The Birmingham Business Alliance, the recently formed organization which is the combination of Region 2020, Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Metropolitan Development Board, has hired Market Street Service to come up with an economic development strategy and plan for the Greater Birmingham area. The Atlanta-based planning firm will help them come up with a plan with the region's demographic data, education attainment levels, and infrastructure to think of ways to recruit more businesses.
Hopefully, they will use UAB as their crown jewel of their recruitment strategy since it is one the leading research universities in the nation and medical centers. Like Huntsville with high-tech jobs, Birmingham needs to focus on biotechnology jobs and firms along with financial and insurance companies in the region. If they can get those particular sectors attention that Birmingham is open for business along with the new state incentives law allowing the recruitment of white-collar businesses with tax incentives then we might be on to something.
I'm crossing my fingers that they can get something major and the leadership of Birmingham will be wise and aggressive enough to push forward with these places to get most of these businesses placed into the city.
No comments:
Post a Comment