Rochester

Rochester one of five chosen by county to be ‘One Stop Ready’

By Mary Beth Almond
C & G Staff Writer

ROCHESTER — The city of Rochester is one of five communities chosen by Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson to participate in a new pilot program that aims to streamline the process of moving a business project from concept to reality to attract more development.

Ferndale, Lyon Township, Oxford and Wixom were also chosen to be One Stop Ready pilot communities. Along with Rochester, they will work closely with the Oakland County Department of Economic Development and Community Affairs, which offers project financing and micro loans, planning services, small business counseling, workforce development, and an introduction to a host of state and federal programs.

Matthew Gibb, deputy Oakland County executive for economic development, said the goal is to try to create best business practices within the county — in communities that maybe have a technique or a process in the handling of business opportunities and ideas that might be really working for them, but that other communities might not know about.

“The whole idea is to create a program where we start to share those ideas and that knowledge base,” he said.

The One Stop Ready concept, according to Gibb, is based on three components: knowledge, tools and strategy, and implementation.

“We will bring our resources in and just have a discussion with the leadership, the elected officials and the planning commissioners, and the zoning board members, and the staff, and say ‘let’s just have a conversation about where you are at as a community when it comes to economic and community development.’ The next part will be to explore the resources that are available that maybe they don’t have at their disposable,” Gibb said.

Patterson said the program is not a rubber stamp for economic development projects or a criticism of current community practices, but rather an approach that complements a community’s ability to respond quickly and efficiently to economic development opportunities.

“We want all of our communities to have a core understanding of economic development and to be more efficient,” Patterson said in statement. “We want them to be more knowledgeable about, and integrated with, the resources we offer locally and those offered by the state. The Michigan Economic Development Corporation is working on a redevelopment readiness program to be launched next month, and the Legislature is working on one too. One Stop Ready will keep our communities out front.”

Throughout the process, communities like Rochester — which Gibb said is already handling economic development practices well — could potentially get even better and more responsive.

“Rochester is going to be a great partner for us because they have such a wealth of knowledge and resources, but they themselves even admit that there are certain processes and things they could do better at, and that’s what the whole design is. We’ll learn from them, they’ll learn from us, and then hopefully when the pilot concludes, we’ll be able to offer it to all 61 communities in the county, to say, ‘here’s what we think are the best practices,’ and then we’ll start to learn from them. By the end of the year, hopefully, we’ll have five more tactics and strategies that people can use to be more efficient and more responsive,” Gibb said.

Nik Banda, Rochester’s deputy city manager for economic development, stressed that the five communities chosen for the pilot program we’re picked because they are shining examples of how to be One Stop Ready.

“We were chosen to show the other communities how we do it and help them be more like us,” he said.

One of the reasons Rochester has been so successful in attracting business, according to Banda, is that the city realizes the importance of attracting development and has streamlined many of its process in the 2 1/2 years he’s worked there to make things as easy as possible for developers.

“We’re all trying to make ourselves as efficient as possible, and the city of Rochester has done that. We’ve done a lot of things to speed the process up, and we’re continuing to tweak that,” he said.

Banda said he doesn’t think the city will have to make any major changes to its processes as part of the pilot program, but added there is always room for improvement.

“We can always find something that we can do better and we are happy to share our story with other communities that haven’t got as far as we’ve got,” he said. “We have a 4 percent vacancy rate in downtown Rochester, and we’ve had five new businesses move into this town in the last two months that know that downtown will be closed for three months during the Main Street Reconstruction Project — that’s pretty impressive.”

You can reach C & G Staff Writer Mary Beth Almond at malmond@candgnews.com or at (586)498-1060.