Area Residents Brainstorm Ideas to Aid Growth

The talk focused on helping businesses to get off the ground by creating a central a website where ambitious entrepreneurs can go first.

"Make it easy to start up and do business in Livingston County," said Ceci Marlow, the director.

Marlow's idea was one of many discussed by about a dozen area residents at the library Monday during the first of a series of workshops designed to elicit ideas from the public to create a strategic action plan for growth that should be finalized early in 2011. After meeting for about two hours, two groups in Hartland prioritized two areas — collaboration, cooperation and regionalization, and jobs and prosperity.

The workshops are part of the Livingston County Strategic Growth Initiative, an effort organized by the , the Greater Brighton Area Chamber of Commerce, the Howell Area Chamber of Commerce and the Michigan State University Land Policy Institute.

The next two sessions are:

• 6:30-8:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Hamburg Township Library, 10411 Merrill Road, in Hamburg Township.
• 7:30-9:30 a.m. Dec. 7 at the Howell Area Chamber of Commerce, 123 E. Washington St. in Howell.

Editor's note: The video accompanying this story is an interview with Glenn Pape, a regional land use educator with Michigan State University Extension. He was the workshop facilitator.