AREA updates council on site-readiness, business outreach and downtown initiative

The Albuquerque Regional Economic Alliance (AREA) briefed the City Council on its contracted economic development work, summarizing deliverables and local outreach completed over the past year.

AREA's president and CEO (identified in the meeting as "Ms. Casey") told the council the organization provides quarterly and monthly briefings to city economic-development staff, represents the community at trade shows and provides custom data and research materials. Casey said AREA has concluded business retention and expansion outreach with 70 written responses and 41 direct business calls since July 1, and that businesses continue to identify workforce shortages, public-safety concerns and infrastructure constraints as principal challenges.

Casey highlighted a new state site-readiness program passed in the legislative session that she said will shorten time-to-market for sites by funding consultant-driven property assessments and predevelopment (for example, archaeology or environmental surveys) and thereby reduce multi-month delays in attracting end-users. "If you can get those predevelopment hurdles done ahead of time, you've saved six months," Casey told the council.

She also described a private-sector-led downtown initiative AREA has helped facilitate; the group plans to begin petitioning property owners in the coming week to encourage coordinated improvements to the downtown core.

Casey said AREA will continue to provide quarterly and monthly materials to the city and that its board and advisory committees supported the downtown outreach and site-readiness engagement.

Ending: Councilors asked follow-up questions about the new state site-readiness program and requested additional briefings; AREA said it would make quarterly reports public and provide the council with more in-depth presentations on request.