Economic Inclusion Efforts
Economic inclusion and opportunity are at the core of our department’s mission. In December 2020, the City Council passed an inclusive procurement ordinance establishing a framework to set and achieve citywide aspirational goals of 12% minority-owned and 13.3% women-owned business participation on city contracts as a result of a collaborative effort led by our department. The program promotes the involvement of minority and women-owned businesses in City spending by breaking larger contract opportunities into smaller bid packages.
The transformation of the St. Paul’s area is the designated pilot for the new policy. Current city infrastructure projects under construction to support the neighborhood transformation of Tidewater Gardens are meeting the established economic inclusion goals.
Brinshore Development, Inc., the Tidewater Gardens CNI lead housing developer, affirmed this effort by adopting the same goals in their Economic Inclusion Plan for the project. To receive information about housing construction opportunities, please register as a vendor through Brinshore’s project website. For more information on contract opportunities for the entire project and business resources, please visit the City of Norfolk Economic Development website and NRHA website.
The four focus areas for our economic inclusion goals are construction projects, enhanced subcontracting, sheltered bidding, and micro-business contracting and support and are achieved through the following efforts:
- Requiring developers to provide individual economic inclusion plans for all construction projects valued over $5 million
- Mandating an analysis of all solicitations for enhanced subcontracting requirements of up to 50%
- Requiring certain procurements between $25,000 and $5 million to be procured from small, women and minority-owned businesses
- Requiring certain solicitations between $25,000 and $250,000 to be procured from local micro-businesses only
Read the City’s economic inclusion ordinance.