Raise the Bar

During FY 2023, Missouri Partnership put extensive resources into the Compete program. A common setback in economic development across the U.S. is the lack of industrial sites. To address this issue, we partnered with Global Location Strategies (GLS) to identify highly competitive industrial sites, and we are working with local partners to control and certify these sites.

Our goal was to identify 10 Premier Sites that are approximately 200 acres. GLS used its geospatial mapping platform to identify properties that met criteria attractive to targeted industrial development.  

We met with our local economic development and utility partners to review the sites identified by GLS. The sites were vetted, and the top ones were down-selected. We held 21 virtual site visits in 20 different communities. Following the virtual site visits, another round of analysis was conducted. The remaining 11 sites in 10 communities received in-person site visits to identify the top Premier Sites in Missouri.

Raise the Bar is Missouri Partnership’s Capacity Building program. During FY 2023, our team put more emphasis on this program than ever before.

Raise the Bar has three core components:

  1. Assess: Communities receive direct feedback and valuable input from nationally active site location consultants.

  2. Train: Missouri Partnership provides one-on-one training for community partners to help them respond more effectively to projects.

  3. Compete: Compete was created to ensure Missouri stays as competitive as possible by identifying and securing sites for future projects.