Beginning in 2009, eight leading local organizations — The Berks County Industrial Development Authority, the Berks County Planning Commission, the Berks County Workforce Investment Board, the City of Reading, the Greater Berks Development Fund, the Greater Reading Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Greater Reading Convention and Visitors Bureau, and the Greater Reading Economic Partnership — began collaborating to develop a new economic development plan for Greater Reading and Berks County. This initiative culminated with the release of the Ride to Prosperity: Strategies for Economic Competitiveness in Greater Reading (published in the August 2010 through February 2011 issues of Route 422 Business Advisor). In this issue, and in our December issue, we will feature, in two parts, the recently released, Ride to Prosperity Version 2.0.

Executive Summary

The original RTP plan has helped guide key county economic development initiatives for the past three years, and spurred a new spirit of collaboration around the important work of building a more prosperous and successful Greater Reading and Berks County.

This report, the Ride to Prosperity Version 2.0, builds on our original work plan and lays out a new vision for economic development in the coming years. The partnership’s newly proposed strategies, RTP 2.0, are focused on five key areas:

• Entrepreneurship and Innovation: We are proposing a new countywide effort, Reignited in PA, to groom a new generation of high growth companies in Berks County.

• Workforce and Talent Development: We will lead a new initiative to transform the County’s Career and Technical Education system so that area youth are better prepared to enter growing technical career fields and local employers can tap into a skilled and career-ready workforce.

• Sites and Infrastructure: We have enjoyed great success in developing new sites for industrial development and will expand on this success via the RTP 2.0 strategy.

• Quality of Place: Hospitality and tourism are key, but little understood, anchors of the Berks County economy. Under RTP 2.0, we will seek to develop a stronger tourism sector that provides high quality jobs to local residents and attractive amenities for visitors.

• Business Friendly Berks: We are sponsoring a new effort to bring top quality business expertise to help local governments redesign how they interact with local businesses in areas like zoning and licensing, and to become national leaders in providing high quality customer services. This effort will begin in Reading via a Business Friendly Greater Reading Task Force, and will soon be rolled out to other communities across the county.

Beyond these work plans, the RTP partners will continue to develop and expand their partnerships so that they can support key economic development initiatives while also serving as smart stewards of both public and private investments in the community.

Introduction

This report summarizes past progress and future plans of the Ride to Prosperity, a strategic economic development strategy for Berks County developed by eight partners who have primary responsibility for supporting effective economic development policies and programs in our community. Our eight core partners include the following organizations: The Berks County Industrial Development Authority, the Berks County Planning Commission, the Berks County Workforce Investment Board, the City of Reading, the Greater Berks Development Fund, the Greater Reading Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Greater Reading Convention and Visitors Bureau, and the Greater Reading Economic Partnership.

Our organizations came together beginning in 2009 with a goal of using stronger regional collaborations as a means to improve the economic prospects of Reading and Berks County. We began with ambitious long-term goals for a transformed Greater Reading:

• Where residents are more prosperous

• Where businesses are more innovative and faster growing

• Where opportunity is available to all, and

• Where long-time residents and newcomers are happy to live.

We embraced these long-term goals, but recognized that this long journey begins with smaller steps. Instead of developing a long-term community wide vision for the County, we instead designed a work program centered on the important day-to-day work of economic and workforce development. We developed strategies and initiatives that would advance our local economy over a relatively short-term period of three to five years. Our achievements to date are detailed in part 2 of this report.

We have made important progress since our first strategy, the Ride to Prosperity, Version 1.0, was released in June 2010. Beyond individual projects and success stories, we have introduced new ways of working in Berks County. Collaboration is now the name of the game, and partnerships are the normal way of doing business.

Because of this success, we believe that the Ride to Prosperity strategic planning effort should be continued and expanded to support new advances in economic and workforce development. Our updated strategy for the coming three years, the Ride to Prosperity, Version 2.0, calls for a number of new initiatives to help further advance the Greater Reading economy and to position our community as a regional, statewide, and national leader in innovative approaches to economic development.

This report contains several key sections. We begin by assessing our progress since 2010 via our RTP 1.0 strategy. While we did not achieve every objective detailed in this earlier strategy, we can point to impressive achievements that are generating momentum as we shift to the RTP 2.0 initiative. Under this strategy, we intend to support new initiatives that will accelerate the growth of new entrepreneurs in Berks County, create the most business friendly communities in Pennsylvania, enhance Berks County’s emerging tourism and recreation assets, and develop a pipeline of local technical talent that will attract new employers to Berks County and to help existing companies grow and thrive.

We conclude with recommendations for next steps beyond those envisioned in the RTP 2.0 strategy. While our eight organizations have lead roles in local economic development, we are not alone in this important work. We encourage any and all local partners to join us as we move forward on a county-wide ride to prosperity.

Ride to Prosperity 1.0

Initial planning for the Ride to Prosperity (RTP) strategies began in late 2009. At that time, leaders of Berks County’s eight leading economic and workforce development programs came together as part of a wider strategy to improve cross-organization planning and collaboration. The original planning team did not intend to start from scratch. They did not envision a comprehensive new plan for the county economy, but instead hoped to build on important efforts already underway. This included ongoing partner projects as well as other County plans such as Berks Vision 2020 and the work of The Initiative for a Competitive Greater Reading.

Unlike many community-planning efforts, the Ride to Prosperity focused on short and medium-term outcomes, i.e. action items that could be achieved with 3-5 years. Our broad goals were to accelerate successful programs that were already underway, change direction and update programs that were not working, and capitalize on the County’s growing Latino community via new economic development and workforce initiatives.

Based on these broad objectives, the RTP Partnership selected five issue areas for initial work, and the June 2010 RTP report included the following calls for action:

1) Entrepreneurship and Innovation: Greater Reading should accelerate existing efforts and introduce new initiatives to improve our ability to nurture and support high-growth entrepreneurs.

2) Workforce/Talent Development: Concerted action to improve Greater Reading’s lagging educational attainment levels is needed, especially in improving high school, community college, and college completion rates. In addition, the County must expand local aggressive efforts to train workers for key industries, such as manufacturing.

3) Business Clusters: We will seek to identify and refine emerging business clusters where we can target business retention and growth efforts, improve business-education partnerships to strengthen the local workforce, and promote these sectors as leading targets for new business development efforts.

4) Sites and Infrastructure: We will introduce a new set of initiatives to improve the area’s site development processes with a goal of 300 shovel-ready acres by 2015, to provide a sufficient number of acres to accommodate local business development as well as any large prospects that we can attract to our region. Meanwhile, we will continue to promote signature projects, such as the proposed Berks Research and Technology Center and the Berks Park 78 @ Bethel, and reach out to localities that want to build collaborative partnerships around a series of smaller “shovel ready” sites. We also intend to prepare an inventory of both large (100+ acres) and small sites (e.g. 25-50 acres) that can be more rapidly converted into viable project opportunities.

5) Quality of Place: Improving the quality of local amenities should have two primary future directions. First, we need to enhance tourism promotion efforts and capitalize on Greater Reading’s assets that could be used to attract visitors with an interest in outdoor recreation, scenic amenities, and arts and culture-related offerings. Even more importantly, the County must make catalytic investments that improve the quality of life for local residents, especially in support of key projects in the City of Reading.

A working group was designated to lead planning in each of these issue areas. Since 2010, these working groups have met and developed a host of strategies to pursue the objective laid out in the original RTP plan. Our progress in these areas is detailed below. We can point to a host of important successes, but we also acknowledge a few areas where our work came up short. In some cases, our original plans were altered by outside events, and, in others, we failed to achieve our projected goals. While we would prefer to report a 100% success rate, the reality is that not all of our plans came to fruition. Like successful entrepreneurs, we are learning from our mistakes and intend to develop more effective approaches in phase two of the RTP initiative.

Each of the Working Groups can point to important achievements since 2010. These efforts are detailed below:

Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Berks County’s infrastructure for supporting local entrepreneurs has been transformed over the past several years, and many of these successes can be attributed to the work of the RTP partnership. The original 2010 RTP report noted that the Reading area faced two primary challenges in terms of spurring entrepreneurship: low rates of new business starts and lower growth rates for businesses after start-up. Without a dynamic base of local entrepreneurs, long-term prospects may suffer. New firms bring new ideas and dynamism to the local economy, and as they grow, they create jobs and wealth for their owners, their workers, and for the wider economy. A competitive local economy is built upon a dynamic and prosperous base of thriving entrepreneurial ventures.

While Berks County’s performance on various measures of small business dynamism was relatively weak over the 2000-2010 decade, more recent data are quite promising. According to 2009-2010 data from Dun & Bradstreet, the Reading MSA was among the nation’s best performers in terms of job creation from new firms. In fact, Reading outperformed all MSAs in Pennsylvania and was among the top performers in the entire Northeast region. Similar analyses from Moody’s indicate that recent job growth in the Reading MSA outpaces both Pennsylvania and US averages. Future initiatives in the RTP 2.0 project should build on this momentum.

The Entrepreneurship and Innovation Working Group can point to two important achievements over the past three years. First, a host of new support resources have been put into place. New facilities are opening up across Berks County. These include the new Jumpstart Incubator and two co-working facilities at the Catalyst at Spring Ridge and at the T.E.A. factory in Reading. These facilities help build on the ongoing work of local support efforts housed at Greater Reading Business Resource Center and the Latino Business Resource Center.

In addition to these new facilities, an efficient and effective Greater Reading Entrepreneurial Action Team (GREAT) is in place, with partners sharing leads and providing joint services. Today, GREAT engages multiple local partners who provide a diverse mix of services to local business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs. Overall, the GREAT team serves hundreds of local business owners each year with services such as technical training, access to loans and other capital, and assistance in entering new markets.

Thanks to these new programs and investments, Berks County has built a robust infrastructure to support start-ups and small business owners. Over the coming years, we intend to build on this foundation via a host of new programs that seek to groom high growth gazelle businesses in Berks County. These new efforts will be a primary focus of RTP’s future work.

Workforce and Talent Development

In today’s economy, economic development is workforce development. Without a skilled and ready workforce, no region can prosper in the 21st century. Like many communities, Berks County and Greater Reading face a host of workforce-related challenges. These range from high dropout rates in many area high schools to lower shares of residents with higher education to a regional shortage of highly skilled technical workers. All of these issues warrant public attention, and many are being addressed by local organizations such as the Berks Business Education Coalition.

The RTP partners opted to focus their work on the important connections and transitions between formal education and entry into the workforce. As such, the RTP Workforce and Talent Development working group proposed to pursue three top priorities: 1) To improve linkages between local high schools and Reading Area Community College (RACC), 2) To expand the use of industry-recognized credentials for technical training and other areas, and 3) To reform and restructure the County’s career technical education system.

The RTP initiative has enjoyed considerable success in building a strong technical training pipeline that links local high schools to RACC and to other higher education institutions. RACC, the Berks Career Technical Education Center (CTC), the Reading Muhlenberg CTC, and Berks County are now nationally recognized as leaders and innovators in this area. GREP’s award winning “Careers in Two Years” program is reaching out to students and their parents, encouraging them to consider high paying careers in key manufacturing technology fields. These positions, which require post high school education short of a four year degree, are known as middle skill jobs, and are projected to be the fastest growing employment segment in the US economy. By building a strong base of middle skill talent, Berks County not only provides promising career options to area youth, but it also benefits employers who will be attracted to Berks County thanks to its strong pipeline of skilled technical workers.

We can also point to important achievements in expanding the use of formal industry credentials, which are an essential tool for career advancement in technical fields. Area high schools and technical schools have greatly increased their use of formal industry credentials and have built much stronger connections to local employers. RACC’s Schmidt Technology and Training Center is national leader on this front as RACC is nation’s first community college to be authorized to issue specialized certifications developed by the National Association of Manufacturers. In addition, RACC’s mechatronics program is receiving international attention as a model for effective education-business partnerships.

We have made less progress in our efforts to reform the County’s career technical education systems. Program administrators are improving services, but continue to operate in a system designed in the 1960s when the basic concepts of vocational education were first adopted. The Berks WIB has led promising discussions with many local area school district leaders, who have expressed strong support for efforts to update and reform career training programs. We build on this momentum by making this initiative into a core focus area for the next phase of RTP.

Business Clusters

Greater Reading, led by GREP, has long targeted key industries, sectors, or clusters. These target industries typically provide higher wages or operate in sectors, such as manufacturing, that have histories of success in Berks County. GREP now devotes all of its marketing and business attraction initiatives toward industries that operate in five core clusters: advanced manufacturing, agriculture and food production, business and financial services, energy, and health sciences. These efforts continue to reap dividends, such as the recent location of GreatGrow, a green agriculture technology firm, to Muhlenberg Township.

RTP 1.0 envisioned the development of a new alternative energy cluster network within Berks County. These networks are important tools to help firms grow and do business with one another. While we thought that an alternative energy cluster made sense, but the cluster working group was unable to create a new countywide network of alternative and renewable energy firms. This initiative began in late 2010 with several industry listening and planning sessions, but ultimately failed to generate much interest among local employers. A number of market factors, such as the cessation of Pennsylvania’s solar energy tax credits and expanded interest in Marcellus Shale gas resources, also affected our planning efforts. Given the current financial challenges facing the renewable energy sector, we do not intend to revisit this strategy in the RTP’s next phase.

Sites and Infrastructure

For many years, Berks County’s ability to attract major new employers was hampered by the limited availability of building sites that were at or near “shovel-ready” status. Dating back to 2001, outside consultants had recommended that the Berks County focus on its inventory of sites, so that attractive locations would be available for firms considering relocation to the area. The Sites and Infrastructure Working Group made this goal into its top priority.

Berks County can point to some impressive infrastructure-related achievements since 2010. A number of new sites are emerging across the county. In Bethel, Berks Park 78 is thriving, with new tenants including PetSmart and Dollar General. On their own, these two firms are expected to employ more than 1,000 people. Near Morgantown, the 200+ acre New Morgan Business Center has been designated as a Keystone Opportunity Zone (KOZ), greatly enhancing its desirability for new businesses. Other smaller sites are being developed in locations such as Amity Township, near the Reading Regional Airport, and Hamburg Logistics Park.

In addition to developing and market new industrial sites, the Sites and Infrastructure Working Group also focused on some of the less public, but equally important, tasks related to site development. This work included the development of a countywide water and sewer plan that maps local infrastructure and its capacities for various uses, and the mapping of dozens of smaller industrial sites across the County. These smaller sites are often located in communities seeking redevelopment opportunities, and the reuse of these sites is excellent use of former industrial land.

Quality of Place

The RTP Quality of Place Working Group likely had the broadest portfolio of issues and challenges. We originally set an ambitious agenda that focused on two related sets of activities: 1) To make Berks County a more attractive destination for tourists and other visitors, and 2) To support a range of new programs and investments to improve the overall quality of life for all county residents.

The Working Group has enjoyed success in developing new activities and events to attract visitors and to provide entertainment opportunities for local residents. Newer facilities like the GoggleWorks and the Sovereign Center attract numerous visitors, and many shops and restaurants along the Penn Corridor are thriving. Regular events such as the Greater Reading Film Festival, the Penn Street market, and First Friday Reading are generating lots of local and regional buzz. In addition, the Greater Reading Convention and Visitors Bureau has developed new marketing tools and strategies, and has also implemented new systems for both promotion and for the management of membership and visitor information.

Our Working Group made less progress in dealing with some of the larger quality of life challenges facing Reading and Berks County. While Penn Avenue in West Reading thrives, other parts of the Penn Corridor (especially the 400-500 block of Penn Street) lack attractive amenities for shoppers or visitors. We intend to continue working to support development of the entire Penn Corridor, in partnership with the Reading Downtown Improvement District and others, as part of the RTP’s next phase.

This effort should be greatly accelerated by the designation of a new Main Street program in downtown Reading. The City has filed an application for Main Street designation, and if approved, the City will have access to expanded resources and technical support to improve amenities in downtown Reading. All of the RTP partners strongly support this effort.

Other Outcomes

Beyond the RTP’s notable achievements in specific issue areas, the initiative has spawned a new way of working in Berks County. Regional collaboration is now the normal way of doing business. It is not tied to a single project or initiative; it is how economic development gets done today. These collaborations are producing better outcomes, as more partners bring new and better services to local businesses and to companies considering relocation to Berks County. Board members of partner groups now have a more complete picture of how other organizations contribute to the local economy. Even better, collaboration is creating a more efficient system where waste and duplication are reduced and where partners are publicly accountable to each other and to the wider community. The day-to-day work of economic development in Berks County is smoother, more collaborative, and, in the end, more effective.

Why Ride to Prosperity 2.0?

Version 1.0 of the Ride to Prosperity introduced a new way of doing business for economic and workforce development in Berks County. It has helped build an important foundation and close partnerships that would remain in place even if we opted to formally end these strategic planning initiatives. However, the success of RTP 1.0 has convinced the eight local partners that this effort should continue, leading to the development of Ride to Prosperity 2.0, a strategy for continued county-wide collaboration to support economic and workforce development.

We believe that RTP 2.0 is an important initiative for a variety of reasons. At the most basic level, the partnership improves the overall business climate and economic delivery system in Berks County. Engaging new partners brings better services and a wider bench of expertise to local businesses. It also creates efficiencies as duplicative efforts are reduced and RTP partners can focus on their own core areas of strength and competitive advantages.

As the partnership prospers, individual partner organizations benefit too. They can provide business customers and companies considering relocation with a wider variety of services and support programs, helping companies access multiple tools and resources with one phone call or contact. For example, the development and build-out of Berks Park 78 has engaged nearly every RTP partner in the process in terms of preparing the site (BCIDA, Berks Planning Commission), promoting the site to new businesses (GREP, Berks Chamber), and in providing financing, worker training, and other support tools to new park tenants (BCDF, Berks County WIB). This kind of collaboration is the way business now gets done in Berks County.

Partnerships like those fostered by RTP are becoming the norm for regions across the US. Cities and townships can no longer go it alone. Wider collaborations are needed, and, in the case of many state and federal grant programs, they are required. They require that grantees operate via regional partnerships that unite groups across disciplines, geographies, and areas of expertise. Berks County’s ability to win future funding competitions will depend on its ability to support and develop partnerships like the RTP group. In fact, the collaborative is already aggressively seeking out funding opportunities such as Pennsylvania’s Discovered and Developed in PA (D2PA) grant program.

RTP 2.0 also strives to build on the important foundations fostered by the RTP 1.0 planning efforts. In addition to building new collaborations, RTP 1.0 also helped spur progress in many key countywide challenge areas. We are excited about re-embarking on this journey via RTP 2.0.