Director’s Corner: Development Ready Sites

In last month’s issue, I highlighted the new investment and job creation in Wayne County over the past 12 months. The hard work and the results of my dedicated EDGE professionals demonstrates CEO Ficano’s commitment to our partners and stakeholders to make the business environment in Wayne County more unique, more attractive, and more conducive to job creation and new investment than anywhere else in the United States. Wayne County stands behind that pledge to you in 2010.

The Development Ready Communities (DRC) program is designed to dramatically increase coordination on development projects between Wayne County and its local communities. The DRC is a participatory program, and requires that local units of government agree to provide certain resources and access to information to Wayne County.

Through the Development-Ready Communities initiative, EDGE is assembling an inventory of development-ready sites within the county. Thanks in large part to the support and partnership of our local community officials and their staff, private landowners, real estate professionals, as well as EDGE professionals, nearly 300 such sites are inventoried and currently marketed on the real estate websites CPIX (maintained by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation) and CoStar.

CPIX and CoStar are web-based real estate marketing sites and are viewed by thousands of subscribers every day. CPIX-Michigan advertises and showcases more than 21,000 available properties to more than 2,200 subscribers. CoStar is a national property and real estate marketing site. Both sites provide detailed descriptions of vacant and developed properties, pricing, land/building sizes, zoning, and links to the complete demographic data of the community and the surrounding area.

EDGE is taking the lead in pushing economic development for the region. By using resources like CPIX and Costar, we are utilizing powerful tools for business attraction as we diversify our economy and transform how we do business. Everyday, my staff works tirelessly to identify, attract, and deliver new growth industries to Wayne County. We seek to attract and nurture new manufacturing technology companies that rely upon our highly-trained and skilled workforce. Most importantly, Wayne County is strategically implementing new ways for government to carry out its business through enhanced communication, streamlined processes, and other efforts to create a customer-friendly environment for business.

I wish to thank those of you who have partnered with Wayne County in our efforts and I extend an invitation to those of you who wish to join us.

Turkia Awada Mullin is an Assistant CEO and Chief Development Officer of Wayne County’s Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE).