Using Economic Development Incentives to Better Align Business Executives in Building Competitive Cities

Introduction

Incentives to attract or retain business in any community are often met with visceral responses encompassing inequality, injustice, zero sum game, race to the bottom, corporate welfare, and much more. While across town, if not across the street, in city after city, is the crying need for more attention and support for urban revitalization. Indeed, this mountain of redevelopment work is a long journey, and it’s very expensive. And the underpinning of the success formula for most urban revitalization agendas is private sector partners. This is where financial incentives to attract and grow companies take on a critical value proposition. 

The objective of this article is to suggest the win-win relationship between companies and communities through the use of economic development incentives that spawn the growth of business in a given market while concurrently building the private sector leadership base to drive the place making of more livable, vibrant cities. 

And in particular, the intended takeaway is the notion that corporate legal counsel, whether in house GCs or their outside legal counsel, have a tremendously valuable role to play in securing these financial incentives as well as guiding C-suite executives to lead the charge in critical place building initiatives.

The full article is available below.