The hardworking volunteers of the Alliance for Regional Development’s Working Teams have been making great forward strides this summer in their efforts to strategize plans to implement the recommendation of the OECD Territorial Review of Chicago’s Tri-State area and collaborate across jurisdictional lines. The initiatives championed by the Working Teams will be showcased at the Alliance’s Second Annual Summit on Regional Competitiveness on December 19.
GREEN GROWTH:
The Green Growth team is focusing on the water sector and ways to regionalize the growing water cluster. The team is finalizing regional criteria for identifying water technology companies, and will use the new criteria to select key stakeholders to invite to two autumn receptions which will be held in both Illinois and Indiana gauging local interest in organizing and possibly growing the Water Council’s footprint. Faculty and students from the University of Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences will provide research assistance leading up to the receptions. The team is also strategizing a potential water-technology recognition award in 2015 as a way to further promote the regional water sector.
HUMAN CAPITAL:
The Human Capital team is aiming its efforts at reaching existing employers, as well as site selectors for companies considering relocation to the region. Efforts to adopt and scale Illinois’ existing successful “Hiring Event” model to other parts of the region are proceeding, with hiring events having taken place during the summer and more scheduled to take place in the fall in all three states. These events differ from job fairs in that attendees are pre-screened and scheduled in advance to have interviews with exhibiting employers, with the aim of attendees interviewing during the event and leaving with an offer of employment. Employer feedback will be collected and video interviews will be conducted with participants at all events, with the goal of showcasing theinnovative, replicable, and scalable nature of this workforce development program unique to our region via an informative, best-practice branding video. The video will be featured at the December 19 Summit on Regional Competitiveness. Northern Illinois University has taken the lead and will provide videography and editing assistance, working with other institutional partners.
INNOVATION:
The Innovation Team is focused on mapping the regions innovation ecosystem as suggested as one of the Key Findings in the Chicago Metropolitan Tri-State OECD Review. Resources of use to local innovators in the region will be organized in a user friendly way. The team will finish collecting data to identify regional innovation assets in September. A web portal will then be created on the model of Detroit BizGrid with the potential to pull in pertinent data from existing regional innovation websites maintained by theIllinois Innovation Network, Indiana’s Innovation in America’s Regions, and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation.Branding this region as a vibrant innovation hub is another team priority.
TRANSPORTATION & LOGISTICS:
The Transportation & Logistics team is creating a GIS-based map of the transportation assets in the region. Over the summer, staff from the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission (NIRPC) collected and collated asset data and GIS shapefiles from regional partners including Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning and Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission. In August, NIRPC working in tandem with the Purdue Center for Innovation through Visualization and Simulation (CIVS) provided the data to the Purdue Center for Regional Development, where the data is will be imported into the Purdue Regional Decision Maker Transportation GIS and mapped. The desired outcomes include identifying the existing interconnected transportation infrastructure as well as underutilized assets in order to build a model for the future that local mayors and other elected officials can use in terms of policy making and funding requests. In a separate effort, the team is also reaching out to the private sector to enhance support for developing a regional brand.
As always, the Alliance is grateful to the hardworking volunteer members of the Working Teams. We look forward to continuing to work together!