Economic Gardening
Growing Businesses, Growing Jobs
Key business, job and community development organizations in the Greater Sarasota area have researched, over the past several months, a targeted approach to restoring lost jobs and creating new career opportunities.
Economic gardening invests an innovative, entrepreneur-centered, economic growth strategy well-suited to the Sarasota County business marketplace. In contrast to traditional economic development practices for business recruitment, economic gardening provides highly strategic and intense support for a small, select group of second stage companies with the capacity and desire to grow rapidly. Second stage businesses are defined as having 10-99 employees and between $1 million and $50 million in revenues.
Facts:
In Sarasota County, second stage entities make up only 11% of employers, but provide 38% of the area's jobs.
The local economic gardening initiative will start by assisting 20-30 businesses that have the potential to rapidly increase their revenues and ideally each create 25-50 or more additional, new jobs.
Assistance Provided: Assistance provided is customized in each community; in part depending on what types of small business assistance is already in place. In Jacksonville, Fla., firms in the "Second Stage Business Development Initiative" are offered the benefits of their:
"Peerspectives" program bringing non-competing, rapid-growth firms together around key subject matter discussion and problem-solving meetings, The "Entrepreneurs Studio" which both gives participants valuable exposure and access to/conversations with successful third stage company executives who grew through the second stage, Productive recognition through the "Companies to Watch" program and publication, and Critically - key research and market intelligence that aids their steady growth.
Additional forms of assistance provided in various EG programs around the United States have included bringing in business experts to speak to and consult with the second stage firms. Local and regional consultants and sources of technical information have been offered, as have linkages to capital to fund greater than average rates of growth. In other instances, local organizations have worked to reduce regulatory obstacles and timelines to speed the firms' growth and creation of new jobs and economic activity.
Specifically in Greater Sarasota: Organizations that have invested time and travel in researching how economic gardening might work well in this market include The Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce, the Economic Development Corporation of Sarasota County, the Institute for Public Policy and Leadership of USF - Sarasota/Manatee Campus and the Manatee Chamber of Commerce.
Locally, a high-powered steering committee is being formed and the first group of firms hoping to expand from second to third stage size and levels of employment are being identified. In the state of Florida, some 6-8 communities located across the mid-state High Tech Corridor are in discussions about working together to share their experiences introducing economic gardening efforts and exchanging best practice information with programs across the nation.
Green Jobs Pilot Program
The Green Jobs Pilot Program will retrofit owner-occupied residences in the Newtown neighborhood within Sarasota County so that the cost of home operation is substantially reduced. The program will preserve and create jobs, invest in long-term economic benefits, assist those most affected by the recession and increase residences’ energy efficiency and sustainability.
Each activity of this project is an opportunity to generate “green” job training vehicles for citizens who live in Newtown in response to the increasing demand of “green” services. The residence retrofits will include the energy/structural audits, weatherization, HVAC, electrical, mechanical, structural and project management, etc.
Project Objectives:
The following are the objectives for the program:
- Job Readiness of Newtown Residents – Increase the job readiness of people with low income jobs. Offer “green” job training opportunities.
- Retro-fit for Wealth Creation – Retro-fit a substantial number of houses owned by people with low-income so that they will have reduced operating expenses.
- Positive Environment Impact – Decrease the environmental footprint of the community by decreasing the demand for carbon-based energy and potable water
- Expand Newtown Organizational Capacity – Increase the capacity of neighborhood-based organizations
- Increase Newtown Resident Business Ownership – Increase the number of minority-owned project-related business within Newtown
Facts:
- This project will result in reduced carbon emissions which will be credited towards Sarasota County’s goal of reduced carbon
- Energy/Structural audits of Newtown residences have been conducted
- This project can be expected to create dozens of training positions (estimated 20 full-time jobs created directly through this program)
- $100,000 has been allocated to this project by the City of Sarasota Commission
- More than $2 million must be secured for the program’s launch
Sarasota Institute for the Ages
In response to the rapidly increasing older population in America, SCOPE is coordinating a broad-scale effort to create a national institute in Sarasota to harness the opportunities and address the demographic realities. The institute will focus on rethinking the way individuals make transitions from one life stage to the next and how communities adapt and evolve to be reflective of their demographics.
The proposed Sarasota Institute for the Ages (SIA) will undertake bold initiatives that will promote inquiry, reflection and research ways to optimize a community’s responses to significant demographic shifts in the U.S. The SIA’s overall intent is to identify and create actions that improve economic and societal life.
Facts:
The SIA is comprised of five major components:
- Think Tank – A “place” where scholars, researchers, artists, etc. will maintain active dialogues and increase the understanding of this issue
- “Do” Tank – Execute and implement ideas from the “think tank”
- Age Force – Maintain annual and ongoing dialogues in discussing techniques and initiatives special to corporate, small business, nonprofits and governments
- Training and Consulting – Share SIA’s experiences and knowledge base in addition to consulting other communities and their residents
- Medical and Life Sciences – Stimulate research among local hospitals and medical facilities and connect existing businesses in an effort to further develop existing assets
The SIA will serve as both a “think tank” and “do tank” in the following areas (to name a few):
- Individual approaches for the second half of life
- Public policy that reflects the demographic reality
- Research practices that can maximize true contributions of all age sectors
- Application of design standards for place that help preserve function and increase community connection
- The development of aging specific products and services
Community Benefits: The benefits to the greater Sarasota community are estimated to be many. From the Medical and Life Sciences segment alone, an estimated 706-758 jobs till be created.