Economic Vitality Group

Date: October 2, 2008

Good morning, B&CAers! This is my first blog post—very exciting stuff. Thanks so much, Taa, for all you do to maintain and expand our online presence at www.tigerbca.com.

This morning I started my day with a breakfast meeting of the EDC’s Economic Vitality Group. I’ve been a member of the EVG for over 2 years now, and I always learn a lot at the meetings. EVG is a great outreach effort by the EDC’s Local Industry division; membership consists of volunteers from the economic development arms of the City of Colorado Springs and El Paso County, the Chamber of Commerce, the Pikes Peak Workforce Center, Colorado Springs Utilities, and higher education. The general purpose is to encourage primary employers in Colorado Springs to stay, and to expand their businesses if possible. In a nutshell, we want to make sure Colorado Springs can give employers what they want and need, so Colorado Springs remains a viable place to expand their businesses. We are currently planning to evaluate all the masses of data that the EDC has already collected through site visits and interviews, connect that with data each of the members of EVG may have through their own research and other extant local industry research, and analyze it carefully to see what logical conclusions and actions we should take.

I really respect our local EDC leadership and the other members of EVG and enjoy working with them. I can see the B&CA doing programs and outreach efforts to support the recommendations of EVG in the future. As they say, a rising tide lifts all boats (and a receding tide takes us all down!)

We take turns hosting the meetings, which are held every 2 months, so it was CC’s turn, and it was great to share breakfast with these dynamic community leaders and have them visit our campus.

More later–I’m off to the PPLD’s fundraising luncheon with Timothy Egan–hope to see many of you at his free public talk at 7pm in Armstrong Hall tonight! If you can’t make that, he is also giving a free talk this afternoon at 3:30pm at the Rampart campus of PPCC.

Best to all,

Connie

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