Our goal is to create wealth in communities adjacent to the Central Corridor by focusing and aggregating the demand from the Anchor institutions to local suppliers that employ and invest in the community.

 

Objectives

  • Create or attract jobs to the Central Corridor by increasing the amount of local purchasing made by the Anchor institutions by 5% over 2012 baseline data.

  • Create cost savings over time for Anchors through collective procurement.

 

We are pursuing our goal and objectives through the following strategies:

  • Drive individual Anchor institution purchasing to Central Corridor vendors and track results.

  • Contract with Central Corridor suppliers to provide goods/services to Anchors through below list pricing or joint contracts.

  • Grow or attract suppliers to the Corridor to meet Anchor spend that is currently being exported out of Minnesota.

 

The benefits to Anchors include:

  • Better vendor pricing and customer service

  • Ability to receive more customized products and services along with competitive pricing

  • A lower carbon footprint

  • Helping sustain and enhance neighborhoods surrounding Anchor facilities

This initiative helps increase employment in Corridor neighborhoods, stabilize the Corridor, and build relationships among vendors and Anchors.

Image courtesy of ICIC

Image courtesy of ICIC

Anchors could feasibly shift over $328 million in purchasing from out-of-state businesses into the Central Corridor.

We have initiated preferred purchasing options for appliances, window cleaning, snow removal, construction, and food. We also worked with the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) to develop a data-driven strategy to spending more procurement dollars in Central Corridor neighborhoods. 

Twenty-five percent of Anchor spending is addressable, translating to 36 industries where spending could be shifted.

This study completed a full analysis of spending by the Anchor institutions. It examined 1.6 million transactions, focused on sectors where spend was over $1 million, and found the collective spend on goods and services to be $3 billion per year.