City of Boone receives BEST of Iowa Excellence Award as it collaborates with Ames EDC
The city of Boone is among four Iowa communities honored with a BEST of Iowa Excellence Award.
BEST stands for Business Expansion and Strategic Trends and is a collaboration among local economic development groups, the Iowa Economic Development Authority and Iowa’s utility companies.
Boone was recognized for going “above and beyond throughout the data gathering process” that helped identify workforce challenges and supply issues. The initiative in 2021 got data from interviews with more than 1,065 companies in 66 Iowa counties.
“The reason this award is important is that it points directly back to the mayor, the city administrator, the city council, that they're placing a high priority on understanding the needs of their existing employers,” said Dan Culhane, president and CEO of the Ames Economic Development Commission (AEDC).
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“They don’t get this award unless they have the leadership and the understanding of how important this is,” he added.
Boone has contracted with the AEDC to support its economic development goals.
“The City of Boone is honored to receive this award, along with the other communities,” Boone city administrator William Skare said in a news release. “Mayor (John) Slight and the city council understand how important our current businesses are to the economic vitality of our city. They deeply appreciate their commitment to our community and work hard to support them. Our relationship with Ames Economic Development Commission has proven to be effective in continuing our economic development progress.”
“We were thrilled they got the award,” Culhane said. “They went from no visits in 2018 and 2019 to where every visit was attained last year. So it was a big jump in the number of visits.”
He said it’s a problem of staff bandwidth for many communities that just don’t have the employees available to make the visits happen. And that’s where entities like the AEDC can help.
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Learning the data surrounding local business trends helps retain and expand existing businesses as well as draw new ones to the community, he said.
“It’s the basic blocking and tackling — the basic tenet of economic development,” Culhane said. “About 80% to 85% of your job growth will come from businesses that are already here so you’d better take care of them.”
There are 16 companies in the city of Boone and a total of 110 companies in Boone and Story counties that the AEDC targets for visits each year.
The AEDC primarily targets interstate commerce employers, Culhane said.
“If someone is producing a product or a service — it could be a software company or a durable goods manufacturer — if they’re selling that out of state, we’re most likely in contact with them,” Culhane said. “One way you do this is by having a lot of communication with them, having relationships with them and ultimately knowing what their needs are to maintain their presence in your community but also grow in your community.”
Getting firsthand feedback from businesses across Iowa is critical to setting the stage for economic success, Drew Conrad, director of the Institute for Decision Making at the University of Northern Iowa, said in the release.
“We hope that this information will help leaders pinpoint how to best support the hardworking people of Iowa,” Conrad added.
Iowa City Area Development, Mahaska Chamber and Economic Development and Urbandale Economic Development also received the BEST of Iowa Excellence Award.
This article originally appeared on Ames Tribune: Partnering with Ames Economic Development, Boone gets BEST of Iowa award
