Dan Stevenson, Westbrook’s Economic Development Director, was our speaker on February 27. Dan comes to Westbrook with an extensive resume in economic development. Most recently he worked in Biddeford leading the Heart of Biddeford initiative. In the upcoming year, Dan will be focusing on Westbrook’s Downtown, but other ideas are also in the works.
Dan is a fan of regional economic development, but here in Maine we are a pretty hyper-local with communities needing to invest in themselves to attract private investment. Good economic development thinks about places and spaces for the long term, just not the next 10-20 years. Good economic development is not haphazard. There are lots of people with lots of ideas, some good, others not so much, but all ideas need to be looked at against the whole. In the end, the public sector needs to move at the speed of business to drive needed change.
Areas to address include business recruitment and expansion, and workforce development. We need to look at each sector of our economy and figure out the issues in each sector so policy can make any changes needed. Complicating matters, we have the oldest population in the US so prospecting is needed to recruit and develop an adequate workforce. As a community, we need to work together collaboratively to send a unified message to current and prospective businesses. Organizations that can help with that include Rotary, Kiwanis, Discover Downtown Westbrook, Arts & Culture and the City itself. To measure effectiveness of programs and efforts, we need an inventory of all commercial properties in the City to establish a baseline from which we can measure growth.
Projects “in the hopper” include a façade program and parking management. A façade program considers what the downtown area looks like and creates a matching grant program to allow the City to work with business owners to improve the look of their building and frontage. Parking management is not just about what we have today, but what is likely to come. Measure what we have, improve absorption rates (usage), then determine need. Parking garages are often proposed as a solution, but they cost roughly $20K per space to build plus ongoing maintenance, so any payback is long and they need to be subsidized.
Look for a complete renovation of Blue Note Park (aka Westbrook Commons) in the near term. Several local groups are working together to secure funding to make this area more welcoming. A lot of people commute through Westbrook. We want to create an attractive and vibrant environment that will encourage people to stop and patronize our local businesses.
L-R: Phil Spiller, Dan Stevenson, Pres Bill Chadwick