New Economic Development Plan for Langley City: Be. Enterprising.

Most municipalities have an economic development plan. These plans help inform decision-making and policies within a municipality to help with economic growth. While the market, provincial, and federal governments hold most of the economic levers, municipalities still must do their part to enable a thriving local economy.

Langley City's current economic development plan was created in 2016. A lot has changed since then, including SkyTrain coming to town. On Monday, Langley City Council adopted our new economic development plan, Be. Enterprising. The plan is broken down as follows:

1. Innovation
   • Pursue a FoodTech innovation vision as a catalyst for the newly adopted Innovation District Plan (along Glover Road to KPU)
   • Implement intelligent community strategies
2. Enterprise
   • Grow the entrepreneur ecosystem by having Langley City help connect people to local and regional organizations that help enable home-grown enterprises
3. Downtown Destination
   • Continue to invest in our downtown, making it a regional destination
4. Land Matters
   • Ensure that Langley City's Official Community Plan, Zoning Bylaw, and other land-use policies support business growth
5. Investment Readiness
   • Establish an economic development office within Langley City
6. Enablers
   • Continue to work on City plans, policies, and advocacy to support a healthy and safe community, an improved public transit system, increased housing affordability and choice, and investments in cultural and recreation facilities and services.

FoodTech sounds like a buzzword, but DigitalFoodLabs provides a good breakdown. KPU's Langley Campus has food and agriculture programs. One of the City's goals is to help support KPU's vision and enable research and learning from the university to grow within Langley City.

It is important to measure the performance of all City plans. The City is rolling out KPIs or Key Performance Indicators. The KPIs for this plan are:

• Positive Trending Net Promoter Score: Langley City performs a Community Survey every three years to get people's feedback on the state of our community. We want to see satisfaction increase.
• Increased Business Licenses Per Capita with a focus on food & beverage businesses
• Maintain our current non-residential to residential property tax assessment ratio

Please visit the Intelligent Community Forum for more information on intelligent community strategies.

You can learn more about Langley City's Be. Enterprising. Plan on Langley City's website.