The $6.5 million will fund specific goals according to the Partnership, including increasing the number of businesses that participate in high school internships, continuing an annual career fair, conducting annual employer surveys to identify needs, tracking new housing to report to investors and enhancing the ClarkCounty.jobs website.
Over the last five years, 2,096 jobs were created, $853 million was gained in capital investments as well as $380 million in new business output, according to GSP documents.
GSP Vice President of Economic Development Horton Hobbs said that the Expand 2024 plan evolved in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic, but GSP learned that it was on the right track. The Expand 2029 expands on or modifies some of the previous goals, he said.
Credit: Bill Lackey
Credit: Bill Lackey
“We learned that developing strong partnerships is the key to our success as a community and we have worked very diligently to grow and strengthen those partnerships, and so when we came into this campaign it became very clear that we were doing the right things,” Hobbs said. “We just needed to amplify or strengthen what we were doing and then add maybe a few new wrinkles to it.”
Hobbs emphasized that the plan is “a marathon, not a sprint.” GSP received community stakeholder input on the plan. This time around, several new investors have joined the campaign, such as the Sheehan Brothers.
“I’m just really pleased with the broad base of support that we’re seeing across the community,” Hobbs said.
In the last five years, the Springfield business landscape has seen a lot of expansion, like the opening and expansion of Topre America Corp. and Gabe’s distribution center.
“The company is the employer in our community; they’re the job creators ... but our job is to create the environment in which those jobs can be created,” Hobbs said.
Credit: Bill Lackey
Credit: Bill Lackey
For each “primary” job created, there are a number of “secondary jobs” necessary, with the number of those depending on the field, Hobbs said. Secondary jobs support primary jobs either directly or indirectly.
The goal for 2029 is to have 2,000 primary jobs created, which will have created 1,500 secondary jobs, according to the plan.
There will be a continuing focus on encouraging Clark County residents to remain in the county for work, Hobbs said, something that has been emphasized for a few years now. He said it is difficult to track how successful this effort has been thus far, but the area is seeing residents who previously worked outside of the county returning here.
The effort includes billboards across the community that remind people how much time they miss out on and how much gas they use by commuting outside the community, as well as videos on gas station pumps and television advertisements, Hobbs said. Using zip code information, advertisements are targeted to people who are known to work outside of Clark County.
The marketing directs people to ClarkCounty.Jobs, which will connect to a person’s YouScience profile in the future, Hobbs said. YouScience is an aptitude career assessment that all Clark County schools use to find the best career opportunities for students.
Hobbs said the website will use the aptitude test to do an “initial match of careers and internships” based on the results, which is the first program of its kind. By 2025, there will be dedicated YouScience navigators in the schools to sit down one-on-one with students to go over results “in a very curated way.”
“We think this is going to be the key to really get people on a college or career or military pathway,” Hobbs said.
Credit: Bill Lackey
Credit: Bill Lackey
One of the key pieces of Expand 2029 is continuing to expand the availability of “income-aligned” housing, Hobbs said. He said there are close to 3,000 housing units “in the pipeline” for the next five years.
“The fact of the matter is we need housing at all income levels, whether it be the traditional affordable to 100% of poverty or less, or it’s market rate, or it’s high income, or it’s rental versus single family,” Hobbs said. “The fact of the matter is we need all of it.”
The plan also accounts for Springfield’s large immigrant population, with around 12,000-15,000 Haitian immigrants estimated to be here. Hobbs said businesses have shared they want to engage this population to fill jobs, and the GSP has played a role with team members Amy Donahoe and Christina Durrell.
“This is an important topic for us to be around the table with and we certainly are, and we just want to make sure that we are actively engaged in that work,” Hobbs said.
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