Gardening | Economic Gardening Promoted For Implementation
CEDAR CITY – Cultivating growth by supporting small businesses is not a new concept, but using an economic development model that embraces the fundamental idea that entrepreneurs drive economies is, especially for rural Utah.
Robin Phelps, a team leader for rural economic gardening program development by the National Center for Economic Gardening, told the more than 500 people in attendance Friday at the Utah Rural Summit at Southern Utah University the 21st century business model called “economic gardening” seeks to create jobs by supporting existing companies in a community.
The concept, pioneered in 1987 in Littleton, Colo., when its largest employer, Lockheed Martin, laid off more than 7,000 employees, is an alternative to traditional economic development practices based on research by Chris Gibbons. He suggested that most new jobs in any local economy were produced by the community’s small, local businesses, and helping those existing businesses grow was vital to economic development.
“It’s not a counseling service. It is a way to bring information and insights to businesses that we work with,” Phelps said. “The tangible results that happened in Littleton, which is what has excited other communities, is that over the 20 year period the sales tax revenue in Littleton tripled and the employment doubled, and this was not by recruiting new businesses but by helping the existing businesses grow.”
By 2009, the concept was programmatically designed and supported by the Edward Lowe Foundation that created the National Center for Economic Gardening to work with communities across the United States. The center uses strategies that bring specialty tools, such as online databases like your economy.org, and expertise that bring external resources to local businesses.
Two pilot programs launched in Florida and Kansas, in addition to regional pilots that followed the economic gardening concept. Florida’s legislature allocated $2 million for a pilot state program in certain industries that targeted businesses that had at least 10 employees and exhibited proof of market, product or service.
Florida is at the end of its second year with the program, but the first year results showed that 1,300 businesses were served creating 1,400 direct and indirect jobs. The local economy grew by $281 million in sales and tax revenue and the net tax revenue, minus the cost of the program, was $8.4 million, Phelps said.
“The state pilot in Kansas is relevant is because it is a model that I think we could do in Utah given that there is interest,” Phelps said. “A state organization in Kansas got together with the rural
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