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Economic Development Plan for Arden Hills The EDC represents the interests of Arden Hills' residents, but with special • emphasis on the corporate residents that share and contribute to our community resources. The EDC members gather and consider business community input and recommend to the City Council actions that support those interests; monitors business activity; and collaborates with other city committees and commissions to ensure a positive environment for economic development. Finding itself at a crossroad for growth, the City of Arden Hills engaged the services of DeSCo in the summer of 2006 to create a strategic plan for the City. This plan of action was developed from an interactive process involving substantial community input. using DeSCo's proprietary methodology develop and experience of creating strategic plans for communities throughout the United States. The final stage of our engagement resulted in the development of this strategic plan. The plan is segmented to address the EDC Strategic Imperatives: • Build an Organization that will Support Economic Development • Attract and facilitate a Community that Fosters Investment • Retain and grow The Existing Business Base in the City of Arden Hills, while at the same time tolerate churning in new business start-ups and existing businesses • Develop and maintain strong relationships between City leaders and the largest corporate, academic and non-profit residents, and ■ Create an environment attractive to educated, creative or talented individuals to provide a strong workforce for the City's businesses, with emphasis on quality more than quantity. Every economic development organization is pressed with deciding how many of these five cornerstones their budget and staffing will allow them to address. Once they determine which cornerstones they can approach they are then faced with determining the relative emphasis to be placed on each • cornerstone. In the formulative stages of the organization, more work is Strategic Plan for Economic Development Page 5 of 20 \\Metro-inet.us\ardenhillslAdmin\Committees\Economic Development Commission\AH strategic Plan-Final 5-16-07.doc