The Centralina Economic Development District (EDD) launched the 2023-2028 Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) Action Plan which serves as the region’s roadmap for supporting a diverse economy that ensures coordinated growth via the prosperity for all regional lenses. The CEDS Action Plan includes 26 urgent recommendations implemented during the next 24 months being led by the 28 regional subject matter experts across the region. The Action Plan also includes 58 additional recommendations that will be implemented over the five-year CEDS time frame. The Action Plan includes a mid-point pulse check mechanism to evaluate how well the monitoring and evaluation of the CEDS goals is progressing and permits for a mid-term correction as a response.
Additional CEDS technical assistance partners include the International Economic Development Council to support the identification of cross linkages and convergences within the advanced manufacturing, health & life sciences, information technology, and logistics & distribution target industry clusters. This will help the Centralina EDD refine the CEDS regional industry cluster strategy that economic developers rely on across the nine-county region. The Institute for Emerging Issues NC-BAND project is supporting the development of Digital Inclusion Plans to assist economic mobility via digital access and participation for all in the region.
Stay tuned for a website refresh this spring that will include a complete update of the Centralina EDD regional economic data dashboards and launch of the CEDS equity metrics entitled Prosperity Profiles. This regionally relevant equity data set examines 16 different variables for strengths and opportunities in three distinct categories of resilience, community and mobility for urban, suburban and rural counties. This information empowers the Centralina EDD and regional stakeholders to bolster what is working and define opportunities for improvement throughout the five-year CEDS implementation process.
Are you interested in participating in the CEDS Action Plan or want to learn more? Please contact Anna Lu Wilson at alwilson@centralina.org for more details.
