Action 5: Develop Robust Regional and Local Partnerships
Formulate a Systematic Statewide Industrial Site Readiness Plan
The availability of high-quality commercial sites and infrastructure is critical for economic growth. When companies are ready to grow, they expect to find facilities that meet their requirements — class-A office, research and development or manufacturing space with ready infrastructure access.
RIEDC markets Rhode Island to out-of-state companies, works with industry sectors, provides financing, project development, and business assistance and connections to workforce development programs. But the final piece of a company’s move or expansion — site selection and development — is often in local hands. That is why a core element of this Economic Growth Plan is to develop robust regional and local partnerships.
We must work in partnerships to ensure that Rhode Island has a reliable supply of sites suitable for economic growth so that we may respond nimbly when our business attraction efforts succeed. We want to be able to seize what we sense will be spill-over opportunities from neighboring states.
RIEDC will develop a systematic, statewide site strategic plan that will align our assets with market opportunities. We have issued an RFP to contract with a national site consultant to evaluate individual sites as to their readiness and best use, provide an analysis of the diversity of sites available, assess which sites are best aligned to which industries, and develop a process to formally evaluate future sites.
It is easy to get excited about what Rhode Island has to offer: the Route 116-99 corridor in the northern section of the state with its proximity to Boston metro;
the Providence metropolitan core with its concentration of hospitals and institutions of higher education; the I-95 triangle with T.F.Green Airport, Amgen and Quonset Business Park; Aquidneck Island and the East Bay with the Navy, defense, marine trades and high technology companies. From Woonsocket to Westerly and from Pawtucket to Portsmouth, Rhode Island is alive with opportunity. Strong regional and local partnerships will allow us to build strategically on our tremendous regional economic strengths. Such partnerships are being put to work already on three high-priority economic development projects:
1) I-195 Surplus Property
The relocation of I-195 will make more than 19 acres of land available for redevelopment adjacent to the area of Providence known as the Jewelry District. This is a premier opportunity to create a new hub of high-wage job growth with significant office and commercial space.
In April 2008, RIEDC, the Department of Transportation and the city of Providence entered into a partnership agreement to take full strategic advantage of this opportunity. The partnership agreed to support an assessment of the development parcels that reflects the community’s vision for redevelopment and issued a request for proposals to perform a professional redevelopment and marketing analysis for the surplus property. After careful review, a selection committee chose Cambridge-based Chan Krieger Sieniewicz to perform the analysis.
Outcomes from this assessment will help us realize the full value of the relocation property and achieve the economic development objectives of both the city and the state. Years from now we will look at our capital city’s new skyline and see the proof that the relocation plan was a transformative opportunity for Rhode Island’s economy.
2) Quonset
The Quonset Business Park in North Kingstown is unique in Rhode Island, equipped with water and sewer systems and served by air, rail and an existing port. The transportation infrastructure was vastly improved by the completion of highway connections to Route 4. As the park continues to grow and mature, planning for its further development needs to be integrated into broader planning for the Post Road district, the West Bay region, and the state as a whole. The General Assembly has created a commission to review the future of the park.
3) Tourism
The tourism industry employs roughly 50,000 Rhode Islanders. In 2009, partnerships will be the key to maintaining Rhode Island’s tourist economy — and even expanding it. Marketed effectively, Rhode Island could be a prime tourist destination in a year when household and business budgets are constrained, as its exceptional tourist attractions are easily and inexpensively accessible within three hours by car to 50 million people. Rhode Island Tourism will actively pursue this "drive" market with an aggressive inte-grated public relations and marketing campaign, and promote value packages created by private industry partners. In addition, the Rhode Island tourism industry, in partnership with local media, will support a "Staycations" campaign to market our state’s attractions to Rhode Islanders who plan to spend their summer vacation at home.
Rhode Island Tourism will also redouble its efforts to bring in visitors from all over the world. New partnerships have been formed with New York-based international package travel wholesalers to expand market share in the United Kingdom, Germany, China and beyond. Group promotion will concentrate on the less recession-affected niche markets such as educational travel, destination weddings, and reunion tours. A unique ambassador program supported by the Providence/Warwick CVB and Newport CVB will encourage local private industry partners to invite their national trade organizations to meet and convene in Rhode Island.