MALONE — The Franklin County Economic Development Corp. has set its plans for the year.

“A big thing for this year is continuing what we have been doing because we think it is important, we know we have been able to be useful for a lot of people, and it’s really exciting. We just want to keep doing it and more,” CEO Jeremy S. Evans said.

The agency plans to continuing its focus on its four main goals — continuing to develop and maintain a strong economic development climate, a vibrant entrepreneurial culture, flourishing downtowns and resilient industries.

“We have our four goals, those are continuing through 2022, to make sure we have a good, strong economic development climate,” Evans said. “One of the things that is really important, that we’ve been participating continuously in, is within that goal we really want to be supporting efforts for related topics and challenges. Whether it is housing, child care, forest development or transportation, these are topics that we may not be experts in, but are really important to the overall health of our community.”

The FCEDC is in support of establishing a county land bank with the Board of Legislators, which seeks to increase affordable housing and stabilize property values from blighted properties.

Alongside supporting the expansion of broadband and cellular coverage, the FCEDC is supporting efforts to improve access to quality child care and explore strategies for leveraging the CSX Rail Line.

“If we can’t solve the child care crisis that we have, there are a lot of really capable, potential employees who are going to be stuck home because they have to stay home with their children. While I think that is a great thing, if you are, as a region, in need of workers — which we do — there is a conundrum there,” Evans said. “Same thing with housing. If we don’t have quality, affordable housing, we are not going to attract or have people stay here. So we have spent a lot of effort on supporting those kinds of initiatives.”

The FCEDC plans to continue to market the county for business and talent attraction, manage and promote EDC facilities such as the land fill, and participate in advisory group participation.

“When it comes to supporting entrepreneurs and our Main Street and downtown work, we are going to continue what we have been doing, which is using our loan programs strategically, connecting business owners with technical assistance or resources that our partners might have, and continuing to administer all these Main Street grant programs that we got,” Evans said. “We’ve got a number of them that are going to be under construction this spring and summer, which is very exciting, but we have a number of other ones that are just waiting for contractors.”

The FCEDC’s plans for developing and maintaining a vibrant entrepreneurial culture involve strategies such as supporting businesses in transitions, securing and administering funding in order to support entrepreneurs, expanding and operating co-work spaces, and promoting the county’s entrepreneurial culture and businesses.

The FCEDC also plans to establish a microloan program and continue administering assistance from the Franklin County Small Business Assistance Program funded by the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, or CARES act.

Under the goal of flourishing downtowns, the FCEDC plans to operate and expand its Main Street improvement programs such as completing the Tupper Lake Renovation Program as well as the Saranac Lake and Tupper Lake Building Renovation Program. The FCEDC will also promote the downtowns of Franklin County as entrepreneur and talent attraction hubs along with supporting the development and implementation of downtown strategic planning initiatives.

Under the goal of developing and maintaining resilient industries, the FCEDC will support and promote businesses or institutions such as tourism, agriculture and food processing, biotechnology and environmental science, forestry, health care and renewable energy.