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IT’S ALL ABOUT SERVICE WITH
ONE STOP READY
By Tom Beaman
Oakland County’s One Stop Ready initiative challenges
communities to break away from traditional thinking
and embrace economic development concepts that are
deceptively simple: capitalize on your strengths, think like an
investor and make customer service the top priority.
Through classroom sessions
and collaborative activities with
their peers — small business
owners, developers and builders
— municipal leaders share
what does and does not work
while viewing the economic
development process through
the eyes of their customers.
“One Stop Ready is a
customer service-based
initiative that leverages people’s
willingness to do cool things
within their community,”
says Deputy Oakland County
Executive Matthew Gibb.
“We help cities identify and
capitalize on their strengths
and refine their economic development processes to
implement a community vision.”
Twenty Oakland County communities have joined One
Stop Ready. Among them is Lyon Township, where Supervisor
Lannie Young applied One Stop Ready principles when Magna
International Inc. was considering building a 151,000-squarefoot
manufacturing plant in his community.
“Typically we would go through the application review
process in four weeks, but they wanted to break ground in
four weeks,” Young says. “I called in our building department
and engineering consultants and asked, ‘How do we add to or
break the rules of our process to get these folks operational?’ ”
Lyon Township allowed Magna to start work before the
building, grading and wetland permits were completed.
“We’re talking 250 manufacturing jobs,” Young says.
One Stop Ready is open to elected or appointed municipal
leaders in Oakland County. Recognizing that entrenched
bureaucracies often resist new ideas — and to secure their
commitment to the program — participants must first pass a
council resolution committing to the process.
“One Stop Ready is heavily dependent on leadership,” Gibb
says. “It’s so easy in government to say, ‘This is the way we’ve
always done it.’ You need problem solvers at the top of the
food chain who can call the shots and are empowered."
One Stop Ready encourages communities to follow
specific practical actions when working with developers.
“If someone wants to build a new ice cream shop, you must
have a process where that person meets with city officials and
they roll out a plan, and it’s collaborative,” Gibb says. “That
way, the business owner gets all the tools and resources he or
she needs right up front.”
Other actions include making information and forms
available online, having regular interaction with the business
community, helping developers track projects to make sure
A Velmeir Companies development in Waterford.
deadlines are met and promoting successes.
“My experience with the program has been extremely
successful,” says Stephen Bock, executive vice president and
general counsel at Velmeir Companies, a commercial retail
development firm in West Bloomfield Township, “Not that you
still don’t run into difficulty, but the understanding between the
municipal community and the developer community has steadily
improved in most of the communities that we deal with.”
Matt Farrell, a principal and partner at CORE Partners LLC,
credits Oakland County for leading this charge.
“Oakland County continues to create the tools and to
provide assistance to the development community to foster
business growth,” Farrell says. “The One Stop Ready program
is more evidence of that proactive thinking.”
Tom Beaman is a business and technology writer based in
Rochester Hills.
Photo: Courtesy of Velmeir Companies
56 OAKLANDCOUNTYPROSPER.COM 2016