How we put the plan to work: Three strategies for transformation
To build a stronger, future-ready Michigan, we’re focusing on three things: diversified industries, skilled workers, and resilient communities that are ready for what’s next. These strategies work together to help Michigan grow in a balanced way.
Strategy 2
Community resiliency
Throughout the Office’s engagement activities, it has been clear that most communities have a sense of what their future could be. They have an asset like a college or historic downtown, a resource like access to public lands or fresh water, or a key employer or sector that could catalyze broader economic growth. What these communities often lack is the data, information, or mechanisms for collaboration to turn that vision into an actionable, implementable plan. Rather than prescribing top-down solutions, the state is leaning into its role as a provider of information and as capacity enhancer, supporting communities to chart their own paths for the future.
Why it matters
When communities become focused on responding to plant closures, job losses, or population erosion, they can get stuck in a reactive cycle of managing decline. When this happens, they can struggle to pivot toward attracting new opportunities, planning for the future, or delivering the quality of life that residents deserve. The Transition Office exists to break that cycle. By providing the tools, data, and hands-on support communities need to proactively shape their economic futures, we are helping them shift from crisis response to long-term resilience and growth.
Michigan’s future depends on the strength and adaptability of its communities. By combining practical tools, hands-on support, and a commitment to equity, the Transition Office is equipping local leaders with the resources they need not only to weather economic disruptions but to emerge stronger, more resilient, and better positioned for long-term success. This strategy reflects Michigan’s bold commitment to inclusive economic growth and offers a model for how states can partner with communities to navigate transition with foresight, coordination, and confidence.
Explore the programs that are fostering community resiliency.
Communities around the state have been clear that it can be challenging to identify state and federal grant opportunities that are targeted to their specific needs. To help solve this problem, we developed MI Funding Hub in partnership with the Michigan Municipal League. This free resource connects local governments to a centralized database of state and federal grants and matches them to relevant and eligible funding opportunities.
At the heart of our work with local communities is the Community Transition Playbook: a three-part initiative that builds local capacity and strengthens economic planning, helping communities address near-term challenges caused by plant closures or business failures, as well as design and implement a regional growth and resilience plan tailored to their communities’ unique strengths, assets, and obstacles. This project begins with deep, community-based research, including the use of tabletop exercises to simulate real-world closures or business shifts, and brings local and state actors together to test response systems and identify gaps.
Learnings from this research will be used to develop a Community Transition Playbook that uses those lessons to create a comprehensive guide with tools on economic data use, asset mapping, plant closure protocols, long-term planning, proactive economic diversification, and models for sustainable financing. Ten communities were selected to be part of our inaugural Community Growth Academy and were provided with specialized, tailored support to apply the playbook in the development and implementation of their own growth plan. Feedback from Growth Academy members will be used to refine the Playbook before it is finalized and distributed to communities statewide.
To ensure Michigan’s most vulnerable communities can fully benefit from available tools and resources, the Transition Office is deploying a dedicated team of community navigators to provide hands-on, sustained support. These navigators serve as trusted liaisons, building relationships at the local level and helping assess community needs and readiness to tailor support and prioritize resources. The small team is currently assisting the ten Community Growth Academy communities in developing actionable plans, navigating funding opportunities, and implementing the Community Transition Playbook. They are facilitating peer learning across communities to share successes and lessons learned, while also tracking progress and collecting feedback to help the state continually refine and improve its approach.
Discover recommendations for enhancing community resiliency across Michigan.
Michigan should scale the Community Growth Academy model to support more regions in forming strong, multi-sector coalitions capable of designing and implementing high-priority growth and resilience strategies. Expanding the Academy would allow more communities to receive planning grants, collaboration incentives, and hands-on support to translate local visions into investable projects. This includes making dedicated funds available for projects that would catalyze local growth, including pre-development activities such as feasibility studies, site control, capital stack planning, and alignment of workforce and infrastructure strategies. Key to the success of this model is the placement of full-time fellows in participating communities to provide surge capacity in data analysis, stakeholder coordination, and project management. Scaling this approach would help more regions build the durable partnerships and technical foundation needed to compete for public and private investment.
Requires significant new investment
Michigan should create a dedicated fund to help communities experiencing major economic transitions stabilize, respond, and rebuild. The Just Transition Fund, a national philanthropic organization, has supported several states in launching similar funds to amplify federal investments in coal-impacted communities. Several states have launched similar funds by pooling new and existing resources. Michigan could provide similar transition grants for projects like industrial site redevelopment, workforce training for displaced workers, entrepreneurship, or other local priorities. The Transition Office is piloting a small version of this approach with Community Growth Academy communities, offering early lessons on design, demand, and impact. A scaled, statewide Community Transition Fund would pool new and existing resources to provide flexible grants and matching dollars that enable communities to act quickly, unlock additional investment, and position themselves for long-term economic resilience.
Requires significant new investment
Requires policy
To help capacity-constrained communities turn plans into action, Michigan should expand access to support from community navigators and improve coordination among state agencies with community-facing roles. The Transition Office’s Community Navigators are providing vital, hands-on support to help local leaders identify needs, access resources, and carry forward the work of the Community Growth Academy and the Community Transition Playbook. By strengthening collaboration among agencies with community-facing teams working in economic development, housing, infrastructure, and environmental quality, the state can ensure communities receive consistent, well-aligned support rather than struggle to navigate siloed programs. A more coordinated approach would allow the state to share data, streamline guidance, and respond more effectively to local challenges. As demand for this type of assistance grows, the state should also explore options for scaling funding to expand the Community Navigator model, enabling more communities to benefit from sustained, trusted relationships and tailored technical assistance. This expanded and coordinated model would accelerate project delivery, improve grant readiness, and strengthen long-term community resilience across the state.
Requires increased collaboration or coordination
Michigan should explore making it easier and faster for communities to repurpose idled industrial sites by streamlining environmental and zoning approvals that promote interim uses and prioritize reuse of existing brownfields over greenfield development. Pairing these improvements with existing incentives such as site-readiness grants, brownfield tax credits, and Opportunity Zones would help attract employers in sectors that require access to transportation, water, and energy while simultaneously taking advantage of underused infrastructure. While comprehensive regulatory changes may be challenging to implement, expediting permits for projects in hard-hit areas sends a powerful signal that these communities are transformation-ready, helping to attract private investment into transitioning communities without significant new spending. This “reuse over rebuild” approach would leverage existing sunk infrastructure costs, reduce rate pressure on residential users, and attract new employers into vulnerable communities.
Requires additional study or policy change
Plant closures and industrial contractions create long-term liabilities for local infrastructure systems. Michigan can establish a technical assistance program that helps transition-impacted communities assess fiscal exposure, model rate impacts, and evaluate restructuring or cost-saving upgrades. Small planning grants would help communities pursue refinancing strategies, alternative revenue sources, and integration of infrastructure planning into broader transition strategies. For the most vulnerable communities facing sudden revenue losses, the state should consider a time-limited “gap coverage” fund to stabilize utility finances, prevent large rate spikes, and provide breathing room for redevelopment.
Requires significant new investment
Many small water and utility systems struggle with declining customer bases and high operating costs. The state can play a convening role to bring together regional stakeholders to explore shared services, cooperative maintenance, or voluntary system consolidation. The state could develop model compact agreements, host regional workshops, and provide legal or technical facilitation through existing partners, such as EGLE. Better regional coordination improves financial resilience, lowers long-term costs, and ensures that infrastructure can keep pace with economic and demographic shifts.
Requires increased collaboration or coordination
Requires additional study or policy change
The state should support the expansion of regional scenario planning workshops modeled after those conducted by the Transition Office as part of the Community Transition Playbook program. These workshops bring together local officials, economic developers, workforce and training providers, business leaders, and community organizations to practice responding to plant closures or major economic shifts. The scenarios should be modeled on real projects, past transitions, or emerging industry trends to make them more relevant. By simulating plausible disruptions, communities can identify vulnerabilities, resource gaps, and response protocols before a crisis hits. Funding these workshops would help communities proactively plan for disruption rather than react in crisis. The exercises build local capacity, foster cross-sector relationships, and surface real-world infrastructure, workforce, and fiscal challenges before they become acute. The insights gained can directly inform local economic development strategies, infrastructure planning, and future grant applications.
Requires modest investment or new use of existing funds
Many communities in Michigan are vulnerable to the impacts of deindustrialization. To date, there has been little analysis tracking which ones are quantitatively at risk for or impacted by economic shocks like a major business failure or plant closure. To effectively target limited financial resources, technical assistance capacity, and state programming, Michigan should devise and maintain a methodology to identify and prioritize these transition-impacted communities through a quantitatively sound transition impact score. This score could factor data surrounding a community’s overall economic health, job growth or loss in relevant sectors, and the concentration of workers and employers in a given sector to assess a community’s vulnerability to economic shocks impacting specific industries.
Requires collaboration or coordination
Requires additional study or policy change
The state should create a comprehensive map that identifies both high-priority community needs and investment-ready projects across Michigan. This effort builds naturally from the work already underway through the Community Transition Playbook and the Community Growth Academy, which help regions assess challenges, surface opportunities, and clarify what local leaders need to support economic resilience. To be most effective, the map should be developed through close collaboration with other state agencies that bring valuable data and on-the-ground insights related to transportation, environmental quality, and housing. A shared, statewide view of needs and ready-to-go projects would help align funding streams, guide technical assistance, and ensure the state can move quickly when federal or philanthropic dollars become available.
Requires increased collaboration or coordination
“Economic shifts are not a one-size-fits-all process. The Transition Office recognizes that and works with communities to address their individual challenges.”
-Daniel Gilmartin, MML Executive Director