SHADY SIDE ECO-BUSINESS PARK
Shady Side, Maryland

Managing Entity : Business Ecology Network (BEN)
Contact Person' s Name: Joe Abe, President
Address: 4800 Atwell Road, Shady Side, MD 20764-9546
Phone : (410) 867-3596 Fax : (410) 867-7956 E-mail : abe@naturaledge.org

Alternate Contact Person : Gregg Freeman, Development Director
Phone : (410) 266-3216 Fax : (410) 266-8950 E-mail: Eloggie@aol.com

EIP's key features.

  • Renovation of an existing facility in an underemployed and under served community.

  • Integration of successful community-based tools and approaches from U.S. and abroad such as visioning, strategic planning, mapping of important resources and sites, and sustainable indicators.

  • Refinement and demonstration of Business Ecology Roundtables, an innovative approach for integrating profitability, stakeholder participation, and environmental performance

  • Park ecosystem may include the following business: microbrewery, fish and shellfish
    aquaculture, a marine exploration and technology firm, an oil recycling business, an
    ecologically-designed water reclamation system, solar and renewable energy, and a
    compost business.

  • Integration of the Internet, video and audio tapes, local printed media, and town meetings to reach stakeholders and communicate projects' progress.

  • Demonstrating linkages among ecosystem healths, the food system, community health, and economic opportunity.

What constitutes success?

  • Economic, social and environmental goals are mutually achieved, creating powerful synergies that ripple within and outside the community.
  • The community, businesses and the environment are so intertwined and mutually supportive that it's difficult to see where the boundaries between these systems begin and end.

EIP linkages.
1. Define the context, stakeholders and vision.
2. Develop and implement a communications strategy.
3. Develop a strategic plan for an eco-business park/community development center.
4. Implement the strategic plan.
5. Maintain the integrity and viability of the eco-business park/community development center.

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Recruiting process.

This is proprietary information.

Resources available.

This is proprietary information.

Strategy to continue progressing.

This is proprietary information.

What is missing?

BEN has developed its Roundtables process to support eco-business park development.

Goals for the upcoming workshop.

Create strategic alliances and new opportunities.



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Case Study Source: Eco-Industrial Park (EIP) Workshop, Cape Charles, Va., October 17-18, 1996.