Ride to Prosperity 2.0 Work Plan

In some ways, RTP 2.0 is a continuation of efforts begun with 2010 RTP 1.0 report. Our approach to the County’s economic development challenges is similar. We are attempting to tackle pressing issues that fall within the core focus areas of the RTP partner organizations, i.e. they directly tie to economic and/or workforce development. We recognize that Reading and Berks County face a host of challenges, many of which should top the agenda of County leaders and citizens. For example, we applaud recent initiatives to combat crime in the City of Reading and to improve city and county schools via the Berks Business Education Coalition. RTP partner organizations will continue to support these essential projects, but will not seek to address them under the auspices of the economic development-focused RTP work program.

RTP 2.0 will also resemble RTP 1.0 in its focus on a near-term work program that can produce important outcomes within three years. Changing a regional economy takes decades, but this process begins with smaller steps that produce tangible outcomes over the medium and short term. Our goal is to make Berks County into a globally recognized center of innovation, entrepreneurship, and community prosperity where local residents have opportunities for attractive careers and an enviable quality of life. While we may not fully achieve this ambitious objective by 2015, we can accelerate the progress that we have made since in 2010. Many of the core focus areas from RTP 1.0 will remain in place in RTP 2.0. For example, we intend to continue a strong focus on innovation and entrepreneurship, workforce and talent, and sites and infrastructure. Our Quality of Life working group will remain in place, but will have a slightly narrower focus on tourism and recreation promotion in our new efforts. We have opted to disband our Business Clusters Working Group, as much of its agenda is already being managed by GREP and other local partners.

We have also opted to add a new focus area for RTP 2.0: an initiative that we are calling “Business Friendly Berks.” This initiative seeks to improve processes and procedures for supporting businesses and business development in the City of Reading and in municipalities across Berks County. We have heard from numerous businesses and other stakeholders that the policies, procedures, and processes for business development and growth, such as new building permits, business licenses, or zoning and planning issues, are too complicated, too costly, and too unpredictable. Under RTP 2.0, we hope to develop new approaches that can position our communities as part of the most business friendly region in Pennsylvania.

Details on each of these RTP 2.0 Working Group Initiatives is presented below:

Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Berks County’s infrastructure for supporting new businesses has blossomed over the past three years. New incubator and co-working facilities are in place, and a robust business service provider network, GREAT, is available to support local residents who want to start a new business or accelerate the growth of an existing company.

Under the auspices of the RTP 2.0, partners intend to pursue two complementary strategies. First, GREAT and its partner organizations will expand outreach efforts to better serve our region’s growing Latino community. In Reading, Latino residents comprise 60 percent of the population. Yet, only 27 percent of City businesses are Latino-owned. Recent national data notes that Latinos start businesses at higher than average rates, suggesting that Latino business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs are under-represented in Reading and Berks County. As part of our efforts to address this issue, we will continue to provide support to the Latino Business Resource Center and to the Jumpstart Business Incubator’s new Jumpstart Diversity Initiative (JSD). JSD seeks to expand services to new and aspiring Latino entrepreneurs via expanded bilingual training and workshops, specialized support services at the incubator facility, and a local business plan competition to spur new start-ups.

At the same time, RTP will support the development of new tools and programs to support high-growth entrepreneurs, often referred to as gazelles. These companies, which grow at rates exceeding 15-20 percent per year, are the key drivers of local prosperity, generating the majority of new jobs across the US economy.

Under RTP 2.0, key local agencies will target support for these entrepreneurs via new strategy called Reignited in PA. Reignited in PA will provide intensified and targeted outreach, coaching, mentoring, training and consulting to an estimated sixty high-growth-potential companies. This effort will target manufacturing-related firms, but will provide support to firms in a host of sectors. Each company will receive a customized suite of services along with coaching and mentoring from successful entrepreneurs who can share lessons learned from their own experiences. When this effort is fully operational, it should be able to support the creation of hundreds of new local jobs each year.

In addition to these two new initiatives, the RTP 2.0 plan also seeks to assess the feasibility of several other new investments that could provide additional support tools for local entrepreneurs. The team intends to sponsor additional market research in the following two areas:

1) Assessing the feasibility of developing a “Maker Space” or new forms of co-working space in the City of Reading. This effort might be closely linked to ongoing programs now underway at the GoggleWorks Center for the Arts.

2) Assessing strategies to more closely engage local library systems in local entrepreneur support efforts. One option would involve developing an economic gardening initiative similar to that currently deployed in the Lancaster County (PA) library system.

Workforce and Talent Development

The Workforce and Talent Development working group has identified three top priorities for its work under the RTP 2.0 plan. Maintaining and expanding newly developed career outreach initiatives will be a top priority. In the past year, several promising new efforts, such as the Chamber’s Career Awareness Task Force and GREP’s Careers in Two Years program, have started. These efforts work with area youth, and their parents, to inform them of local career options, particularly in fields that require an associate’s degree, certifications, or other credentials short of a four year degree. These careers, known as middle skill jobs, are projected to be among the fastest growing occupations in coming years. Located in many technical fields, such as manufacturing, information technology, and health care, these jobs offer high pay and desirable career ladders without requiring that young people assume massive education debts in pursuit of a college degree. They are also located in fields where employers report significant worker shortages and face great difficulties in finding qualified job candidates.

These efforts need to be further expanded. In addition to supporting existing programs, we intend to convene a county-wide summit that will focus on new career opportunities and engage parents, educators, and students.

We will also expand our outreach to local schools. Reading High School continues to suffer from unacceptably high dropout rates. Low high school completion rates create major challenges for individual students, but they also create long term economic challenges as dropouts are more likely to need public support services and are less likely to obtain well-paying jobs. The Reading Area School District must develop a comprehensive school completion program, and we intend to work with Superintendent Carlinda Purcell to support this effort.

An additional outreach initiative will identify three area high schools to service as demonstration sites for implementation of the WorkKeys career readiness certification. Developed by ACT, WorkKeys is a job skill assessment system that assesses work readiness in the form of key skills such as applied mathematics, business writing, listening, teamwork, and general work attitudes. It is increasingly recognized as a key credential by employers across the US. For many communities and employers, WorkKeys helps ensure a smoother school to work transition. By expanding WorkKeys adoption in local schools, we can provide better job opportunities for area youth and also signal to employers that Berks County is home to a ready and capable workforce.

The Workforce and Talent Development working group also plans to pursue a more long-term and ambitious objective: supporting a major initiative to transform the County’s Career-Technical Education system. This effort, already kick-started by the Berks WIB, will help shift the system from its current half-day model to a new approach that offers greater potential to engage students and produce better learning and career outcomes. Potential options, which will require additional analysis, might include creating a separate technical high school, more specialized modules, or some other differing approaches. We recognize that this project will require a long-term commitment to change, but we also believe that improvements in the County’s career and technical training programs will greatly contribute to a more prosperous local economy.

Sites and Infrastructure

In coming years, our Sites and Infrastructure plan will revolve around a multi-pronged strategy to develop more available development sites across Berks County. This strategy has generated important economic development “wins” over the past few years, primarily at the Berks Park 78 but also at other sites around the County. Future site development efforts will emphasize sites that are attractive to manufacturers, who now represent nearly half of all firms expressing interest in relocation to Berks County. As reshoring brings manufacturing jobs back to the US, Berks County can and should be in a position to capitalize on new business opportunities in manufacturing. But, our prospects will depend on our ability to develop and market available properties. This will require a mix of strategies that develop new industrial sites, such as the newly proposed industrial park near the Reading Airport, and aggressive marketing of existing industrial sites (e.g., Berks Park 78, New Morgan). We will also invest resources to assess and prepare smaller brownfields sites for potential reuse and to identify other new sites with rail access, a key need for many manufacturers.

The attractiveness of these industrial sites will be further enhanced by the development of new Reinvestment Improvement Zone in Reading. This zone, modeled on Allentown’s successful Neighborhood Investment Zones, would allow the City to deploy state and city business taxes to fund major redevelopment projects. These incentives have spurred significant new investments in the City of Allentown and their use in Reading could generate significant new economic activity within the City. RTP 2.0 will also support the expanded use of fast track procedures for the review and approval of new projects. These new procedures were first tested in 2011 and 2012 with efforts to support the expansion of Cambridge-Lee Industries’ facility in Ontelaunee Township. The new Joint Express Approval Program, managed by the Berks County Redevelopment Authority and Greater Reading Economic Partnership, has significantly reduced both the time and cost involved with necessary zoning and planning procedures for major new development projects. It is part of wider effort, strongly endorsed by all RTP partners, to create a more business friendly Berks County.

In addition to identifying sites for firms considering relocation to Berks County, the Sites and Infrastructure plan will also include several efforts that should improve support and services for existing businesses. Developing a new Business-Friendly Municipalities program will be a top priority in coming years. This effort will involve outreach and technical assistance to townships and local municipalities seeking to attract new businesses and spur business development. Key RTP partners will assist these communities in developing planning, zoning, and other regulatory procedures that are transparent and that do not place undue burdens costs on businesses. In addition, RTP partners are supporting the creation of new county Water and Sewer Association that will bring together key local leaders to share insights and expertise on how to develop and maintain key water and sewer infrastructure.

Finally, many of these priority economic development focus areas are integrated into the Reading Area Transportation Study, under the auspices of the Berks County Planning Commission, a key RTP partner. Many of the major road projects now or recently underway in Berks, such as the extension of River Road and upgrades on Rt. 501 in Bethel, are linked to countywide economic development priorities.

Quality of Place

For the RTP 2.0 plan, our Quality of Place working group intends to focus on bolstering Berks County’s reputation as a destination for visitors. Tourism and hospitality are under-appreciated, but important anchors of the local economy. According to research from Pennsylvania’s Department of Tourism, visitors contributed more than $761 million to the local economy in 2011. This spending helped support 6,238 jobs across Berks County. These jobs fall in a wide range of industries, and are not all located in traditional hospitality sectors like hotels or restaurants. In addition, hospitality and tourism provides a growing number of high quality jobs with desirable career options. A recent US Travel Association study estimated that two out of every five workers who start their careers in the travel industry will go on to earn more than $100,000 per year.

While recent trends in our local tourism industry are promising, we believe that Reading and Berks County could improve on this performance with smart investments in developing new activities and destinations and in expanding our marketing and outreach activities. During RTP 2.0, we intend to commission a new strategic plan for enhancing the County’s tourism industry. This research effort will address several key questions:

• What are the County’s most important and attractive tourism assets? In addition to larger attractions, this research should also assess the potential for promoting outdoors activities and recreational tourism.

• What is the County’s niche? What would generate the greatest interest and buzz in surrounding markets?

• What is the local economic impact of the tourism and hospitality sectors? What can we do to promote and support careers in these fields?

• What gaps exist? What kinds of amenities are needed to make Berks County a more attractive destination for visitors?

This research effort will also revisit past plans and strategies, such as those led by the Berks County Conservancy, related to the County’s trail systems and river access programs. This effort would be a first step in part of a larger strategy to promote the County’s outdoor recreation assets. We continue to believe that a tourism promotion strategy focused on recreational tourism could generate significant interest in nearby urban markets.

The Quality of Life Working Group also intends to continue its support for initiatives focused on improving quality of place in downtown Reading. This includes Reading’s new Main Street program and the work of the Penn Corridor group, with a particular focus on the 400-500 block of Penn Street.

Business Friendly Berks

Under RTP 2.0, we intend to support a new focus area that seeks to make Reading and Berks County the most business-friendly region in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. This effort will start with the City of Reading (“Business Friendly Greater Reading”) and will soon be rolled out to other communities in Berks County. We intend to convene a City of Reading Productivity Improvement Task Force, led by staff and members of the Greater Reading Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The task force members will include local leaders and industry experts in fields such as customer service, information technology, process improvements and the like.

The task force is designed to address key issues identified by numerous local businesses looking to locate, expand, or do business in the City of Reading. Current rules and procedures in areas such as planning, licensing, and zoning are unclear and unwieldy, and the costs of compliance are too burdensome. As Mayor Spencer and his team have noted, the City needs to embrace cutting-edge and innovative new technologies and procedures so that the processes for working with the city are understandable, efficient and effective. The project will also be examining the City’s key practices affecting fiscal health. The City’s financial health is a key concern for businesses now operating in Reading and for those considering relocation to the area.

This job requires a true partnership between the City and local business leaders. Berks County is home to many world-class companies who can share their expertise in how to streamline internal processes and provide top-quality customer service. These firms and their leaders have committed to sharing ideas with City staff and managers, and aggressive program for reform will kick off soon.

Expanded Partnerships and Engagement

As noted above, one of RTP’s most important outcomes has been the fostering of strong countywide partnership among our eight economic and workforce development organizations. We are proud of this alliance, but hope that it become even deeper and more consequential. To date, the RTP team has focused its partnerships at the staff level. The chief executives and staffs of our organizations regularly collaborate and work together on key projects. Our next step is to bring our Boards of Directors into the mix. Beginning in 2014, we intend to convene regular joint Board meetings of all RTP partner organizations with the intention of creating even closer ties among our organizations. This Board engagement strategy will create important connections and ensure that the work of RTP 2.0 truly transforms the Berks County economy.

Next Steps: RTP 2.0 and Beyond

We are excited about the work plan envisioned in the Ride to Prosperity, Version 2.0, but this strategy is not the last word on economic development in Berks County. Our communities are recovering from the Great Recession, but we face many serious challenges, particularly in our effort to revitalize the City of Reading. We will continue to support important local efforts such as Reading’s ongoing anti-crime programs, Our City Reading, and Mayor Spencer’s newly announced economic development initiatives.

We also intend to advocate for creation of a new countywide Community Indicators Partnership that would publicize data and other findings related to the performance of the Berks County economy. In the past, several local efforts have sought to create annual Indicator reports for key local issues such as quality of life or child welfare. In 2009, the Berks County Community Foundation’s “A Snapshot of Berks County,” tracked community progress in several areas such as health, civic engagement, environment, and arts & culture.

We envision a new and more targeted community indicators assessment that would dig deeper into the underpinning of the Berks County economy and that would be closely tied to the strategies promoted via the Ride to Prosperity process. For example, key indicators could track progress in workforce development (e.g. changes in educational attainment levels), entrepreneurship (e.g. new business starts and business growth rates), and quality of place (e.g. visitor totals and revenues). In addition, the indicators project will serve as tool to track and report on progress with the RTP 2.0 strategy, and to make mid-course adjustments if necessary.

These indicators would be tracked on an annual basis, and reviewed at an annual summit to assess Berks County’s economic performance. Other communities have enjoyed great benefits from these kinds of Community Indicator projects. They serve to spark conversations about future directions and to inform residents on what’s happening with the local economy.

What’s Next for Berks County: 2015 and Beyond!

The Ride to Prosperity strategic planning process has produced important changes in how economic development gets done in Greater Reading. It has helped key partners to develop and implement effective new programs, and has introduced a new county-wide partnership model to our work. We look forward to continued progress over the next several years.

RTP has always had a short and medium term focus, and it has operated as more of a staff-driven initiative. Each of our organizations has used the RTP plans to help drive our own work—on our own and in partnership with other agencies. Beyond 2015, it may make sense to develop a more comprehensive and broad-based long-term vision for the Berks County economy that takes the form of comprehensive economic development strategy. This new vision would build on the work of RTP and other current planning documents, such as the Berks County Comprehensive Plan. However, this effort would be much more community-driven and focused on engaging a wide and diverse array of community stakeholders from across Berks County. Reading and Berks County have changed greatly in the past few decades, and it is important that future economic development planning recognizes the impact of these changes and engages all Berks Countians in thinking about our future economic directions.

Thank you to EntreWorks and Erik Pages for facilitating all of the work that has been done with the Ride to Prosperity initiative.