Downtown Grand Rapids Inc. Planning Manager Tim Kelly emails a weekly GR Forward update to the project Steering Committee. Here's this week's communication:

Good Morning Everyone:

I hope you are finishing up a great week.

We had a brief reprieve in our GR Forward community engagement this week, but we continue to incorporate the feedback we have received to date into revisions of the vision statement and goals. We are also further developing strategies to accomplish our goals and vision, and look forward to sharing those with all of you and the community later in February and March.

A quick reminder on some upcoming events. First, next Tuesday, February 10 at 5:30p we will have our second meeting with our neighbors in Heritage Hill. The meeting will be held at Cornerstone Church (48 Lafayette Ave SE), and is open to all to attend.

Additionally, next Thursday, February 12 at 6p, we welcome Peter Kageyama to town for the fourth installment of our GR Forward Thinking Speaker Series. Peter is the author of “For the Love of Cities” and “Love Where You Live”, and the title of his presentation is “Welcoming Civic Love through Open Engagement”. As with our other GR Forward activities, this is a free event and will be held at Kendall College (17 Fountain St NW). Hope to see all of you there!

Web Numbers

The latest web and social media numbers are below. Though we continue to see positive trends, our activity slowed a bit this week. We expect those numbers to pick up a bit with our upcoming activities.

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/grfwd

Twitter - https://twitter.com/grfwd

Instagram - http://instagram.com/grfwd#

Resources

This report from the Brookings Institute on the importance of America’s “advanced industry” sectors, and their role in the continued revitalization and long term sustainability of the economy is really interesting.

An advanced industry is a broad term encompassing approximately 50 industries ranging from manufacturing, to energy, to high tech. The industries are characterized by their deep involvement with the technology research and development (R&D) and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) workers. The Brookings report asserts the success of these industries will drive the long term health for many metro regions and the county as a whole.

While some metros are performing stronger than others in these sectors, the report also identifies some challenges moving forward. Here is an overview of the findings:

• As an employer and source of economic activity the advanced industry sector plays a major role in the U.S. economy;

• The total number of jobs in the sector has remained mostly flat since 1980, but its output has soared;

• Advanced industries provide high-quality economic opportunities for workers;

• Industries tend to cluster in large metropolitan areas and in a variety of configurations;

• The nation’s declining concentration in advanced industries and its negative trade balance in the sector do not bode well; and

• Jobs in advanced industries are available at all levels of education, but only a narrow educational and training pipeline channels potential workers into the sector.

To correct for some of the deficiencies, the report recommends the nation’s private and public sectors engage to defend and expand opportunities within these industries. To accomplish this, they must commit to innovation, provide workers the skills they need to fill available jobs, and provide the infrastructure necessary for these industries to cluster and succeed.

While Grand Rapids has ~ 10% of its total employment residing in an advanced industry, focused efforts to further grow that share might go a long way toward long term economic sustainability and achieving our goal of further catalyzing our local economy.

As always, if you have any questions let me know. Otherwise, have great weekend!