• Join your peers at SSTI's 2024 Annual Conference!

    Join us December 10-12 in Arizona to connect with and learn from your peers working around the country to strengthen their regional innovation economies. Visit ssticonference.org for more information and to register today.

  • Become an SSTI Member

    As the most comprehensive resource available for those involved in technology-based economic development, SSTI offers the services that are needed to help build tech-based economies.  Learn more about membership...

  • Subscribe to the SSTI Weekly Digest

    Each week, the SSTI Weekly Digest delivers the latest breaking news and expert analysis of critical issues affecting the tech-based economic development community. Subscribe today!

Strategy Outlined to Encourage Strengthening of Manufacturing Communities

April 24, 2013

To encourage communities to strengthen their industrial ecosystems, the U.S. Department of Commerce has announced it will make awards to up to 25 communities to launch implementation strategies. The solicitation for the awards will be released in May, and awards of up to $200,000 each will be issued by the end of September. The awards are one part of a four–phase plan announced by Deputy Secretary of Commerce Rebecca Blank last week that also includes listening sessions and a proposal to award five to six communities $25 million each.

Details for the cross-agency initiative, the Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership (IMCP) that will provide coordinated assistance to manufacturing communities, were outlined by the deputy secretary. The first of four phases will be listening sessions coordinated by federal agencies throughout 2013 to seek input on a 2014 competition. In the partnership's second phase, the grants of up to $200,000 will be awarded to 25 communities to create strategic plans that strengthen their industrial economies.

The third phase will be contingent on a proposal made in the president's budget to award $25 million to five or six competitively-selected communities that effectively identify their comparative advantages and develop implementation-ready plans, invest in public goods and institutions through public and private funding, and encourage community links that reinforce and expand their commercial appeal to investors. Funding would come from the Economic Development Administration and would be supplemented by funding from other government agencies.

Meanwhile, the announcement indicates in the fourth phase, The Commerce Department will lead an interagency effort that aligns economic development programs across the government. Read the announcement.

For a detailed overview of the president's FY14 budget request with more information on the Administration's proposals for manufacturing, see SSTI's special budget issue.

strategic plan, manufacturing, federal agency, dept of commerce