A Scorecard To Help Local Leaders Attract Small-Scale Manufacturers

Forbes

27-05-2025

Back in 2014, Ilana Preuss founded Recast City with the aim of helping cities and towns revive their ailing downtowns with small-scale manufacturers, from artisans to commercial shared kitchens, working out of vacant storefronts.
Ilana Preuss
Now, to reach even more communities, Preuss recently introduced SPARK Scorecard, an online tool local leaders can use to assess their economic and entrepreneurial environment, gauge strengths and weaknesses and get advice on next steps. 'By investing in these local businesses, they can become the epicenter of local economic growth,' says Preuss, who also is the author of Recast Your City: How to Save Your Downtown with Small-Scale Manufacturing (Island Press June 2021).
She works with municipalities, chambers of congress, and downtown development authorities, among others, that want to boost their local economies. Perhaps they have a lot of vacant storefronts that could be used to house small manufacturers. Or they want to create more jobs or diversify their local economies. 'They understand they need to build up the pipeline of small businesses in their communities,' says Preuss.
To help them, Preuss created a method with which communities can analyze and understand what's going on in their economies and build up not just small-scale manufacturing, but also the entire local ecosystem. 'Most programs dive in on the entrepreneur,' says Preuss. 'We're saying, what about fixing the foundation and not just the kitchen sink.'
Preuss's online tool draws on lessons she's learned since starting her business and her previous work in economic development. Early last year, she and her colleagues created a document with those lessons and quickly realized it could be turned into an interactive tool. They released it in March.
It uses a scorecard, which evaluates 30 indicators across 10 elements, to help downtown development authorities and other local economic leaders figure out where to start in their community. Factors range from whether there's space for businesses to expand to the possibility of providing micro loans and other funding assistance. 'We get into the details of what a small-scale manufacturing ecosystem needs to support small product businesses in the community,' says Preuss. 'Most communities are at the early stages of figuring out how to build an ecosystem.'
Recommendations local leaders have learned through the process range from partnering with neighborhood organizations to find home-based businesses to determining how to change permitting and zoning to make sure companies can move into storefronts without facing too many hurdles.
Recast City works with community leaders in one-on -one four-month intensive sessions to create development plans. It also hosts cohort programs for five or six communities to teach participants the method for developing strategies and engaging with business owners on their own. 'We mentor them to develop action plans and support them in the implementation, connecting them with experts who've done projects like this,' says Preuss.
Local leaders from La Grande, Ore., who took part in a program last year, were looking to redevelop a street downtown. They identified food products and other small businesses in the community that could move into the area. They also worked with property owners to understand the barriers they were facing, according to Preuss.
So far, they've been able to bring in a commercial shared kitchen and help some businesses move downtown. For example, Kimberly Voelz is converting a historic building once housing a car dealership and machine shop, which she bought in 2023, into a winery and tasting room. She plans to open to the public next month. 'The city of La Grande and the Economic Development Department have been instrumental in moving my project along' she says.
Leaders from Elgin, Ill., were able to change their zoning to allow artisan businesses to operate. They also launched a training program to help property owners and businesses understand the opportunity. And they're developing a retail product incubator downtown as part of a mixed use residential building development, according to Preuss.