Press Release | City named 2010 Innovative Community Development Program Winner

For Immediate Release

November 16, 2010

Contact: Julie McQuade
Community Outreach Coordinator
479-575-8302
[email protected]

Arkansas Community Development Society Names City of Fayetteville 2010 Innovative Community Development Program Winner

FAYETTEVILLE, AR – The Arkansas Community Development Society (ACDS) announced the City of Fayetteville as the recipient of its 2010 Innovative Community Development Program in a community of over 50,000 people for the Fayetteville Forward program.

Fayetteville Forward began as an Economic Development Summit in 2009, involving more than 600 participants from 334 stakeholder groups. The program is an innovative, collaboration-based economic development initiative. It engaged the entire community in creating an action plan to build and foster economic development in the community and resulted in 18 city-led projects that are key to Fayetteville’s continued development. Eleven projects have been completed thus far, three are ongoing, and four have future completion dates.

The key to the program’s success was developing a mechanism for active public involvement in the community’s future. The Fayetteville Forward program is about economic development through collaboration. It provides an opportunity for anyone to get involved in driving economic development in Fayetteville – based on the belief that everyone has something to contribute. No matter what a person’s interest or experience – there is a place for them.

Julie McQuade, Community Outreach Coordinator, accepted the award on behalf of Fayetteville at the ACDS’s annual meeting in Conway on October 21.