When the COVID-19 pandemic started, the Capital Area Economic Development District (CAEDD) had just begun developing its strategic direction and action plan as part of the 2020-2025 Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) for the 10-county region. The CEDS is a data informed, strategy driven plan for regional economic development. One of the early issues to emerge from 2020 CEDS planning workshop in February was the need for economic resiliency to be included in the plan. The previous 2015-2020 CEDS included broad resiliency considerations, but this year the CAEDD saw an opportunity to drill down on more specific issues tied to resiliency in the new CEDS document.
“The region has seen its share of disasters during the past five years, and we’ve seen the benefit of resiliency planning,” said Rachel Steele, CAPCOG’s community and economic development director. The CAEDD’s first approach in developing the new CEDS was to include a small portion on resiliency within each theme that was identified. After identifying three broad themes; workforce development, infrastructure, and entrepreneurship and innovation, it was determined that resiliency needed its own chapter as it became apparent the region had moved into a pandemic.
The U.S. Economic Development Administration had indicated it will allow the economic development districts working on their CEDS to take additional time in May, so the CAEDD extended its CEDS planning process to include a section dedicated to resiliency strategies that will support subsets of economic planning as well as resiliency through a more detailed lens that includes lessons learned from our local economic development partners and stakeholders.
