Chamber 5-year plan goes for growth
Goal to lure certain industries, young professionals
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
The Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce's five-year strategic investment plan - designed to help the area compete for economic growth - calls for efforts like an aggressive new marketing campaign aimed at automotive, biomedical and other targeted industries, and work with other local groups to try to lure young professionals here.
The plan, released Tuesday in a meeting with The Times' editorial board, is part of the chamber's Huntsville Regional Economic Growth Initiative unveiled in 2003 to help Huntsville compete with Austin, Texas; Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte, N.C.; and other technology-based U.S. cities.
The five-year plan, which will be updated in September, sets eight goals with strategies on how to meet them.
"To improve the quality of life, we think, is the bottom-line reason for economic development," said Brian Hilson, the chamber's president and chief executive officer.
Joel Daves, president of AmSouth Bank in Huntsville and vice chairman for investor relations on the chamber's 2005 Executive Committee, was recently asked the reason behind the effort. "The answer, of course, is we want to be better than anybody else."
The plan "does suggest we need to work on retaining and attracting young professionals," said Brad Jones, CEO of Crestwood Hospital and chair of the chamber's Strategic Planning Committee. Although that is an important part of the plan, he said, "it is one of many variables that will lead to success."
Here are the plan's goals:
Among the strategies: calling on 120 local employers each year to explore the potential for growth and find out how the chamber can help, and creating a Small Business Council to develop a business mentor program for new businesses.
Among the strategies are implementing a new business marketing campaign aimed at corporate decision-makers at the headquarters level of companies in targeted sectors like automotive and aerospace manufacturing and support, diversified manufacturing, space and defense, electronics and information technology and biomedical; developing a marketing campaign for business location consultants; and expanding the marketing of local research parks and industrial properties.
Strategies include being an advocate for Redstone Arsenal during the Base Realignment and Closure process, evaluating the feasibility of attracting a new space, defense or technical program office to Huntsville as its headquarters and positioning Huntsville to assume a lead role in the state's homeland security initiatives.
Strategies include encouraging companies to work with local schools in research and development projects that may spin off technologies into the business market, and working with the Army's Aviation and Missile Command, Marshall Space Flight Center and others to expand co-op programs and internships.
Strategies include working with local schools to expand work-force development efforts and working with community organizations to attract professionals age 25 to 35.
One strategy calls for producing marketing publications to introduce the Huntsville area economy and marketable assets to target audiences.
Strategies call for collecting financial and demographic data for Huntsville and peer cities and creating an average net new job growth of 2,500 new jobs a year in targeted industry sectors.
Howard Thrailkill, president of Adtran Inc. and past chamber chairman, said the plan isn't meant to be critical or divisive. "This plan presents a vision," he said.
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