Efforts to attract and retain businesses in Ormond Beach continue to produce tangible results, even in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the city's head economic-development official said.
In the past three years, the city's economic-development efforts have resulted in the creation and/or retention of 850 jobs with 138,000 square feet of new commercial construction and $18 million in capital investments by area businesses for industrial-plant improvements and/or expansions.
But as communities across the state and country ratchet up business recruitment, the city needs help from as many partners as it can get to stay competitive in the game of "economic hunting," Joe Mannarino, the city's director of economic development, told a business gathering Monday.
Mannarino said the city's development goals for the coming year include working with Tomoka Holdings on its plans to create a massive 3,000-acre, mixed-use development called Ormond Crossings along North U.S. 1, with more than 2,900 homes and nearly 4.9 million square feet of industrial and commercial space, selecting an aviation firm to master-plan and develop the southwest quadrant of the city's Airport Business Park and working with Realtors and hospital-management officials to facilitate reuse of the former Florida Hospital Memorial building on Sterthaus Drive.
The Ormond Beach Chamber of Commerce, which hosted the breakfast at Halifax Plantation Country Club, pledged to step up its support by forming a business-recruitment team to assist the city. Details regarding the plans have yet to be worked out.
Kent Jones, the chamber's 2010 board president, and Patrick Opalewski, the chamber's president-elect, said the proposed recruitment team would be a pool of area business leaders who would make themselves available to work with the city in pitching the merits of Ormond Beach as a place to do business to companies considering relocating or expanding here.
The team would include commercial real-estate brokers and agents, business owners and/or executives from a wide range of industries and officials from a number of organizations, such as the Center for Business Excellence, the Small Business Development Center at Daytona State College, Volusia County's Department of Economic Development and the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE).
If the concept sounds familiar, it should. Mannarino acknowledged the chamber's Ormond Beach Business Recruitment Team, in some ways, will be a more localized version of the Team Volusia Economic Development Corp., the new public/private partnership being formed to coordinate efforts throughout the county to recruit and retain businesses. Mannarino said Team Volusia should be a welcome complement to but not a replacement for his own department.
"We look at Team Volusia as an additional resource ... mainly to help us with business recruitment," said Mannarino, who added it will still be up to each city to make a pitch, separate from Team Volusia, as to why their community would be the best home for that business.
George Mirabal, president and CEO of Team Volusia, said his organization applauds efforts by the city and Ormond Beach chamber.
"We're thrilled that any city or chamber continues to view economic development as critical and important," said Mirabal. "Team Volusia's intent has never been to replace" those efforts, he said.
"Partnerships ... are what it's all about," said Mirabal. "We keep saying economic development is a team sport."