Each month now for nearly 9 years I have provided this column predominantly about the CEP and the work we do. This month, I thought I would provide a little Q&A on the CEP for those who may not familiar with us.
What exactly is the CEP?
We are the Ocala Metro Chamber & Economic Partnership or CEP for short. The CEP is the chamber and lead economic development organization for all of the Ocala Metro (Marion County). We do everything a traditional chamber does (but with a twist) along with leading efforts around Business Attraction (bringing new primary employers to the area), Business Retention (assisting existing businesses), and Business Creation (entrepreneurship). We have a staff of nearly 25 professionals who are working every day to deliver on these activities and help ensure this is a prosperous community for all of our residents.
What kind of work does the CEP do for the city of Ocala and surrounding areas?
The CEP contracts with both the City of Ocala and with Marion County to provide certain economic development activities such as business recruitment. The investment by both governments is a fraction of what they used to spend on their own efforts but they receive a far greater return. Plus we are able to match our private sector funding at a rate of $4 for every $1 of public investment.
Additionally, we have been able to partner with both governments on other projects especially during the last year with COVID. We managed the business assistance programs for the County distributing more than $7 million in just over 4 months and have managed Microenterprise Loan programs for both governments.
What are some of your recent successes?
It has been a really good year! We welcomed new employers in the last year including the new Dollar Tree, Big Daddy Unlimited, and Amazon distribution centers and new manufacturing facilities like Artemis Plastics as well as number of expansions. These combined projects resulted in the announced created of more than 1,000 new jobs and $100 million in capital investment.
We rolled out two really important new programs: Impact and Sphere. Impact seeks to address the inequality of opportunity in our three majority minority communities through entrepreneurship. We have significantly expanded our entrepreneurship assistance in these communities in and assisted more than 400 entrepreneurs in just 6 months! We will be continuing to expand these efforts throughout the next few years.
Sphere is focused on expanding our community’s footprint in healthcare by focusing on healthcare as an economic development target. We are working to attract more healthcare related support businesses to cluster around our ever-growing primary care hospitals and to assist with the attraction of more healthcare talent.
And I would be remiss if I did not mention that just over a year ago the CEP was named National Chamber of the Year by the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives.
What are you looking forward to in the near (or perhaps distant) future?
We have so much growth happening in our community. We recently announced that we expect to see approximately 5 million sq ft of new industrial spec space to be built over the next 18 months. That is a massive amount of space and an incredible testament to the value investors see in this market. This new space will attract new employers and additional investment.
Big things are in the works for our Impact and Sphere initiatives and our efforts at growing Downtown Ocala are really starting to payoff with several major projects set to move forward in the coming months. We also hope to open the first of what we hope will be several satellite offices across the community later this year.
And I haven’t said anything about the World Equestrian Center! It is, in a word, a game-changer. Work should begin soon on Phase II!
