Allen County Together Plan

In February 2020, Greater Fort Wayne Inc. (GFW Inc.) began the process of crafting an economic development action plan for Fort Wayne and Allen County. The goal was to create a strategic plan that would guide the community’s continued economic growth over the next 10 years. However, as with so many other planning initiatives at that time, the COVID-19 pandemic struck, and the process was delayed through most of 2020 during a prolonged period of stay-at-home orders and social distancing.

Then finally, in November 2020, the planning process was reactivated, and GFW Inc. selected TIP Strategies, Inc. (TIP), an Austin-based economic development consulting firm, to help facilitate the creation of the plan. Throughout the planning process, the TIP consulting team worked closely with GFW Inc. to engage the community, gather input, and develop a plan to advance Fort Wayne-Allen County’s economic development. Because of this tight-knit working relationship between GFW Inc., the project Steering Committee, and the consulting team during the engagement, a high level of public and private participation became a reality, even in a time of virtual meetings.

In addition, new data sources and analysis helped ensure a shared base of information that would inform the strategies. Finally, the best practices of other communities were critical components of the strategies outlined in the plan. With COVID-19 still looming in the background, Allen County was feeling the immediate economic impacts of the pandemic, and the future had never appeared more uncertain, and yet, one conclusion remained clear: Fort Wayne-Allen County is a community on the rise.

Throughout TIP’s more than 25 years of experience leading consulting projects across the country, the firm’s three-phase Theory Into Practice planning model— discovery, opportunity, implementation—has proven flexible enough to address a variety of challenges and opportunities. As part of the discovery process for the project, the consulting team conducted 20 roundtables and dozens of individual interviews to gather information and ideas from more than 200 local stakeholders. These included business leaders, elected officials, educational leaders, developers, investors, community activists and advocates, and other stakeholders in Fort Wayne and Allen County. In addition to open discussion, a live polling tool (Mentimeter) was used to capture input from stakeholder meetings, with more than 1,400 qualitative data points. The consulting team also gathered quantitative data from available public and private sources and delivered them in a data visualization tool (Tableau). These data included demographics, population migration, employment trends by industry and occupation, housing characteristics, commercial and industrial real estate market trends, and other economic indicators (see Key Data Findings on page 14).

Finally, the consulting team developed a perception survey for regional and national real estate professionals (including site selectors, developers, and commercial brokers) and worked with GFW Inc. to distribute that survey to identified targets. The survey resulted in 50 responses—with a roughly equal amount of in-state and out-of-state responses—which were analyzed and delivered in a Tableau data visualization tool (see Real Estate Perception Survey Key Findings on page 18).

The planning process was participatory, inclusive, and transparent; it inspired community leaders to create a future-focused vision. The process evolved from highlighting numerous individual thoughts to discovering a collective focus. The shared understanding of priorities helped to create a strategic vision for the future of Allen County. Allen County Together (ACT) is the economic development action plan that will provide a 10-year strategic focus for the future. The name of the plan is meant to emphasize collaboration and inspire action. The plan is built on a framework of three guiding principles.

The Allen County Together plan charts a path to grow the Fort Wayne Allen County economy through a collaborative effort to increase business growth, job creation, entrepreneurship, capital investment, and real estate development over the next 10 years (2022 to 2031). With this purpose in mind, the TIP consulting team worked with the ACT Plan Steering Committee to craft a set of three guiding principles to shape the planning process. These principles reflect the values of the community. In the context of an economic development action plan, they are a set of statements expressing how a community and its leaders define economic success. The plan’s guiding principles are designed as crosscutting themes and reference points for strategies and actions. Each guiding principle is forward-looking and also serves to keep the community’s focus on making Fort Wayne and Allen County a more vibrant, successful, and nationally recognized economy over the next 10 years.

The plan’s guiding principles form the foundation of the Allen County Together plan. Each of the three guiding principles is supported by three bold projects and three strategic initiatives designed to accelerate the momentum of Fort Wayne and Allen County’s economic growth. Bold projects are the most aspirational, transformational, and high-impact opportunities from the action plan designed to take Fort Wayne-Allen County’s economy to the next level. Strategic initiatives are the goals, strategies, and tactics—the set of actions GFW Inc. and its partners will undertake—that make up the action plan.

Broadly speaking, Guiding Principle 1 is about elevating the community’s capacity for economic growth through site development, placemaking, and strategic infrastructure investments; Guiding Principle 2 is about creativity, entrepreneurship, and technology adoption in the private and public sectors; and Guiding Principle 3 is about investing in Fort Wayne-Allen County’s people and communities through talent and workforce development, inclusive small business support, and targeted real estate development.

While the initiatives and strategies outlined under each guiding principle differ, they are complementary and interconnected. Together, the guiding principles and the underlying bold projects and initiatives help advance the GFW Inc. mission of building a nationally recognized economy by growing jobs and wages, and attracting new business, talent, and capital. Guiding Principles 1, 2, and 3 describe what is necessary to build a high-growth, innovative, and inclusive economy in Fort Wayne-Allen County, regardless of the financial resources and organizational alignment that might be required. The Capacity and Resources section on page 46 addresses the funding sources, incentives, and organizational capacity needed to support
implementation of the plan.