The District of Columbia’s five-year, six-part economic development plan includes harnessing remote workers and young people in the education-to-work pipelines around Washington.
Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development unveiled “DC’s Comeback Plan,” a strategy outlining the district’s economic development goals for the next five years. The plan is part of the district’s Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy, an economic roadmap intended to expand and strengthen the local economy.
“We want to be a destination of choice for job creators as well as visitors and residents in a place where people continue to choose to live, work, visit, and thrive,” Bowser said during a press conference on Monday. “You may have heard me talk this week about how important it is that we have a robust tax revenue base.”
Bowser said the district will make “key investments” in businesses to help create 35,000 new jobs.
The ‘Vitality Fund’ Incentive
One new tool the district is using to attract businesses is the Vitality Fund, an incentive program designed to support existing companies in target industries actively planning to relocate, expand, or retain their physical location in Washington.“As we pursue our goals to revitalize downtown D.C. and bring 35,000 new jobs in high-growth sectors, the Vitality Fund will be a critical tool,” said John Falcicchio, deputy mayor for planning and economic development.
The Vitality Fund’s first applicant, a cybersecurity company called Virtru Corporation, was influenced by the plan to stay and grow in the district, said Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie of Ward 5 at the news conference.
“This strategy reflects our desire not only to keep and grow existing businesses like some of the ones that are around this table—like Enlightened, like Virtru—because they are driving employment in our city, but we also need to be thinking fabout how we attract new businesses to the District of Columbia,” McDuffie said.
Along with jobs, Bowser wants to add an additional 15,000 residents to the downtown population by providing 7 million square feet of housing.
Bowser said the downtown area is currently 92 percent commercial.
“One of the lessons we learned during the pandemic is that mixed-use communities are more resilient in the face of adversity,” said Bowser. Retaining current residents and reaching a population of 725,000, which decreased during the pandemic, is a crucial part of the plan, she said.
“We’re heartened by the most recent update from the Census Bureau that showed our residents coming back as well as the number of school-aged children in our public schools increasing, so we think that the pandemic-related out-migration is reversing,” said Bowser.
Increasing Access to Fresh Food
Another component to making all this happen is ensuring food access for all residents, so they live no farther than 1 mile from a grocery store, the mayor said.“We estimate that reaching this goal will require us to add two or three additional grocery stores,” said Bowser.
The 35,000 new jobs will be in high-growth target sectors such as education and research, communications and design, consulting services, hospitality, tourism, entertainment, life sciences and health tech, and cybersecurity and artificial intelligence technology.
In order to reach these lofty job numbers, it will mean attracting remote workers, said Bowser.
“We’re going to put some dollars behind this strategy to attract remote workers who are living elsewhere,” said Bowser. “For example, you may be living in California because you work for a California company. Now your company says you can live anywhere, we want and we’re targeting those workers to live in D.C.”
Councilmember Brooke Pinto of Ward 2, which encompasses the Foggy Bottom neighborhood and George Washington University, said she will be directing her efforts at university students and communicating what opportunities are available before they enter the workforce.
“That’s making sure that our D.C. students have the vision, can see what those jobs are for them in these different industries, and have jobs and partnerships with employers waiting for them when they get out of school, when they get out of needed licensure programs,” Pinto said.
