ALABAMA GROWTH ALLIANCE: TURNING A STATEWIDE PRIORITY INTO A QUALITY OF PLACE PROGRAM

Alabama is not short on industrial momentum. It is competing for people.

Quality of place is central to that competition. Workers weigh where they want to live alongside where they want to work, and employers pay attention to where talent wants to be. Downtowns, trails, parks, and cultural life are not extras layered onto the economy. They help shape whether people stay, move in, and invest.

Catalyst, the state’s economic growth strategy presented to Governor Ivey in 2024, sets out what long-term competitiveness will require: stronger population growth, higher labor force participation, productivity gains, and the ability to attract and retain talent. It names quality of place as a statewide economic development priority and connects that priority to talent attraction and Alabama’s outdoor recreation assets.

The Alabama Growth Alliance was created to move Catalyst from plan to results. Its next step is to turn that quality of place priority into a program Alabama can implement.

THE MOMENT

Alabama’s competition is close to home. Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina are investing in downtowns, trails, and community amenities to attract many of the same workers and employers. A quality of place program would give Alabama communities, especially smaller and rural communities, another way to compete for talent beyond traditional incentive dollars.

Program structure will matter. A competitive grant would allow the state to target dollars and deliberately reach rural communities, but it would require staff to administer. A tax credit could offer predictability and attract private capital, but it would be harder to target and could favor communities with the capacity to use it. The wrong structure could be too burdensome for a small town or too difficult for the state to manage.

The study will help Alabama answer four practical questions:

• What should the program fund: downtowns and public spaces; trails, parks, and waterfronts; arts and culture; or the marketing and events that help communities tell their stories?
• Should the program be structured as a competitive grant, a tax incentive, a hybrid, or another tool?
• How should communities apply, and how should success be measured?
• How can the program reach every corner of the state, including communities with limited capacity to pursue funding?

THE CIVIC SOLUTION

CivicSol is proud to partner with the Alabama Growth Alliance on this work. The engagement is a focused program design effort that will move from national benchmarking and structural analysis to a recommended model and detailed program design. The engagement includes:

• A 50-state scan of how states fund and structure quality of place investments, supported by source-documented profiles of the major state programs
• A comparison of grant, tax incentive, and hybrid models based on reach, cost, administration, and impact, leading to a recommended structure for Alabama
• Cost and administrative benchmarking to establish what the program would require to operate
• A benefit analysis comparing physical investments such as streetscapes, parks, and trails with noncapital investments such as marketing and events
• A detailed program design covering eligible applicants and projects, funding tiers, match requirements that preserve access for rural communities, the application process and scoring rubric, and a recommended administrative home
• Tiered metrics that demonstrate results while keeping reporting manageable for small communities
• Alignment with the state’s One Alabama partner network to support statewide reach
• An implementation roadmap that lays out the steps from recommendation to the first round of awards

THE IMPACT

The work will produce a program design Alabama can carry into authorization, funding, and launch: a recommended structure, an application process a small town can navigate, metrics the state can sustain, and a roadmap to the first round of awards.

Alabama has already decided that quality of place is economic strategy. This study is how that decision becomes a program.