Behind any vibrant, flourishing community is the work of economic development teams who tirelessly strive to strengthen and diversify the economy through job creation, business attraction, expansion and retention efforts, and collaboration—all of which contribute to community wellbeing and advancement and a way of life that is so revered by so many.
Without these efforts, valued services and amenities like infrastructure fail to meet the ever-changing needs of communities, deficits that can be exacerbated by market ebbs and flows and geopolitical conditions outside of their control. For matters within control, however, organizations like the Economic Development Council of Colorado (EDCC) have spent the last five decades working to support economic development activities state-wide, offering education, resources, and advocacy while serving as a conduit for relationships and ideas to take shape.
“It’s grassroots,” says Executive Director Kim Woodworth. “Pull up your bootstraps type of work,” of the approach that has been taken by EDCC and its partners.
While the organization has taken many forms throughout the years, over the last decade especially, the team at EDCC has been working to sustain its impact through a unified vision for growth for the state, empowering the various private and public sector stakeholders who are working to secure economic wins for their communities.
Riding the momentum of revival
Like any effective economic development agency, EDCC has evolved throughout its history to better meet the changing needs of the local economy and community. Celebrating 50 years of economic development, the organization, like the market, has experienced ebbs and flows.
In the late 1980s, after a brief period of inactivity due to a leadership change, two economic developers saw the opportunity to breathe new life into the organization and the state economy. John Grueling of Denver, who at the time represented the State Office of Economic Development, and Robert Scott, who was CEO of the Colorado Springs EDC, came together in conversation and saw an opportunity to revive the organization and maximize its impact through collaboration.
Under their leadership, they infused the organization with a renewed a sense of community, bringing economic developers from across the state together and offering an outlet to share information, resources, and best practices and a forum to air their challenges, which resulted in the establishment of professional development programs, education initiatives, and advocacy efforts to support the various efforts taking place statewide.
“We had a number of professionals in the state who we thought would benefit from getting to know each other, staying in touch, and sharing information and sharing best practices and the status of things in their community,” explains Scott of the organization’s revival through relationship building.
This effort to revitalize the organization not only brought economic developers together from across the state; it also created a place for legislators where a feedback loop and system of advocacy and representation could take place, which at the time was imperative from an economic development level, as policies could be informed by the communities and regions themselves for more tangible results.
Thinking collectively, acting regionally
Given the competitive nature of economic development, as every community vies for opportunities to expand within its own bounds, EDCC is softening this adversarial approach to promote a more collaborative framework, serving as a pipeline through which cooperation and collaboration can take place. These efforts were necessitated by the pandemic, which caught many people and organizations on their heels—economic developers included—as they worked to insulate their communities from the brunt of the economic impact associated with the shutdowns and drastically altered approach to doing business.
Working with the state’s economic development alignment initiative, Colorado Align (CO|Align), EDCC is part of the collaborative force working to foster and sustain a cohesive strategic framework within which Economic Development Districts (EDDs), governmental and non-governmental agencies, and other economic development stakeholders work together to advance the state’s economic growth rather than competing for resources and opportunities.
For the first time in the state’s history, Colorado has achieved full regionalization with a total of 16 comprehensive economic development strategies (CEDS), two of which are tribal. Together, they endeavor to better understand and address the unique needs of the various regions through collaboration facilitated by a nesting model and a funding structure that will increase access to state and federal funds.
“No other state has ever done this, so we see this as an economic competitive advantage. With EDA funding we can start to have local and state match and we’ve never done that before. Colorado as a whole has left hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table, and now here is our opportunity to really maximize those dollars to support the work that these CEDS plans are trying to address,” says Woodworth of the systemic issues that require a regional, rather than local, strategy and solution.
Through this work, resources are being shared and optimized in accordance with a unified purpose and vision across the various regions, with 85 communities and statewide organizations taking part to see the economy sustainably return to strength.
Moving beyond boom and bust
As a state that is heavily dependent on extractive industries, Colorado has long been subject to boom and bust cycles, which is why efforts are underway to define a clear path forward and away from these volatile cycles.
The regional strategies that are being developed and implemented will give the state more diverse legs to stand on and will facilitate development that makes sense for the various regions according to their unique needs and strengths. This includes a strategic and necessary focus on primary employment, which will have benefits throughout the community in the form of secondary employment and the provision of supportive services and amenities.
“Those dollars then go into the secondary market, which then runs your retail establishments,” Woodworth explains. “Those sales tax dollars and property tax dollars feed the coffer of the government, municipal, county, or state, and that’s how we pay for all the things that we consider quality of life: education, police, parks and recreation.”
Advocacy is another particularly important aspect of EDCC’s work, particularly when it comes to advising elected officials and ensuring that policies and programs that are legislated meet the needs of its membership. For instance, the costs of doing business in Colorado are higher than in many other states, which instantly reduces its competitiveness. Woodworth calls for lower taxation and an increasingly business-friendly environment as well as the need to prioritize talent development and investment, particularly in the K-12 education system.
“Our workforce system is doing incredible work, and a lot of money has gone through that system to really back up the work. But not everybody’s college-bound; as Elizabeth Gardner, our past state demographer would say, ‘It takes 23 years to grow a person and get them into the workforce.’ That makes a lot of sense, so how do we look at really putting money into the education system so that they are coming out of high school work ready?”
Colorado certainly has the room and the resources to grow; it just needs to continue to align efforts to optimize those resources and attract business and industry that makes sense for its quality of life. This includes water, with Woodworth noting, “Colorado doesn’t have a water shortage problem; we have a water management problem.”
Once again, collaboration is the solution. As a headwater state, the west and east slopes need to align their visions and efforts to better manage the flow of water leaving the state, and EDCC is again serving as a conduit for those kinds of partnerships to bloom. “We’ve got to come together as a state together instead of fighting west slope versus east slope. We need to come together and say, ‘how do we handle this?’”
Part of the efforts to enable relationships between stakeholders across the state are the events EDCC hosts. In March, it will facilitate regional roundtables, which are great opportunities to bring everyone to the table to connect, learn, and strategize, and to celebrate how far the state and the organization has come over the last half-century.
50 reasons to celebrate
For 50 years, EDCC has worked to promote economic development in Colorado, and as the organization celebrates this milestone, it is reflecting on what economic development truly means.
For lifetime members like Robert Scott who had such a pivotal role in the organization’s success, “What I treasured in that activity so much is the unique ability to engage and align with peers, all of whom have a passion for this subject to advance not only the craft, but the outcomes. If it were not for EDCC, no one would be doing that. Every community in Colorado that has somebody participating in EDCC, in my view, is benefitting in ways that they’ll never fully understand—and they shouldn’t need to, but I think it serves a critical purpose.” He credits Woodworth’s enthusiasm and passion for keeping the momentum moving ever forward.
And for Woodworth, this is a moment in time worth celebrating. She explains, “What we’re hoping to see and do in our big celebration is go back to the roots, back to the basics of what economic development is,” to further increase buy-in from the various communities across the state and amplify the positive impact a collaborative approach to development can have.
“We’re all doing economic development, every single one of us, all the way down to the person who’s running the gas station. It’s all part of commerce. It’s all part of creating vital communities. What is your role and how do you play that role really well? Because if you play your role really well, then we’ve reduced redundancy because you’re really holding up your pillar.”
This creates capacity, which Woodworth notes will help mitigate the impacts of economic uncertainty. “If we get back to the basics and we do what we need to do to control what we can control, all the rest of this is noise and it doesn’t hurt us. We need to keep our noses to the ground, steadfast and furious forward, doing what we have to do for our own economy.”
