growth.

Economic Development Advisory Board meeting - May 17th, 2022

At the City of Sandy Economic Development Advisory Board (EDAB) meeting in May, city staff introduced Elliot Weiss of Community Attributes, Inc. (CAI), the contractor selected by the City of Sandy to create its first economic development strategic plan (EDSP). Mr. Weiss introduced the plan as a five to fifteen year roadmap to achieving an economic vision for the community, and an incredibly effective tool for business attraction and development. The plan will be developed in six stages:

1. Project kickoff and coordination with other stakeholders: Introducing CAI to key staff, elected officials and internal stakeholder groups like this advisory board and setting schedules for future meetings. The City of Sandy is also updating its Comprehensive Plan and economic opportunities analysis (EOA) simultaneously along with this economic development strategic plan -- the development of all three of these reports will provide tons of new, updated economic data for the City of Sandy to work with.
2. Identifying existing conditions and creating a landscape assessment for the community: This stage of the project will see CAI develop a basic landscape assessment of the community to provide a baseline as well as the collection of demographic and socioeconomic data about the community.
3. Performing a SWOT analysis: This analysis looks at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in existence in our community:
4. Public & stakeholder engagement: There will be a lot of meetings with groups related to the economic development of Sandy (five or six meetings with this committee, plus a meeting with a technical advisory group made up of city staffers), plus a large public stakeholder engagement event later in the year.
5. Visioning and goals: At this stage, CAI will synthesize all of the data collected to this point and convert it into a draft report with specific recommendations.
6. Strategies, actions and implementation: The draft report will be refined through review by stakeholders in several stages and a final report is produced.

Elliot also showed the board examples of how the data would be presented in the report using real-time data from Sandy.

You can take a look at the slide deck for this meeting using the link provided below.

CAI presentation slide deck from 5/17/22 EDAB meeting

Economic Development Advisory Board meeting - July 27th, 2022

At our July meeting, Elliot started by giving the board a brief update of where the plan stands at the moment (landscape assessment about halfway done, planning the stakeholder engagement event for the fall, setting a January 2023 completion date for this project, coordination with EOA and Comp Plan contractors). He also showed the data he collected from the EDAB at the last meeting by asking these four questions:

1. What is your #1 objective for this project? Most interesting answer "Who should we be attracting to make Sandy a complete community?"
2. What is one economic question you would like us to address with data? Most interesting answers "Where are we not sufficiently diversified (economically speaking)?" "Who considers Sandy to be an economic hub? (Gov'y, Boring, Estacada, unincorporated Clackamas County, the Villages?)
3. What is one of Sandy's most important assets?
4. If this plan were magic, what one challenge or problem for Sandy would it solve? Most interesting answer "How do we create an adequate number of living wage jobs, regardless of industry?

Mr. Weiss then made a preliminary attempt to answer these questions graphically with data, focusing particularly on the questions of Sandy's market area and how to create living wage jobs regardless of industry.

You can take a look at the slide deck for this meeting using the link provided below.

CAI presentation slide deck from 7/27/22 EDAB meeting

Economic Development Advisory Board meeting - September 27th, 2022

The EDAB's September meeting once again began with a brief update on the project status (landscape analysis almost complete, public stakeholder event planned for late September, draft vision and goals by mid-October). CAI is also starting the SWOT analysis piece now, and plans to begin the visioning and goals piece of the project in early October with a first draft of the report due in December for the EDAB to review. Elliot showed the Board a lot of the data that has been collected already and described the process of canvassing the community. He also highlighted potential "avenues of growth" for Sandy, such as tourism, metals fabrication, health care, specialty food and beverage and remote work.

The exercise for the evening was to demonstrate some of the hard choices the Board will tackle by providing two opposing views of growth in which there is no right and wrong approach and asking board members where they fall on a spectrum when looking at the two choices. For example, the first spectrum had "leveraging our assets like trails, the Sandy River, Mount Hood, etc to attract visitors and tourism". On the other side of the spectrum was "focusing on high wage jobs". Board members all decided individually where they stood on this question by placing a dot on the spectrum and defending their choice. Five questions like this were asked in total.

You can take a look at the slide deck for this meeting using the link provided below.

CAI presentation slide deck from 9/27/22 EDAB meeting

Economic Development Advisory Board meeting - November 30th, 2022

At the EDAB's November meeting, Elliot and the Board completed the SWOT analysis for the community from the Board's perspective -- strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to the community were listed out and discussed in detail. Elliot also presented the Board with two competing versions of a vision statement for Sandy and worked with the board to combine those statements into one better statement.

Finally, Mr. Weiss provided a series of draft goals statements for the EDAB to debate and discuss:

1. Improve systems to ensure broad and durable access to economic opportunity and maintain Sandy's high quality of life.
2. Leverage our investments in technology to maximize economic benefits.
3. Build on our businesses and workers in manufacturing to establish Sandy as a destination for metals fabrication and related activities.
4. Cultivate emerging innovators in our specialty food and beverage industries and align business development activities with the robust food storage and processing sector of the region.
5. Invest in hospitality and place-based tourism to make Sandy the most active and vibrant base camp for Mr. Hood area adventures.
6. Be a leader as both retail hub and heart of east Clackamas County.

You can take a look at the slide deck for this meeting using the link provided below.

CAI presentation slide deck from 11/30/22 EDAB meeting

Economic Development Advisory Board meeting - March 1st, 2023

At the EDAB's March 2023 meeting, Elliot and the Board continued to discuss the vision and goals piece of the plan.

Project Status: We are now in the process of completing the final review of this report before it goes to the City Council for final review and approval.

Vision & Goals: The vision statement for the report was reviewed and given final approval by the Board. The six primary goals were presented (and finalized) as follows:

1. Improve systems to ensure broad and durable access to economic opportunity and maintain Sandy's high quality of life.
2. Leverage our investments in technology to maximize economic benefit.
3. Build on our assets in manufacturing to establish Sandy as a destination for metals fabrication and related activities.
4. Cultivate innovation in specialty food and beverage industries and align with the region's robust food storage and processing sector.
5. Invest in hospitality and place-based tourism to make Sandy the most active and vibrant basecamp for Mount Hood area adventures.
6. Be a leader as both retail hub and heart of East Clackamas County.

Individual strategies (2-3 per goal) and action items were presented to the EDAB for each goal. They will also add level of effort required, priority, and other metrics to these strategies going forward.

How to Use the Plan: Elliot presented a completed page from the plan to show how goals, strategies and actions will be presented in the final report.

It was determined at this meeting that one more EDAB meeting would be required to complete this review before promoting it to the City Council for final review. That additional board meeting will be scheduled for April 5, 2023 and will confirm strategies, leads and partners.

You can take a look at the slide deck for this meeting using the link provided below.

CAI presentation slide deck from 3/1/23 EDAB meeting

Economic Development Advisory Board meeting - April 5th, 2023

At the EDAB's April 2023 meeting, Elliot and the Board incorporated changes to strategies and actions developed at the last meeting. The board also saw implementation metrics for the first time and completed reviewing those metrics.

Project Status: This action completes the EDAB review of this strategic plan. The Board voted unanimously (6-0) to forward this plan (including any modifications made this evening) to the City Council for final review and adoption.

Implementation metrics: Action item modifications suggested by the Board have been included in the plan. Implementation metrics are now listed, but no baseline data exists for these metrics. Elliot has agreed to provide starting point data for a collection of the more important metrics to help the City establish a baseline.

There will be between six and nine implementation metrics for each goal. Some of these metrics are used in more than one strategy listed under a goal.

You can take a look at the slide deck for this meeting using the link provided below.

CAI presentation slide deck from 4/5/23 EDAB meeting

City Council meeting - May 15th, 2023

At the City Council's regularly scheduled meeting in May 2023, Elliot presented the plan draft to the Sandy City Council for a final review.  This gave the City Council an in-depth look at the plan with the capacity to ask targeted questions and request final changes to the content in preparation for releasing the full plan to the public.

Most of the Council discussion centered on the content of the plan and what to emphasize within it, but there was broad agreement that this plan was well researched and well crafted.  You can view video of the entirety of the May 15th City Council meeting by clicking here.

You can take a look at the slide deck for this meeting using the link provided below. 

CAI presentation slide deck from 5/15/23 City Council meeting