Currently, there are a number of business and economic development organizations pursuing regional growth strategies and initiatives in Kansas City. Among them are the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, the Kansas City Area Development Council, and the Civic Council of Greater Kansas City – the main business organizations that focus on the region as a whole – as well as the Economic Development Corporation of Kansas City.

In addition, a number of industry partnerships have business support and involvement. The Alliance for Innovation in Manufacturing and the Mid-America Manufacturing Technology Center focus on the manufacturing sector. The Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute works to advance the life sciences research, commercialization, and workforce development. The Kansas City Metropolitan Healthcare Council focuses on the healthcare workforce. And there are efforts under way to develop industry partnerships in the green energy, logistics and healthcare IT sectors.

To link these different efforts together, the Mid-America Regional Council (MARC) and its partners are using AWI funds to organize a “regional workforce intelligence network” that builds on the partnerships that were established under WIRED. The network will collect and analyze labor market data, and turn that data into information that can guide and align regional growth strategies, and promote greater collaboration among the many different organizations that are pursuing those strategies. MARC envisions that the network will provide a common platform of information for regional workforce and economic development organizations to work from, and a forum for those organizations to plan together where their investments can make the biggest difference. The information will also be used to establish a dashboard of indicators to track the growth of key sectors, identify labor market trends and skill gaps, and analyze the overall competitiveness of the region.

There is some concern, however, that these efforts to grow the regional economy may not be sufficient to revitalize Kansas City’s urban core, with its high levels of poverty, unemployment and crime, and high concentrations of vacant and abandoned properties. There is currently a project under way to revitalize a 150-block area of the urban core hardest hit by poverty and unemployment, called the Green Impact Zone. This is an experiment in taking a comprehensive approach to revitalizing poor neighborhoods, focusing on housing rehabilitation and weatherization, community policing, job training, and health and wellness programs, using green as an organizing principle, and using federal stimulus funds to jump-start the effort.

Taking such a comprehensive approach requires bringing together many different streams of funding from many different federal and state programs, each with its own missions, institutional interests, administrative structures, performance measures, and geographical boundaries. It also requires collaboration on the ground among business, economic development, workforce development, universities, local government, labor, and community-based organizations. The initiative is led by a steering committee that brings together these various stakeholders to work across boundaries toward common community goals.

This effort is now entering its second year. During 2010, the Green Impact Zone received $26.2 million in federal transportation funds for infrastructure repairs, $24 million in federal energy funds with $24 million in local matching funds for a SmartGrid demonstration project, and $4.5 million in state funds for a weatherization program.

One of the strategic initiatives of the Green Impact Zone is help residents gain access to training and employment. There has been a conscious effort to use some portion of each grant to give zone residents access to jobs created by that grant. MARC has supported that process by helping identify the specific jobs being generated by the grants, along with their qualifications, recruiting residents of the zone and identifying their job-readiness needs, then meeting those needs and connecting residents to jobs.

Recently, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded the region a $4.25 million Sustainable Communities grant to support regional efforts to integrate housing, land use, economic and workforce development, transportation and infrastructure investments. Around 50 partners in this effort plan to integrate these components by focusing on specific centers and corridors within the region.

The HUD grant will make it possible to apply the lessons from the Green Impact Zone at the regional level. The effort will be guided by a regional sustainable development committee and supported by MARC.