5. EDSR 09-11-2006 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Project Background and Research Methodology On June 12, 2006, the City of Elk River Econotic Development Authority (EDA) voted 7-0 in favor of hiring Wolf Marketing & Media LLC as the facilitator of the 2007-09 Strategic Industrial Marketing Plan Update. To lay the groundwork fox the update, Wolf Marketing has spent the past 13 weeks researching the overall business and economic development environment, the City's primary and secondary markets, the City's competitors, and Elk River itself -what we refer to as a Situation Analysis. The Situation Analysis was conducted using both primary and secondary research. The primary research included: ^ A series 11 of one-on-one interviews conducted with past, present and potential clients, along with brokers and partners, from Aug. 2-7, 2006 (Please see Appendix A for a summary.) ^ A 90-minute focus group session with local industrial brokers, held Aug. 9, 2006 (Please see Appendix B for a summary.) ^ Two meetings with the Elk River Economic Development Authority (EDA) Marketing Committee, held July 17 and Aug. 28, 2006 (Please see Appendices C and D fox the meeting minutes) ^ Numerous phone calls to competing cities, counties and other economic development groups to request copies of their marketing materials The secondary research included: ^ Searches fox news articles regarding economic development activity in the Northwest Metro, using Lexis-Nexis, Dow Jones Factiva, ABI/Inform and other paid subscription news databases (Please see Appendix E for copies of the articles.) ^ Additional searches fox relevant news articles in our company archives of local newspapers, business journals and trade publications, including the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune, the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal, the Minnesota Aeal Estate Journal, the Elk Iliver Star News and other media (Please see Appendix E for copies of the articles.) ^ Ongoing tracking of news coverage in local newspapers, business journals and trade publications ^ Visits to the Web sites of competing cities, counties and other economic development groups (Please see Appendix F fox detailed competitor information.) ^ Visits to broker and developer Web sites to gather information regarding potentially competing industrial development sites. Some sites visited included www.noxthstarpaxtnexs.net, www.cbxe.com, www.dynamicsland.com and www.dukerealty.com ^ Visits to the Economic Development Association of Minnesota (EDAM) Web site to gather infarmation regarding Minnesota and national economic development news and trends (Please see Appendix G for copies of the economic data source materials.) ^ Visits to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Web sites to gather general information Upper Midwest and Minnesota regarding economic conditions ^ Visits to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) Web site to gather Community Profile information and other data