Putting Out the Welcome Sign: Speed, decisiveness among leading factors when considering site selection

 Nearly every community has a deep desire for economic development.

Steve Prange sees the process from the corporate side. He’s senior vice president and director of business development and strategy for Crawford, Murphy & Tilly Inc., an engineering and consultancy firm that provides site selection services for companies nationwide.

Companies are looking for all sorts of different things, Prange says – logistics, utilities, workforce, education and training opportunities, and more.

Operating from this perspective, Prange understands the biggest factor in site selection is risk.

“When you look at these things, if you do have a risk, how are you going to mitigate it to make a company select Springfield?” he says.

A huge factor in overcoming risk, Prange says, is trust.

If a civic leader makes assurances about what they can do, companies expect them to follow through, even if things get controversial, he says.

“When clients are coming to make an investment like this, they want certainty in local government leadership – that when they say something, they mean it,” he says. “They want bold, decisive leadership they can count on.”

If a community has a history of flip-flopping on deals, there’s a good chance a would-be developer will walk. Likewise, if projects are frequently stalled by red tape, word gets around in the development community.

Such development snafus comprise an issue where many communities can do some soul-searching, according to Prange.

“I’ve seen our challenges with that,” Prange says of Springfield. “We can be more development-friendly – there’s no doubt about it.”

Steve Childers, director of planning and development for the city of Springfield and former city administrator for Ozark, has heard the criticism that the wheels of local government can turn slowly.

“Speed to market is very important, and that’s one of the No. 1 things we hear that could be improved,” Childers says.

He sees promise in the city’s current project of rewriting its zoning code to align with the comprehensive plan. It’s a process that the city is aiming to complete by spring 2025.

Springfield’s Economic Vitality department website points out that the last time the city completed a comprehensive update of its codes was in 1995, and the revisions will help to ensure that all codes related to new development are consistent and compatible with one another – a process that has potential for reducing possible confusion and delay.

“We hope to be able to improve internal processes to get the business community where they want to go faster,” he says.

The local business community has clear preferences on where they would like to see government apply its energies. Among business leaders who responded to Springfield Business Journal’s 2024 Economic Growth Survey, 46% said they wanted government to help by improving or investing in capital infrastructure – a number that is unchanged from 2023.

Additionally, 44% of respondents said they wanted government to streamline the permitting process – up 10 percentage points from 2023 – and 29% said they wanted development charges reduced, an increase of 5 percentage points year over year.

Nationally, a National League of Cities survey from 2023 assessed the highest priorities of municipal leaders. Improving streets and roads ranked highest on the list, at 56%, followed by sewer and stormwater improvements at 45% and water systems at 41%.

While taking care of infrastructure needs for existing businesses, some municipalities maintain the bandwidth to focus on potential new businesses, too. The city of Springfield did that with the 2023 Buc-ee’s development on the northeast corner of the city by providing sewer, water and three-phase power north of Interstate 44 and opening up about 1,000 acres to future development.

More recently, Springfield City Council has annexed and rezoned property in west Springfield, near the location of a second Target store that is currently under development. As one example, as recently as the Oct. 7 council meeting, a rezoning measure paved the way for McCurry Plaza LLC to construct a 2.7-acre commercial development kitty-corner to the Target site at Sunshine Street and West Bypass.

In effect, the moves plant open-for-business signs at either side of the city – but that doesn’t mean Springfield should take on all comers.

Right fit
Prange says development is a two-way street.

“Every community in this country has to kind of make that decision as to how development-friendly they’re going to be, finding the right balance between being who you want to be and attracting new development,” he says. “You have to find out what’s right for you.”

He gave the example of data centers – entities that make huge draws on a community’s electrical grid but produce a relatively small number of jobs.

“Some cities are making the decision that they’d rather save their electrical capacity for a development that makes more jobs for their communities,” he says.

Prange says while companies are looking to see whether a community is a right fit, local leaders can turn the mirror back on them.

“They need to be asking the hard questions, too – who are you trying to attract, what are you going to need from our community?” he says. “We can take that back and make a stronger commitment knowing it’s in alignment with our strategic vision and where our community wants to go.”

The ideal situation is when goals dovetail, according to Prange.

“That’s where the magic happens – where you have that alignment,” he says.

Collaboration and self-awareness
Childers says public-private partnerships were essential for the successes he oversaw in Ozark, and they are also vital in Springfield.

“A city needs to be a partner with all the universities, school districts, the chamber, not-for-profit organizations and other very important community partners that are here,” he says. “You need to have relationships with each and every one of them.”

Not only should there be strong relationships, but these should be evident to observers.

“When a business looks in from the outside, and they see, wow, all these groups that should be working together, having a common mission, fighting, sparring – they see them in the paper all the time – they go, ‘What the heck? We don’t want to go there,’” he says.

Businesses looking to locate in an area want to see signs of a collaborative environment, Childers says.

He adds that attracting development starts with some soul-searching.

“In order for a community, whether large or small, to be successful with economic development, a city or town has to have a good understanding of what your economy is – what your economy needs, what your economy can support, what the demographics of your economy are driven by,” he says.

Childers was hired to the Springfield post in late 2023, meaning he came to the city with a new comprehensive plan, Forward SGF, already in place and a zoning code rewrite underway.

“So now I’ve got this roadmap,” he says. “Really, it’s about what tools, what techniques, what processes and policies do I put along the way to allow for business opportunities to flourish.”

Transformational projects can come in all sizes, Childers says, and cities just need to be open to new ideas and ways of thinking.

“Cities need to be able to think big, think bold,” he says. “That doesn’t mean they need to be reckless. They need to be very calculated.”