The City of Ranson maintains a strong track record of working with businesses, developers, and investors to attract and leverage resources that can help projects succeed. This includes building strong relationships and communicating the city’s willingness and share its solid abilities to seek and secure regional, state and federal grants, subsidized loans, incentives and other resources to support economic development projects. Through Economic Resource Mapping, I am able to link the location and project to the a variety of potential economic resources.
Resource mapping begins by fist defining the community character and the vision for future development and understanding how state and federal programs qualify and distribute resources. In Ranson, the City Council adopted a bold vision for the future through the comprehensive plan. For the purposes of resource mapping, each with unique characteristics and visions for development has been further organized into the five census tracts that make up Ranson.
Once this high level planning was mapped, I worked with the city’s grant writer, Sustainable Strategies DC, to identified which of the thirty-one various economic resources area available that could help a development project come to fruition. A brief program description is included for potential investors to explore the applicability to their development. This memo creates a map forward to bridge the city’s vision with the numerous resources available to implement a project.
This mapping was critical in understanding new federal programs like Opportunity Zones. When this program was announced, the city was positioned to pursue this status. This led to the governor designating three of the five censuses tracts in Ranson as Opportunity Zones, creating an economic advantage for private development in the city.
The economic resource mapping is shared broadly with potential investors in addition to the glossy master plans and illustrated renderings. The clarity of these resources along with the support of the City Council, provide a competitive advantage for an investor exploring opportunities in Ranson. Once a development project is matched with specific resources, I work at the federal, state, or local level, to connect the development project to the specific resource. This includes coordination with the state and county development offices to advocate for these private investments.