Regional Economic Development in Fulton County

2015 Public Engagement Symposium | March 10

Sponsored by Office of Public Engagement and the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning

Spoon River Partnership for Economic Development, a non-profit organization in Fulton County, has collaborated with University of Illinois Extension and Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to promote economic development in the county.

Manish Singh, a Master of Urban Planning graduate student is working on a three pronged project with SRPED to enable Fulton county to achieve its goals.

The first part of the project is an economic opportunity assessment of the county to analyze the labor market, income trends, industrial mix and employment specialization in the county.  The assessment engages the community and businesses to find economic development niches in the county through stakeholder interviews and a business climate survey.

The second part is to collect International Economic Development Council Site Selection Data Standards for the county to publicize the community to relocating employers.

The third part of the project is to create a business development toolkit that would help entrepreneurs in the area to open and expand businesses.  The outcome of this project would give SRPED the ground work to orchestrate future economic development initiatives.

The university's ability to engage locally, nationally and globally is critical to the land grant college mission.