It’s difficult enough for municipal officials to manage everyday responsibilities such as roads, schools and public safety. Community development is important but often gets set aside in favor of other, more pressing tasks. So when Conneaut’s leaders decided they needed help in identifying development opportunities, generating new investment and marketing their community, they chose inSITE Advisory Group to assist them.

Located in Ohio’s Northeast corner with a population of 12,500, the city, along with the Conneaut Port Authority and Conneaut Foundation, turned to inSITE to help them identify and implement the right processes to grow the community.

inSITE started quickly by writing and submitting applications for the Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) grant and Port Infrastructure Grant (PIG) (Deep Water) to provide the necessary infrastructure between the Port and the Conneaut East Industrial Park.  The next step was assisting the city in getting access points to the natural gas pipeline that runs through Conneaut.

The process continues as inSITE focuses on business expansion, attraction and retention.  Current business leaders are being interviewed to get a sense of their future needs and inSITE is putting together the right incentive packages to help attract new businesses to Conneaut.

In addition, the economic development experts at inSITE are working with local, state, and federal government officials and meeting with state and federal legislators to help fill funding gaps that are hampering development.

Other assistance includes helping create an Energy Special Improvement District (ESID) and promoting the Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) Program, a new program that enables commercial property owners to obtain affordable, long-term loans covering up to 100% of the cost for energy efficient improvements.

Conneaut is just one example of how inSITE works with municipalities and companies to promote job growth and identify funding opportunities that help create healthy business and community environments.