What an incredible past few months for the Lincoln Partnership for Economic Development. On the morning of June 30, the Angelou Economics Team unveiled their recommendations for keeping Lincoln competitive in the global job market over the next decade. In the weeks since, the Partnership has been working to make the recommendations a reality.
The Vision Plan will serve as a roadmap for Lincoln to become a destination city. The report detailed industries that Lincoln is equipped to focus on and how to optimally align the city’s assets for future prosperity.
The Partnership hired Angelou Economics in January and over the past six months their team has conducted a stakeholder engagement process including dozens of interviews with key stakeholders, focus groups with experts from leading sectors of the economy, and captured responses from nearly 3,000 residents and businesses participants in the online survey. (That is a record level of engagement among AE client cities, and it communicates very robust community interest in participating in Lincoln’s economic future.)
The engagement process was also supplemented with extensive quantitative and qualitative research to provide a thorough market assessment of the community’s strengths and weaknesses.
After months of work, the Angelou team recommended three broad, overarching strategic objectives:
• Develop world class workforce, recruit talent, and infrastructure
• Nurture a globally competitive entrepreneurial ecosystem
• Strengthen collaboration among key economic assets
These three goals form the backbone of the Vision Plan and are supported by specific strategies and actionable steps that will facilitate their realization, including:
• Stronger investment in physical and technological infrastructure
• Improving coordination – between large and small businesses; the public and private sector; and training facilities and research facilities with the business community.
• Expansion of talent attraction and retention efforts
Our next step will be to form task forces designed to look at each of the recommendations and come up with some viable strategies to achieve these goals. We also want to reach out to the community and get their input on the plan. There may be some ideas in the report that rank as a higher priority in the public’s mind and we want to be as attentive as possible to the desires of the community at-large as we move forward with the project.
More than a decade ago, the Partnership engaged Angelou Economics to create a strategic plan to bolster Lincoln’s economic development efforts. From that initial plan came the momentum that made initiatives like the West Haymarket and the Pinnacle Bank Arena a reality. I know this latest report can have the same effect.
Angelos Angelou said it best as he addressed the Annual Breakfast crowd: “When I came here in 2002 everybody told me the Antelope Valley project was unrealistic and that Lincoln would never build a new Arena. Look at your community now.”
I agree, look at how far Lincoln has progressed … the future is bright.
The Chamber’s mission is to improve the lives of Lincoln residents by providing increased economic opportunity and can only be accomplished together. For more information, please contact Jaime Henning at jaimehenning@lcoc.com.
by Wendy Birdsall, President, Lincoln Chamber of Commerce
402-436-2350 | www.lcoc.com