By JIMMY LAWTON

CANTON – St. Lawrence County has adopted a new economic development plan and this time, they say it won’t grow dust on the shelf.

St. Lawrence County Industrial Development Agency developed the plan. IDA Director Patrick Kelly said this plan is different from many than have came before it.

“This wasn't an update of a previous plan, it was a new plan.  But in building it, we synthesized not the results of other studies and plans, the St. Lawrence County Economic Development Study, the Massena GM Brownfield Opportunity Area initiative, the North Country Regional Council strategies, the County Agricultural Development plan among others,” Kelly said. 

“We also built it with the idea of using it as an actual plan of attack, not just as a document to use to seek out grant funds.  Internally at the IDA, as well as with our development partners, we put a lot of time into prioritizing what we think needs to be done, and where we need to focus our resources. This was balanced, and in many ways confirmed, by the outside input from the many stakeholders involved in this plan, as well as the others referenced,” he said.

This time the Industrial Development Agency, which worked with dozens of stakeholders to develop the plan, will be issuing updates and revising the strategy as needed to ensure the county is moving forward.

The new five-year plan replaces the county’s former plan, which failed to meet its goals. Kelly says the plan builds on the $4 million McKinsey study with a focus on implementation.

“With any plan, implementation is key, and there are always resource limitations around execution, primarily relating to time and funding.  Beyond that, focus and adherence are always a challenge with any strategic initiative.  In terms of resources, for a small county, we have some fairly robust internal assets, whether it is IDA programs, the local developers, the colleges, or other local and regional support partners, and we've got a pretty strong track record of bringing outside funding into the area, so I'm optimistic we can find ways to enact the action plan within the strategy,” Kelly said.  “Adherence to the plan is going to come down to our own discipline, things come up, issues and obstacles that aren't always foreseen, but we've built this plan locally, we own it and we believe in it, so I have every reason to believe we are going to be committed to its implementation.”

The plan is aggressive, especially in the first year, where the county has sent nearly 50 goals it plans to implement. Those goals are broken into five major categories.

Enterprise and expansion

According to the study locally-owned employers feel isolated and need a forum that enables them to learn mutually from one another and to assist each other in solving problems and in planning and implementation business expansions.

To achieve this, the county will create an entrepreneur-led small business opportunity network, that will develop ways to overcome the isolation. Working with this group, the county will help businesses and entrepreneurs become better informed about how to access local, state and federal incentive programs that can help them maintain and expand their businesses. This part of the plan puts an emphasis on growing small, well-established, businesses throughout the county. To accomplish this a business-led growth training and support program would be established. This would be modeled after the recent success of Buffalo’s Center for Entrepreneurial Development.

Also in the interest of preserving businesses, the SBON would help identify locally owned companies whose management and ownership is reaching retirement age to transition to enable companies to maintain or expand operations and ensure the company continues.

The plan puts a renewed emphasis on helping businesses stay afloat, with a goal of providing assistance to ensure they can get over the early hurtles that can fold a fledgling business. They county will endeavor to get early warnings of possible closure or curtailment of operations at companies and provide options available to respond to those events.

The plan also calls for working with institutions including colleges and healthcare providers to find ways to incorporate their operations with local businesses.

Startup enterprises

Startup businesses are a main focus in the new county strategy. The county will collaborate with existing economic development organizations and the SBON to focus on providing better assistance to start up businesses. This includes SUNY Canton’s Small Business Development Center, Clarkson’s Reh and Shippley centers, the Adirondack Economic Development Agency, the Seaway Private Equity Corporation and Point Positive. By identifying potential startups earlier, the county can help them get up and running sooner and provide support to ensure they have the tools they need to succeed.

The plan also calls for working with colleges in order to create and fund worker training programs that are not only dependent on state and federal funds. Building on this the IDA would also work with the colleges and the New York Power Authority to deliver coaching, and other support services to help these startups scale up their businesses at an accelerated rate.

Outside investors

Working with the Power Authority the IDA will help conduct a search aimed at attracting advanced manufacturing firms, value-added dairy processing and large-scale covered agriculture investors and businesses to the county.

The IDA will also expand on it’s “come-back-here” initiatives aimed at attracting previous county residents who could relocate businesses they have started elsewhere or bring their businesses ideas and capital and skills back to the area.

In the interest of spurring new ideas, the IDA, Reh Center and Power Authority would plan to conduct a “come-back-here” business plan competition. A similar competition is also planned for Canadian businesses that could bring fresh ideas to the county.

The IDA will continue to solicit Canadian companies, in the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal corridor to expand their businesses in the county as well as market the areas low-cost renewable power.

To help facilitate these ideas the IDA will improve its customer relationship management system and upgrade its information technology systems to improve marketing.

Research and development

New to this plan is a focus on research and development. This includes a prioritized list of development-related topics aimed at the county’s natural and other resources. In the first year the county will research quantities and destinations of wood materials harvested in the area that are exported elsewhere. It will also identify what products are made from locally harvested wood.

The IDA will examine the assumption that many people who own or want to start businesses want to escape pressures of urban life and return to the presumed slower place of rural communities. The IDA will also try attract these people to the area.

The IDA will work to determine whether raising and processing sheep, goats and grass-fed beef presents opportunities for growth and how that could be achieved.

Another research area will focus on the potential of warehousing for Canadian businesses in U.S. The emphasis would be on businesses that sell products in the states.

The IDA will also work to adopt a modeling program that can be used to measure the performance of the local economy and determine if the plan is yielding results.

The plan calls for some research into a claim in the McKinsey study that county dairy farms lag behind peers across the state due to lack of investment and innovation. Also in the interest of aiding farms, the study calls for a survey of the rules and requirements of standard development loan incentive programs to determine if they could be expanded to farm businesses.

Tourism is also being addressed in the study. The IDA plans to create a revitalization fund that will be used to create a coordinated foundation for a major increase in tourism-related business growth. Coinciding with this will be an effort to catalogue, promote and coordinate the carious attractions, events and initiatives that bring people to the region. This includes the effort to establish St. Lawrence County as the fishing capital of the world.

The information gathered from this research will help the county identify areas in need of investment to ensure funding is targeted to entities that can be successful.

Infrastructure

St. Lawrence County’s aged public works, dilapidated buildings and contaminated land present major problems for attracting businesses and investors. To address these issues the IDA is prioritizing rehabilitations and improvements that can be turned around to ready to go for interested entrepreneurs.

To do this the IDA will work with local developers and planners to assist communities with maintenance and expansion projects and assist them in applying for funding from local, state and federal sources.

Some of the areas identified in the plan are the redevelopment of the Alcoa East site into an industrial site, cleaning up the J&L site at Benson Minds and fishing the rehabilitation of the Newton Falls secondary railroad.

In Massena the IDA hopes to develop and industrial or business park in the Town of Massena on 70 acres donated by Alcoa to the town and assist in the redevelopment efforts at the St. Lawrence Centre Mall in Massena. Other projects include replacing the water line in East Massena and providing water infrastructure to the Alcoa East site and replacing water piping and lines to the water tank in the village.

In Ogdensburg the Ogdensburg Bridge and Port Authority aims to finance and construct a new shell building in commerce park. The OBPA also hopes to secure financing for the restoration and modernization of the Ogdensburg-Prescott International Bridge.

Continued improvements are also planned at the Ogdensburg and Massena airports.

In Canton an effort is also underway to improve water and sewer infrastructure to the Maple Hill Route 11 and Sullivan and Riverside Drive area. This would include a new sewer lift station and transmission line on northeastern side of village and construct a new water main from Waterman Hill to the village limits.

The installation of white water parks in Canton and Potsdam are also included the longer-term goals.

Living document

While the new plan is detailed compared to many documents used by the county in the past, it is also clear that the document will be changed on a regular basis. Many of the goals included in the document are aimed at identifying more refined courses of actions to ensure funding is targeted in the most effective areas.

According to the plan, revision and frequent updates are at the core of the strategy, and that’s by design.

“Only by making a firm commitment to a regular and rigorous process of revision can the CEDS truly be the owners’ manual that the County wants it to be,” the study says.

Kelly also offered appreciation to those who assisted in developing the plan.

“We had a great deal of outside help, not just from the other strategies and studies which were out there, but from the stakeholder throughout the County, the community leaders and businesses who gave us a great deal of their time and input,” he said.  “Whether it is local and county government officials, state agency partners or businesses and entrepreneurs, people in the County are supportive and interested in seeing economic development progress.  There is no doubt we struggle economically, but overwhelmingly there is an interest in helping, in working, and in seeing good things happen.  It might not sound like much, but it isn’t a bad place from which to start.”