Chamber launches Grow Quad Cities development arm

The Quad Cities Chamber announced a new approach to regional economic development with the creation of Grow Quad Cities, a development and marketing engine designed to bring more people and businesses to the region.

Peter Tokar III, who became the chamber of commerce’s president and CEO in January, announced the new, two-prong community and economic development approach Wednesday, Aug. 7, at the chamber’s annual meeting. He stressed that the newly launched Grow Quad Cities will not negatively impact the existing full-service chamber organization.

Mr. Tokar also joined outgoing Quad Cities Chamber Board Chair Mara Downing in celebrating a number of community development wins the chamber helped leverage in the region over the past year. That includes existing business expansion projects that brought $122.7 million in economic impact to the region.

“At the beginning of my tenure as board chair, I shared a bold future for our region – one where we collaborated and maximized our partnerships to drive results for our region. I challenged us to anchor our work in economic growth and regionalism. I’m proud to say we made great progress and have wins to celebrate,” said Ms. Downing, the vice president, global brand management and corporate communications for Deere & Co. 

Those kinds of accomplishments will be enhanced, not diminished with the new organization, Mr. Tokar told chamber members gathered at Rhythm City Casino Resort in Davenport. He also urged the sold-out crowd of more than 650 to support the effort to create that external economic development and marketing arm. It is designed to attract new people and outside investment to the area.

Six-lane highway needed

“Remember, economic development is not a one-lane road. To me, it’s a six-lane highway,” Mr. Tokar explained. “While we were very successful in our limited operation, we can be more impactful by serving the community in all areas of opportunity for the region. Today we introduce to you Grow Quad Cities, our regional, parallel economic development organization which will be nested within the chamber of commerce and focused on expanding our economic development footprint in the region.”

Through that new parallel regional organization – charged with expanding economic development in the Quad Cities – Mr. Tokar said “We will be able to focus on a broad scope of economic development services, support new types and genres of economic development and focus on all aspects of community growth and prosperity within the region; not just that one-lane highway.”

To put it another way, he said, by focusing on only community economic development, which is the chamber’s current central mission, “to me it’s like fighting the economic development battle with just Captain America and not all of the Avengers. We need the full team out there to make that happen.”

That team will include Quad Cities municipal leaders, members of the chamber’s Regional Opportunities Council (ROC), and brokerage partners, who will be founding members of the new Grow Quad Cities organization.

Financial help needed

The effort also will need financial support as it uses the next year to get up and running. 

He told the QCBJ after the presentation that he anticipates when Grow Quad Cities is fully operational it will need an annual budget of between $2.5 million and $3 million.

Seed money for Grow Quad Cities’ first year will come from current funds spent for such external marketing and business development efforts, which will be transferred to the new organization, he added. 

Mr. Tokar stressed, however, that no other chamber funds will be used to support Grow Quad Cities. “No. This will not replace the chamber. Grow Quad Cities is aimed at making the chamber more efficient and available to focus on its core mission better,” he said.

As a result of the change, the chamber organization will continue to focus on internal economic development and growth, while the new organization will be charged with external economic development that will center on external marketing and growth efforts.

Those efforts are essential in the Quad Cities, which has seen a population growth of less than 1% over the past 10 years, Mr. Tokar said. The region must attract new industry and a new and diverse population in order to have the workforce it needs to grow and prosper. 

The groundwork for that, he added, has been laid since the region consolidated multiple  chambers on both sides of the river into one single Quad Cities Chamber organization in 2010.

“The chamber has been a work in progress since its consolidation and is now a highly effective organization,” Mr. Tokar said. “And today, just as they did those many years ago, we’re taking our first step to the formation of Grow Quad Cities to begin our regional economic development journey together once again.”

Believe in better QC

Ben Keith, the incoming chamber president, urged members to join the effort to grow the Quad Cities through the reorganization. The chamber has had a strong foundation since it was merged in 2010, the vice president of electrical transmission for MidAmerican Energy said.

“I’m asking you to listen to our new vision for the future that Peter will ultimately drive forward. But it will take all of your support as we plot and plan to put this strategy in place by this time next year,” Mr. Keith said. “It will require your belief that the QC can be better than it is today. That it can have more investment, more jobs, more businesses, more industry than we do today.”

The chamber has been doing its job as a community development organization by networking, promoting and supporting local businesses, workforce development and education, and being proactive in bettering the community’s quality of life, Mr. Tokar said. It also has excelled in acting “as the connective tissue” within the regional community. “But it is not designed to be the economic development engine of a region,” he added.

Grow Quad Cities will do that by focusing on external economic growth via attracting workforce talent through external marketing, helping enhance Quad Cities quality of place, driving new business attraction and growing a diverse business community. 

Competition at ‘all-time high’

“Competition for talent and resources is at an all-time high,” Mr. Tokar told the crowd of business and community leaders. And while the chamber has done its job well, he said, “we are not realizing our full potential as a region.”

Consider that tiny 0.86% Quad Cities population growth over the past decade. 

“We are not taking specific actions to ensure the long-term sustainability of our region from a GDP growth perspective, from a population perspective, from a diversity perspective,” he said. “We will continue to remain stagnant if we don’t use more economic development practices to create a more sustainable community in the Quad Cities.”

Among the things Grow Quad Cities will do to make that happen he said is “develop a more robust marketing campaign to really share with the outside world where the Quad Cities and, what opportunities we have here,” Mr. Tokar said. “The economic development organization’s role is to be the cheerleader of the Quad Cities to the nation and beyond.”

As a startup organization, however, Grow Quad Cities “will not have all the funds we need to do all of the work it will take to become full service as of yet,” he added. “This is where we need your support.”