Maria Laughner

Maria Laughner has pushed the city to rethink the dynamics of economic development. Job creation and business attraction remain central to the role, but she treats housing, schools, infrastructure and daily life as parts of the same equation.

The City of Peoria, Arizona, is known for its excellent lifestyle. Master-planned neighborhoods, wide landscaped roads and abundant parks and trails are part of the highquality living the city offers. Yet, for a long time, this came with a cost. Many residents drove up to an hour each way to jobs elsewhere in the Phoenix region, losing close to two hours a day to the road and time away from their personal lives and families.

For Laughner, bringing jobs closer to where residents already live is an important part of addressing that cost and strengthening the city’s economic development. A change of this scale needs a leadership team willing to commit publicly and repeatedly to growth. She points to the city council and city manager as the ones who set the direction for Peoria’s evolution from a bedroom community to an employment hub.

Peoria is still in the middle of that shift. For decades, commercial and industrial development received less attention. The city is now making room for more of those uses through Peoria Innovation Core, 7,300 acres zoned for commercial and industrial development along a freeway corridor close to another employment center in Phoenix. The site sits far enough from existing neighborhoods that heavier industrial uses would not bother residents.

Jobs remain central, since people need a way to earn a living and reach their own goals, but she treats them as just one part of what she calls a ‘live-work-play approach.’ Young residents bring spending, energy and civic engagement to the city. Planning for that population is as much a part of her job as planning for employers. A mix of housing types for different stages of life, not limited to single-family homes, matters. So do walkable and safer neighborhoods, better transit and school systems that support young families. Those priorities influence how Peoria plans new development.

Growth with Guardrails

Rezoning for the development of Peoria Innovation Core required more than a council vote. Peoria updates a ten-year general plan with community input. Changes to zoning or land use move through public hearings, planning and zoning meetings and formal neighborhood notification. Residents learn what is being proposed near them and have a chance to weigh in before anything is approved. On larger projects, the city typically requires developers to add public amenities such as a trailhead alongside new commercial space. That way, growth does not come at the expense of what residents already value about where they live.

Beyond incentives and available land, Laughner notes that workforce access is the first factor companies consider when deciding where to invest. Access to electricity comes in close behind and, in some national conversations, the two are treated as tied for first. Freeway proximity, shorter drive times and nearby amenities still matter.

In the state of Arizona, access to water carries its own weight, too. Peoria has a 100-year water assurance designation and needs to demonstrate that water will be available to new employers. It also expects them to respect the conservation standards already built into local practice. Housing has entered the same conversation recently, driven less by anything specific to Peoria than by housing scarcity nationwide.

If you are spending all of that time behind a windshield trying to get to your job, it takes away from your quality of life. Bringing employment closer to where people live improves quality of life.

The city also tracks progress through measurable goals. Job creation is the clearest example. In a sector such as semiconductors, where the city already has an advantage, it might set a target of 500 new jobs a year. Then it reports back publicly on whether it hit that number. Increased tax revenue is tracked the same way.

Putting the Strategy to the Test

East of the city, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is building a group of facilities valued at nearly 265 billion dollars on roughly 1,000 acres. The scale of that investment created a regional draw that helped bring Amkor Technology’s twelve-billiondollar advanced packaging facility to Peoria, five minutes down the same freeway.

Both projects relied on Arizona’s state land trust to acquire land in an area that was, until recently, largely undeveloped. With zoning, water and infrastructure work already underway, the surrounding land is positioned for other companies looking to co-locate near an Amkor or TSMC. Laughner met with roughly 40 Amkor suppliers in Korea to discuss how Peoria could help them establish a North American beachhead in the city.

Growth at this scale carries costs that the city is still managing. Power capacity is still being built out, since advanced manufacturing requires substantial electricity. The city is working with its utility to add substations able to support it.

Peoria is building out roughly 600 million dollars in infrastructure across the Innovation Core, including roads, water, sewer, fiber and natural gas. The city expects to recover that upfront cost over time through land sales, while balancing that investment against other budget needs. Housing near the site remains scarce. With Amkor expected to bring around 3,500 jobs and TSMC roughly 15,000, solving the commute problem in one place could recreate it, with added congestion, in another.

Success Beyond the City Line

Laughner is also working on workforce development with high school career and technical education group to build two campuses connecting local high schools with employers such as Amkor. Not every graduate needs a four-year degree, in her view, and part of her job is making sure students know a trade pathway exists and leads somewhere before they leave high school.

She is equally direct about what does not count as economic development. A company relocating from a neighboring city to Peoria does not create new opportunities. It only moves them, and treating that kind of move as a win keeps the profession focused on competition between neighbors rather than the region as a whole. Her preferred measure looks past city lines. A Peoria resident working at a company located in a neighboring community still contributes to the regional economy. A school partnership with a business outside city limits can still benefit Peoria students. Workers from elsewhere may also come to Peoria and spend money in the community.

Laughner’s goal is not to simply add another company to Peoria’s roster. It is to make sure a resident spends less time on the road, a student has a clear path into a career and a family can find housing with access to work and amenities, without losing the qualities that drew people to the city in the first place.