Kane County is setting aside $3 million in federal pandemic relief funds to start a new organization that would encourage economic development throughout the county.
The Kane County Board voted unanimously in favor of dedicating the funds, which came to the county through the American Rescue Plan Act, at its meeting on Tuesday. Although funding has now been set aside, the organization has not yet been created.
The organization is planned to be a nonprofit partnership between the county government and the private sector, according to Mark VanKerkhoff, director of the Kane County Development and Community Services Department.
He said in an interview that, once up and running, the organization will coordinate development efforts across the county, keep tabs on market trends, promote development opportunities within the county and help to retain and support existing businesses, among other things.
While individual cities within Kane County may have their own economic development groups, whether they are part of local government or a private organization, the county has never had an organization looking at and guiding the overall direction of economic growth, said Kane County Board Chair Corinne Pierog.
“Developing businesses and the opportunity that businesses provide for a growing county is critical to its health and well-being,” Pierog said in a phone call.
Kane County is also one of the only counties in the region that does not have an economic development organization, according to VanKerkhoff.
County officials are hoping that the $3 million in startup funding will be the largest single public investment that will need to be made in the organization.
While the county is expected to continue investing smaller amounts of money in the organization — around $100,000–$150,000 per year, according to Pierog — the plan is for the organization to be primarily funded by groups in the private sector, such as manufacturers, hospitals, banks, real estate firms and large employers.
The exact details of the organization have not yet been developed, but the idea is that it will have full-time staff members that are led by a board of directors made up of representatives from the private sector and Kane County, according to VanKerkhoff.
Once the organization has been started, the Kane County Board will have to vote again to officially give it the funds, he said at Tuesday’s meeting.
Pierog has been a “cheerleader” of the organization for years, she said in a phone call. Talks first began around 2021, she said.
Work didn’t start to pick up until 2022, when the county received a $150,000 grant from the state to do an economic development strategic plan, according to VanKerkhoff.
RW Ventures, a Chicago-based economic development firm, was hired to develop the plan and presented its initial findings at the Kane County Board Committee of the Whole meeting in March. One of the presentation’s recommendations was to develop a county economic development organization.
The organization and the economic development strategic plan will be important for Kane County because it has many different areas, all with their own economic drivers, according to Anita Lewis, who is the District 3 Kane County Board member and co-chair of the Jobs Committee.
She said that, between roughly 500,000 residents, significant stretches of farmland, cities along the Fox River, industry and small businesses, Kane County needs to figure out “what we want to be when we grow up.” The economic development strategic plan is set to do exactly that.
However, the plan developed by RW Ventures just lays the groundwork for what direction county officials decide to take economic development.
The presentation in March gave a number of different pathways that the county might take, including supporting local entrepreneurs, building a market for more high-value crops or supporting manufacturing efforts by analyzing the supply chain and encouraging businesses to fill in the gaps.
No matter the direction economic development takes, Lewis said the new organization will be a “big deal when it happens.”
When she was interviewed in mid-April, she said she hopes that the county will be able to make an announcement about the details of the organization in later summer.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
