RFP Prepared

Incubators are intended to serve both as a local business support system, and also to act as a recruitment and retention tool to provide a space need not currently being met within the marketplace. Depending on the type of facility and support services offered on-site, it is likely that the facility will attract interest from outside the City itself. An assessment of the local labor pool and supply chain needs to be conducted to determine an appropriate trade area for the feasibility study. This trade area will be used to define the area examined in the industry assessment.

A successful incubator will foster businesses that have a high level of startup and growth potential, as well as businesses that will provide long-term community benefits. To identify the industry segments that have the appropriate mix of both characteristics, the City of Lake Mills would like an examination of the business environment in an attempt to discern the following:

· The concentration and scale of existing industry clusters

· Local industries with the highest-level of community benefits

· Industries with high growth potential

· Level and type of entrepreneurial interest

· Access to local skills, education and training

To develop an understanding of the local industry landscape and identify the above characteristics, we expect the study will utilize Department of Workforce Development and industry classification data to construct measures of local industry concentration, scale, job creation potential, community value -added and export base potential. The industries which appear in the upper echelon for each of the measures need to be identified.