Wasilla awarded grant to plan for economic and community development.

Wasilla lies in the heart of the Mat-Su Borough. Just about anyone wanting or needing to travel from Anchorage to Fairbanks, or Trapper Creek to Valdez, must go through Wasilla.

With that comes more people moving to the city, businesses finding new opportunities to grow, and communities beginning to develop. There also comes a need to find the balance between economic growth and community development, which is at the center of a grant Wasilla was recently awarded.

“We want to go from ‘just Wasilla’ to the heart of Alaska,” explained Crystal Nygard, the Deputy Administrator for the City of Wasilla on what this could mean for the city.

Known as the CEDS grant, the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) contributes to effective economic development in communities and regions across the country through a locally-based, regionally-driven economic development planning process.

Wasilla received $70,000 for CEDS, which will be matched by the city as they look toward the future of Wasilla.

In simpler terms, a CEDS is a strategy-driven plan for regional economic development. A CEDS is the result of a regionally-owned planning process designed to build capacity and guide the economic prosperity and resiliency of an area or region. The idea is to utilize a robust economic network by building regional capacity that contributes to private, business, and community success.

“I met with the Economic Development Administration (EDA), which is part of the Department of Commerce and asked if the city could do a CEDS, and typically they do not because it is such a comprehensive plan,” explained Nygard, adding that the city decided to take a chance and apply for it.

What does this all mean for Wasilla? Having the CEDS could be comparable to having a pre-approved mortgage loan from a bank-all of the work is already done beforehand and it carries a significant weight on how many homes one might be able to available to the buyer. With the CEDS, Wasilla now has options when it comes to opportunities for economic growth in the form of other grants they might qualify for in the future.

“This is helpful for things like smaller beautification projects, zoning an area for IT and the costs associated with it, we can get this independent funding through the EDA grants,” she said.

Mayor Glenda Ledford has said one of her initiatives is opportunities for economic development.

Nygard said that while she had not done anything like this before, the Mayor’s office, in conjunction with the planning department, brainstormed on ways to map out diversification within the strengths of the economy.

“When you look at it holistically, we have to ask what part of our city is going to have the greatest return on investment, what has sustainable money so we can keep the parks open, the library open? It takes the regional goals with objectives and initiatives that will hopefully stimulate economic growth, help the workforce, expands commercialization, and enhances infrastructure,” Nygard said.

Qualifying for the CEDS was tricky, as Nygard explains, because the eligibility is based on communities that have experienced severe economic disruption or have had some type of economic disaster where there is no preplanned resilience factor built in to the response plan.

According to the CEDS website, several key areas are needed for consideration, including a summary background of the economic conditions of the region; an in-depth analysis of regional strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (commonly known as a “SWOT” analysis); a strategic direction and action plan built upon SWOT analysis and incorporate/integrate elements from other regional plans (e.g., land use and transportation, workforce development, etc.) where appropriate. The action plan should also identify the stakeholder(s) responsible for implementing timetables and opportunities for the integrated use of other local, state, and federal funds; and a framework for evaluating performance measures of the organization’s implementation of the CEDS and impact on the regional economy.

Another piece needed for applications is the incorporation of the economic resilience, defined as the ability to avoid, withstand, and recover from economic shifts, natural disasters, the impacts of climate change, etc.

“So when the pandemic hits a small community, how do you survive? The CEDS requires forethought and asking ‘what if?’ and ‘what are the consequences?’ So that’s really important to qualify,” Nygard said.

The EDA also looks at components such as large employee workforce displacement, which might seem odd as there hasn’t been any such displacement in the traditional sense.

“We (the Borough) are the biggest exporter of workforce because of Anchorage and Prudhoe Bay. Everybody lives here but works somewhere else, so when looking through this section, we have had workers displaced when jobs were lost on the Slope. Companies in Anchorage that previously had commuters and now let people telework from home, it still counts as a job in Anchorage, even though people are living here and working from home, I can’t count them as lost jobs in Wasilla, even though we feel it here.”

Another important factor for consideration was seasonality as pertaining to not just the 4 seasons, but tourism, construction, or fishing.

“You have to look at your economy and ask ‘what are some things we can do to add to that in between those things?’”

Nygard points to Southeast Alaska as an example after the area lost a swath of their economy when timber was driven out.

“They started looking at other options, like mariculture, how could they grow oyster farms, and out of necessity how could they think outside of the box?”

Economic development planning – as implemented through the CEDS – aside from being the basis of the EDA programs also serves as a means to engage community leaders, attract the involvement of the private sector, and establish a strategic blueprint for regional collaboration. The CEDS provides the foundation by which the public sector, working in combination with other economic players (individuals, firms, industries), creates the environment for economic prosperity, something Wasilla is very much interested in providing.

“How do we understand our city’s economics? When a new developer comes in, we should be asking how many jobs is this going to create, how much payroll are you going to have, why did you choose Wasilla? In our assessment, if you can’t have good, reliable, and economical infrastructure, it’s very hard to get a big investment into the community.”

Nygard said that building a local economy that is resilient and has redundancy built in, and created from within rather than allowing others to do it is a vital part of the application and approval for the CEDS.

“There’s a component of it, the basic economics of Alaska and Wasilla, and with COVID there are some anomalies, but there are real people with real stories and real concerns. Finding the balance between economic and community development. This will be a comprehensive, co-created as a public-private narrative with regional objectives.”

Nygard says that the CEDS will be used in a few ways, the first being to share with the community on what the vision is based on the needs they identify; it is going to be used with the city’s strategic partners, the people that want to make big investments into this region It doesn’t matter if it’s a port or a new convention center or brand new development for hospitality.

She said it will also be used for capital.

“We have to have our finances in a way that shows we are worthy-our credit’s good, our finances are good, and we have it organized around how we’ll get to the next step. We have no debt and we have saved our money frugally. That’s really telling for a population of 11,000 with a $28 million in the budget.”

As for receiving the CEDS and what it could mean for Wasilla, Nygard says,“We have an opportunity to grow our local economy with intention and building around the needs of residents, businesses, and regional partners. We will have options to apply for grants that enhances economic development.”