Home » EKPC, state organizations partner to promote investment throughout Kentucky

EKPC, state organizations partner to promote investment throughout Kentucky

Frankfort, Ky. – A number of state organizations and East Kentucky Power Cooperative are collaborating on a project to provide a powerful web-based tool for bringing jobs and investment to the Bluegrass State.

The Kentucky Economic Development Cabinet, the Kentucky Association for Economic Development (KAED) and the Kentucky League of Cities (KLC) are partnering with EKPC to provide information to Statebook.com about each of Kentucky’s 120 counties so the site can more effectively promote those communities.

“Our organizations have a shared interest in seeing Kentucky prosper by gaining jobs and investment,” said EKPC’s CEO Anthony “Tony” Campbell.  “StateBook is a powerful tool that provides site selectors with exactly the type of information they need to identify communities that have the resources they are seeking.”

The StateBook platform is used by business site selectors worldwide to help find communities that have the characteristics necessary to host facilities like company headquarters, manufacturing plants or support facilities. StateBook is the first to aggregate more than 63,000 data points relevant to site selectors, with data about such community features as education, workforce, tax rates, infrastructure, utility costs, incentives and quality of life, as well as GIS-based data including local building inventories.

A year ago, EKPC and its 16 owner-member cooperatives signed a multiyear agreement to provide the co-ops with access to the StateBook platform. The co-ops provide additional details to StateBook for the 87 Kentucky counties they serve.

“Research shows that more than 90 percent of site-selection decisions are made online before economic development staff members are ever contact,” said Brad Thomas, EKPC’s  Associate Manager of Economic Development. “Over the last year, our cooperatives have gained the knowledge and experience with StateBook, so we can help others around the Commonwealth put the platform to work for their communities.”

Through the announced partnership, partners across the state will have access to StateBook’s data for activities such as grant-writing.