Resilience Roadmap

A Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy, or CEDS, is a federally recognized 5-year plan. The U.S. Economic Development Administration considers a CEDS:

• a key component in establishing and maintaining a robust economic ecosystem
• an important vehicle for regional coordination
• a prerequisite for many types of funding — not just for the region as a whole but for a range of Central Coast jurisdictions, community-based organizations and projects

Not only does having a CEDS make the region more competitive for investment of all kinds, it also helps clarify regional funding priorities and opportunities by centralizing economic development goals into one plan.

The Resilience Roadmap builds on REACH 2030, which had served as the region’s interim CEDS, fleshing out the goal of a diversified, inclusive and resilient Central Coast economy with dozens of specific actions. But it also differs in a few ways.

• It was developed under EDA guidelines for a federally recognized plan
• It’s a 5-year plan, while REACH 2030 spans 10 years
• It encompasses the full two counties of San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara (REACH 2030 initially spanned SLO and Northern Santa Barbara County, though our mission has since expanded to the full two counties.)

Dozens of local community strategic plans have been reviewed as part of developing the Resilience Roadmap. Aligning goals, strategies, and action items with other regional planning efforts for greater coordination, collaboration, and impact was a key consideration.

REACH serves as the CEDS administrator and oversaw development of the regional strategy with participation from several hundred cross-sector stakeholders.

But like all CEDS, the Resilience Roadmap is designed to be implemented by multiple organizations and multiple partnerships across the two-county region.

Regional, county, and city economic development practitioners, as well as stakeholders implementing workforce and economic development programs and philanthropy, all play a role in moving the recommendations forward.

Developing the CEDS was a wide-reaching community effort involving more than 400 participants from a broad spectrum of industries and sectors.

A CEDS Strategy Committee (listed below), composed of 30 members from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors throughout the two-county region, steered the process.

Four industry councils — Agriculture and Agtech; Clean Tech and Renewable Energy; Aerospace, Defense, and Precision Manufacturing; and Technology — along with dozens of roundtables, focus groups and interviews, provided valuable insight and feedback.

REACH, as the CEDS administrator, facilitated the process with consulting support from Austin-based TIP Strategies, which has worked on CEDS in dozens of communities across the country, and data analytics from Lightcast.

An EDA grant under its Nuclear Closure Communities program and required community matching provided by the Counties of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo and Bank of America.

The Strategy Committee has begun implementation planning, working to identify lead and supporting regional partners for each of the identified strategies.

And REACH is setting the stage for the first key initiative — expanding career pathways into high-wage industries — with new research and analysis forthcoming in spring 2024.