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PROSPER --- GOING UP Cool for Customers 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
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