Business Attraction
Business attraction remains a top priority for the Fort Bend EDC as competition continues to increase across the region and throughout the nation. FBEDC employed a new, fresh strategy understanding the shifting nature of development and business attraction, focused on what we understand businesses and consultants prioritize: streamlined processes, quick product delivery, and land that is shovel-ready with power, broadband, water capacity, and sewage systems.
Our economy is growing, diverse, and strong, and as we move forward and redevelop parts of the county and develop the nearly 50 percent of the county that is not developed, we must continue to focus on what makes Fort Bend the ideal location for business relocation and expansion.
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More so than ever before, companies and site selection consultants are concerned with lifestyle factors that contribute to placemaking and quality of life. Diversity of cultures and inclusivity, workforce housing options, access to healthcare, and the quality of the talent pool now lead discussions versus footnotes at the end. These lifestyle factors make Fort Bend even more competitive when considered side-by-side with similar communities. As we refined our business attraction strategy, we focused more on talent attraction and quality of life factors.
As business needs shift, the business attraction tactics shift as well from focused location primacy and aggressive incentive negotiations to broader asset marketing, strategic pre-development work, employee/talent attraction capacity, and direct outreach to consultants and businesses.
Pipeline and Successes
As markets continue to shift, incentivized projects are less frequent. Economic Development success in the new economy is measured by job growth, expanded commercial tax base, and new small businesses and startup activity. The FBEDC working with municipal allies and Fort Bend County's Director of Economic Development and Opportunity, we continue to seek opportunities to grow the region, both through incentivized projects and project support for unincentivized deals.
Pipeline Summary
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Gross Regional Product
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Commercial Values
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County Employment
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County Population
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Regional Outreach
"Thank you for having us for lunch and meeting with the rest of the Fort Bend Team! Meeting and getting to know the economic development people from the cities and the county and understanding the services and information they can provide was very valuable. We are looking forward to continuing to build on your years of hard work to make Fort Bend County 'The Place' to live and work" - Billy Gold, CBRE
FBEDC targeted opportunities to meet with regional allies, brokers, consultants, and developers to ensure the Fort Bend County brand remains top of mind across the region.
- FBEDC hosted Broker Lunches, a series of lunches hosted with commercial brokerage houses and the cities’ economic development directors to build new relationships and strengthen long-standing relationships. The county’s economic development team joined brokers from CBRE and Colliers International to network and share information on their individual communities and the county at large. These lunches will be hosted quarterly to remain connected with the Greater Houston region’s brokers and developers.
- FBEDC participated in regional industry events such as NAIOP, GHP, CCIM, HREDA, Colliers Trends Annual Event and others to interact with the target audience and expand the Fort Bend County brand to new and existing brokerage contacts.
- FBEDC presented to area chambers, brokers, and real estate events to share data and growth trends with area stakeholders and generate interest in new opportunities.
National Outreach
Familiarization Tour
The FBEDC, via the Fort Bend Marketing Program (FBMP), hosted a familiarization tour on October 24-26, 2022. The event brought six national site selectors and two consultants to Fort Bend to learn more about the community. The program was divided into two tracts, highlighting the assets and resources on the East and West sides of the county. Nine months of planning culminated in the event, which was extremely positively received by the participants, consultants, and city staff.
The event focused on relationship building with national site consultants, highlighting the strategic assets which set Fort Bend apart, and identifying opportunities to be more competitive moving forward. Reviewing lessons learned from the event in 2022, some slight changes will be made to the event scheduled for March 2024.
Regional Trip
FBEDC staff and representatives from the cities of Sugar Land and Richmond attended the three-day Economix 2022 December 6-8 event in Columbus, Ohio. The team had the opportunity to visit directly via “office hours” with more than 30 site selectors and consultants, and Fort Bend County hosted a dinner with eight consultants and the FBEDC/cities team. Via our workforce development panel on the familiarization tour, the Central Fort Bend Chamber’s CTE Leadership Academy and Manufacturing Day events were highlighted, representing innovative workforce initiatives in Fort Bend County.
The 2023 trip will be in Atlanta, Georgia, and the cities’ economic development directors who are members of the marketing program and the county economic development director will be invited to participate in the outreach event at the end of November. FBEDC has secured a sponsored dinner again this year, and has begun making selections for invited consultants.
*Note: for both the familiarization tour and the regional trip, business cards with QR codes were created to a broker/developer/site selector specific webpage, Why Fort Bend.
Houston Exponential
Understanding the changing economic development landscape, the Fort Bend EDC expanded its relationship with Houston Exponential (HX) this year with the purpose of finding better ways to serve the burgeoning innovation community across the county. With funds committed by the FBMP board, FBEDC forged a stronger, more grassroots relationship with HX, adding events for entrepreneurs, roundtable discussions with innovators and economic development professionals, workshops on defining the Fort Bend entrepreneur, and conversations with regional leaders on how to best integrate into the broader regional innovation ecosystem. To add opportunity, the various meetups and workshops were a combination of virtual and in-person events.
What’s Next…
The HX/FBEDC relationship has only just begun and moving forward, FBEDC will work cooperatively with HX to find opportunities to bring innovation programming and activity across the region to Fort Bend.