City of Alvin, TX – Economic Development Strategic Plan

Challenge

Alvin, Texas, is strategically located halfway between Houston, the core city of the nation’s fastest-growing large metro area, and Freeport, the nation’s largest petrochemical complex. The city’s location also offers easy access to the region’s four major ports; proximity to Houston Hobby International Airport; and access to Alvin Community College, a key component of the Greater Houston education and workforce training system. The multitude of ongoing and announced plant expansions indicates the beginning of a transformation that has the potential to set Alvin on a sustained path of growth and prosperity. Despite these advantages, however, Alvin has not benefited from the same level of residential development as nearby communities such as Pearland, Manvel, and League City, in particular.

Response

To capitalize fully on its assets, the City of Alvin engaged TIP to provide a strategy for focusing its resources on the community’s most promising opportunities for economic development. The plan established a vision of Alvin as a “major growth center” in Greater Houston and outlined specific economic development goals for accomplishing the vision. These four goals concentrated on the areas of business development, talent, sites and infrastructure, and quality of place. The economic development strategy was prepared concurrently with an update to the city’s comprehensive plan, led by Kendig Keast Collaborative. One of the top priorities that emerged from both planning processes was enhancing the city’s quality of place. Towards that end, the city launched a Downtown Improvement Task Force with the primary objective of reviewing case studies of successful downtown revitalization projects of similar size and scope, reviewing existing conditions, identifying stakeholder priorities, and developing a vision that included potential projects for the community to implement.