2026-02-09-pw-study-session-supporting-documents

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term, strategic investment in competitiveness and reinforces a form of The activities and enterprises that Old Heat will house are ones that not only "path dependence." contribute to a community's dynamic capacity but also accelerate the growth of prosperity factors of its economic ecosystem.These types of enterprises Path dependence describes how historical development trajectories shape and are identifiable through using the Regional Contribution Continuum (RCC), as limit current choices. Regions that grew around a single industry or sector, such explained below(CWU, BCS, 2025). as agriculture, resource extraction, or warehousing, often lack the institutional infrastructure,workforce, and supplier base needed to pivot into new high-value A TYPOLOGY OF ENTERPRISE CONTRIBUTIONS(BASED ON THE industries. Without intervention,these constraints perpetuate underperformance. CENTRAL WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY BUSINESS COMMUNITY SERVICES REGIONAL CONTRIBUTION CONTINUUM): Conventional approaches to business recruitment or cluster growth, while valuable in established industrial ecosystems,offer little strategic guidance Not all businesses contribute equally to prosperity. When looking at the larger to regions that lack high-wage industry clusters altogether. In such contexts, impact of a business on a community's ecosystem on a continuum, it is helpful to communities must not only attract or grow businesses but must also select and use a typology of four enterprise types, each representing a different relationship support the types of enterprises that can systematically improve community between a firm and the community in which it operates.The enterprises and prosperity. activities Old Heat houses can only be Accelerative and Multiplicative. DEFINING PROSPERITY IN ECONOMIC ECOSYSTEMS The following models describe impact in terms of value to a local or regional community over time contributed by given type of enterprise. In evaluating the full effect of a business' impact in a community,the multidimensional framework used by the Iowa State University Extension (Fey EXTRACTIVE ENTERPRISES and Flora, 2006)of eight interdependent forms of capital captures long-term Extractive Enterprise factors that contribute to a region's Definition: These businesses reduce - prosperity: net community prosperity. • Financial They may use local labor, land, or tax r • Intellectual incentives, but locate 3 • Human ownership, management, intellectual • Social property, and/or high-skill • Cultural employment elsewhere. o • Political Characteristics: U • Natural Profit/value flows leave the region • Built Limited local reinvestment • Time •A business that contributes to long-term prosperity will strengthen one or more of No improvement in local skill base or infrastructure these forms of capital without degrading the others. Importantly,this prosperity is Examples: not measured solely in job quantity or short-term revenue, but in a community's Externally owned solar farms: use local land but employ few locals and increasing capacity to shape its own economic future.This capability to export profits. effectively shape and change is referred to as a community's"dynamic capacity'. Absentee landlords:extract housing revenue without improving housing 28 1 Old Heat CERB Feasibility Study