Author: dkendellto

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Toyer Supports Proposed Logistic Park

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This week, Toyer Strategic successfully held a community meeting with property owners adjacent to a proposed logistics park in Lacey, Washington.

Toyer is one of the project consultants supporting the entitlement of the Hawks Prairie Logistics Park – a project that would create around 1.9 million square feet of warehousing and distribution space on 131 acres.

An economic impact analysis produced by our firm estimates that the project could result in nearly 900 direct, indirect and induced jobs at full-build out of all phases of the project.

Lacey, Washington has a population just over 49,000 and sits on the Interstate 5 (I-5) corridor south of Tacoma, Washington and immediately north of Olympia (the state capitol).

 

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Welcome Anna to the Team

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We’re excited to announced that Anna Leidl has joined our team as a research intern and will be supporting a number of our economic development and marketing projects.
Anna, a native of Saskatchewan, Canada, is a sophomore at Iowa Wesleyan University where she is double majoring in Psychology and Marketing while playing volleyball and softball for the Tigers.
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Highlights from Spencer Economic Forum

Video

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Check out some highlights from the Spencer Economic Development forum our firm conducted on November 5th.  Clip is courtesy of Spencer Municipal Utilities.

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Don’t Make it A Christmas List

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An economic development plan shouldn’t be a Christmas list of all the wonderful things your community wants to open this year (and the next several years).  Such plans aren’t anymore realistic than the pony you wrote to Santa about when you were 9.

If you going to update your economic development plan (or strategy) in 2019, consider these two Christmas themed points:

  1. The Story Matters – It’s hard for me to recall a great example of a long Christmas story (or one that I can’t easily break into bullet points to give you the highlights).  Possibly because Christmas was such a big deal in my house, but it’s also because we are much better at telling, remembering and enjoying stories that are identifiable, exciting and brief.  A successful plan needs to be constructed with the story in mind so that your stakeholders can tell it as easily as you can and your prospects will remember it before others.  Just keep thinking about how War & Peace may be a literary achievement, but Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch that Stole Christmas likely had greater impact on you (and your children).
  2. Be Rudolph not Frosty – Rudolph’s nose gave him an advantage over the competition.  Finding your greatest asset and how to leverage it as a competitive advantage is the main task of any successful strategy.  Unfortunately, too many planning efforts try to hang a hat on transforming a community into something their not – a sure way to slowly fade (or melt) into irrelevance.

Need help with an economic development strategic plan?  We can help

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Another Example of How We Add Value to Projects

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Whether you are a community, economic development organization, real estate developer or expanding business, our land use and economic development expertise can add significant value to your projects.  Here’s an example of value we’re adding to a project by changing the land use and zoning.

On a 6-1 vote Wednesday night, the Auburn Planning Commission recommended the City Council approve a comprehensive plan map amendment and rezone for 1.89 acres that our firm has been pushing through the City’s annual docket cycle on behalf of a client.  If approved by the City Council, the resulting zoning would increase the density of the site by as many as 29 additional housing units.

“This project is a perfect example of how our company can help land owners and developers add value to their properties and projects,” said David Toyer, founder of Toyer Strategic Consulting.  “With land supply inside urban growth areas becoming more constrained, our experience changing zoning and permitted uses can add significant benefits clients looking to achieve a higher and better use.”

In another example earlier this year Toyer Strategic successfully amended the matrix of permitted uses in the City of Pacific, Washington to allow a client to move forward an industrial warehousing in an office park zone – a obvious win for the project developer, but also a key win for a city which hadn’t seen much new development in that zone.