Outlying counties to shape strategies for development

Geography, Ron Weisinger says, will shape strategies for the two major economic development agencies in northern Nevada.

The Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada, which works in land-short Washoe County, increasingly focuses on highvalue jobs as a way of extracting the most value from each scarce acre of development.

But for Weisinger's Northern Nevada Development Agency, the Carson City-based nonprofit that works in predominately rural areas of northwest Nevada, no one worries about a lack of property to support new development.

"We still have lots of land,"Weisinger says.

"We want to make sure those counties grow."

NNDA in early January will publicly introduce its plans to plan an economic development strategy for the four counties that the agency covers Carson City, Douglas, Lyon and Storey.

The plan also will include three counties, Churchill, Pershing and Mineral, to which NNDA provides technical assistance.

Like EDAWN to the north, NNDA will contract with AngelouEconomics of Austin, Texas, to develop the plan.

The two agencies, which already work cooperatively with many of the new companies scouting northern Nevada for locations, will share some of the data developed by AngelouEconomics.

The study,Weisinger says, will begin with a compilation of the region's assets for economic development everything from water supplies to communication infrastructure to availability of a qualified workforce.

Once that's done, NNDA will work with local government officials in the seven-county region to bring groups together to talk about their community-by-community vision for economic growth during the next 25 years.

Weisinger says NNDA plans to conduct the forums both in English and Spanish.

"The Hispanic population is growing, and it is a significant factor in every county's economy," he says.

NNDA also will seek out comments from folks who don't want to see economic development and population growth in their communities.

"They are a significant element in any county.And sometimes they have good points,"Weisinger says.

The data and the visions will be combined into plans for each community.

The process is expected to be complete by mid-2006.

Weisinger says, however, the plans will need to update regularly to reflect changing economic conditions and community preferences.