Berks County Economic Development and Imagine Berks Plan Update

An update on the Berks County Imagine Berks economic development plan with Derek Harris, Economic Development Coordinator, and Commissioner Michael Rivera.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Good evening and welcome to County Connections. I'm Berth County Commissioner Michael Rivera. Before we get started with the show, I want to just bring up a little important announcement here. Some of you may be looking and saying, wow, why does Commissioner Rivera uh have a beard on today, right? I have it on every now and then, but not most of the time. And it is because I'm celebrating No Shave November. For those of you that don't know what No Shave November is, it is November is the month to bring awareness to men's cancer. So many of us uh are not shaving. I don't know if my guest here is not shaving for the same reason, but we'll get to him shortly. But myself and my other two colleagues, Commissioner Leinbach and Commissioner Santoni, also are participating of No Shave November, as well as some of the other uh employees and staff at the county. So if you see people around there uh with a beard and a mustache or longer hair than normal, than what you see normally, it's probably because they are participating in No Shave November. And the idea is to use the money that you save by not shaving, by not grooming, by not getting the haircut, is to donate that money to cancer awareness or some type of cancer services. I will be doing that to the uh Reading Hospital Tower Health Cancer Group here in Reading. Uh so that's what I will be doing for No Shave November. So please, if you have a chance, uh join me for No Shave November and help share the awareness that men also need to get checked out for cancer. Okay, now moving on to the topic today. Today we're going to talk about economic development here in Berks County, together with the Imagine Berks Economic Development Plan. And to do that, I have Derek Harris with me, and Derek is the economic development coordinator for the County of Berks. Derek, welcome to County Connections. Thank you for having me, Commissioner. Okay. So Derek has been with the county for four years now. Uh before that, he also worked with the Greater Reading Chamber line. So a lot of uh time working in economic development. And today I have Eric here to to Derek to talk about economic development here in Burks County. So, Derek, uh let's get started. Tell me a little bit about your role in economic development here in Burks County and also uh what some of the focuses are for you in your job here.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Sure. Uh my role for economic development in Burks County is the economic development department uh is community and economic development for Burks County. It is myself and Pamela Mennett are the two employees for that department. And uh what we focus on is the implementation of the Imagine Burks plan over the last several years. We're kind of coming to the end of that three-year plan, and part of what we'll be discussing today is what that's turning into, which is the Imagine Burks comprehensive plan. So instead of it just being the economic development plan, it'll be morphing into the economic development plan and the comprehensive plan for the county as a whole as our path moving forward and what we're looking to in terms of future development and existing growth in the community. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

So for people that are watching us, Derek, and they don't know what economic development is, right? Because they may have heard that and we hear that, but not everyone knows what that is. What is economic development and why is it important?

SPEAKER_00 3:47

So economic development is a broad term in the industry in general for a little bit of everything. So when you see a building like Alvernia across the street going under renovations to uh re uh revitalize and activate that space to be student housing, uh small business center, um, credit support services, that's an economic development project. Economic development is kind of a term for any form of investment that helps improve the quality of life in the community. And in recent years, housing has been a component that's been added to economic development. Traditionally, in the past, housing was not really part of economic development or economic development plans. Um but really post-COVID, there's been a larger push for housing to be involved in economic development plans throughout the um kind of throughout the country, and it's a new practice that we're still in the process of kind of fully wrapping our arms around as housing is an is a need that needs to be addressed further throughout the county. Um, but that's one of the main uh areas that we're focusing and tackling with the rollout of the economic development plan and the comprehensive plan. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

And Derek, you mentioned uh housing is kind of a new topic to economic development. Why is talking about housing within economic development so important? How are they uh correlated?

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Sure. Um in the past, when you'd work with attracting businesses or work with existing businesses in the community to expand their facilities or to grow their business, um, housing was a separate component. But now, in terms of how you attract a strong workforce, housing is one of the first things that comes up from companies looking to locate, is there housing available for my current or future employees? Um, and that continues to be a keystone that people focus on in terms of economic development as a more holistic approach instead of just is there land available, is there um workforce, are there utilities? Housing has been another piece added to that puzzle. Um, and we think Berks County continues to be really well situated to continue to support our existing businesses and attract businesses in the future as we begin to develop out our housing strategy.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Okay, and when you talk about housing, it's important to understand we're talking about rentals, we're talking about home ownership, we're talking about entry-level homes, we're talking about mid-level homes, we're talking about luxury homes. Yep. So it's the whole gamut of housing that we're talking about, not just focusing on one area or the other. Correct. And as you said, if a business is going to come into the area, they want to make sure that there's housing for the executives and housing for the workers uh that might be moving to the area as well. So that's important. Just some numbers here. Uh when you look back maybe six, seven years ago, there are about 900 houses, uh, single-family houses on the market at any given point here in Burns County, and that's what is considered a neutral market. So about the same number of buyers uh and sellers looking for and selling homes at the same time. A couple years ago it went down to as low as a little over 300 homes, single-family homes in the market, making that a very strong seller's market. In other words, there are a lot more people buying homes than there were people selling homes, and that led to multiple offers and different types of creative financing and creative offers. Uh now you're looking at about 550 on average single-family homes on the market at any given time. So it's moving to more of a uh neutral or balanced market, but we're still not there yet. It's still uh still a seller's market. Again, that means that there are more people looking to buy than there are houses on the market. And that's where the housing part of the housing crisis has come from. And that's not only a crisis in Burst County or even in Pennsylvania, it's nationwide. Correct. It's come up multiple times in our state association conferences as well as as well as the National Association conferences as well. So that's you know part why housing now is such an important part of economic development, because if you don't have the housing for the people, they're not going to move into the county to to fill the jobs that we have here. Okay. So uh Derek, you you talked about different uh examples of what economic development is. So how does strengthening economic development and the economy in the county, how does it impact the daily lives of everyone here in Birch County? Because the idea is to have an impact on everyone's life here in the county, not just certain areas. How does helping a area or a certain area help the county overall?

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Sure. Um, some of the projects we've seen over the last few years, whether it's the redevelopment of the Fleetwood uh Lofts project in Fleetwood, um, that was taking an abandoned factory building that had been vacant for um the past few decades and reactivating and revitalizing that space to be a uh 20 or 30 apartment units in Fleetwood Borough, some of that redevelopment in our commercial core areas and our main streets and downtowns is incredibly important for quality of life. For when people are looking at the diversity in terms of where you can live, what you can, what your house looks like in Berks County, if you want to live in the city, the suburbs, uh more rural area. We have all of that in a 10 or 15 minute drive in any direction from um Reading, which is our county seat, and that is one of the quality of life components that is absolutely huge for Berks County, is incredibly important. That open space and outdoor recreation, uh, it continues to be a bigger driver for people on where they're looking to live. And we're very fortunate in Berks County to have a robust park system, an excellent trail system, um, outdoor mountain biking trails, golf courses, disc golf, pickleball, a little bit of everything in terms of that outdoor recreation piece. But having those places that are uh communities where people uh self-select and want to live in and move into, um the shops in those areas can benefit from the increased momentum as we've seen in West Reading. If West Reading could add another block for businesses, I'm sure they would like the opportunity to do that. But looking at filling in some of the areas throughout the county that have been uh, you know, that haven't been as loved as some of the other areas, that redevelopment allows them to take that step into the future and kind of that new lease on life to continue their prosperity uh for future generations to come instead of letting things fade into the past.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

And you also take uh, for example, the the loss at fleet. What do you take a building that was, like you said, sitting vacant for many years that keeps on deteriorating? It's blight, and now you take that and you turn it into a multi-uh family apartment, and it also puts it back on the tax roll and it increases the tax on that property, which will have a benefit for the municipality that's located in as well. Absolutely. Okay. I know economic development is always important, right? But what makes this moment particularly important for economic development in Burks County?

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Sure. Um I think we're at that kind of crossroads coming out of uh COVID and some of the uh challenges that some of our municipalities were facing, of you know, what we want to be in the future, um, and taking the ability to go out and meet with all of our municipalities, all of our local leaders, and figuring out areas that are open to development and looking at how we can best support their ability to make those steps and move forward together in the future. Um, that's been one area that we've really strived for. And with the rollout of the Imagine Burks Comprehensive Plan, we're going to be continuing to meet with those leaders in the areas that they represent and where they're located. Previously, during the uh kind of lead up of the Imagine Burks plan originally, we went out and had 10 regional meetings and met with all of our municipalities and their elected officials to figure out you know, are there areas that are happy with the um existing circumstances, they don't want to see further development? Um, and we took note of that and made sure to respect those communities' you know desires, and we were looking to areas that were looking for development opportunities or had projects in mind to continue to support them in any way that we can at the county level, whether that's connecting them to state resources, um reviewing plans that come through through our Berks County Planning Commission. Um, all of those are ways that we've been able to support some of those smaller scale projects. But as we start to look ahead, um we start to have a few projects on the horizon that have come up in the news in the last few weeks. The Berkshire Mall has come up in the news several times, not always for the most positive reasons. Um, and I know that's an area that Y Missing is continuing to work on for the path forward for either redevelopment or supporting existing development at that site. But we look at um broadcasting square uh in Spring Township, and the site that if you drive past the Wawa or Chick-fil-A on the corner, you see a lot of dirt being moved right now. That is a project that it's expected right now to kind of open in fall of 2027, but that will include um over 700 housing units of variety variety of types, uh, single family, town home, apartment, as well as a Whole Foods, um, and some of that kind of higher tier uh shopping opportunities. Um, there will be a few new food destinations. Uh we'll be getting a Shake Shack, which is always one of the things near the top of the list when people are asking. Um Costco, Trader Joe's, Shake Shack, those are often things people um you know ask about when we're getting uh a location in Berks County. We're getting a full standing Sephora, which I'm sure a lot of people will be really appreciative of. Um but that project doesn't happen overnight, and that's taken years to come together. But the impact that that will have not only on just that area, but the broader community, the Broadcasting Square shopping center, while it's busy to us relatively, uh when we look at the number of people that actually visit that shopping center in a year, in 2024 there were 10 and a half million people that visited that shopping center. It represented over um, you know, it was hundreds of millions of dollars spent um by residents, visitors, um, alike. But what it showed us is that shopping center has regional draw that pulls people in to spend money in Berks County, whether they live here or not. And that is one of the ways we can really um continue to develop and push forward for the future, having investment in areas where we have assets and resources that people take advantage of. That shopping center, uh, last I had checked, was the 55th busiest shopping center in the country, not just Pennsylvania, countrywide. And when you look at our population compared to your Floridas, Texas, California's of the world, we don't have more than 450-ish,000 people living here. So to be almost top 50 in the country really shows that that center is an economic powerhouse, and continuing to lean into that development will help chart our path towards the future.

unknown 16:18

Good.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

And Derek, I don't know about you, but as I've been out and about and talking with people, a lot of people tell me they're excited about what's happening in Burks County and the future that they're seeing here in Burks County, so that's great. Also, something I want to point out here is uh, and you mentioned this, when you're talking about economic development and Imagine Burks, which we'll uh talk a little bit more about, but it's not just about new housing and new shopping centers. It's also about how do we maintain the farmland that we have. Uh farming is uh our aggregated businesses, it's the number one industry by gross revenue in Burks County, and we want to make sure that we have our farm conservation. Burks County is one of the top counties in the state that does a farm conservation, has some of the highest numbers of conserved farms here in Burks County. So as part of the uh Imagine Burks Comprehensive Plan or the County's Comprehensive Plan, which I'm going to ask Derek to talk about in a little bit, uh, we want to make sure that we're having development where development should go, and but that we're also maintaining farmland and ag uh businesses and different areas around where they're supposed to go as well, to make sure that we have a balanced growth here in Burks County. And it's hard to believe, but I've been given the 10 minute warning by John. Uh so uh Derek, talk about a little bit about uh Imagine Burks, what that is, and it's because it's been three years now, so give us an update what's been accomplished in this three years and what the next steps are for uh the Imagine Burks plan.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Sure. Um so the Imagine Burks plan, it's hard to believe that it's been over three years since we've adopted that plan. And like we said when we had launched the plan, we didn't want it to sit on the shelf. Over the last three years, we've been able to utilize state, local, federal resources to deploy into the community to really move the needle on some of the uh programs that were outlined in that plan. Um, since the launch of that plan, there had been over $35 million put towards projects, resources, uh, pieces of the plan that we were implementing in the county. Um, some of those numbers for our small businesses, uh, we provided 67 grants totaling almost $150,000 to small businesses in Berks County. There were 43 loans that were funded, um, totaling almost one and a half million dollars. Uh when you look at the talent and economic mobility section, where we were looking at upskilling uh existing workforce and people if they were in a job but kind of felt like they were at a dead end, giving them resources or other opportunities to also upskill without having to necessarily go back to school full-time or start over from scratch in a new trade. Uh we had 50 uh 54 people complete our Connect to Success program through our workforce development board. Um of the uh ways that we've engaged the youth and our young adult population has been through the Emerging Entrepreneur Academy that the Small Business Research Association, along with uh Gary Siebert, have um supported over the last four or five years. There have been 97 students that have gone through that program and successfully graduated through that program. That teaches them about uh small business, uh entrepreneurship, other opportunities. So it's not just going to work for someone, but if you want to be your own boss and run your own business. Um for placemaking, like Commissioner Rivera had mentioned, we've invested a lot of resources into our outdoor amenities as well. Um we've invested over $400,000 into uh 21 different park and recreation projects throughout the county, whether it's uh Splash Pad for Davy and All Abilities Water Park in um Wolmelsdorf, or the completion of the pedestrian bridge at the Reading Public Museum, so people are able to access and utilize that space, or uh planning efforts to complete and develop the Washington and Bardo Township um park plan. Those have been uh a few of those projects that have supported open space and access to uh trails in our community for housing. We have been tracking that as well. Um the number of units that have been built since 2021 when we had started the planning process, we've had almost 3,500 units that have entered the market since then. And while that's been a good number for us over the last few years, um, we know that we can do more and that number can be higher. Uh the number of housing units that are still in that kind of pipeline, um, that our planning department tracks is almost 5,000 units. So we still have a good runway of growth for housing, but like Commissioner Rivera said, we're focusing that growth in areas that have the infrastructure, the resources, the desire to see that development, um, and it's not on vacant uh farmland or production agriculture land in some of our high-quality soil areas. We celebrated 80,000 acres of preserved farmland forever back in June with the Department of Agriculture, and that theme had came up at one of the um kind of on the road meetings we were doing for the comprehensive plan. We had a student ask, Wow, it's great to see all of the development that's going. On, but you know, I I wish there was more farmland in Berks County, and I had to I had to smile and I was like, you know, where are you originally from? And he said, Alaska. I was like, what parts of the county have you visited? And he's like, Well, I've spent a lot of time um around my college in in the city of Reading. Um and I was like, Well, we're in one of the parts of the county that there there isn't open space in Agland in the same way everywhere else. If you drive out to Oli, if you drive out to Cootztown, those open fields that you see aren't just pretty spaces, those are economic economic drivers in our community, and it's what puts food on the table, it's what you know employs thousands of people in this county, um, and that is all part of this plan. But the in the implementation of this plan has only been made possible through the support of uh the county commissioners and the board.

SPEAKER_01 22:51

Yeah, so looking at this plan, Derek, it's again not just a building here and a building there of businesses, but placemaking, agriculture. There's a lot of things involved in this plan. And we've been intentional also in reaching out to different parts of the county as well, not just here in the center of the county where we're located out, because we understand that we need we want this throughout the whole throughout the whole county. Correct. And Pam and you have done a great job in helping move this uh plan forward. The Q said it was implemented a little over three years ago. And you can get more information online at imagineburks.org. Again, that is imaginedberks.org. You can get a copy of the plan, a copy of the updates. We've been receiving updates every six months because we wanted to make sure that uh the plan was being acted upon and not just uh sitting take uh gathering uh dust somewhere. So there, in four minutes, what is next? Three years have gone by. Sure. What is next now with the Imagine Burks economic development plan?

SPEAKER_00 23:58

So the economic development plan is morphing into the comprehensive plan. It's funny because the Imagine Burks plan originally came out of the economy chapter of our previous comprehensive plan. Um so the fact that it's tying back into it kind of brings the picture full circle. Some of the things we're looking at over the next few years, um, the train coming back to Reading could be a huge economic driver that will really jumpstart the economy in and around the city, but will really uplift Berks County's economy as a whole. Um keeping with the theme of transportation, our airport. Uh we're continuing to invest resources and time into developing uh the airport and being able to expand their capacity, the number of business flights that they have that generate positive economic impact in the community. Um but moving forward to the comprehensive plan, uh the Berks County Planning Commission's next um uh comprehensive plan meeting with their uh board will have a growing Burks presentation, which is the agriculture um version of Imagine Burks. It's their kind of economic development plan quantifying the impact of agriculture in Berks County. That meeting um is December 10th at 3 p.m. Um at the South Campus uh meeting location. Our Burks County Comprehensive Um, sorry, our Burks County Planning Commission is housed there as well as my department. But there will be a presentation on the importance of agriculture and how it will tie into the upcoming comprehensive plan. Um there's a survey that is open through the end of this year that we urge you to uh take uh part of. There's a QR code that is on the Imagine Burks um website that's on the County uh Planning Commission website, it'll be potentially somewhere involved uh at the end of this video. You can scan that QR code, fill out that survey. Those responses matter. That is some of the public feedback that we're getting, other than the showing up to events, going out and meeting with officials. Um but we are in the planning stages for this plan. It'll take us 18 months or so to get through that process. So sometime in 2027, you'll probably see the final um version of the upcoming comprehensive plan being adopted. But over the next year and a half, we will be coming out to meet with you, see you in public, um, whether it's at events, whether it's at official meetings. Um we'll be getting out there making sure we can get as much feedback and input from the public and community as we can for our plan.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Because we want to make sure that we want to hear what you have to say, we want to hear what our residents have to say to make sure that we're putting a plan together that will benefit everyone. So again, you can go online at imaginedburks.org to get see a copy of the ImagineBurks plan. You can also go to the Burks County website under the Planning Commission Department to learn more about the comprehensive plan. There's timelines on there. I know Commissioner Leinbach did a BCTV show specifically on the process of the comprehensive plan. You can access that on there as well. So it's important that you get go out and learn about how this will have an impact on Burks County because this plan is done every 10 years. It's updated every 10 years, that's why we want to make sure that we get it done right. So, Derek, we've got a minute left. Is there anything uh that you want to add that we have not discussed today?

SPEAKER_00 27:41

I think we hit a lot of the highlights. Um, but yes, like Commissioner Rivera said, uh, we'll be launching a new version of the ImagineBurks website um by the end of this year. It'll still be imaginedBurks.org, but it'll have a new kind of refreshed look connecting together all of the pieces of this plan as we move forward to the comprehensive plan rollout. Uh you'll see us more on the road and we'll be happy to answer any questions and meet with you to discuss the plan because your feedback's important to us. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 28:13

We will get that information out, so keep uh keep us present on your Facebook page if you have one. Visit our website often to get more information on that. Derek, thank you for being here today. Thank you for the important work that you do in Burks County government to help keep Burks County moving forward in our economic community and economic development plans. Thank you for having me. Thank you for watching us today and enjoy the rest of your evening.