Meet the Jackson Anchor Initiative

The Anchor Initiative is Jackson, Michigan’s private sector effort to transform and revitalize the downtown area. The Anchor Initiative has been a driving force to bring in new businesses and developments into the downtown area, creating prosperous businesses and a wonderful place for many to call home.

Downtown Jackson is located at the center of Jackson County, Michigan, a self-contained metropolitan area of 160,000. The downtown is both the geographic and economic center of this metropolitan area and improvements to this core will resonate through the entire community.

Interested in supporting the Jackson Anchor? Contact us and be a part of revitalizing Jackson.

Meet the Jackson Anchor Initiative
Meet the Jackson Anchor Initiative

Success Starts with Living, Investing, & Innovating

The Anchor Initiative will follow successful models employed elsewhere with a focus on Live Local, Invest/Buy Local, and Innovate Local. Live Local aims to grow a new downtown residential base of young adults with creative ideas and the means to provide bring financial stability to both the private sector and the municipal government. Invest/Buy Local efforts will focus on the interdependence of Jackson area businesses and the advantages of procuring goods and services from local firms including creating new enterprises, expanding commerce and increased job opportunities. Innovate Local will be a natural outcome of young creative people living and interacting in a vibrant urban setting where there are opportunities to launch careers and create new sustainable enterprises.

Organization & Governance

The Anchor Initiative is a consortium of larger Jackson-based employers and our local colleges. In terms of governance, the Board of Directors includes a representative from each anchor organization committed to supporting the effort. From this board, an Executive Committee is elected for active management and oversight of the initiative. The Board and Executive Committee oversee the initiative’s work plan, budget and the duties and performance of its executive director.

The commitments the Initiative asks of its anchor organizations are as follows:

  • A three-year pledge to financially support implementation of the project’s objectives,
  • A willingness to evaluate and aggregate purchasing to support the “Invest/Buy Local” effort,
  • Active in engaging their millennial generation workers in a young professionals group,
  • Rent incentives for employees to live downtown. Check with employer policies for more details.
  • A commitment to co-op style business internships that can help support a young, year around, talent-based population in the downtown.
Meet the Jackson Anchor Initiative
Meet the Jackson Anchor Initiative

The Anchor Concept

The anchor institutions concept originated in the 1990’s, and it was Harvard Professor Michael Porter, a leading economic development theorist and placemaking advocate, who demonstrated the win-win relationship when large employers sought to improve the economic and social landscape in their respective downtowns. His Initiative for a Competitive Inner City has demonstrated that when downtowns benefit from investment and support from large anchor organizations, these large anchors benefit as well with improved conditions that directly address their core business operations.

Anchor institutions participate in seven aspects of community and economic vitality. In four of these, the anchors are Actors, conducting the activities of their businesses including: (1) innovating their products, services and processes, (2) developing their real estate, (3) purchasing goods and services and (4) employing local residents. However, in conducting these activities, these anchors simultaneously benefit the community and its economy.

In two areas, anchors work as Leaders, joining with others to improve the economic and competitive conditions that help them succeed including providing direction for workforce development and stimulating clusters related businesses and institutions.

Finally, anchors act as Collaborators, leveraging their resources and influence with any other stakeholders to build a better community.

Anchors realize their greatest potential when they can aggregate and leverage their respective needs. The aggregated purchasing and employee skill requirements of several anchors, as examples, allows scale to be realized that would not otherwise be achievable with just individual needs. Similarly, anchors working together will magnify the impact they collectively make in all seven roles they play in the community.