Erie Times: Erie Amps Up Homecoming Pitch

The annual Erie Homecoming event sponsored by the Erie Regional Chamber and Growth Partnership sprang from a sound impulse and promising model crafted in another on-the-ropes Rust Belt city, Detroit.

Invite successful expatriates back to their hometown to share the keys to their prosperity, connect them with businesses in the city where they got their start and maybe, inspire new investments by them.

Local participants praised insights gleaned and returning natives offered Erie compliments and counsel. But the investments that flowed from the Detroit homecomings, more than $300 million, did not follow.

That may be in part because the best we could offer then was generalities about Erie’s business diversity and vibrancy.

At this August’s Erie Homecoming, that script will be flipped, Brett Wiler, director of capital formation for the Flagship Opportunity Zone Development Corp., said Thursday during Mayor Joe Schember’s weekly news conference.

First, the guest list will be broadened to include a “network of investors, social impact organizations, developers and foundations from across the country.” The audience will then be presented with concrete opportunities to invest in Erie’s eight Opportunity Zones, low-income census tracts where investors can invest capital gains with major tax advantages thanks to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.

The still-developing list of projects includes real estate projects, start-ups and existing businesses that promise to deliver, Wiler said, “a triple bottom line return” on “profit, people and place.”

What’s more, Accelerator for America, a consortium of mayors and urban and economic development experts, will attend, lending heft to this opportunity to raise and change Erie’s profile.

This moment is a credit to host of factors — unprecedented capital investments by Erie’s largest businesses, the deeply researched plans now being rolled out, leaders who are stepping from silos, and the better organized and focused Erie economic development strategy and apparatus emerging from DevelopErie’s collapse in 2016. Amid and because of that momentum, the city seized the lead in the race for Opportunity Zones investments, launching the first prospectus in the nation.

Whether the Opportunity Zones legislation will deliver the gold rush predicted remains uncertain. No matter. Erie’s preparation to compete in that race — collaboration, identification of priorities, data-crunching, and touting the city’s assets and grit on stages nationwide — has already clarified the path forward and expanded the capacity to get there.

The city’s damaging trend lines took decades to develop and won’t turn on a dime. This work is what it takes. A bonus, as Wiler noted, is that Erie, in taking its own reins with such command, could help chart a way forward for other legacy cities looking to unlock the capital needed to fuel the potential that resides in them.

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