Equitable Strategic Site Selection
As part of Northeast Ohio’s initiatives to advance a more equitable economy for all, the Fund for Our Economic Future, a Northeast Ohio non-profit civic collaborative that bring together leaders across sectors to advance a more equitable economy, has developed a unique site selection tool called “Where Matters.”
This online open-source tool enabled businesses and economic developers to find a site for investment that to compare sites based not only on its real estate characteristics risks but also on critical information like diversity of a labor shed and the time, cost and carbon emissions of commuting.
OEDA and the Fund for the Economic Future are sponsoring this no-charge webinar to demonstrate how this unique tool works on Wednesday, December 6, 2023, from 11:00 am to 12:30 pm.
Webinar participants will see a demonstration of how the Where Matters tool helps to identify sites that are more accessible to the area's workforce, and given an opportunity to break out into a group to obtain more targeted technical assistance.
More about the Where Matters Tool:
The Fund for Our Economic Future (Fund) released the Where Matters site analysis tool on October 31, 2023, after 2 years of development.
The Where Matters tool enables businesses, economic developers, government leaders and planners to go beyond immediate site considerations to consider long-term factors including labor pool demographics, commute costs, emissions and transit access across more than 380 U.S. metro areas.
This first-of-its-kind, open-source tool can be used by public and private sectors alike to make more sustainable and equitable business location decisions to maximize economic development, regional planning and civic impact.
“Bethia Burke, President of the Fund, noted that "Too often, ‘forever’ site development decisions are made using incomplete, ‘right-now’ data,” Comparing two potential sites based solely on limited real estate characteristics risks ignoring critical information like diversity of a labor shed and the time, cost and carbon emissions of commuting. But until now, that information wasn’t easily available.
Where Matters puts this data at the fingertips of every corporate leader, site selector and government actor figuring out where and how to apply incentives to make informed choices that work better for everyone.”