MARION COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS Board Session Agenda Review Form Meeting date: November 9, 2016 Department: Community Services Agenda Planning Date: 11/3/16 Time required: 20 mins Audio/Visual aids Contact: Sarah Cavazos Phone: 3234 Department Head Signature: TITLE Issue, Description & Background Economic Development - GROW EDC 1st Quarter Report As a recipient of an Economic Development Board Designated Allocation, GROW EDC provides a quarterly report to update the Commissioners on the status of their economic development activities for business and community development in the North Santiam River Canyon. Board Designated Allocations are funded by Oregon Video Lottery revenues allocated to Marion County for economic development purposes. The Board of Commissioners have established Board Designated Allocations to provide funding for strategic, regional investments in entities that promote, expand, or prevent the decline of manufacturing, agriculture, tourism, and small business in Marion County. In FY16/17 GROW EDC received $60,000 to support economic development in the North Santiam Canyon region. Financial Impacts: Impacts to Department & External Agencies The financial supports provided to GROW EDC support economic development efforts throughout the North Santiam River Canyon communities, businesses, and municipalities. Options for Consideration: Recommendation: List of attachments: Presenter: Quarterly Report Allison McKenzie, CEO, GROW EDC Copies of completed paperwork sent to the following: (Include names and e-mail addresses.) Sarah Cavazos - scavazos@co.marion.or.us Allison McKenzie - allison@growsantiam.org
Economic Development Allocations Quarterly Report Organization: GROW EDC Quarter Ending: September 30, 2016 Allocation: $60,000 Received YTD: $30,000 Instructions: Provide an update on the following objectives, including brief overview of activities to date, successes, challenges or anticipated challenges, and/or any changes made to the objective. 1. Objective Launch a regional tourism initiative In the first quarter of FY 2016 17 we continued work on our regional tourism initiative as identified in our Travel Oregon Rural Tourism Studio Accelerator in Spring 2016. The purpose of this tourism initiative is to help our North Santiam River region, from Aumsville/Scio to Marion Forks/Breitenbush, build a compelling outdoor product and brand, build relationships between tourism businesses and attractions, and create high value authentic experiences for visitors to Oregon. Our aim is to become a visitor destination in our own right, thereby deepening and strengthening the role that tourism plays in our local economy. We expect this tourism initiative to be a primary focus of GROW EDC activities at least through the eclipse in August 2017. The following is updated info about the projects our three tourism action teams are working on: 1. Creating a regional tourism marketing strategy that will help attract visitors to our area. This group is finishing up our regional asset inventory by Nov 1 so that timely and accurate data can be used to help populate Travel Salem and Travel Oregon s websites as well as inform future printed material. Given the number of changes in the asset inventory over the past few months, this team expects to revise this data on a quarterly basis. This team is also preparing to market eclipse and River Fusion 22 events (see below) starting in February 2017. Next up: populating Travel Salem s new interactive Discovery Map with North Santiam River region data and pushing out the asset inventory to Travel Oregon for their website and materials. 2. Building a local tourism network that will create/strengthen relationships between those working in and interested in the hospitality/outdoor recreation industries throughout our region, making it easier to package products, refer business to each other and help make the visitor experience meaningful and memorable. With so many team members involved in tourism businesses/organizations during the high season, this team was fairly quiet during the summer/early fall. We held a small regional tourism network gathering at Piluso Winery on a Saturday in July to further encourage locals to explore assets in their own backyard. This team opted to keep this event small & informal. Ten people attended, four of whom had been on the previous field trip and six of whom were visiting the winery for the first time. Next up: This team will begin reaching out to individual Form Revised August 2015 Page 1
tourism & hospitality businesses late this fall to invite them to join the North Santiam Tourism Alliance and to help educate them about the upcoming August eclipse. Their next networking event will likely be eclipse focused, especially given the February deadline to have eclipse/river Fusion 22 events scheduled for marketing purposes. 3. Create an annual river festival to celebrate the North Santiam River as the connecting link between communities and outdoor recreation assets on the river, in our foothills and in our towns. This action team plans to launch River Fusion 22 during the August 2017 eclipse weekend built around a new whitewater competition that started in Mill City in 2015. In its first year this festival will help coalesce the many eclipse activities that are taking place in our area on water and land while helping to facilitate micro events throughout the region over that weekend. In future years this festival will likely move to September when river levels rise as Detroit Lake reservoir empties. Over the summer this action team began mapping out existing eclipse activities and potential River Fusion 22 activities from Aumsville to Detroit, joined Oregon Festivals & Events Association to get access to professional event planning expertise, and began identifying local organizations who might want to participate in River Fusion 22. Next up: Begin planning a regionwide geocaching event for River Fusion 22; continue building micro events for eclipse weekend; get the word out about a February 1st deadline for marketing River Fusion 22 and eclipse related events with help from the local tourism network team and the regional marketing strategy team. 4. GROW helped recruit for and facilitate an Eclipse meeting organized by the Stayton Sublimity Chamber of Commerce (SSCOC) and Travel Salem in Stayton in September, which gathered 47 local stakeholders together to learn more about the eclipse on August 21, 2017. Although there has been a lot of publicity about the eclipse already, we expect to continue holding informational sessions about the eclipse with our tourism partners over the next several months to help our businesses and communities prepare for this special event and unique opportunity to showcase our region to visitors. 2. Objective Youth engagement/workforce development. As part of this objective, GROW has been looking for a way to bring essential life skills training and greater access to the business community to student populations in a pilot project based in Mill City. In September OSU Extension and GROW developed a fledgling concept to run a 10 week program (with OSU Extension as lead) during the down time in the junior master gardener program, starting in January. In the early planning stages right now, this pilot project is scheduled to begin with high school freshmen during two class periods each week over 10 weeks, and will involve some of our North Santiam Young Professionals and local businesspeople/leaders. Next up: Digging deeper into the curriculum and identifying Young Professionals who will help OSU with facilitating. GROW is also proud to be the fiscal sponsor and behind the scenes support for the United Waysponsored Aumsville Educational Collaborative, whose signature event is the summer reading and literacy program, now augmented by year round after school student and parenting events, an August Academy to help prepare returning students for school, a Science Fair, a Safety Day and other special events and programs. This project is spearheaded by the Aumsville PARC board and city staff in conjunction with Aumsville Elementary, Trillium Services, Aumsville police and fire, plus several other local businesses and organizations. The summer reading day camp served 314 children this year, with an average of 180 children each Monday receiving a healthy breakfast and lunch from Fresh n Local, and participating in reading, crafts and outdoor recreation. Every child receives a free book each week. Form Revised August 2015 Page 2
Two thirds of the children served this summer were age 7 and under, with an average of 50 parents participating during the program each week. In addition to the summer reading program, this year s 4 week August Academy served 150 children, including children from the Migrant Education program. This program ran Tues Fri so kids could participate in the summer reading program too. Next up: continuing after school homework and parenting classes, including families who need extra help from Trillium Services. 3. Objective Launch a community based lending program. This quarter we met with Community Lending WORKS about their program based in Springfield, and are planning a funding workshop for local businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs after the first of the year that will include Community Lending WORKS as well as MESO (Microenterprise Services of Oregon). Both programs could provide a source of capital for businesses that are not quite strong enough for traditional lenders. Next up: Setting a date and structure for the workshop. 4. Objective Apply value chain methodology to the natural resources industry. This project was on hold this quarter as Freres Lumber Co. prepares to make a major investment in our area. The largest private employer in the canyon communities, Freres Lumber Co. has recently announced an expansion into production of an environmentally friendly wood product at a new mill that will be built near their other local plants (between Lyons and Mill City in Linn County). 5. Other Individual and small business consulting. Sixty one clients received direct services from GROW in the first quarter of FY 2016 17, 59 of whom received individual counseling sessions and 53 of whom were returning clients. Two of these existing clients continued to require unusually extensive help through this quarter, a situation that has been ongoing since fall 2015. We expect this situation to continue with one of these clients through the fall, and the other through late spring/early summer. The summer months tend to be fairly quiet. GROW held one Small Steps, Big Results class in late August and a small Young Pros gathering in September (12 total attendees), and facilitated four tourism action team planning meetings/events (31 attendees). GROW clients come from a wide variety of industries, but the top three are services, retail/wholesale and hospitality. As a result, many of our clients are involved in the tourism initiative and have become more active with GROW in recent months. We expect that trend to continue as the local tourism network begins to grow and plans for marketing River Fusion 22, the eclipse and our region are further underway. Next up: Our Small Steps, Big Results monthly class and our Young Professionals groups resumed this fall. We are also experimenting with offering Small Steps, Big Results in a virtual format on the first Tuesday of the last three months of the year. We have several tourism related workshops in the planning stages, including a fall field trip to Dayton to explore how they used their Main Street program to build a local tourism economy, a workshop with Michael Held to learn how The Dalles used the Main Street program to augment their tourism profile, and a visit from Air BNB to help locals understand what Form Revised August 2015 Page 3
visitors want in local accommodations and to help build out our lodging capacity in advance of the eclipse. 6. Other Please provide a brief narrative of other items of importance not identified above. Rep. Kurt Schrader visited our area with Marion County commissioners and others to discuss what can be done to keep Detroit Lake water levels higher during the summer months. This visit culminated in a meeting w/ 160+ local stakeholders at the Gates Fire Hall to discuss options, including dredging under the marinas to keep lake water levels deeper into the late summer while still providing plenty of water for fish and downstream water users (like Salem). A November 9th meeting is scheduled in Detroit to further discuss this option. Cheeriots has been working on their new transportation plan, which included eliminating services between Gates and Stayton, dropping the dial a ride service, and expanding services between Stayton, Aumsville and Salem. At a meeting in September with many local stakeholders, including elected officials, riders, non profits, DHS and a Stayton medical clinic, Cheeriot board members and staff learned how detrimental eliminating bus service would be for Gates, Mill City, Lyons and Mehama residents. An October meeting was scheduled in Mill City, at which time Cheeriots announced that two round trips per day would be retained in the canyon communities. 7. Activity and Output Metrics. Complete the following for each quarter. Number of Clients Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Total # of new clients 8 # of returning clients 53 Total Active Clients Type of Clients Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Total # of clients with existing businesses 56 # of clients with prospective/new businesses 5 Services Provided Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Total # of clients that received counseling 59 # of individual counseling sessions provided 187 # of workshops/ events held 2 # of individuals participating in workshops 11 Total # of workshop attendees 12 Tourism planning meetings/events # individuals tourism planning meetings/events (in person only; does not include participation by email) 4 23 Total attendance tourism planning meetings/events (does not include co facilitating Eclipse meeting w/ 31 SSCOC & T Salem 47 attendees Total client contact hours (all activities) 2,846 Form Revised August 2015 Page 4