Earlier this month, we hosted leaders from across our 11-county Greater Des Moines region at the inaugural Regional Summit. It was inspiring to have hundreds of passionate advocates and changemakers for our region in one room. 

During the event, we celebrated the winners of our Economic Impact Awards, which have been presented to organizations and individuals for more than 40 years. In that time, we’ve celebrated a total of 230 award recipients. Many of these are companies that have completed major expansion projects that add jobs and capital investment to the region, as well as startup companies that are rapidly growing and economic development practitioners who work behind the scenes to help make projects happen.

One of this year’s winners was Carla Eysink, Marion County development director. Carla has extensive experience of nearly 30 years in the economic development field, and she shared her view that economic development success leads to more success. When a company expands in a community, it not only creates jobs for that specific company but also has a ripple effect. 

For example, a manufacturing company expanding in Marion County leads to jobs in industries that support manufacturing such as trucking companies. Creating more jobs helps attract people to live and work in a community, which leads to more restaurants, retailers, auto mechanics and other companies that serve community needs. 

Economic development leads to community development and vibrancy, which in turn builds more economic development opportunities. Momentum builds upon momentum.

Economic development projects do not happen by accident, and they do not happen overnight. They take time and cooperation between public, private and nonprofit partners. Economic development takes relationship-building, constant marketing of our region and grit.

Good news is, we have all of these things. Our economic development team is hard at work cultivating relationships with local partners and marketing Greater Des Moines across the country and world.

Each year, we conduct hundreds of existing industry visits to meet with companies, learn more about their current opportunities and challenges, and identify how we can help. This year, we’ve held over 400 of these meetings (and counting) with companies from across the region. We also work with businesses to complete business retention and expansion surveys to gather quantitative data to help us better serve businesses. More than 160 companies have participated in our survey so far this year.

On a national level, our team represents our 11 counties on marketing trips, at trade shows and during city visits around the globe. Just in the second half of this year, our team has been to the Institute of Food Technologists Expo in Chicago along with the Iowa Economic Development Authority (IEDA), hosted ag-tech conference Tech Hub LIVE, attended the Site Selectors Guild Fall Forum in Detroit and attended recruitment trips to metros across the Midwest. 

Recently, Sid Juwarker, vice president of economic development at the Partnership, joined the honorable Gov. Kim Reynolds on a trade mission to India. The delegation included Director of the IEDA and Iowa Finance Authority Debi Durham, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig, and several agricultural and business leaders. Trips like these help our team find and cultivate economic development leads and are important to the long game of growing our prospect pipeline. 

We hear from site selectors and other economic development professionals how much they appreciate our approach and commitment to regionalism, and how they choose to use the Partnership as their first call to learn about sites and connect to key players across our service area. 

Once companies are ready or close to making a decision about completing an expansion project in Greater Des Moines, we work with the state, local municipalities and economic development groups, including IEDA, to close the deal. Economic development is a team sport. 

Because of these efforts, our pipeline of prospects, at over 100, is larger than it has been in years. It is imperative to have projects in the pipeline because potential projects turn into completed projects. 

Economic development is a core focus of our mission at the Partnership and is rated as the most important thing we do by many of our investors and stakeholders. We will continue to develop the relationships, market Greater Des Moines and build our region’s project pipeline. 

We play the long game, and as a region, we collectively win more together.