Individual Survey

Please answer this if you are representing your individual thoughts.


This survey is open through Monday, March 17, 2025.

Company/Organization Survey

Please answer this from a company or organization perspective.


This survey is open through Monday, March 17, 2025.

Overview

Project Overview

Economic development includes education, workforce development, community features that attract or retain workers, and infrastructure and land planning.

A Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS), includes all these and provides an economic “state of the region” snapshot and develops a roadmap for economic development effort in the region.

How?

Steps include gathering and analyzing relevant data, talking with the community, identifying trends, and creating an action plan and evaluation metrics. The goal is to align economic development efforts across the nine localities.

Who?

The CEDS for the Richmond region is being developed with each local government and business, community, and elected officials at the local, regional and state levels.

Why?

The CEDS will integrate work from across the region, and once completed, can be used to support funding requests in areas such as workforce training, broadband expansion, and infrastructure investments.

A CEDS is required for possible future designation of this region as an economic development district (EDD), which could bring additional resources to Richmond to support economic development planning and projects.

When?

See the Project Timeline at top right for more.

This process updates the last CEDS for the Richmond region, which was adopted in 2014. A copy of the 2014 plan can be found under the Project Documents section of this page.

FAQs

FAQs

A Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) is a regional planning document that provides a strategic roadmap for economic growth and helps in seeking public grants and funding for economic development projects.

The CEDS focuses on issues and recommended actions of regional significance, and does not replace economic development planning or activities undertaken by local governments or other organizations.

This CEDS will form a portion of the regional strategic plan, Pathways to the Future: Economic Development.

The CEDS process is guided by a Steering Committee and will include input from the community and a variety of stakeholders across the region.

We also want to know what YOU think. Visit the Survey tab to tell us your thoughts on the Richmond region's strengths and opportunities for improvement.

Recommended actions in the CEDS may take many years to accomplish, but the plan itself is designed to be refreshed every five years, with progress assessment occurring in the intervening years.

The CEDS update process welcomes community input! An initial survey (open February 14 - March 17, 2025) seeks feedback on the region's economic strengths and opportunities for growth or improvement. Please visit the Survey tab on this page to provide your thoughts.

A second survey is planned for later in the process, which will focus on potential actions to address the regional issues that are identified. Please check back to this page or click the "+ Follow" button at the top to learn more over the coming months.

If you know of a community who should be connected to this work, please share it: Contact Us is at bottom right of this page.

The 2014 CEDS is available in the Project Document section of this page. The current process to update the regional CEDS includes revising data and conducting new engagement processes with the community and stakeholders.

Alongside PlanRVA staff, there is a project Steering Committee which will lead the creation of the CEDS. The Committee includes representatives from locality, regional, and state government, as well as a range of other stakeholders from the region.

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