ED Now

Each new year brings new leadership to IEDC’s board of directors. Dr. Eloisa Klementich, CEcD, president and CEO of Invest Atlanta, will serve as IEDC’s board chair in 2024.

Communities, developers, and real estate asset managers will continue to need to reimagine and reinvent shopping malls into mixed-use redevelopments. The availability of large amounts of land, building space, parking capacity, and typically superior access to roadway connections, provides the physical resources to transform malls from predominantly single-use spaces to a dramatically more varied mix of uses.

IEDC recently held a webinar titled “Truth, Myth, and Mystery: Making Sense of Real Estate Today” based on the latest report from the Economic Development Research Partners (EDRP). The speakers discussed the latest trends in real estate for economic developers to know from multiple perspectives. Economic developers risk irrelevance in industrial real estate unless they keep up with the best practices in site marketing and preparation, according to Courtney Dunbar, CEcD, EDFP, AICP, director of site selection at Burns & McDonnell. Dunbar explained the importance of preparing and organizing due diligence material for potential buyers so they can quickly assess the suitability of the site. Clear labeling of key components of ...

IEDC’s 2022 Economic Future Forum will be held next month in Richardson, Texas. A few of our conference sponsors shared some exciting economic development projects happening in the North Dallas cities of Richardson, Addison, and Allen.

Despite recording the lowest job growth since September, the U.S. economy “continues to have underlying momentum,” according to economist Vincent Reinhart. The growth shrunk unemployment to 3.6 percent—the lowest since the pandemic began—in the midst of Russian aggression against Ukraine, the highest inflation in 40 years, and the ongoing effects of the pandemic. In March alone, 418,000 people began searching for employment and hiring gains were made in restaurants and bars (+61,000), retail (+49,000), manufacturing (+38,000), hospitality (+25,000), and construction (+19,000). The gains for construction signify a return to pre-pandemic levels for the sector. U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh touted wage and ...

For roughly the past year, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported that job openings exceed the number of people unemployed. This is a dramatic shift from the previous year when the nation reported its highest unemployment numbers since the Great Depression. What is going on? The shortage has many reported causes, and industries are impacted very differently on their way to economic recovery. To understand the effects of the labor shortage, one must first understand why it is happening— and no, it’s not because people are getting lazy. Experts in the field have examined four primary factors behind the labor shortage: an increase in savings; early retirements; lack of access to ...

Small companies play a critical role in rural communities where there are fewer economic development opportunities than in urban areas. This is particularly true of second-stage companies, powerful job creators that have moved beyond the startup phase and are striving to scale larger. To accelerate growth for rural second-stagers, the Edward Lowe Foundation has developed a new program model that blends customized research, leadership development, and peer learning.

The latest economic data show some U.S. cities slowly bouncing back from the Covid doldrums. But a longer-term problem looms in 2022 and beyond for the nation’s urban centers. At issue is that many of the nation’s downtowns, large and small, are in danger of hollowing out and transforming into ghost towns as the tsunami of the pandemic recedes and workers across the nation demand remote work as a staple of employment. “We forecast that 25 to 30 percent of the U.S. workforce will be working-from-home one or more days a week after the pandemic,” said Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics, which tracks attitudes about remote working. That percentage could grow even more over time. The group estimates ...