Who We Are
LEAPartners is an economic development consultancy specializing in the design and development of community economies. The company engages in four general areas of activity: economic architecture, master-planning and project management, innovation work and thought Leadership.
Master-planning and Project Management — LEAPartners works with developers, principals and communities to help plan, structure and complete transformational economic development projects. This includes masterplanning, entitlement work, marketing, deal structuring, and project management for individual development projects and site selection. LEAP also works with master planned community developers who want to establish their own in-house economic development operations.
Innovation Work — LEAPartners works with communities and entrepreneurs to help pioneer new economic development and workforce development program approaches.
Thought Leadership — LEAPartners provide insight and perspective on new challenges and solutions facing community leaders trying to manage their local economies. The company writes books, articles and program guidelines as well as performing conference keynote addresses, conducting break out sessions, workshops and seminars on a range of topics.
Leadership
Mark Lautman — President
Mark Lautman, CEcD, CRE, has been a practicing economic developer for nearly three decades. His consultancy, Lautman Economic Architecture Partners, works with states, communities and real estate firms to design and develop new economies.
Jeff Spiegel — Partner
Jeff Spiegel is a founding partner in Lautman Economic Architecture Partners. Spiegel spent nearly 35 years in New York, where he started a health care consulting firm, APM, Inc.; an Internet marketing firm, The Sidecast Network; and 11 restaurants that he planned, financed, developed and operated for his own account.
William Knauf — Adviser
William Knauf is the co-founder of Advanced Insights Group, Inc., providing consultant services to state, federal and private-sector clients. Knauf served as deputy director and chief of staff for Sandia National Laboratories’ national security programs from 1994 to 2005.
Our Projects
ECONOMIC ARCHITECTURE ENGAGEMENTS
LEAPartners is a participant member of a privately funded local think tank formed to look at ways to address the looming prospect of long-term economic decline resulting from contraction of the area’s two primary economic base sectors: natural gas production and coal fired power generation. LEAPartners is on retainer to this expanding group of community and business leaders, helping them identify and manage the outside experts needed to complete the process. The process includes an analysis of their predicament, the prioritizing of new industry-sector targets, the development of a plan, and the exploration of different organizational approaches.
Spaceport America
LEAPartners has contracted with the New Mexico Spaceport Authority to design and implement a multi-county economic-development effort to prepare the region for the demands of the nascent commercial space industry. As consultants to the NMSA Regional Economic Development Leadership Team, we have designed a council structure that deals with four market areas: contracts, industry, tourism, and education & technology. We will also establish infrastructure and workforce-development committees that cut across all four market councils.
Cibola County
We have contracted with a small group of community leaders in an effort to revive the Cibola County’s economic-development program. LEAPartners is developing a two-pronged strategy: first, a traditional industry-recruiting effort, focused on emerging opportunities, and second, an innovative, workforce-led economic-development initiative, headed by the leadership of the New Mexico State University branch campus.
Rio Rancho Economic Development Corporation
LEAPartners has an open contract for advice, counsel and technical assistance with the Rio Rancho Economic Development Corporation. We are working with a small leadership group in Sandoval County to focus on an updated analysis of the area’s predicament, changes in its competitive market position and potential solutions and initiatives needed for the future.
ECONorthwest/Group Mackenzie/Oklahoma City
LEAPartners has teamed with ECONorthwest and Group Mackenzie on an employment/land-needs assessment and action plan for Oklahoma City. We are providing advisory services and technical assistance, to help the City and its economic-development organization understand its land-inventory needs and how to attract the support of master-plan-community developers and industrial development companies.
We are leading a team of architects, engineers and developers in an effort to craft a master plan, a development business model and initial-tenant projects for a 468-acre, state-owned, Pershing-era fort in Grant County. The team is working with local interest groups, State General Services Department, Veterans Affairs and the Health Department to determine the feasibility of designing and developing a major asset to provide a full spectrum of health, wellness, job-creation, recreational and educational uses for the historic site.
LEAPartners has teamed with Innovate+Educate New Mexico under a $6 million Kellogg grant focused on developing an innovative new market platform that would allow employers, job-seekers, and educational and training institutions to use a common set of skills-based metrics for determining job-readiness. We are teamed with Monster.com, The Garrity Group and The Digital Workshop and others in this endeavor. LEAPartners’ role in the project is to develop and execute a program to recruit a critical mass of employers in each regional job market in New Mexico to adopt the skills-based-assessment program. This project has the potential to finally connect and inform employers, workers and educators on a practical basis.
EB5
LEAPartners is engaged in an effort to establish New Mexico’s first EB5 center. EB5 is a U.S. immigration program that allows high-net-worth foreign nationals to fast track permanent residency for their families by investing $1 million ($500,000 in rural areas) in an enterprise or expansion that creates 20 or more new jobs. Program funds would targeted to fill deal structure gaps in economic base job creation projects around the state.
This book, authored by LEAPartners founder and president Mark Lautman, is an economic survival guide for community leaders. As the industrialized world slowly recovers from the Great Recession, many communities face an new economic threat. A structural shortage of qualified workers is creating a zero-sum labor market that forces communities to steal talent from each other in order to survive and grow. The cause of this impending economic disaster: Boomers who didn’t have enough kids to replace themselves, and an education system that has failed to properly prepare students for the rising technical demands of today’s market.
Add to that 78 million-soon-to be retired Baby Boomers who will go from high earning producers to resource sapping dependents. Any community unable to attract and hold talent will join a growing number of economically doomed places where economic development is impossible. This suddenly makes deciding where to live or invest a much higher stakes game.
When the Boomers Bail details the causes of the problem, explains how it changes the game and what communities can do about it.
Business Weekly Column
Mark Lautman writes a provocative monthly column in New Mexico Business Weekly, titled “Reinventing Economic Development.”
Keynotes and Workshops
LEAPartners principals are engaged in making conference keynote presentations, conducting panel discussions and workshops on a variety of topics related to improving the ability of communities to manage their economic destinies.
Contact Us
Mark.Lautman@LEAPartners.com / 505-366-3234
Jeff.Spiegel@LEAPartners.com / 505-366-3234