The second quarter issue of the Alliance newsletter recaps the Water Quarterly Conversation, provides an overview of the Alliance Board Meeting, a Save the Date for the 5th Summit on Regional Competitiveness at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, an update on our working teams and several articles of interest to Alliance stakeholders. The Alliance remains committed to serving as a neutral platform championing initiatives and convening leaders from government, academia and the private sector to grow the regional economy. 

Quarterly Conversation:

"Creating the Most Water Efficient Region in the USA"

On June 6th, the Alliance for Regional Development hosted a quarterly conversation with an emphasis on water issues and opportunities in the mega-region in the office of Microsoft Chicago, inside the AON Center. The workshop, titled “Creating the Most Water Efficient Region in the USA,” included leadership from the private sector, educational institutions, and non-profit groups. This diverse group of stakeholders provided a blend of knowledge that will be extremely beneficial to the water emphasis of the Alliance moving forward. 

The event highlighted three different panels.

Matt Howard, the Vice President of The Alliance for Water Stewardship North America, discussed the AWS International Water Stewardship Standard for large water users to consider adopting.  Matt emphasized the need for a basin wide approach to address water issues stating, “Water stress is a regional issue”. Businesses are acutely aware of the risks posed by water challenges and are adapting their operations to address water risks. Water is an important unifier for the Alliance region and creates value for communities and businesses. As such, it is important to continue the emphasis on addressing water risks and opportunities in the region with an eye on shared responsibility and collective action. The AWS Standard directly relates to the responsibility of corporations and high water use facilities while encouraging stakeholder engagement and collective solutions from a basin wide approach. Audrey Templeton, Sustainability Manager for MillerCoors Brewery, highlighted her facility’s implementation of the AWS Standard. She echoed Matt’s sentiments and shared the successes of the Milwaukee facility as it has proceeded through uptake of the standard. These included various process improvements and efficiencies which directly relate to various business risks related to water. The Milwaukee facility will serve as MillerCoors pilot program with the goal for additional MillerCoors and MolsonCoors facilities to implement the standard in the future.

Energy Water Nexus 

• Cliff Cole, Director of Product Marketing, ABB Group
• David Garman, Associate Vice Chancellor Water Technology R&D Director, R&C Program; CTO The Water Council;School of Freshwater Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
• Alan Perlstein, Executive Director, Mid-West Energy Research Consortium

This cohesive panel discussed the important interdependency between energy and water. Alan Perlstein and David Garman shared their successes in creating The Energy Water Nexus (EWN) Strategic Roadmap. This report identifies opportunities for the Midwest region to further their leadership role in this emerging market space. In all sectors, from agriculture to heavy industry, there are core opportunities as the result of cross cutting technologies that pertain to the water energy nexus. The sustainability of energy and water is critically important to businesses and their economic success. Understanding the interconnectedness of the two offers great opportunities for site improvements and efficiencies. Additionally, there are many producer and regulatory drivers. What this means, is that there is a great market for new technologies. Cliff Cole spoke to technologies that ABB Group offers and discussed the role that localized distribution systems will play in the future.There will be benefits for the Alliance region using the EWN strategy and the identified market potential. The unique platform of the Alliance can provide an important component for demonstration and implementation.

This group included a very diverse group of green infrastructure planners and experts. They addressed the integration of urban design, urban engineering, landscape architecture, and landscape planning into the management and strategic functional analysis of water systems. The concepts provide a vision for the infrastructure of future cities, specifically the Alliance mega-region. These opportunities include education, removing regional barriers, driving innovation and capturing the emerging markets.  Carrie Bristoll-Groll addressed the importance for green infrastructure and stormwater education. She emphasized that compromised water quality is a major risk for large parts of the mega-region. Proper education and outreach regarding green infrastructure is an important first step for encouraging uptake in the region. Linda Reid followed by discussing the need for removing regional barriers (ordinances, zoning, laws) that impede on green infrastructure implementation. There is an important relationship between green infrastructure and policy that requires further discussion. Debra Shore discussed some of the challenges that green infrastructure tackles including flooding, sewer capacity, and sewer backups. She shared some of the successful projects in Cook County and emphasized the importance of the relationship between green infrastructure design, implementation, maintenance, and education. Jim Wasley shared that good water quality is important for economic growth and there is an important role for the Alliance to bring the appropriate people together to discuss green infrastructure opportunities. He introduced the idea for closing loops in water management and how environmental urban design offers feedback for better water management. The conversation concluded with Bill Sturm sharing example projects and how his firm was able to tackle different challenges related to green infrastructure implementation. 

Following the conclusion of the event, the Alliance expressed interest in adding follow up activities to its newly constructed agenda. Water is a significant economic driver and the conference provided several key points for future action. The Alliance has created a group on the project management tool, Basecamp, for sharing updates, announcements, files, documents, and messaging for future meetings/calls.

The Alliance for Regional Development would like to thank Microsoft Chicago for providing the meeting venue, David Garman and Alan Perlstein for their leadership and partnership, as well as the panelists and moderators for providing interesting and engaging dialogue.

SAVE THE DATE

Sponsorship opportunities are available.

For information, please contact President & CEO, Kelly O'Brien at kobrien@alliancerd.org. 

Alliance Transportation Working Team Update

The Alliance Addresses Chicago Appraisal Institute

The Appraisal Institute is a global association of real estate appraisers, with nearly 23,000 valuation professionals in about 60 countries throughout the world. Organized in 1932, its mission is to advance professionalism and ethics, global standards, methodologies and practices through the professional development of property economics worldwide. Founded in 1991, the Chicago Chapter serves real estate appraisers and professionals in allied fields in the Chicago Metropolitan Area. Alliance President & CEO  Kelly O'Brien gave a presentation entitled: "Politics and Why You Should Care About Regional Economic Development." O'Brien provided an overview of both the Alliance and its partner organization the Chicago Central Area Committee and the respective organization's initiatives.

Overview of Alliance Board Meeting 

The Alliance Board of Directors met on June 1st. Paul Jones, Board Chairman, called the meeting to order and each Board member was provided the opportunity to comment on current initiatives as well as share insights into future collaborations.  In addition, the Working Team Managers, Steve Schlickman, Transportation, and Anne Edmunds, Workforce, provided updates on their respective teams agenda. See below.   Ideas for panels and speakers for the 5th Annual Summit were discussed.  The Board is scheduled to reconvene in July, September and December.

Important Information from Alliance Stakeholder: The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

"The Peer City Identification Tool (PCIT)"

The Peer City Identification Tool (PCIT), developed by the Community Development and Policy Studies division (CDPS) of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, is a data comparison and visualization instrument that can help policymakers and practitioners understand a municipality in the context of peer cities. Drawing on city-level indicators from the American Community Survey and historical Decennial Census records, the PCIT performs a cluster analysis to identify groups of similar cities along economic, demographic, social, and housing dimensions. The 300 cities included in the dataset had a population of at least 50,000 in 1960. Today, they have a median population of just over 100,000. All cities meeting this historical criterion are included in the tool, with a few cities excluded due to data consistency concerns.

Did You Know?

The Alliance would like to thank stakeholder, Morton J. Marcus, for providing the following information: 

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.