Client: City of Buckeye, AZ

The City of Buckeye engaged Gruen Gruen + Associates (GG+A) to prepare a strategic economic development plan. GG+A based the plan on significant stakeholder input including one-on-one interviews with land owners, developers, real estate brokers, businesses, economic and community development staff in Buckeye and with adjoining communities as well as public officials and market and economic research and analysis. The plan reflected an analysis of demographic characteristics, housing stock characteristics, and land availability and growth capacity; an analysis of the economic base and structure of Buckeye; an identification of the primary geographic areas from which industrial building space users will be attracted and the primary competing locations as well as an identification of the primary advantages and disadvantages associated with Buckeye as a business location. The plan also reflected an analysis of the building space inventory and the land capacity to accommodate future building space development and an employment forecast for the primary market for industrial space using sectors and the resulting estimates of the demand for industrial building space and land in Buckeye. In addition, the plan reflected an analysis of retail sales trends and commercial market conditions in Buckeye, an identification of the retail and office space inventory in Buckeye and forecast of potential future retail space and office space demand and the land needed to accommodate potential building space demand.

As part of the strategic economic development plan, GG+A described how Buckeye should evaluate requests for development or business attraction related incentives and provided recommendations for establishing an incentives policy. GG+A described elements the incentives policy should include and the information that should be obtained and used to evaluate requests for incentives. GG+A also recommended the primary criteria or benchmarks to use to reach decisions about requests for incentives.

GG+A tailored the specific recommended policies, programs, and actions of the strategic economic development plan needed to accomplish the identified economic development goals and objectives to enhance competitive advantages, mitigate competitive disadvantages, capture identified business targets, and real estate development opportunities.