Worcester seeks to add 10K jobs by 2030 as City releases five-year strategic plan

The City of Worcester has released its five-year strategic plan, a document seeking to guide the city’s operations and development through fiscal 2029 and calls for the creation of 10,000 jobs over the next five years.  

The 90-page document, developed by the City Manager’s Office over the previous two years, sets 49 objectives for the next five years, ranging from topics like public health and safety to economic development. 

The five-year plan comes after the prior five-year plan covering fiscals 2020 through 2024. The plan is a separate effort from the Worcester Now | Next plan adopted by the Worcester Planning Board in March, although full implementation of the Now | Next plan is outlined as one of the strategies towards encouraging private investment in Worcester.

“With the scale of operations in the second largest city in New England, we need a detailed plan to guide, prioritize, track and evaluate our work,” Worcester City Manager Eric Batista wrote in a letter to city councilors in a letter submitted with the plan as part of the council’s upcoming Tuesday meeting agenda. “We must ensure that nothing – and nobody – gets overlooked while we maximize our efficiency.”

The plan outlines six objectives to support economic growth in the city, including the creation of 10,000 new jobs in Worcester by 2030, supporting the growth of neighborhood-scale commerce and small businesses, and expanding the city’s tax base by encouraging investment in housing, commercial, and industrial developments.

The document outlines seven strategies toward hitting the 10,000 new jobs figure, including recruiting and supporting the growth of private employers and facilitating pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship opportunities for minority-owned and women-owned business enterprises. 

To improve the city’s housing situation, the plan outlines 13 objectives seeking to increase Worcester’s housing stock and protect existing residents from displacement. Objectives include the development of a housing production plan and updating zoning regulations to facilitate additional housing types and the creation of more housing units.

In regards to transportation, the plan calls for making Worcester’s neighborhoods more walkable, the implementation of electronic vehicle charging infrastructure in public parking facilities and at on-street locations, and supporting efforts to improve the city’s connections to the region, including the state’s West-East rail plan and the creation of additional MBTA Commuter Rail service to Union Station. 

The full plan can be read here as part of the communications from the City Manager for the upcoming Tuesday council meeting, beginning on page 163.

Eric Casey is a staff writer at Worcester Business Journal, who primarily covers the manufacturing and real estate industries.