3) SUPPORT THE ENGINES OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

The Urban Core should be the driving force of economic revitalization for the region. A keen focus on economic diversification is imperative to ensure a competitive and positive future for the Urban Core. Efforts should include sector diversification, job type/wage diversification, and the attraction of additional residents with higher-level education levels, skill sets, and incomes. The Urban Core must bring back anchor businesses and attract new businesses through the cultivation of a culture friendly to start-up businesses and new job opportunities. Latent assets around quality of life should therefore be better leveraged for talent attraction and retention.

A concentrated move towards a more robust local economy that enables people to both live and work in the Urban Core will be necessary for longterm economic relevance and sustainability. A deep level of purpose and collaboration in addition to realistic priorities and coordinated tasks will be imperative to improve the competitive positioning of the Urban Core. To succeed and compete in this global environment, economic and community development efforts in the Urban Core will need to be focused and proactive, seeking to support existing institutional assets, address the disconnect between the Urban Core’s commercial offerings and how customers choose to spend their money, and attract start-ups and job-creating businesses.

3.1 Support Macon’s institutions as economic anchors for future growth

• Promote an Urban Core Health District via a medical corridor that links institutions physically and in people’s minds

• Create an attractive, 21st Century campus for Navicent Health that incorporates wayfinding, streetscape improvements, and a mix of uses that includes housing

• Build better support for economic anchors by expanding employee-oriented commercial businesses employee-oriented and encouraging medical office space

3.2 Send a clear message that Macon is open for business

• Strengthen competition and re-establish natural churn in the local market by providing build-out assistance to prospective retailers and offering pop-up storefronts for testing business concepts

• Initiate Urban Core-specific business attraction efforts by redefining the draw area, pursuing business recruitment, and seeking to diversify the business mix

• Work with existing commercial property owners to encourage movement in market through outreach and education

• Initiate talent attraction efforts to build local economy and diversify the workforce

• Attract more customers through programming, clustering, and consistent hours

3.3 Support start-ups and attract job-creating businesses

• Embrace and support start-up culture by fostering collaborative workspace, improving infrastructure for high-speed internet, fostering initiatives for networking, small business promotion, and information accessibility, and supporting the Mercer Innovation Center

• Encourage modern industrial uses along 7th Street by remediating brownfields, assembling land, and marketing shovel-ready sites