Lawrence Chamber of Commerce officials have announced plans to raise $1.8 million for a five-year capital campaign to boost economic development efforts in the community. The Chamber has set specific goals for what it wants to accomplish in those years, including attracting large-scale businesses to the area.

“We’ve got some work to do,” Larry McElwain, president and CEO of The Chamber, told attendees of a meeting Thursday. “There is a group that is working on that diligently. Three weeks ago we toured Douglas County in a 16-passenger van and looked at a lot of potential sites.”

McElwain said those sites will be studied as potential locations for larger projects, specifically ones that are looking for more space than can be offered at Lawrence VenturePark, which is the industrial park located on what used to be the Farmland Industries fertilizer plant in eastern Lawrence. McElwain said some businesses are looking for more space than the 250-acre park has to offer.

“A lot of projects that we see, we can’t necessarily qualify for because some of them want 200-plus acres,” McElwain said. “Some of them want as many as 500 acres, some of them as many as 1,000 acres.”

The $1.8 million campaign, named “Growing Forward,” will cover 2017 to 2021. Those involved with the campaign said in that time period they aim to accomplish three things: adding 500 jobs, increasing capital investment by 10 percent and increasing median income by 10 percent. That progress will be tracked using a matrix, said Dwight Crosby, senior project director for Opportunity Funding, which is working on the campaign.

“So it is a completely matrix-driven program,” Crosby said. “We think we’ve got the right measurements in place and the right action steps.”

Efforts have been categorized into five core initiatives: business retention and expansion; workforce development; business recruitment and marketing; entrepreneurship and startups; and site and infrastructure capacity. Each initiative lists strategies, action steps and key measurements. Crosby said business retention and expansion was ranked as The Chamber’s top priority.

“The feedback was to focus on the companies that are here: how can you get their suppliers, their vendors, perhaps similar companies to come in and join them and expand, create more jobs, more economic value,” Crosby said.

In addition to private investment, The Chamber receives $400,000 a year in taxpayer money, with the county and the city each contributing $200,000 annually. As part of the meeting, Chamber officials also went through recent projects they have been involved in, including the opening and ongoing funding of the Peaslee Technical Training Center and the pending Menards manufacturing plant.

More information on whether and when Menards will begin work on the plant, which would locate in Lawrence VenturePark, has yet to arrive. McElwain reiterated information that the Menards project is still “viable,” but has been put on hold by the company.

McElwain said attracting projects to VenturePark would be another “major goal.” It has been two years since the park’s ribbon cutting, and it continues to await the arrival of its first development.

As far as progress on the “Growing Forward” campaign, McElwain said The Chamber has been raising money for the campaign for the past six months and already has $1.5 million of pledges.

“We continue to push forward to meet and hopefully exceed the goal,” McElwain said.